January 22 was a good day for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his official YouTube channel. Having delivered on one of his key election promises — getting legal permission to construct a temple on a disputed land — he attended its inauguration on January 22.
With so much hype around this event and his presence on the occasion, its live stream on the red platform ended as one of his most successful ever. In fact, it was his most-watched video ever at 3.2M Hours Watched, a whopping 437.5% better than the next-best entry. The previous record came when ISRO made history after its Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed on the Moon's south pole.
The grand temple, dedicated to the Hindu God Ram, in Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, was cleared for construction by a Supreme Court ruling in 2019. It was the culmination of a four-decade-long campaign by Hindu far-right groups to reclaim the land and build a place of worship befitting their religion.
Popularly known as Ram Mandir, the temple is being built on the same land that housed a 16th-century mosque. This structure stood till 1992, when Hindu far-right mobs demolished it and triggered nationwide riots between the two religious groups that left more than 2,000 people, most of them being Muslims.
The contentious issue was taken to court, where it stayed for almost three decades before the Supreme Court gave ownership of the land to a Hindu trust five years back. Most importantly, the temple's inauguration has been hailed as a symbol of religious triumphalism that is likely to benefit the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2024 general elections.
In fact, the political party's own YouTube channel hit records with its live broadcast of this event. Such was the response from the viewers that its numbers were much higher than any other seen on the handle so far.
When looking at the most popular Indian YouTube handles over the past week, Narendra Modi comes in second behind the famous news channel, Aaj Tak. It is also the fifth-most watched one, with only news channels ahead of it.
With India's broadcast habits mostly dominated by TV and YouTube, there's a kind of monopoly that other market players are yet to break. However, with the growing influence of esports and over-the-top platforms, other players are slowly getting hold of a market that is nowhere close to reaching its potential.
