Dharam Das is one of the most powerful seers in Ayodhya.In 1949, his guru planted an idol of Ram inside the Babri Masjid, breathing new life into a dispute over the 16th century mosque.Das was a litigant in the contestation over the place of worship for nearly four decades. The movement, which fuelled the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Indian politics, ended with the destruction of the mosque by a Hindutva mob in 1992.In 2024, a grand Ram temple was built over the ruins of the mosque, marking a victory for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.But two years later, the temple is at the centre of allegations of grave financial irregularities and theft.“All the sadhus here are upset,” Das, now in his seventies, told Scroll. “The prime minister needs to give this his attention.”The target of Das’s ire is the trust created by the Narendra Modi government in 2020 to build the temple on the orders of the Supreme Court.Opposition leaders and a whistleblower have claimed that cash and jewellery offerings made by devotees have been swindled by the temple staffers under the trust’s watch. A special investigation team formed by the Uttar Pradesh government is inquiring into these allegations. However, a first information report is yet to be filed.Dharam Das at his quarters in Ayodhya. “Trust means vishwas, but that does not exist now,” Das said. “The money donated for the temple has been swindled. Crores of money. Everyone there is involved in theft. The trust should be disbanded.”Chief Minister Adityanath, on a visit to Ayodhya last week, appealed to “all sides to not make any baseless remarks that hurt the sentiments of Ram’s devotees”.But in Ayodhya, the anger is unmistakable.Residents and temple-goers are visibly upset, but so are local BJP leaders, volunteers of its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and seers associated with the Ram temple movement for decades.“Whoever has made this mess [in the trust] will bear the consequences,” Vinay Katiyar, the founder president of the Bajrang Dal and former member of parliament from Faizabad, told Scroll.An RSS leader, who has worked with the organisation for nearly two decades, said that the allegations will damage the Sangh Parivar’s standing, especially among Bahujan communities.Devotees in Ayodhya.The trustWithin a year of its formation, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra trust found itself under a cloud.It had demolished historic temples to subsume their land into the Ram temple complex. In June 2021, months before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, it was reported that its dubious land deals had enriched influential middlemen linked with the BJP and RSS.Five years later, with another Assembly election in the offing, the trust is under scrutiny again. Much of it comes from its fellow travellers within the Hindutva movement, many of whom harbour resentment against the trust for alienating them from the Ram temple’s functioning since 2020.Their anger is also directed at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which slowly seized control over the mandir movement since 1984, and is now purportedly unwilling to share power with the original players. Under the scanner for the alleged theft of temple funds is Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Champat Rai, the general secretary of the trust and the main administrator of the temple.“The VHP always wants to capture temples,” claimed Dharam Das. “There is not a district in the country where they have not done this.”In 2021, months after the trust’s land deals became public, Das accompanied Opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal (who was Delhi chief minister at the time) to the temple. It was his way of undercutting the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.Today, the seer says that it has become difficult for him to access the temple. “There are VIP passes handed out to special people for worship,” he said. “They have stationed so many security personnel around the temple. Why is all this even needed? People should be able to easily worship the deity. Will the trust run Ayodhya or will the sadhus who have lived here all their lives?”Regardless of Das’s criticism, the temple trust includes several Ayodhya seers as trustees. One of them is its president, Nritya Gopal Das of the Digambar akhara, who has been incapacitated by illness for a few years.His deputy, Kamal Nayan Das, has made critical comments about the trust over the last two weeks. But last week, on the day Adityanath arrived in Ayodhya, he grew reluctant to talk. “All I can say is that god will punish those who committed wrong deeds,” he told Scroll in his quarters in the akhara’s temple.Senior religious leaders of the Digambar akhara have been close to Adityanath’s guru, Avaidyanath, and his guru, Digvijaynath, for several decades. The monastic order has also been cultivated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.Kamal Nayan Das (centre) in his room at the Maniram Das Chhawani in Ayodhya.“I know Champat Rai,” added Kamal Nayan Das. “He is an honest man.” He was less enthusiastic about another trust member at the centre of the allegations – Anil Mishra of the RSS. Das said that he would not comment on Mishra.