Ram Mandir, Ayodhya

Ram Mandir, Ayodhya, a grand Hindu temple inaugurated on January 22, 2024, at a site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram. The site is where the Babri Masjid, a Mughal-era mosque, stood until December 6, 1992, when Hindu activists destroyed the mosque and tensions between religious groups led to rioting throughout the country.

The site at which the Ram Mandir stands has long been an area of conflict. The Hindu community considers it Ram Janmabhoomi, or Ram’s birthplace, while the Muslim community holds it sacred as the spot where the 16th-century Babri Masjid stood, and numerous lawsuits were filed by both communities for possession of the site. A court ruling in 2010 divided the land between Hindus and Muslims, but that decision was overturned in 2019 by the Supreme Court of India, which entrusted the site exclusively to Hindus and directed the state to grant an alternate site in Ayodhya to the Muslim community.

Consecration ceremony and temple inauguration

The temple’s consecration ceremony, or prana pratishtha (establishment of life force), held on January 22, 2024, was attended by about 7,000 guests, including Bollywood celebrities, prominent athletes, business moguls, and spiritual leaders, among others. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided at the ceremony. The inauguration day was a widely publicized and intensively marketed event. The day after the temple’s inauguration, roughly 300,000 devotees thronged the temple for darshan (divine vision) of the newly installed murti (devotional image) of Ram Lalla, a five-year-old Ram. An equal number of people were said to have been waiting outside for a turn to see the image.

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Temple design, architecture, and plan

The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, set up by the Government of India, is responsible for the construction and management of the temple. The main temple is built over 2.7 acres (1.1 hectares), and the temple complex is spread over an area of 70 acres (28 hectares). Work on the temple and the surrounding complex was completed in phases. The construction of the temple’s ground floor, with the garbhagriha (“womb room”) for the deity, was completed in time for the consecration ceremony in 2024, a year in which India also had its Lok Sabha elections. The temple complex’s construction was officially marked as completed at an event on November 25, 2025, where Prime Minister Modi hoisted a ceremonial saffron flag (the color saffron is associated with Hinduism by many, is used in the Indian national flag, and is the color of the flag used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh).

The main temple has three floors, going up to a total height of 161 feet (49 meters). It is 360 feet (110 meters) long and 235 feet (72 meters) wide. The temple features 5 congregation halls (mandapas) and 12 gates. Designed by architect Chandrakant Sompura and his son Ashish Sompura, the temple is built in the Nagara style of architecture, similar to the Sun Temple at Konark, Odisha. The Nagara style is characterized by its distinctive shikhara—that is, a superstructure, tower, or spire above the garbhagriha. The spire and the garbhagriha of the Ram temple have a unique octagonal shape, unlike the traditional square-shaped garbhagrihas. Although no iron or steel has been used to build the temple, it is expected to withstand natural calamities for the next 2,500 years because it has undergone 3D structural analysis, according to Ashish Sompura. Pink sandstone from Bansi Paharpur and marble from Makrana, both in the state of Rajasthan, have been used to construct the temple. The temple complex is designed to have lifts and ramps for people with mobility difficulties, a sewage treatment plant, a water treatment plant, and a power station. The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust plans to keep a large green area constituting about 70 percent of the complex and to conserve environmental water.

People’s reactions

While a large part of the country celebrated the 2024 inauguration of the long-awaited Ram Mandir with chants of Ram’s name, fireworks, saffron flags, and the lighting of diyas (lamps) in temples across the country, the event evoked criticism from some quarters. Some senior Congress Party leaders turned down the invitation to the consecration ceremony, and the Kerala chief minister and Communist Party of India leader Pinarayi Vijayan issued a statement expressing concern about the government’s involvement in a religious event and noted that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, believed in the separation of religion and state so that secularism could be preserved. After the consecration ceremony, some Indian cinema celebrities posted the preamble of the Indian constitution on social media as a reminder of the country’s secular spirit. Opinions, however, differed even within political parties that are largely opposed to the central government’s involvement in a religious event.

Many individuals from the Muslim community expressed acceptance of the 2019 Supreme Court judgment that allotted the disputed site to Hindus, but simmering anger over the Babri Masjid demolition and the lives lost in communal clashes could also be seen in India and abroad in the form of various small incidents involving stone-pelting and rioting.

