India’s Hindu nationalists face fraud claims at controversial temple

Donations allegedly embezzled under watch of temple trust with links to Modi’s party

- Debarshi Dasgupta

Back on Jan 22, 2024, Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were riding high on a wave of Hindu nationalism.

That was the day the Indian Prime Minister inaugurated the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, fulfilling a decades-long Hindu nationalist pledge.

The grand temple had been constructed on the site of the 16th-century Babri mosque, brought down by Hindu mobs in 1992.

Many Hindus believe the mosque was built by Muslim invaders on the ruins of a temple where Ram, the Hindu deity, was born. Hindu litigants were handed the disputed plot by the country’s top court after a protracted legal battle.

It was the BJP’s campaign to build the temple at the site of the demolished mosque that propelled the party into political prominence in the 1990s, but today the same temple has put the party in a tight spot.

Many Hindus have been shocked by revelations that devotees’ donations to the Ram Temple worth tens of millions of rupees may have been embezzled under the watch of the temple trust set up by the BJP-led federal government.

It has raised uncomfortable questions for the party ahead of the state elections in Uttar Pradesh expected around February to March 2027.

“Given that the BJP spearheaded the campaign to build the temple and has also claimed credit for it, critics are asking why the blame for wrongdoings there should not go to them as well,” said Shashi Kant Pandey, a professor of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in the state’s capital, Lucknow.

Modi had announced the creation of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust in Parliament in February 2020 and 12 of its 15 members were nominated by the BJP-led government.

While members of the trust do not include representatives from the BJP, they feature members from right-wing Hindu groups with close connections to the party, besides serving bureaucrats from the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh state government.