Can an unfinished temple be consecrated? Opinion in Ayodhya is divided

The portraits of KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar, the early leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, watch over 34-year-old Jairam Das as he sits up to make a point. “The shikhar [spire] has not even been constructed, then how will the temple be inaugurated?” he said.

Das is the head priest of the Shri Ram Ashram in Ramkot, the Ayodhya neighbourhood where the Ram temple is coming up, on the site where the Babri Masjid once stood.

He is convinced that the date for the consecration of the still-under-construction temple – January 22, 2024 – was not set by theological considerations.

“Only the wise ones in Banaras would know under whose pressure they fixed that date,” he said, a reference to the seers from Varanasi who chose the date after a meeting with Champat Rai, secretary of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, a trust formed to build the temple. “If the tradition of seers is dictated by external pressure, then what happens to religious scriptures?”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will play a central role in the pran pratishtha or consecration, could have come “in April, May or after,” Das reasoned. “But he is coming now because of the trust’s invitation,” he said. “If the trust is...

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