India Will Build New Temples, And These Temples Will Build New India

The first anniversary of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir pran pratishtha (22 January) provides us with a vantage point from which to acknowledge India’s post-colonial realisation that a great nation is built not only on sound economic fundamentals but on solid spiritual and religio-cultural foundations.

North India was devastated by Islamic iconoclasm from the eighth century CE onwards. And even though many good temples were built in the 20th century, when the British Raj was on the wane and after independence (Delhi’s Birla Mandir and various Akshardhams come to mind), it was with the rebirth of the Ram Temple in 2024 that India truly left behind its ambivalence about making temples central to its core civilisational identity. 

The rebuilding of the Somnath temple immediately after independence, while symbolically important, did not result in any broader rejuvenation of our cultural heritage, as the “secular” Nehruvian dispensation chose to underplay its significance and even disapproved of President Rajendra Prasad’s association with the temple. In India, the word “secular” is shorthand for running down Hinduism.

One of the big mistakes made by the Nehruvian state was to equate modernity with the building of dams and steel plants (“the temples of modern India”), while equating temple-building with blind devotion and regressive activity.

The same “secular” attitude drove some “liberals” to suggest building a school or hospital at the disputed Babri site before the Supreme Court finally handed down its verdict to give the Ram Janmabhoomi fully to Hindus to build their temple.

The shortsightedness of this “liberal” view is apparent from the fact that a school would have benefited a few hundred children annually; Ayodhya is generating a whole new level of mass cultural awareness and hyper economic activity.

The fundamental point to note is that temples are seldom merely places of worship; they are centres of commerce and economic activity too.

Chola temples, for example, played a major role in trade and commerce, and the same merchants who lavished wealth on temples also financed expeditions to South East Asia.

We are already seeing this in Ayodhya after the temple was built. In less than a year, tourist and pilgrim footfalls have taken it past Agra and the Taj Mahal.

Between January and September 2024, the UP Tourism Department reported that Ayodhya attracted a massive 135 million domestic tourists and 3,153 foreigners, while the Taj attracted 125 million domestic and international tourists.

Overall, Uttar Pradesh attracted 476 million tourists during this nine-month period, not least because of the creation of the Kashi corridor, which makes movement in the temple complex easier than before. Again, this economic activity is about the temple.

This boom will continue in 2025, as we not only have the Kumbh mela in January and February, which is expected to see 400 million visitors in Prayagraj, but many of the same devotees may visit Ayodhya too.

The year 2025 will be another boom year for Ayodhya’s religious tourism, and this boom is stoking a huge rise in building and construction activities. Land prices in Ayodhya are now headed for the stratosphere. The resultant wealth generated will boost other commercial activities, from hotel building to social and physical infrastructure in and around this temple.

From food joints to transport operators, from schools and colleges to hospitals, jobs are going to skyrocket. The temples of modern India are actual temples too.

With four of the holiest Hindu places in the state — Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura, and Prayagraj — Uttar Pradesh’s rise in India’s growth league will be led by temple development and faith as much as by investments in highways, airports, and tech startups nurtured around Delhi in the western part of the state.

This suggests that the recovery of the Gyan Vapi in Kashi and Sri Krishna Janmasthan in Mathura from Islamic occupation is as important as the recovery of Ayodhya, which has sparked regional economic rejuvenation.

Even without these recoveries, which may need court sanction or community agreements, organisations like Iskcon and the Swaminarayan sect are building large temples in India.

One of Iskcon’s most ambitious projects is the Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir near Mathura, which is in the early stages of construction. Then there is the already inaugurated Statue of Equality of eleventh-century Saint Ramanuja on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

While the Vrindavan temple is expected to be the tallest religious structure in the world with an elevation of 2,213 metres, Vaishnavite saint Sri Ramanuja’s is the second-tallest sitting statue in the world.

Dharmic India is being built temple brick by temple brick (or other building materials, including stone, marble and granite).

When India builds temples, these temples will build the new India, both rooted in antiquity and ready to soar high on standard economic development parameters.

Viksit Bharat is achievable by 2047 only when temples occupy centre-stage in development.