Allegations regarding theft and misappropriation of public donations from the Ram temple in Ayodhya cannot be treated as a standalone, isolated financial scam. Instead, these charges must be contextualised through the lens of political evolution, institutional transformation and the systemic (non)accountability rampant within the current regime.The choreographed consecration of the Ram temple on January 22, 2024, was described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “not just a date on the calendar” but “the dawn of a new era”. But to now understand what has gone ‘wrong’ within this temple, we will have to contrast the organic and decentralised nature of the decades-long agitation for the Ram temple with the centralised, bureaucratic and corporatised structure presiding over a multi-thousand-crore treasury.The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust was nominated by the Union government at the inappropriate behest of the Supreme Court of India in its debatable November 2019 Ayodhya verdict. The trust oversaw the temple’s construction and took over its subsequent management. From the very outset, it has functioned as a bureaucratic edifice with no democratic oversight.The trust’s structure, in which power is shared by nominees of the Union government with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine (VHP-RSS), paved the way for opaque financial irregularities, besides erasing one more line of separation between religion and governance. This organisational entity, which controls the temple, stands in contrast to the faith-driven collective founded at the grassroots that powered the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.Also read: Ram Temple Theft FIR Says Devotees’ Offerings Embezzled in ‘Planned, Recurring, Criminal Manner’Quite clearly, the cohort of top political figures and religious administrators eroded traditional boundaries and created a religio-political nexus. Within it, the spiritual idealism of the decades-long movement was overtaken by real estate speculation, large-scale mismanagement of capital and embezzlement.Worryingly, with the ‘trail leading right to the top’, the nature of accountability will have to be redefined. Those who were expected to ensure transparency and impose honest functioning have been exposed as, at least, being in league with those accused, if not as masterminds.Organisational shift from movement to establishmentWhen the agitation for the Ram temple was launched in the mid 1980s, the RSS provided the ideological umbrella while the VHP acted as the militant, mass-mobilising vanguard. It established the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti in 1984 with Mahant Avaidyanath as its chief, and this body spearheaded the public mobilisation phase of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and, of course, it was involved in raising resources.Because the VHP pulled some of the strings, the entire agitation was a maze made up of a decentralised network of regional pracharaks, sadhus and kar sevaks. What knitted them into a tight political fabric was their focus on Hindutva ideology, passion for street agitation and the zeal to wage a mass movement.After the apex court’s verdict and the establishment of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi trust in early 2020, all these organisations at the forefront of the movement became redundant. The Mukti Yagna Samiti ceased to function, although its annulment was not formally declared since it was, RSS-like, not a ‘registered’ body or trust.The Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas was the only registered organisation which was part of the movement. Its role in the movement was fundamentally different: the Nyas was formally legalised as against the ‘informal’ activist-led campaign committees.The Nyas was founded for the acquisition of land and construction of the temple, for which it raised considerable funds in the years after 1985. It bought several large ‘parcels’ of land adjacent to the disputed site during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government even leased 42 acres for a planned ‘Ram Katha Park’.Also read: Lal Das’s Legacy: A Dissenting Voice From Within Ayodhya’s Ram Janmabhoomi MovementHowever, all these plots were legislatively acquired by the Union government following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. For this, it enacted the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act, 1993, which forcibly acquired all 67.7 acres of land in and around the mosque, including the land owned by the Nyas.As all land was legally handed over to the new government-mandated trust under the Supreme Court’s 2019 verdict, the Nyas ceased to have any independent purpose to remain functional. Its leadership, including its long-time chief Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, was absorbed into the leadership of the new Teerth Kshetra Trust.This was done despite the Nyas and other spearheads of the Ram Janmabhoomi Andolan, from the 1980s, being regularly accused of raising tens of millions of rupees without adequate centralised accounting or transparent auditing.Over the decades, the VHP and its affiliates faced multiple challenges and reviews by the Income Tax Department regarding their charitable status and tax exemptions. Opponents frequently demanded a White Paper on international funding sources, but little came of these.The trust takes over, creating discontentEventually, the new trust was established as a bureaucratic edifice, not just tightly aligned with the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi, but also mirroring it structurally. The formation of the trust resulted in the