India’s Narendra Modi rides nationalist wave at Ayodhya opening

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Good morning. We start today with India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the consecration of a Hindu temple on the site of a destroyed mosque, hailing it as “the beginning of a new era”.

The opening yesterday of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya delighted millions of Modi supporters but drew criticism from opponents who said India’s leader was flouting secular constitutional principles.

Ayodhya has long been a flashpoint for religious strife between Hindus, who make up four-fifths of India’s population of 1.4bn, and Muslims. The destruction of the Babri mosque sparked communal riots in which more than 2,000 people were killed.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party is expected to tap into religious nationalism in the campaign to propel the 73-year-old premier to a third term in national elections in April and May.

Some likened the ceremony to an elevation for Modi, India’s most powerful leader in decades, to quasi-royal status. Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said: “Essentially, this is all about crowning one person today and that person is not the deity but the king.” Here’s how Modi is riding India’s wave of Hindu nationalism ahead of elections. 

And here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• US 2024 election: New Hampshire holds its Republican primary. Donald Trump is heavily favoured but Nikki Haley is making a last-gasp bid to win.

• Monetary policy: The Bank of Japan makes its rate-setting announcement.

• United Nations: The UN Human Rights Council reviews China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Beijing has been lobbying non-western countries ahead of the meeting to get them to praise China’s rights record, according to Reuters.

Five more top stories

1. Sony has called off its merger with Zee Entertainment, ending its agreement with the Indian media group two years after striking an ambitious deal to create a $10bn entertainment powerhouse in the world’s fastest-growing large economy. The deal’s collapse is the latest setback in Hollywood’s campaign to expand in India, where executives have encountered intense local competition. Here’s how the deal fell apart.

2. Apple has paid a $12.3mn fine into Russia’s state budget, after a court in Moscow found the US tech giant guilty of abusing its dominant market position through the App Store. The payment boosts the Kremlin’s coffers at a time when President Vladimir Putin’s government is raising funds to support record defence spending on prosecuting the war in Ukraine.

3. Terraform Labs, the Singapore-based company behind the $40bn collapse of terraUSD digital tokens in 2022, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the state of Delaware, as its co-founder Do Kwon faces extradition to the US by mid-March to face a trial over alleged fraud. Kwon became one of the crypto industry’s most infamous executives as the implosion of terraUSD and its sister token, luna, sparked a crypto market crash in May 2022.

4. Christine Lagarde is performing poorly or very poorly as president of the European Central Bank, according to most respondents in a union survey of its staff that suggests internal dissent has surged in recent years. Here’s why ECB staff are unhappy.

5. China has shifted its investments in Latin America from costly infrastructure projects towards strategic sectors such as critical minerals, technology and renewable energy, a study has found. The shift came as new investment in the region fell, but alarm grew in the US and Europe about growing Chinese competition for economic supremacy.

News in-depth

A shortfall of workers in Japan is profoundly affecting the way the government, companies and people operate now and think about the future. Japan is the world’s fastest-ageing society and the “labour shortage is occurring regardless of whether the economy is doing well or not,” said Shoto Furuya, chief researcher at the Recruit Works Institute. Now, the country is turning to innovation — avatars, robots and artificial intelligence — to tackle the demographic challenge.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Russia’s grip on nuclear fuel: Here’s a look at Washington’s multibillion-dollar push to rebuild its nuclear supply chain after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Dealing with the past: Alexander Payne’s bittersweet new comedy The Holdovers provides a useful test case in how to treat history, writes Stephen Bush.

• Mass immigration: High levels of immigration are a sign of a dynamic and healthy society — not a harbinger of doom, writes Gideon Rachman.

Join the FT’s Martin Wolf and Alec Russell along with expert guests this Wednesday at 21:00 HKT as they discuss the challenge posed by migration to liberal democracies. Subscribers can register for free here.

Chart of the day

The world’s most successful hedge funds made their biggest profits on record last year after punchy bets on stock markets paid off when share prices surged.

Take a break from the news

What started out as a cheap, nourishing way of feeding a hungry population in postwar Japan has grown into an obsession among chefs. Ajesh Patalay goes in search of the perfect ramen.

Additional contributions from Tee Zhuo and Gordon Smith