As petals rained down and celebrities beamed, Modi unveiled his vision of a Hindu India | Mukul Kesavan

Built on the site of a razed mosque, the Ram temple represents the culmination of the Hindu right's century-long project

• Mukul Kesavan is a writer based in Delhi

The inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the small north Indian city that Hindus believe as a matter of faith to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, a Hindu deity, is both a milestone in republican India's history and a sideshow.

It is a milestone because the prime minister of a nominally secular republic, Narendra Modi, was the master of ceremonies at this event. In just over 30 years, India's political class has travelled from condemning the demolition of the mosque, on the site of which the half-built temple now stands, as an act of sectarian vandalism, to celebrating it as the first act in the re-founding of a hitherto rootless republic. The idol of the infant Ram installed in a temple raised on the site of a razed mosque is to be the icon of this new Hindu nation.