Harsh Mander: With the Ayodhya ceremony, has the inclusive India of my dreams been lost forever?

Like a meteor in slow motion, it was only a matter of time that this would hit us. Even so, August 5, 2020, is a day of profound sadness and loss. History will remember it as the day on which the bumpy but colourful and often hopeful journey of India as a humane and inclusive republic of equal citizenship was formally halted by an incumbent government. A government of unmatched hubris, rooted in an ideology of Hindu supremacism, the complete reversal of the pledges that we the people of India made in our Constitution.

Was this a tragedy foretold? From the moment when three bullets were pumped into the frail body of Mahatma Gandhi during his inter-faith prayer meeting on a winter afternoon in January 1948, was the ideology of his assassin bound to triumph eventually? Was it inevitable that the iridescent dream of building a country that one day would belong equally in every way to people of every faith, caste, class, gender, language, ethnicity, colour, sexuality and ability would be smashed? And has this dream been destroyed for generations to come?

When the prime minister brusquely brushes aside all scruples of constitutional propriety by choosing to preside over a private programme of...

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