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History of the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid dispute

Conflict over the site has lasted for centuries. In 1856–57 Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at the disputed site, and the colonial government of India erected a wall, allotting the inner part to the Muslim community and the outer part to Hindus so they could retain structures significant to Hinduism, such as the Sita Rasoi (rasoi means “kitchen”) and the Ram Chabutara (chabutara means “platform”). The government’s decision to divide the site between Hindus and Muslims did not resolve the dispute; both sides continued to fight over it.

Hindu-Muslim clashes in 1934 resulted in damage to the Babri Masjid’s dome, which was subsequently repaired. On December 22, 1949, the mosque was again desecrated by a group of people, and murtis of Ram were placed under the mosque’s central dome. Following this event, an attachment order was issued, and the chairman of the Municipal Board of Faizabad (Faizabad district was renamed to Ayodhya in 2018), Uttar Pradesh, was appointed as the receiver of the inner courtyard. Restrictions were placed on the general public, limiting entry beyond the wall.

Three key lawsuits followed the order:

• In 1959 a Hindu body, the Nirmohi Akhara, filed a lawsuit and claimed the right of ownership and management for the site, arguing that this right was obstructed by the attachment order of 1949.
• In 1961 the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Board of Waqf (Sunni Waqf Board) and nine of Ayodhya’s Muslim residents filed a lawsuit claiming the title of the disputed land based on the contention that it was a mosque built on the instructions of the Mughal emperor Bābur and requested that the murtis placed at the site be removed.
• In 1989 senior advocate Deoki N. Agarwal filed a suit on behalf of the deity, claiming that the law recognizes both the murti and the birthplace as juridical entities. The suit claimed that the birthplace is a legal person that possesses a juridical status.

At the crux of these lawsuits was the belief among Hindus that this site is Ram Janmabhoomi, the birthplace of Ram, and a temple dedicated to Ram existed at the spot before being destroyed during the Mughal conquest of India. On the other hand, Muslims argued that the Babri Masjid was built on vacant land, so Hindus do not have any proprietary claim over the site.

On July 10, 1989, all key suits were transferred to the Allahabad High Court.

Another significant development relating to the Ayodhya dispute about this time was the Rathyatra (“Chariot Tour”) led by BJP president Lal Krishna Advani from Somnath, Gujarat, to Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, in September–October 1990. This tour, spanning many Indian states, was in support of the demand by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP; “World Hindu Council”) for a Ram temple in Ram Janmabhoomi, which was the site where the Babri Masjid stood. Advani was arrested mid-tour and the Rathyatra came to an end, but massive protests and communal riots broke out, especially in northern India. A few days later a group of Hindu activists stormed the Babri Masjid, and some of them were killed in police action.

Two years later, on December 6, 1992, a mob of Hindu activists destroyed the Babri Masjid.

On September 30, 2010—after going through a large volume of evidence, including reports submitted by the Archeological Survey of India—the High Court ruled that the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board, and Lord Ram represented by Triloki Nath Pandey (a VHP activist who replaced Agarwal after his death in 2002) would be joint holders of the disputed premises, and each party was allotted one-third of the disputed property.

The parties filed multiple appeals against the High Court judgment, and the Supreme Court of India stayed the High Court’s order in 2011. On January 8, 2019, Ranjan Gogoi, the chief justice of India at that time, constituted a five-judge bench to hear the appeals. Final arguments were heard beginning on August 6, and on November 9 the Supreme Court delivered its final judgment: it awarded the title to the deity and directed the central government to set up a trust to manage the construction of a Ram temple at the site. It added that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was against the rule of law and that the Sunni Waqf Board should be given an alternate site in Ayodhya to build a mosque.

The road ahead

With more than $10 billion invested in infrastructure—including roads, a new airport terminal, and railway station upgrades—Ayodhya is expected to attract up to 50 million tourists every year. In fact, tourist visits increased more than threefold in just one year, up from 50.75 million in 2023 to 160 million in 2024. The Labour and Employment Ministry expects about 500,000 jobs directly or indirectly related to the hospitality sector to be created in the area before 2030. Entrepreneurship opportunities are also increasing. Several hotels and townships were developed in the months following the consecration, and property prices in the area skyrocketed.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation announced that it will begin constructing a new mosque in May 2024. It will be called Masjid Muhammed bin Abdullah, for the Prophet Muhammad.