From Ayodhya to Kanyakumari, political parties have turned faith into strategy…
From Ayodhya to Kanyakumari, political parties have turned faith into strategy, creating identity, fear and loyalty in the name of devotion. As temples rise and dissent fades, India’s secularity is at stakes.
In January 2024, the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya marked a defining and turning moment in India’s landscape of religion and politics. The event was broadcast live across all television channels and multiple social media platforms. It had political leaders, business figures, and celebrities in attendance. The event was celebrated as a national milestone and less of a cultural or religious happening. It acted as a symbol of political consolidation.
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At the same time, smaller gestures of interfaith harmony in other parts of the country happened quietly — with no news coverage or national attention. A mosque in Kerala organised Iftar for its Hindu neighbours and a temple in Hyderabad offered space for community relief work. These acts did not draw the attention of the media, but they reflected the other version of Indian religiosity — one that is less amplified but is rooted in coexistence rather than performance and spectacle.
This contrast illustrates how religion in India has gradually but surely moved from the personal to the performative sphere.
When God entered Politics
Religion and politics were never truly separated in India. But the transformation from belief to ideology has been careful and deliberate.
In the following decades after Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru’s secular vision imagined religion as person. It was “a matter between man and his maker.” Yet, beneath that ideal, fissures remained. Partition had scarred the national psyche, and the new Republic never truly healed its communal wounds.
In the 1980s, faith became a political weapon. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement launched by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and backed by the BJP changed Indian politics forever. The imagery was vivid — Lord Ram, the ideal king, reclaiming his birthplace from supposed invaders.
L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra in 1990 was a religious procession turned campaign tour. It blurred the line between pilgrimage and propaganda. When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, it wasn’t just a structure that fell. Along with it crumbled India’s idea of secularism.
In contrast, the South held firm to a different imagination of religion. The Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, inspired by Periyar, rejected Brahminical dominance and religious orthodoxy. “No god, no religion, no caste,” Periyar declared. Kerala’s syncretic culture, shaped by centuries of trade and migration, saw temples, churches, and mosques coexist as civic institutions, not political tools.
The divide between North and South wasn’t merely linguistic; it was spiritual.
The North saw religion as nationhood.
The South treated it as personal morality.
The machinery of devotion
Over the course of the 21st century, religion has evolved into one of India’s most sophisticated political technologies.
Election campaigns are more often than not built around religious optics — temple visits are televised live, godmen bless manifestos, and welfare schemes are also named after deities. WhatsApp forwards and YouTube sermons these days carry more influence for political parties than policy papers. “Soft Hindutva” has become a survival strategy even for opposition parties who fear seeming “anti-Hindu” in a majoritarian mood.
In Uttar Pradesh, the temple corridor in Varanasi is marketed not just as a spiritual project, but majorly a developmental one. In Maharashtra, Shiv Sena’s journey from linguistic pride to religious nationalism mirrors BJP’s rise. In Karnataka, hijab bans and temple fairs become flashpoints before every election; each controversy conveniently timed.
Data underpins every political spectacle. Campaign strategies are influenced by caste-based microtargeting, temple-donor databases, and religious demographic information. According to Pew’s 2021 survey, 64% of Indians consider being Hindu to be “very important” to being truly Indian. This belief, when amplified by propaganda, has contributed to what political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta describes as “emotional infrastructure,” fostering a sense of belonging that persists despite governance failures.
In summary, religion has emerged as the most effective voter retention strategy in contemporary India.
The Economics of the Holy Vote
Faith and religion aren’t just political capital or armoury. They are also the financial capital.
State governments tend to pour billions into temple redevelopment, pilgrimage subsidies and “spiritual tourism.” The Ram Temple alone is estimated to yield ₹50,000 crore in annual revenue through tourism, hospitality and allied sectors. The Kashi-Vishwanath corridor has easily turned a sacred space into an arena of marble and merchandise.
Temples were once spaces of surrender and tranquility. But now, they are economic engines. And now that religion has become an industry, faith has turned into a brand.
The irony is well-spelled. Secular institutions struggle for funds to conduct their daily operations while religious endowments swell. Welfare is rebranded as charity, and charity, in turn, is rebranded as nationalism. The line between piety and policy becomes finer and finer until it eventually disappears.
The South’s secular stubbornness
South India continues to complicate the narrative the rest of the nation is intent on following.
Tamil Nadu politics and ideologies continue to be largely Dravidian rationalist inspired. While public funds for temple management do exist, there are state control measures to prevent religious monopolies. The leftist government in Kerala continues its efforts for interfaith dialogue to be emphasised among the growing polarisation. During the pandemic, one could have seen temples cook for mosques; churches opening their doors for vaccination drives. These were quiet resistance to a national current of division.
However, not everything is as good as it may seem. The “northernisation” of politics is indeed happening. From Ganesh processions in Coimbatore to communal tensions rising in Mangaluru, the playbook is all too familiar — emotional mobilisation, identity fear and eventually targeted outrage.
Still, intellectual and cultural resistance in the South from writers like Meena Kandasamy to artists like TM Krishna continues to remind the country that secularism is not always atheism as is often misinterpreted. It is merely coexistence.
Women, Minorities and the politics of protection
When religion and politics have their line of difference blurring constantly, women’s bodies and minority identities often become battlegrounds they did not ask for.
The “love jihad” narrative, the hijab controversy, and the triple talaq ban — all in the guide of protecting women, while actually and subtly policing their choices.
Minorities are often cast as threats or conspirators and women as symbols of purity, in need of rescue. The damsel in distress narrative takes the front seat.
Faith becomes a patriarchal tool, where control is wrapped in the name of culture. The very politics that promises to “restore” tradition oftentimes erases the freedom that tradition did allow for.
And the burden of “saving” the culture falls on the shoulders of women, excusing all the terms and conditions that are forced upon their existence.
The Media and the Moral Collapse
Media channels seldom report on religion these days — they tend to sermonise it. Primetime debates are filled with gods being pitted against one another, turning belief and spirituality into spectacle and performance.
Social media algorithms reward outrage, pushing hate-filled videos under the guise of “sentiment”.
Bollywood, too, has jumped tracks. From Amar Akbar Anthony’s secular harmony to The Kashmir Files’ militant memory. But South Indian films tell a different story altogether. Jai Bhim questions caste, Maamannan reclaims dignity and Malayalam films such as The Great Indian Kitchen tear open the mask of patriarchy masquerading as piety.
The moral compass of Indian storytelling has been fractured — faith now sells but seldom saves.
Reclaiming faith
Yet amidst all the polarisation, quiet countercurrents persist.
Interfaith groups organize peace marches. Temples shelter Muslims during riots. Churches host community kitchens for Hindus. Mosques in Chennai open for Christmas prayers.
These are not grand gestures, but small reminders that belief, at its core, unites more than it divides, which is the deeper truth about India.
Reclaiming faith is not a rejection of religion, but a refusal to allow it to be weaponised.
The Sacred and the Secular
The Constitution of India starts with the word We, not Hindu, Muslim, or Christian.
That is the collective promise most subtly eroded by religion-based politics: the ability to imagine “we” without condition.
The battle today is not between believers and atheists; it’s between those who see faith as compassion versus those who use it to control.
As temples rise and television cameras bow, democracy forgets that divinity was never meant to be televised.
Perhaps it’s time to remember what the poet Kabir sang:
“The river that divides, carries equal water on both sides.”
India’s salvation, spiritual and political, may well depend on remembering that.
