Before we move to the unsavoury saga of donation money running into crores being siphoned off at the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, let us cast a backward glance at its grand inauguration that took place on January 22, 2024, a few weeks before a general election was to take place.It was a moment when the media projected the prime minister as a demi-god for the first time, a framing that Modi was to use famously during the election trail that followed when he declared that he was a non-biological being. The January spectacle was designed to invest an omnipotence to the prime ministerial figure as he conducted himself as “yajman” (chief pujari) to the ceremony of consecration. Champat Rai, then secretary of the Ram Temple Trust, now in bad odour, played up this spiritual framing at that point. He made the widely reported observation that Modi, as “king,” has to be considered the incarnation of Vishnu.That overblown comparison should have rung warning bells about the unholy nexus between those put in charge of managing the flow of unlimited cash from millions of believers and those who wielded the levers of power. But history shows that the media, far from taking note of this sycophancy and potential source of corruption, preferred to revel in the government-concocted spectacle that was playing out before them and ran headlines like “Lord Ram’s Grand Return to Ayodhya Temple After 500-Year Struggle.”The question that now arises is whether the financial malfeasance that has cast a shadow on Hindutva’s most ambitious and rewarding political project would have manifested itself if the mainstream media had proved more independent. By totally embedding themselves in this project, they signalled that they were more than willing to suspend their disbelief, critical faculties and investigative powers. This must have also fuelled the confidence of the scamsters in being able to mask their designs in ceremonial fluff. Following the completion of the inaugural Pran Pratishtha ceremonies, the story was by no means over. There was a great deal to be scrutinised after the celebrity guests had left.Also read: Time to Confront the Larger Corruption Without Which the Ram Temple Would Never Have Come Into BeingHow were the trustees going to manage vast land resources that had been handed over to them after the Supreme Court verdict? How was the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust that was to manage the shrine registered? Was it really independent, as it was meant to be? Who among the trustees had voting power? How were the two personalities who quickly became synonymous with the trust, Anil Mishra and Champat Rai, conducting themselves? Were they guilty of playing favourites; of allowing those they ‘trusted’ to take advantage of the trust? How many audits were meant to be conducted and were their findings presented to the trustees and the public at large? What checks and balances were operating to ensure that the donations pouring in didn’t end up in the wrong hands? Why did not every single step designed to check graft – regular updating of records, preservation of CCTV camera footage, special uniforms for the counting staff, frisking procedures for staff entering and exiting the premises – serve the purpose for which they were set up? Why were these measures allowed to come undone as the days passed?Any journalist with the right contacts could have followed the temple money trail and concluded that something was rotten in the system, far before that haul of Rs 2.25 lakh along with jewels and foreign currency surfaced in a bathroom in the complex. Clearly, the media were either too over-awed or too intimidated to deliver the required stories on an issue of monumental importance to the country.Once this story was broken after the discovery of those unaccounted bundles of money and after local whistleblowers had come up with possible explanations, it seemed that the media had somehow shaken off the spell they were under. By June some were even displaying an appetite for competing among themselves to get to the kernel of the story. Adani’s NDTV put out headlines like “How big is this Chanda Cartel? Only NDTV has the whole story.”Also read: No Reference, No Allusion to ‘Chori’ in Films. Period.But as the days went by, the desire to let the Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party off the hook threaded through the critical coverage. News18’s Pallavi Ghosh did a programme that carried the alarming headline, “The Loot went on for years.” She sternly asked her guest, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) spokesperson Desh Ratan Nigam, whether he saw all this as a “bit of an embarrassment.”He did not seem to have a convincing answer, so she turned to BJP spokesperson Sanju Verma, who is never known to speak in the normal decibel range. “First things first,” screamed Verma, “As a proud Hindu am I pained by all this? Oh certainly…But does the opposition have the locus standi to give lectures to the BJP and dole out integrity related certificates? Certainly not.”She then went directly to 1990 and how Mulayam Singh Yadav had fired on kar sewaks. This “firing on kar sewaks” trope was a particularly favoured one this season – almost every BJP spokesperson resorted to this gambit, rife with emotion guaranteed to trigger the audience into forgetting the current heist.Watching these spokespersons in action would have been amusing if it was not so devious. While the assurance that “nobody