Voting in India’s national elections started last Friday. It will take six weeks to complete, which is less of a surprise when one considers that in a population of 1.4 billion people there are 969 million voters, 2,600 political parties, 28 states and 780 languages. It is a logistical task of dazzling scale, not only for India’s election commission but also for its political leaders.
Why then, in January, did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi kick off his re-election campaign to secure his record third five-year term of office in the remote northern city of Ayodhya? This city, in a district with only a few million inhabitants, is a pinprick in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), an area with a population of around 250 million people. (If UP were a country, it would rank as the 5th largest by population).
Ayodhya’s importance is twofold. Firstly, it is the birthplace of Lord Ram, the eponymous hero of the 24,000 verse Ramayana, which constitutes one of Hinduisms most important texts.
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