India’s prime minister shut down schools and the stock market to focus the country’s attention on the opening of a vast new Hindu temple built atop a razed mosque.

The sprawling Ram Mandir complex in the northern city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, has been called the “Hindu Vatican” and is said to mark the birthplace of the deity Ram.

It is built on land previously occupied by a 16th-century mosque before it was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992.

The construction of the pink sandstone temple honours a pledge by Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which the Indian prime minister hopes will help catapult him to a record third successive term in forthcoming elections.

“Jan 22 2024 is not merely a date in the calendar but heralds the advent of a new era,” Mr Modi said at Monday’s ceremony.

The Indian leader, dressed in a traditional kurta tunic, was filmed performing religious rituals inside the £300 million complex with priests and the head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary force.

Mantras were chanted around a fire in the temple’s inner sanctum, where a 4ft stone sculpture of Lord Ram was installed last week, at a ceremony intended to infuse the idol with sacred power.

Millions of Indians followed the ceremony live on television, with news channels running non-stop coverage of the event as the BJP shut schools, universities, stock markets and declared government holidays to encourage people to watch the festivities.

Only the ground floor of the temple has been completed, but that did not prevent a host of Indian celebrities turning out to mark the occasion.

About 7,500 people, including industrialists, politicians and movie stars, gathered to witness the event on a giant screen outside of the complex as a military helicopter showered flower petals on them from above.

Those in attendance included cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar, Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan and multi-billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

Analysts and critics framed the event as the start of Mr Modi’s election campaign, with opposition MPs accusing him of exploiting the temple project for political gain.

A Hindu nationalist, Mr Modi has sought to transform India from a secular democracy into a Hindu state during his nearly 10 years in power.

Monday’s pomp-filled display highlighted the extent to which the line between religion and state had eroded under the 73-year-old’s rule, ahead of elections scheduled for April and May, critics said.

“Prime ministers prior to Modi have also been to temples, been to other places of worship, but they went there as devotees,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author on Hindu nationalism.

“This is the first time that he went there as somebody who performed the ritual.”

India’s main opposition Congress party boycotted the ceremony alongside Hinduism’s four leading spiritual leaders, the Shankaracharyas, who said it was not being inaugurated in the proper manner outlined by Hindu scripture.

Mr Modi’s BJP has long vowed to build the temple and its construction has served as a symbol of the growing sectarian divisions between Muslims and Hindus, with the latter making up 80 per cent of India’s population of 1.4 billion.

The site has long been a religious flashpoint for the two communities, with the demolition of the mosque more than three decades ago triggering bloody riots across India that killed 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

A 2019 Supreme Court ruling gave the land to Hindus and provided Muslims with a plot outside of Ayodhya to build a replacement mosque.

The fraught history is still an open wound for many Muslims, who see the construction of the temple as a testament to Mr Modi’s Hindu-first politics.

The former mosque, the Babri Masjid, was built by the-then ruling Mughal dynasty in the 16th century on the site of what Hindus say was an earlier temple.

Authorities expect 150,000 people to visit the new temple every day after it opens to the public on Tuesday.