A man touches the place where the idol of Lord Ram will be placed inside the under-construction Hindu Ram Temple in Ayodhya in India, July 9, 2023.
The site in the northern town of Ayodhya, where the temple construction is nearing completion, was bitterly contested for decades with both Hindus and Muslims laying claim to it.
India's majority Hindus say the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram, and was holy to them long before Muslim Mughals razed a temple at the spot and built the Babri mosque there in 1528.
A Hindu mob destroyed the mosque in 1992, triggering riots that killed about 2,000 people across India, most of them Muslims.
Building a Ram temple at the site has been a central, campaign theme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than three decades.
Persons:
Lord Ram, Adnan Abidi, Modi, Narendra Modi's, ”, Nripendra Misra, Misra, Larsen, Toubro, Sakshi Dayal, Sharon Singleton
Organizations:
REUTERS, Modi’s BJP, Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Supreme Court, Thomson
Locations:
Ayodhya, India, DELHI