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The Indian national flag and images of Ram Temple were displayed at the iconic Times Square in New York on Wednesday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the structure in Ayodhya, India.
The Indian community in the United States said that it was a proud moment for India and Indians.
"It shows how successful Indians are in America that our Ram Temple and tricolour are on the most iconic screen in the world. It is a proud moment for India and Indians," Mr Jagdish Sewhani, president of the American India Public Affairs Committee, told news agency ANI.
The New Indian Express reported that the words "Jai Shri Ram" in Hindi and English, Lord Ram's portraits and videos and 3D portraits of the temple's design were displayed on billboards at Times Square from 10am to 10pm to mark the historic day.
Mr Modi said "golden history" was written on Wednesday when he launched the construction of the Ram Temple at a flashpoint religious site that sparked some of the India's bloodiest sectarian violence.
The colourful ceremony in Ayodhya, with Mr Modi surrounded by saffron-clad priests, came on the first anniversary of the removal of the special status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority region.
Indian-Americans across the US celebrated the foundation stone laying ceremony by lighting lamps and driving a truck displaying digital images of the Ram Temple around Capitol Hill.
However, there were protests too. Members of the South Asian Solidarity Initiative and the Indian American Muslim Council shouted slogans against those celebrating near a traffic island at Times square. The police moved in to separate the two groups.
Earlier, 20 organisations and several individuals in the US collectively wrote a letter to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio opposing the display of the images of the temple at Times Square.
"(The) billboard (will) dehumanise Muslim New Yorkers and celebrate human rights abuses against Muslims in India," the signatories said.
"Our coalition stands opposed to the far-right Hindutva nationalism of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government. We are writing to ask you how New York City, a city that claims to have inclusive and egalitarian values, can allow such a brazen celebration of hatred and Islamophobia."
The signatories included the Hindus for Human Rights and Coalition Against Fascism in India.
The signatories also spoke of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, when a Hindu mob destroyed a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya that they believed had been built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. This triggered religious riots that killed 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.
"We request that your office take action to prevent the projection of a billboard which celebrates the destruction of the nearly 425-year-old mosque that led to some of the worst communal violence India witnessed," the protesters wrote to the mayor.
The day saw supporters hail Mr Modi as a decisive, visionary and heroic leader - India's most important in decades. But his critics saw him as remoulding the officially secular country of 1.3 billion as a Hindu nation at the expense of India's 200 million Muslims and taking it in an authoritarian direction.
AFP, Indo-Asian News Service
