Shiv Kumar combines work with worship. So, on a recent business trip to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, he decided to visit the pilgrimage city of Ayodhya, five hours away by bus. He wanted to pray at the makeshift temple that many Hindus believe marks the exact spot where the god Ram was born, and on which the Babri Masjid stood until December 6, 1992.

The mosque was razed by a Hindutva mob in a culmination of the Sangh Parivar’s Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The mob also erected a makeshift temple there: an idol of Ram Lalla, the infant Ram, under a canvas tent. Even as the legal dispute over who owns the land on which the mosque once stood grinds on through India’s courts, worship at the temple has continued unaffected for over a quarter century now.

When the mosque was destroyed, Kumar was a 10-month-old baby in a village in Pratapgarh, not more than five hours from Ayodhya. Though it was close by, he never visited the temple in his 15 years in Pratapgarh. Aged 15, he shifted to Delhi with the help of an older brother who worked in a plastics factory on the city’s outskirts. Their family belongs to the Kurmi caste and made a living as small landholding farmers. “We did not earn much from farming so many people from my family, and village, moved to Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai,” Kumar said.

‘How long will Rama Lalla sleep in a tent?’

Kumar has been in the plastics business for over a decade now, working his way up from an ordinary factory worker. He now helps procure raw material for a factory in North Delhi’s Bawana that makes plastic pellets used in industrial production. That is what he was in Kanpur for when he took a detour to Ayodhya before heading back home to Delhi. “I had never visited Ayodhya but I am a bhakt of Bhagwan Ram so I thought I should see the Ram Lalla temple,” he said.

Kumar is pleased to have visited the makeshift temple but is keen for a proper structure to come up. “This is the birthplace of Bhagwan Ram, this spot should have a grand temple,” Kumar argued. “But look at it now. And there are so many policemen, so much checking. It is like I am visiting a jail and not a temple.”

Given the highly sensitive nature of the Ayodhya dispute, the makeshift temple is guarded like a fortress. Multiple perimeters of metal barricades enclose the place where the mosque stood and the entire area bristles with gun-toting paramilitary personnel. Visitors must deposit all their personal belongings – from mobile phones to wallets – in a storeroom before proceeding through multiple patdowns and metal detector checks. The 20-minute walk to the temple is through a metal mesh-covered corridor – a veritable cage – to ensure pilgrims are completely immobilised should the need arise.

“How long will Ram Lalla sleep in a tent?” Kumar asked. “My own child sleeps comfortably in a house but my god is in this condition. How does that make sense? We must build the temple.”

This anthropomorphisation of Ram Lalla is not a new tradition. In the winter of 2017, for example, the Uttar Pradesh government installed heaters in the makeshift temple to keep the idol warm.

‘Modi will build the Ram temple’

Kumar believes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s promise of building a permanent Ram temple before the 2019 Lok Sabha election. “Modi and BJP have been trying for so long to get a temple built,” he said. “But why is the Supreme Court taking so long to deliver a judgement? Does this make any sense?”

Kumar is, however, a little less strident than many supporters of the Sangh Parivar who are dead set against any possibility of having a new mosque near the disputed spot. “If they want to a build a mosque nearby, that is fine. Why should we have a problem with that?” he said, referring to the Muslim community. “Magar mandir to wahin banega, bas”. But the temple will be built at that very spot. Full stop.