New Delhi: If it had not been preceded by allegations of embezzlement and ‘chanda chori’, the appointment earlier this month of a retired Indian Air Force (IAF) Air Marshal as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust in Ayodhya might have been seen as nothing more than an admission that even divine affairs require a little military oversight and discipline.In reality, the appointment is that and much, much more.Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra has become the Trust’s first full-time CEO, four months after retiring as head of the IAF’s Western Air Command – which was at the forefront of offensive air operations against Pakistan during Operation Sindoor in May 2025.The three-star officer’s appointment says something about the kind of credibility the Trust is now seeking, and where it has chosen to find it. It lies not only in Mishra’s military background – that’s of course important – but in what the armed forces have come to represent in contemporary India: discipline, trust, competence and national resolve.But, for a Trust facing embarrassing questions over its administration and finances, the military’s aura offers something a conventional management appointment definitely does not. And that is where wider questions of politics come into play.“When an institution at the heart of the BJP’s greatest political triumph needs to restore public confidence, it turns to the armed forces,” said a senior IAF veteran, declining to be named. He further added that the military’s institutional credibility was being ‘harnessed’ to shore up that of a party-sponsored Hindu religious trust battered by blatant corruption and wrongdoing, he added.The reaction of much of the electronic and print media to Mishra’s appointment has been along expected lines: deferential, presenting the highly decorated and operationally experienced officer’s selection as self-evidently reassuring. Their collective message seems to be that with a retired Air Marshal of Mishra’s profile at the helm, the ‘chanda-chori’ dishonour can now safely be put to rest and that all is well at Ayodhya.Conversely, the Trust, for its part, insists Mishra emerged from a rigorous selection process in which 5,585 applications were whittled down through scrutiny, online interactions and face-to-face interviews to three finalists. The question, therefore, is not whether he was qualified, but what made a recently retired Air Marshal the preferred choice to run a religious institution whose administrative problems had become serious enough to require a new CEO?Ostensibly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was not responsible for the selection even if political analysts have been quick to note the way in which Mishra’s appointment will prove beneficial to the party in Uttar Pradesh.The symbiosis between the Ram temple and the BJPIn any case, pretending that the Ram temple and the BJP exist in separate political universes would be highly disingenuous, as the symbiosis between the temple and the party that built its rise around the Ram Janmabhoomi movement is too well established to require repetition. The temple, after all, was not merely one factor in the BJP’s ascent to national power; it was central to it.Furthermore, there is also nothing improper about a retired military officer accepting a civilian position with a religious institution, nor is there any clear evidence that Mishra was a BJP or RSS ‘loyalist’ while serving – though his appearance in uniform at a private event organised by a regime-adjacent ‘godman’ did spark a row. The issue, however, is the increasingly close relationship the BJP has cultivated with the armed forces and the way military achievements have been woven into its political messaging.The pattern has been familiar over the past 12 years.The 2016 surgical strikes against Pakistan, followed by the Balakot air campaign in 2019 and eventually Operation Sindoor, have increasingly been presented by the Hindu nationalist government, not merely as military operations but as demonstrations of the Modi government’s political will, national resolve and a more assertive and muscular India. Defence minister Rajnath Singh too described Op Sindoor as demonstrating India’s “military capability, national resolve” and “political acumen”, while Modi subsequently framed it frequently in the language of national victory and military strength.The military, for its part, too was not a passive participant in that process, with senior commanders, especially from the army, displaying a marked religious receptiveness towards the ruling party.In December 2024, Rajnath Singh and Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi jointly offered prayers and performed a rudrabhishek at the Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. Thereafter, in May 2025 Gen Dwivedi visited Hindu seer Jagadguru Rambhadracharya at his Chitrakoot ashram in Madhya Pradesh, where, according to the seer, he received Ram Mantra diksha. Rambhadracharya subsequently said he had asked the Army chief for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as “dakshina”. And, in March this year, Dwivedi visited the Jagannath Temple in Puri to pray for the well-being of Army personnel and their families..Such a trend is visible beyond the senior military leadership as well, with Army units and personnel increasingly appearing at events involving Hindu religious figures and “godmen”.The military and overt expressions of religious affiliationTaken individually, each incident of this kind may appear harmless. But taken together – and especially given the deliberate way in which such encounters are made visible to the wider public – it suggests the military is becoming more comfortable with overt expressions of religious affiliation. In the past, the military brass encouraged a separation between the armed forces and the personal religious affiliation of officers.In the leaked manuscript of his unreleased memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, former Army Chief General M.M. Naravane explicitly reflects on this scenario and states that the Army would have been highly reluctant to fire upon or target the kar sevaks in October 1990. In the text, Naravane expresses profound relief that the military was never called to action, directly questioning whether soldiers could bring themselves to target the kar sevaks and stop them from crossing into Ayodhya.The military’s involvement has also extended into the Ram temple’s own religious ceremonies. At the November 2025 Dharma Dhwaj ceremony in Ayodhya, presided over by Modi, Army personnel assisted the Ram Mandir Trust with technical preparations, rehearsals and the installation of a 22-foot saffron flag atop the temple’s 161-foot spire. The Army’s role was operational rather than ceremonial, but its very presence in facilitating a distinctly Hindu religious ritual further blurred the line between military service and religious activity. IAF helicopters also showered flower petals over the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya during the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ (consecration) ceremony on January 22, 2024.Eleven former service chiefs ultimately attended the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the Ayodhya Ram Temple. This made up roughly one-third of the living former heads of India’s Army, Navy and Air Force. It sparked considerable discussion regarding military ethics and the apolitical traditions of India’s armed forces. Lt Gen Prakash Menon revealed that ahead of the event, a flag-rank veteran called former service chiefs individually to gauge their interest and inclination to attend the functions. Those who showed willingness or did not explicitly decline went on to receive formal, official invitations from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.And these were hardly isolated instances of uniformed service personnel participating in religious events and ceremonies and such examples have become increasingly difficult to ignore. They merely illustrate how senior military leadership is increasingly willing to inhabit the religious-nationalist space in which the BJP has built much of its political identity.This is precisely what makes Mishra’s appointment as CEO of the Ayodhya trust so significant in political terms. Mishra is not any old officer and the trust is not of any other temple. As a general, he helped helm a politically prominent military operation. And now, within months of retirement, he is helming the one institution most closely associated with the BJP’s political programme.