Travel

 The Ram Mandir ISO: Rāma Maṁdira, lit. Rama Temple, is a Hindu temple complex in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. Many Hindus believe that it is located at the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the mythical birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism.

The temple was inaugurated on 22 January 2024 in an elaborate ceremony led by Indian Prime Minister Modi, in which the Hindu priests performed religious rituals consecrating the deity. On the first day of its opening, the temple received a rush of over half a million visitors. The temple has a high number of daily visitors reportedly between 100,000 and 150,000. Ram Mandir become Uttar Pradesh state's top religious tourism destination drawing over 135.5 million visitors in 2024. The temple construction was completed on 25 November 2025 with an event marked by hoisting of the Dharma Dhwaja .

The site of the temple has been the subject of communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India, as it is the former location of the Babri Masjid, which was built between 1528 and 1529. Idols of Rama and Sita were placed in the mosque in 1949, before it was attacked and demolished in 1992. In 2019, the Supreme Court of India delivered the verdict to give the disputed land to Hindus for construction of a temple, while Muslims were given land nearby in Dhannipur in Ayodhya to construct a mosque. The court referenced a report from the Archaeological Survey of India ASI as evidence suggesting the presence of a structure beneath the demolished Babri Masjid, that was found to be non-Islamic.

On 5 August 2020, the bhūmi pūjana transl. ground breaking ceremony for the commencement of the construction of Ram Mandir was performed by Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India. The temple complex, currently under construction, is being supervised by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. On 22 January 2024, Modi served as the Mukhya Yajamāna transl. chief patron of rituals for the event and performed the prāṇa pratiṣṭhā transl. consecration of the temple. The prana pratishtha ceremony was organised by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra.The temple has also attracted a number of controversies due to alleged misuse of donation, sidelining of its major activists, and politicisation of the temple by the Bharatiya Janata Party.