Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted a Dharma Dhwaja, or religious pennant, atop the Ram temple in Ayodhya on Tuesday, hailed it as the “flag of India’s reawakening” and claimed the entire world was steeped in Ram.

At the same time, he regretted that India was still in thrall to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s education policy and appealed to people to free themselves of this “slavery”.

“The whole of India, the entire world is Rammay,” Modi told a gathering after pushing a button to raise the triangular saffron flag to the top of a 30-foot pole on the temple’s pinnacle, which is 161 feet above the ground. About 40 priests chorused Vedic chants.

The flag — 22 feet long and 11 feet wide — is said to mirror the one Ram had adopted during his rule.

“This is the beginning of the renaissance of Indian civilisation,” the Prime Minister declared.

“The saffron colour of the flag and the sign of Om, symbol of Suryavansh (a smiling sun) and the kovidar tree (a hybrid representation of the mandar and parijat trees) inscribed on it symbolise Ram Rajya.”

Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, was at the event, held two weeks after the completion of the three-storey Ram temple and its domes and spire.

Modi had consecrated the Ram idol at the temple on January 22 last year. Since then, the BJP government has been conducting one event after another on the premises to emphasise the party’s role in the shrine’s construction.

“There is unprecedented satisfaction in the mind of every Ram devotee…. The wounds of centuries are healing…. The commitment of centuries becomes a reality today. The Dharma Dhwaja is the flag of India’s reawakening,” Modi said.

“The flag symbolises Ram Rajya…. The flag is our commitment and our success.”

Modi rued that the country remained enslaved by the education system Macaulay had introduced. He pledged to eradicate it by 2035.

“Macaulay planted a seed in 1835 to erode India from its roots. We’ll complete 200 years of that unholy incident in 2035,” Modi said.

“The impact of Macaulay’s policy was deeper than he had expected. We got Independence but the tendency towards slavery didn’t change within us. We started thinking that everything in foreign countries (the West) was good and everything in India was bad.”

He appealed to people to change this mindset.

“We are also told that our Constitution has foreign elements — and yet India is the mother of democracy. Democracy is in our DNA,” the Prime Minister said.

He said the 10th-century Chola inscription at Uttaramerur, Tamil Nadu, describes a local democratic system of governance, and added that Ram’s rule benefited every part of society and offered the best model of development.

“We have to awaken Lord Ram within us if we want to make India a developed nation by 2047, when we enter the 100th year of India’s independence,” Modi said.