conversion of what had been a ‘jan andolan’ into a government and Sangh Parivar-controlled ‘flagship project’.The problem with this evolutionary process, however, was that select organisational loyalists from the VHP were elevated into positions of immense administrative and financial power, handling multi-thousand-crore corporate assets far removed from their original roles as street-level coordinators.Quite clearly, these people were put in charge of tasks they had never handled before, and for which they were never trained. Take, for instance, Champat Rai; his skills matched his moniker, ‘Patwari’, which implies someone adept at land and revenue matters and keeping records. Some of these skills may have been used to handle processes which have been called out as deception.File photo: Champat Rai (extreme left) and others inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Ram Mandir event. Photo: Facebook/Champat Rai.The agitational programmes led by the VHP- Mukti Yagna Samiti combine – most importantly, the shila pujan and the yatras and shilanyas in 1989, the kar sewa in 1990 and finally in 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished – created not just a collective sense in favour of the ‘cause’, but also provided a sense of ownership (or direct participation in construction) of a sacred place (by carrying, consecrating or donating a brick).After the formation of the new trust and consecration of the temple, people who were once a part of the movement found themselves with no further role, except visiting the temple for darshan. The disclosures, therefore, have blasphemed not just people’s faith, but also their contribution to the movement.The extent of public dismay over the disclosures as well as the temple management’s clumsy efforts at dispelling these questions can be gauged from the fact that while previously any accusation against VHP-led organisations was successfully framed as questioning the faith itself, this time, no one has called critics anti-Hindu (or, thereby, anti-national).Quite clearly, the government and the trust have discovered that their standard religious and emotional armour are no longer the safety shields they once were. The BJP and the Sangh Parivar ascended the political and governance ladders by juxtaposing corruption and criminality with the chaste characteristics of their political and social morality.The accusations of massive siphoning of donations and offerings point to the universalisation of these political and institutional ailments. The Sangh Parivar is now little different from its adversaries, even in its own narrative.The cost of betrayalOver the course of the Ram temple movement, the Sangh Parivar transformed Ram from a spiritual icon into a political one. Now the prima facie establishment of “donation theft” by those at the top of the Ram temple ‘establishment’ shatters the emotional core of ordinary citizens who sacrificed their meagre savings out of pure devotion.At this stage, the BJP runs the risk of alienating the very core that raised the most successful mass movement in post-independence India. If people begin to view the trust as they would any corporate entity mired in financial scams, the BJP stands to lose electorally too.Also read: Ram Mandir Funds Theft: Daily Footfall to Temple ‘Reduces by 50%,’ Devotees Have Faith in Justice for ‘Thieves’The crisis that the Sangh Parivar, and even the Union government, find themselves in may seem to be because of having pole-vaulted street-level, backroom organisational loyalists into corporate-scale administrative empires without the necessary checks and balances or professional expertise.However, if a fair probe is ever conducted, there is no knowing the heights to which the ‘trail’ will go. Eventually, this may not be just a methodological error, and could be exposed as a sinister, well-thought-out plan.Swindling donations and contributions from the temple’s treasury exposes the falsity of the claim from within the highest levels of the Sangh Parivar that lifelong pracharaks possess inherent, unassailable moral purity that renders formal oversight unnecessary – the claim that ideological commitment irons out all aberrations. Reportedly, the Standard Operating Procedures for donation counting dating to 2025, which included pocketless uniforms, were just a smokescreen, because for every “hurdle”, there was a well-thought-out Plan B.Undoubtedly, the political Opposition’s campaign in 2027 for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls shall revolve around the swindle, and rightly so. Custodians of religious shrines in India have always been viewed with suspicion. For instance, in their search for a ‘different’ lineage of villains, Bollywood filmmakers created a trope: a vile priest or temple administrator who uses his religious garb and pedestal as a shield for acts of immorality, criminality and financial fraud.The RSS is entering what can be termed the last trimester of its centenary year, which it intended to celebrate with events, a new structure and a fresh plan for the future. But unfortunately for the RSS, this period has got clouded by probably its biggest challenge since it was accused of involvement in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. The context of Dev Anand’s cult classic, Haré Rama Haré Krishna, may have been different, but the entire Sangh Parivar could soon find people rising in chorus and singing at them: Raam Ka Naam Badnaam Na Karo…Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay reported and wrote on the Ram temple agitation from the 1980s. He authored The Demolition: India At The Crossroads (1994) and The Demolition and the Verdict (2021), updated in 2024.