 Summary of this article
- Small roadside shrines have vanished from Benares. They were not relocated with ceremony or rebuilt elsewhere. They were simply erased.
- The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, the most celebrated symbol of Benares' transformation, is repeatedly presented as a triumph of devotion.
- The creation of Gyanvapi complex involved the clearing of entire neighbourhoods and the erasure of smaller temples.
I detested my love for holy cities. Yet Benares, Varanasi, Kashi, whichever name one chooses, remains a civilisational signpost. I loved the city from a distance, and like all civilisations, it has always been threatened, not primarily by Hindu rulers destroying Jain temples or Muslim rulers destroying Hindu ones, but by the cowardice of modernity and capitalism.
One does not visit Benares. One either falls into it or rejects it completely, regardless of social or religious position. It is a city of thousands of years, now eroded not by faith but by modern religion. Benares implicates you in belief even as it frees you from sectarian loyalty. Its ghats and winding alleys recall a time when things, beings, and orders existed in a strange, schizophrenic harmony, listless yet paradoxically structured. For the white, the brown, and the occasional Western tourist, even scamming in Benares was once done with a peculiar kind of courtesy. |
