Modi’s audacious plan for India Opinion by Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal has published an article noting that the Indian Prime Minister harnesses nationalism and faith to spur modernization and economic growth. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

What, I asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi when we met last week, should I do to understand the political and religious movement that brought his Bharatiya Janata Party to power? Go to two places, he said: Varanasi and Ayodhya.

This turned out to be excellent advice. To see the hundreds of thousands of people flocking daily to the temples and ghats that line the banks of the Ganges, and to hear the chants of “Jai Shri Ram” (“Hail Lord Ram”) rising spontaneously from throngs waiting to enter the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir (as the new Ayodhya temple is known) is to witness the power of a religious enthusiasm that matches anything in the world. To speak with Hindu scholars and priests about their hopes for a renaissance of Hindu culture and faith after centuries of alien rule, and to hear university students mix religious fervor with nationalist pride, is to observe one of the strongest forces reshaping our world.

But even in India, religious enthusiasm cannot, alone, sustain a major political movement. India’s Hindu nationalists must produce rapid economic growth to maintain their support, but economic modernization will inevitably involve massive and unsettling social and cultural change.

In both Varanasi and Ayodhya, the ruling BJP aims to fuse Hindu revivalism and economic development on the ground. Party leaders hope that religious tourism will deepen Indian identity while leading to transformational economic growth.

It has worked in Varanasi. Since the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor opened up access to one of the holiest Varanasi temples in 2021, there has been a more than tenfold increase in the number of visitors, with more than 130 million pilgrims making the journey. The streets are jam-packed, and hotels are springing up and booking fast, with room rates skyrocketing. A new airport terminal and runway expansion will accommodate six million passengers a year.

The boost to local pride and the local economy has paid political dividends. Varanasi is Prime Minister Modi’s parliamentary constituency. In the 2019 election, he won roughly 64 per cent of the vote in a field of 26.

Similar plans are afoot in Ayodhya. Just as cathedrals in medieval Europe promoted economic growth by attracting tourists and merchants, the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir is intended to spark an economic boom. The temple, on the traditional site of the Lord Ram’s birth, is only one facet of a massive infrastructure program with streets, highways and a new airport being built to accommodate the surge of visitors. Land prices have surged. Luxury hotels are planned, and holy sites around the city are being refurbished.

Harnessing the piety of India’s rising middle classes to fuel domestic tourism is only one aspect of the project. Lord Ram is perhaps the most political figure in the Hindu pantheon. Like King David in the Hebrew scriptures, Ram was a just and godly king who set the standard for later rulers. That Islamic conquerors destroyed the original temple and built a mosque over Ram’s birthplace (as Muslim conquerors built the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Hebrew temples) made the temple site a key issue for Hindu activists going back to the 19th century. The political and sometimes physical battles over the mosque have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people across India and were instrumental in the rise of the BJP to national power.

Nobel Prize-winning writer V.S. Naipaul described India as a “wounded civilization.” After the country suffered both British and Islamic invasions and conquest, many Hindus lost their civilizational self-confidence. In recent decades the success of Indian tech entrepreneurs and businesspeople has convinced much of India’s elite that Indians can compete and win worldwide. But many ordinary Indians are less optimistic. Can capitalism and free markets, once slogans under which the British conquered India, really work for the average Indian? Or does India need to be protected from a cruel outside world?

For BJP activists and intellectuals, creating visible symbols of Hindu pride in Varanasi and Ayodhya is a necessary step in creating a confident India ready to engage on equal terms with the world.

I don’t know if Plan Modi will work. Channeling the forces of nationalism and faith in an immensely complex society of more than 1.4 billion people into a project of economic and social modernization may be the single most daunting political challenge in human history. But after visiting Varanasi and Ayodhya I have no doubt that the passion and piety driving today’s Hindu resurgence is a force that will be felt around the world.