What is the story behind Ayodhya Ram Mandir?

The Ram Mandir is a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located at the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the site believed to be the birthplace of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu and the principal deity of Hinduism.

What is the story behind Ayodhya Ram Mandir?

The building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya fulfills a decades-long Hindu nationalist pledge. Many Hindus believe the Babri mosque was built by Muslim invaders on the ruins of a temple where the Hindu god was born. The movement to build the temple helped propel the BJP into political prominence in the 1990s.

The trust in charge of the temple, whose construction is still underway, has invited an estimated 7,000 people — politicians, leading industrialists, sports stars and other public figures.

But while Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has pitched the event as a national celebration, the temple’s history is grounded in what many have dubbed one of modern India’s darkest chapters — one that has shaped the country’s politics and that cracked open deep religious fault lines in its society.