India’s ‘temple economy’ set to turbocharge its tourism industry

In meetings with members of India’s financial community during a visit to Mumbai in late January, I was struck by their enthusiasm for a new economy emerging in India that is often overlooked. They called it the “temple economy”, based on the idea that religious tourism in India is on the cusp of a dramatic surge, surpassing levels associated with some of the world’s great destinations for faith-based tourism, such as Mecca and the Vatican.

A few days before, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, amid great fanfare,

inaugurated a new temple to the Hindu deity Ram

in the northern town of Ayodhya, built on the ruins of an old mosque. This fulfilled a longstanding promise of Mr Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many of whose adherents had claimed the site of the temple was the birthplace of Ram, the central figure in the Indian epic, the Ramayana.