would be spared” tripped off every tongue, they were quick to protect those who needed protection.So you had the famed accountant from Tamil Nadu, S. Gurumurthy, tell Navika Kumar on Times Now that since “people at the top” were not involved, this was a “theft,” not a “scam” and only shows the “inexperience of the administration.” Meanwhile Ratan Sharda, another familiar RSS defender, did a rescue act that would have done Franz Beckenbauer proud, literally carrying Champat Rai away from being kicked through the goal post: “Champat Rai has served the public for 60 years and has not taken a single penny for himself, so alleging that he made money from donations is foolish.”If you had sat through weeks of such coverage, you would have come away with the distinct impression that Ram Bhakts wanted nothing more than accountability; that “politics” (read opposition’s criticism) could come in the way of a fair probe; that the BJP could pay a price for this in the 2027 Uttar Pradesh elections but Yogi Adityanath should be able to remove the taint in time.One BJP acolyte from Maharashtra even gave up defending the BJP as a graft-free entity. He put it this way, “We know that both the BJP and the Congress are corrupt, but those who are corrupt in one are nationalist; while those who are corrupt in the other are anti-nationalist.”Three cheers for nationalist corruption!§Why doesn’t the PM address press conferences?Wherever Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes, and he has visited over ten countries this summer, the question that hangs in the air is this: Why doesn’t the prime minister of India hold press conferences?Sometimes the question is not raised upfront but sidles up into the ether and hovers in the background nevertheless. Sometimes it is posed publicly, shouted across the room behind a man hurriedly making his way out of it. In at least four countries, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia and New Zealand, it has emerged as a significant talking point.Also read: PM Modi’s ‘No Press Conference’ Rule Has Haunted Him Down UnderHow to come up with credible answers to this question has clearly not been taught at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, otherwise why would we have our usually eloquent civil servants tie themselves into knots while trying to find the right answer. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men and women cannot put it together. They hum and they haw and attempt every trick in the book to divert attention from the central issue.In Norway, we had Ministry of External Affairs secretary (west) Sibi George launch into a long peroration about India’s culture and incredible democracy apropos of nothing. So, when a New Zealand journalist raised the question recently, MEA secretary (east) Rudendra Tandon decided to change tack and adopt a humble stance. He suggested that as a civil servant he would not deign to understand the workings of the great mind of the great man, but he could provide some “context.” He then proceeded to spill out information that was badly in need of fact checking.Thus, a quick fact check: “Modi is a quintessential Indian politician.” Right. “By and large, Indian politicians favour direct contact with the electorate.” Wrong, every prime minister of India before Narendra Modi has addressed multiple press conferences.“They don’t like to communicate through intermediaries.” Wrong, media are not “intermediaries” like digital platforms, they are tasked with carrying information from politicians to the public.“Remember, the Indian electorate are predominantly rural folk.” Only partially right. The Indian electorate is a mix of both rural and urban constituencies with urban and peri-urban constituencies accounting for a little less than half the 543 seats.“They want direct contact.” Right and wrong, they want to be in contact, period, whether through direct speeches or through information brought in through the media.“They don’t like being spoken down to.” Wrong. Why would a press conference be seen as the prime minister speaking down to his audience?It is ironic that even as India, its captive media, its diplomats and bureaucrats have reconciled themselves to hearing Modi through the radio-ed ‘Mann ki Baat,’ the world is in no hurry to lay that niggling question to rest.Listen to young Helle Lyng in the latest Caravan. It was Lyng, incidentally, who publicly demanded to know why Modi doesn’t take some questions from the freest press in the world after he shook hands on May 18 with his Norwegian counterpart and then proceeded to walk out of the hall without engaging with the journalists who had gathered there. Said Lyng: “India does a lot of great stuff for the world…But to me, I asked the question, ‘Can you really be a full democracy without a press that is reporting critically and also have access to the highest power in the country?’”