“Focus on those that he doesn’t talk about,” an aide of Kamal Das explained discreetly after the interview, on the condition of anonymity citing disciplinary reasons. “Rai does not have a family to steal for. But Mishra does. He will bear the consequences.”But Vinay Katiyar, the Bajrang Dal founder and former Member of Parliament from Faizabad, was sharply critical of Rai.“Champat Rai was never involved with the [Ram temple] movement,” Katiyar told Scroll at his residence near the temple. “He was not even an ideologue with the Sangh. He came from western UP.”Champat Rai arrived in Ayodhya in 2000, according to an Ayodhya-based journalist with a national newspaper. His initial duties included speaking to the press and maintaining a good relationship with the town’s seers for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. “This was at a time when some of the town’s most influential sadhus here – like Gyan Das of Hanumangarhi – resisted the Sangh Parivar making inroads into Ayodhya’s religious establishments.”Last week, Katiyar had decried Ram temple trust members, especially Gopal Rao, a Sangh leader, as “thieves” and said he will take matters into his own hands. He later said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken to him and then returned, like other critics, to the standard response: “Whoever has made this mess [in the trust] will bear the consequences.”Scroll contacted Rai, Mishra and Rao for a response to these allegations. The story will be updated if they respond.A former Vishwa Hindu Parishad Faizabad district president was much more candid. “Champat Rai is not a cheat,” he said. “But he has always had a habit choosing the biggest cheats as his deputies.”The reason for Rai to remain in the trust, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader added, was his role in pushing an entrenched but inconvenient faction of the VHP out of the temple town.“He was instrumental in making [former VHP leader] Praveen Togadia leave Ayodhya during the first term of the Modi government,” said the leader. “It was a move ordered by his superiors. But he was the one to make it happen.”Togadia, who quit the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in 2018, is a long-time critic of Modi.‘Sweep it under the rug’While the RSS was formed in Maharashtra, the Hindu supremacist group has deep roots in Uttar Pradesh. This is where its electoral arm, the BJP, won its first election by itself in 1991. The victory was driven by the Sangh’s campaign to demolish the Babri mosque and build a temple to Ram on it.The temple movement was driven by hundreds of RSS leaders who mobilised support across the towns and villages of North India, often leaving communal violence in their wake. Many more joined the organisation after 1992.In Ayodhya today, only a handful of these men have come to wield power. This includes trustees like Champat Rai and Anil Mishra, but also Sangh leaders like Gopal Rao, Kaushal Kishor Singh and Subhash Srivastava.The temple trust’s office near the Ram temple in Ayodhya.“Many people have worked for the temple and sacrificed their lives for it,” an RSS leader in Ayodhya told Scroll on the condition of anonymity, citing disciplinary reasons. He has worked for the outfit for 19 years. “But it is only a few who have cornered the credit – and maybe much more.”The leader was alluding to nearly Rs 3,500 crores that the Sangh collected for the construction of the Ram temple after the 2019 Supreme Court judgement that awarded the disputed site to Hindus, as well as the lakhs in donations it collects every day.Several people, including Mahipal Singh, an alleged accountant who claims to have been employed by the trust, Santosh Dubey, an activist in Ayodhya, and a jewellers association, have claimed that crores of rupees in donations and more than a thousand kilos of gold and silver offerings have either been swindled or have gone missing from the temple. Scroll was unable to independently verify their accounts.“There is little doubt to me that there has been theft inside the temple,” the RSS leader said. “This public revelation has besmirched the Hindu faith.”The RSS is wary of how the theft is being viewed by those from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes, sections which the Sangh Parivar hopes to unite into a larger Hindu fold.“Despite the Sangh’s efforts, only 5%-10% of Hindu society sees it as truly working for their interests,” the RSS leader said, referring to the organisation’s mostly upper-caste base. “But the rest have always had doubts and misconceptions about us – [think of how people say] Brahmins loot devotees visiting temples. This incident will only confirm those views.”For now, many in Ayodhya wait for the SIT to conclude its probe and release its report. An investigation had also been ordered in 2021 after the trust’s controversial land deals. That report has never been made public.A second Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader in Ayodhya said that the trust could have avoided the new allegations if it had learnt its lessons then. “If they had done something when the land deals had happened, an opportunity to tarnish the temple today would not have arisen,” said the leader.The RSS leader quoted earlier said that the Sangh leadership is still mulling over its options. “The likely course of action is that this will be swept under the rug,” he said. “Perhaps that is the best option. Whoever has committed the theft should be asked to return the sum. This is a matter of the Sangh Parivar and it should be settled like a family matter.”All photographs by Ayush Tiwari.