Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted the saffron Dharma Dhwaj atop the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, marking the completion of the temple’s construction. The ceremony comes as Ayodhya records an unprecedented rise in pilgrims, with more than 160 million visitors in 2024 and over 230 million in the first half of 2025. The city now earns between 900 million and 1.4 billion dollars annually from tourism, projected to reach 18,000 crore rupees or about two billion dollars by 2028. Other major pilgrimage centres, including Varanasi, Vaishno Devi, Amritsar, Tirupati and Guruvayur, are also seeing sustained growth. India’s temple economy is valued at about 34 billion dollars.
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