§Readers write in…Don’t leave women and transgender people out of the voter listsMembers of All India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA-NAPM) comprising over 50 prominent pan-India gender and transgender activists have written to the Election Commission of India. Excerpts from the letter are as follows:We are writing with deep dismay and concern at the systematic decimation and large-scale erosion of women’s voting rights in the context of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls being undertaken by the Election Commission of India (ECI) since 2025. We understand that the ECI, as a constitutional body, needs to periodically clean and update voter rolls. At the same time, the ECI has to give primacy to its core objective of Leave No Eligible Voter Out. Across the world, in social policy, such an approach (understood as risk of Error of Exclusion) is recommended, to ensure that the most vulnerable and marginalised are not excluded. The ECI data from the first two SIR phases in 13 states and union territories shows that as high as 8.9% less living voters got into the updated SIR. Women, transgender persons, and members of minority, especially Muslim communities got deleted in greater percentages than their proportion in the population… It is in this extremely worrying backdrop we feel that a sincere midcourse correction is urgently required in SIR Phase-3, wherein the following measures should be adopted…Expand the basis of Voter eligibility away from patriarchal lineage, kinship and householdAddress specific concerns of transgender and gender-diverse personsIncrease the time period for the completion of SIRRevisit the ‘Logical Discrepancy’ Criteria in a Fair and gender-just mannerInstitute Gender-Just Measures for Inclusion of all eligible women voters and transgender voters.Reduce unnecessary difficulties for women and marginalized communities Enable Re-admission of those left out of the SIR electoral rollsEnsure Transparency and Citizen – Civil Society InvolvementIssue Formal Clarification from ECI that exclusion from updated SIR is not denial of Citizenship status:The ECI must urgently dispel the confusion and fear among the voters about the link between the Special Intensive Revision process and the Citizenship status. The ECI should issue an official statement in text and video format, that unequivocally clarifies that the Supreme Court has limited the ECI jurisdiction only to Voter List Revision and exclusion from updated SIR is not denial of Citizenship status.We hope the ECI, as a constitutional authority, will take serious note of all the aforementioned concerns and suggestions and institute adequate measures to address the same, so that no women and transgender persons above 18 years are left out of the voter lists because of the systemic gaps. Report chaired by Justice S. Muralidhar is welcomeWe received a statement put out by the South Asian Councillors for Human Rights, Democracy and Peace, comprising Hina Jilani, Pakistan; Sultana Kamal, Bangladesh; Hameeda Hossain, Bangladesh; Syeda Hameed, India; Sima Samar, Afghanistan and Kanak Mani Dixit, Nepal welcoming the report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, chaired by Justice S. Muralidhar. The excerpts from the statement are as follows: The Councillors are deeply shocked by the atrocities against children that the report exposes and condemn the wilful killing of children. Extensive, persistent and indiscriminate airstrikes, the use of high-yielding bombs and high-precision weapons on densely populated areas, with the full awareness of the presence of a sizeable number of children, can only lead to the conclusion that the Israeli security forces have adopted this as policy in their aggression against the Gaza population. The finding of the Commission that Palestinian children have been subjected to gender-based violence, sexual violence and torture by the Israeli security forces, is extremely disturbing and must not escape accountability…We fully endorse the recommendations of the Commission and call on the duty bearers mentioned in the report for the immediate and effective implementation of these recommendations and not to allow impunity to prevail for such blatant and serious violations of international law. The international community must not allow the recent joint military action of Israel and the US against Iran that has thrown West Asia into turmoil, to distract attention from the continuing atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. We would also urge the relevant UN member states to exercise ‘universal jurisdiction’ in their domestic courts, carrying out their own investigations and consequent prosecutions of any person who may be accused of these crimes. Such proceedings would promote and encourage international commitment towards accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.Israel has persistently shown its contempt for international human rights and humanitarian law, violating every principle enunciated in the UN Charter. It has disregarded all UN resolutions condemning the practices and policies of occupation, of waging aggressive and illegal armed action on the Palestinian population and deliberately allowing impunity for the violence committed by Israeli non-state actors against Palestinians. The international community and member states of the UN must now seriously consider whether the State of Israel deserves the privilege of remaining a member of the UN community of states that are bound by the principles of the UN Charter and international law.We appreciate the actions of those South Asian countries that have cut ties with Israel in terms of diplomacy, defense and trade. At the same time, we express deep disappointment that the governments of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have not only maintained relations with Israel but have made little contribution to multilateral efforts to restrain Israel in its roguish behaviour in the context of global peace and security and respect for international law…Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in.