ABSTRACT
On January 22, 2024, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram Mandir with fanfare and opulence, befitting the triumph it represented for right-wing nationalism in India. More than half a million people thronged the sparkling new temple on the first day to leaven Modi’s dream of a Hindu state. Built on the ruins of the sixteenth-century mosque Babri Masjid, razed to the ground by foot soldiers of Hindutva on December 6, 1992, the temple now stands as a monument to the decay and death of an inclusive, secular Indian state. This chapter is a short chronicle of that death foretold.
