What next after the temple ceremony in Ayodhya

livemint.com:

In the days leading up to 22 January, I could not sense any genuine mass euphoria among temple-going Hindus over the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. There was importance attached to the day, like an approaching festivity, and few had a quarrel with the authorities for asking them to observe remote ceremonies or ordering schools and stock markets shut. But I sensed no religious fervour among devout Hindus.

All around me, there has been a spectacle of euphoria at most. In my colony, a security guard was deployed to distribute scented candles with the brand-name “Ram". I do not know why scented candles exist as an object in the first place, but I accepted it.

Of course, some people are exhilarated, and ‘some people’ in India could be millions. My cab driver arrived wearing a saffron cap with images of Lord Ram on it, playing a holy song. I asked him to turn the music off, as I do every time I get into a car.

Only after I said it, did I think there could be trouble. He gave me a look, but switched it off. Then he rechecked my name on the app and looked at me again in the rear-view mirror.

But we quickly became friends, and I even conducted taxi-driver journalism on him. He did not change my view that at a mass level, there is very little real euphoria. I have not been able to convince anyone about this view, but even Hindus who dispute me are not euphoric themselves.

They say others must certainly be filled with passion for the event, but they personally do not know anyone who is moved by Ayodhya today the way Hindus were in the 1990s. As I write this piece, I feel I am in a time that is similar to times when religions were born, or at least when legendary temples and mosques were dreamt into life. This was