Lights! Camera! Modes! It is a one-man show on Indian television.

The people who poured into the holy city came on an intimate quest: to be among the first to seek the blessings of a beloved god who they said would return home after 500 years.

These Hindu devotees took leave from work. They ate with fellow pilgrims, slept in the cold and drank tea at roadside eateries as they waited for the dazzling new temple dedicated to the deity Ram. Early in the morning, as a soft devotional melody sounded from loudspeakers attached to utility poles, they took a purifying dip in a river.

But it was another, smaller group, camped on the riverbank in Ayodhya, that made the moment as much about India's powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi as it was about Lord Ram.

As a spectacle of laser lights and jarring beats played out in the background, a dozen national television channels tried to outdo each other in what has become a guiding mission for most: spotlighting the prime minister's every move.

“We must not forget that this is because of Narendra Modi,” a commentator on one of the shows reminded his viewers.

Through a mix of incentives and coercion, the broadcast media has engaged in an image-making machine that glorifies Mr. Modi as an infallible, divine leader. Through this prism, he is the author of every national success, an inescapable figure for ordinary people like the Ayodhya pilgrims, and his continued rule seems inevitable.

At the same time, news of setbacks — Chinese invasion of India's borderlands, deadly ethnic conflict in a northeastern region, uneven economic growth that doesn't create enough jobs — is rarely discussed on TV, and even more rarely attributed to Mr. Modi. Asking questions to a prime minister is a thing of the past; Mr. Modi has not held a proper press conference in the past decade since he took charge.

The inauguration of the Ram temple last month hastily coincided with the launch of the prime minister's campaign for a third term in office. For the millions of people who tuned in during his speech, the full range of his skills as a communicator were on display: his powerful oratory, his keen eye for symbolism and his shrewd understanding of messaging in a new media age.

The construction of the temple, on land disputed between Hindus and Muslims, was the culmination of a four-decade movement by India's Hindu right, the cornerstone of their efforts to turn a secular republic into a Hindu-majority state.

The consecration ceremony was both a religious ritual and a viral spectacle, with Mr. Modi playing the role of eventual victor, striding alone into the frame. He said nothing about the bloody, divisive legacy associated with the dispute, in which a mosque that had stood for centuries was razed to the ground in 1992 by a Hindu mob driven by the belief that there had previously been a temple had stood.

Instead, he instantly placed himself at the center of a 500-year history and an even longer future.

“We must lay the foundation for India for the next thousand years,” he said, after helicopters showered flowers from above.

The guest list was heavy with Bollywood and entertainment royalty, businessmen generous with their pockets and gurus with a foot in each of those realms. The seating arrangement, one organizer jokingly said, was based on who had the most social media followers.

That was in line with how Mr. Modi's tech-savvy party has done it celebrities and influencers collected in the service of his image.

In moments of political tension, stars with large followings issued near-copy-and-paste statements of support. And as the election approaches, ministers have turned to podcasts and online broadcasts with influencers to reach a generation that gets its information outside the traditional channels that Mr. Modi has co-opted.

At the front of the crowd at the temple's inauguration were stars like Amitabh Bachchan, one of India's biggest film icons. With his phone off, he took photos and videos of the moment for his collective following of more than 100 million people on social media accounts.

His face was everywhere, welcoming passengers at the newly built airport and smiling from the billboards selling everything from flour to a 'seven-star' property in Ayodhya, a 'kingdom reborn'.

In the days leading up to the ceremony, television stations shouted their excitement from the riverbank, the noise growing louder as you went upstream.

There were the state television networks Doordarshan and NDTV, once an independent broadcaster but now under the control of a billionaire ally of Mr. Modi, both of which tied the prime minister, at least implicitly, to the monumental event.

At another station, Republic Bharat, an anchor dove into the crowd to hear their views. “Modi-ji did his duty, he built the temple,” said one man, before announcing next temple construction targets, amid a chorus from the Hindu right that intensified in recent days.

Coincidentally, the laser light show was activated on the eve of the inauguration just as the channel went live. Urged on by the producers from a corner, people danced in their seats, and after the show ended, they broke out into an all-out rave.

“It was our luck today – I really enjoyed it,” said the show's lead producer Pratap Singh.

It didn't matter that much could be heard over the noise. “Who listens to the guests these days?” he said with a grin. “It's about the show you put on; you could see everyone was dancing.”

Further away, another channel, ABP, ran a program for the second night in a row that made its intentions abundantly clear: “Who will be prime minister?” read the poster for the show, decorated with red thrones.

Participants, including one who said in a slip of the tongue that he was participating in “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” – the names sound very similar in Hindi – made it clear that the answer to the election question was Mr Modi.

Between Republic of Bharat and ABP there was a channel that often had a single purpose: to fuel the polarization under which Mr. Modi's ruling party thrives.

Sudarshan News, which like the rest of India's broadcast media receives ample advertising money from the government, is unapologetic in its divisive agenda – and was unimpressed by the government's pre-inauguration advice to the media against publishing content which “disrupts communal harmony.”

Whenever guests went off on theological tangents, Suresh Chavhanke, the channel's chairman, would step in to bring the show back to focus: the opposition Congress Party, which was made to pay for its absence from the ordination, and India's Muslim minority.

“We can get religious knowledge from anyone,” he said, cutting off a seer. “Tell me what your message is to the enemies.”

When another seer struck a tone of conciliation and said that the temple dispute is now a thing of the past and that Muslims and Hindus must work towards “brotherhood”, Mr Chavhanke interrupted him. He focused on something often instigated by the Hindu right: an economic boycott of Muslims.

“Look, on Sudarshan this 'brotherhood' doesn't work,” he said. “This drug of 'brotherhood' has caused a lot of harm to Hindus.”

At the inauguration, Mr. Chavhanke and several other media barons were among the hand-picked guests seated close to the front.

In an interview, Mr. Chavhanke denied saying what reporters from The New York Times heard him say on his show, including a question he asked the Hindu audience about how many people had swords in their homes.

“You are telling lies,” he said, although videos of his broadcast remain on the channel's platforms.

When asked if his channel had ignored the government's advice on communal harmony, Mr Chavhanke said it was following all guidelines.

“Till today,” he said, “we have not taken any action against the violation of guidelines.”