Ayodhya: Transforming a flashpoint holy city into the ‘Hindu Vatican’

On a brutally cold morning, Yogendra Guru looked adrift in a maze of traffic after visiting the heavily secured makeshift shrine where Hindus believe Lord Ram was born.

Frenzied construction work provided the backdrop in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya - a vast centre to welcome pilgrims, arched sandstone gates, a broad corridor leading to a grand new $217m (£170m) temple for the Hindu deity. A multi-billion dollar makeover has seen swathes of the city bulldozed to turn it into what some Hindu nationalist leaders are calling a "Hindu Vatican".

Mr Guru had endured a gruelling 14-hour bus journey with two dozen family members who made the pilgrimage to Ayodhya from their village in Morena district in central Madhya Pradesh state.

"I am elated that we are finally getting a new temple. It seems like the Hindus have awakened, experiencing a sense of freedom. I believe we were previously suppressed," he told me.

Next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fulfil a decades-long Hindu nationalist pledge by opening the temple, which replaces a 16th-Century mosque that once stood here, on one of India's most controversial religious sites. In 1992, Hindu mobs tore down the Babri mosque, claiming it was built by Muslim invaders on the ruins of a Ram temple, sparking nationwide riots that took nearly 2,000 lives.

The stormy ownership dispute between Hindus and Muslims ended in 2019 when the Supreme Court granted the site to Hindus, despite explicitly stating that the demolition of the mosque was an "egregious violation of the rule of law". (The court gave Muslims another plot of land in Ayodhya to construct a mosque.)

Mr Modi opens the Ayodhya temple months before general elections, with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) eyeing a