The Liveability of India’s Cultural Capital

My experience and study on Banaras (Varanasi/Kashi), as an outsider, over the past decade, has led me to conclude that there are many Banaras-es, depending on who you talk to. A pilgrim, university professor, rikshawalla and vegetable seller will all give you different answers on what the city means to them. The phenomenon of Banaras goes from the sacred city to an urbanity gripped with traffic jams and gridlocks. How do you, as a Banaras resident, see its contemporary condition?

Banaras is not only a city, but also a culture in itself. Seeing the city is easy, but acquainting with it is difficult. Touching it is easy, capturing it is difficult. The sense and spirit of holiness embedded in Banaras has attracted people from various sects and religions like Vaishnavas, Shaivas, Tantrics, Buddhists, Jains and even Muslim Sufis. It is said, “By seeing Varanasi, one can see as much of life as the whole of India can show.” But it is not an easy city to comprehend for the outsider. The lifestyle of Banaras is distinct in nature: it is referred to as banarasipan. It is an art of living, both passionate and carefree, what the Banaras dwellers call masti (joie de vivre), mauj (delight, festivity) and phakarpan (carefreeness).

It is here that one finds some of the oldest and most important shrines of Hindu deities like Kal Bhairava, Dandapani Bhairava, Vishveshvara, and Annapurna as well as several kundas (water tanks). It is here that one finds products for the enjoyment of man’s material life and here that one is en route to the cremation ghat (stairways) — life and death, material enjoyment and spiritual quest, immanent and transcendent, uniquely juxtaposed. The urban morphology of the city shows a complex pattern where traditions are maintained and modernity is introduced in an often discordant way. The areas that have the highest density of religious and heritage properties also have the highest density of commercial wholesale and retail outlets. Presently the city is struggling to bridge old traditions and modern ways of transformation, especially through the initiatives of the Smart City development plan.

In your writings, you have consistently critiqued ongoing planning efforts for the city’s future. What are some of the key points of this critique and how can they be addressed?

Most of the time, outsider perspectives with more theoretical models are superimposed as the development plan and strategy for Banaras. Inside realities, the traditional lifeways and the continuity of the cultural scenarios are not taken into consideration. There is lack of coordination among the three development institutions responsible for making plans and implementing them, viz. Varanasi Development Authority, Varanasi Municipal Corporation, the District Urban Development Authority and their affiliates. The way Master Plan 2031 manages its urban transformation will determine the course of its development and economic ascent. Unfortunately, public participation is rarely taken into consideration for making this Master Plan, which is mostly conceived as an extension of the old one and additionally chalked out from earlier model plans that are in no way concerned with the current situation. One has to remember that the modern way of life and science, and that of ancient wisdom and its messages, can work together. Increased citizen awareness and participation, community-level development, self-help development and PPP (Public-Private-Partnership) can and will help to formulate optimal plans and make them successful and sustainable – environmentally, socially and culturally.

The pilgrimage geography of Banaras is one of its most unique aspects. It is simultaneously an experiential and urban phenomenon. You have described Banaras as “one of those celestial-archetypal cities where the material environment expresses a parallelism between macro-, meso- and micro-cosmos, regrouping them to form a sacred spatial system.” As arguably the foremost scholar today on Banaras’ sacred geography, how would you describe this side of Banaras to someone who comes from places where such aspects are not part of the discussion?

During the 1990s, I realised that this sacred place has a covering territory, represented with various attributes and functions and their interfacing complexities. India has a rich tradition of sacred places distributed all over the country. The concept of the holy place in Indian culture (tirtha) can be described as the consecration of a cosmic influence on topography; culture, geography and spirituality interacting with one another to create meaning, symbolism and transcendental power within a territory. A sacred landscape combines the absoluteness of space, relativeness of places and comprehensiveness of landscape. This altogether results in a ‘wholeness’ carrying the inherent and imposed spirit of ‘holiness’, which is to be called ‘sacredscapes’ (tirtha kshetra).

The sacred power and the sacred design are experienced through pilgrimage and the totality of the territorial perspective of sacrality and holy landscape is represented as sacredscape. The sacredscapes are associated with mythology and maintained by the pilgrimage tradition. Many such places also contain symbolic images and icons, both natural and cultural. Pilgrims and devotees visit them for faith healing and to experience the ‘spirit of place’. Sacredscapes possess multilayered richness of human religious activity, always regulated and maintained by the continuity of rituals, auspicious visits and pilgrimages. Sacredscapes function as a system of communication, power and embodiment; this multiplicity of character needs to be recognised in various contexts and concepts. All these notions evolved in the past, continued from the past, are maintained in the present and are fundamental to the future of Banaras.

The sacred bond between person and place is a reciprocal process illustrated in spatial manifestation (representation in miniature form), visualisation (architecture and the symbolic meanings imposed upon) and the world of festivities (regulating and re-awakening the spirit through rituals). I have tried my best to follow the path for my life-long journey and have described these experiences in my writings.

Ultimately, the wholeness of such a landscape creates a ‘faithscape’ that encompasses sacred place, sacred time, sacred meanings and sacred rituals and embodies both symbolic and tangible psyche elements in an attempt to realise man’s identity in the cosmos. The mythological stories converge the divinity’s acts and life into a divine environment making the spiritual sphere of faithscape more meaningful. The riverfront ghats of Banaras are a unique example of convergence of sacredscapes into faithscape (Fig. 3, Fig. 4). These ghats represent one of the finest ensembles of monumental architecture linked with the everyday activities of the devout people, thus symbolising the heritage tradition of India. In comparison to other sacred cities of India, sacredscapes in Banaras have maintained their ancient glories while accepting changes and superimposing manifestation. This is where it stands out.

Some years ago, I had the privilege of walking a part of the Panchakroshi Yatra pilgrimage path with you, and also getting a detailed tour of the Kardameshvar Halting Spot, one of the five halting spots along this pilgrimage route. Let’s talk some more about the Panchakroshi Yatra pilgrimage route. It has a total of 108 sacred sites, the number stemming from the summation of 12 months of the year and the nine planets of the Hindu cosmogony (Nava Graha). It covers a distance of 88.3 kms, including the Nagar Pradakshina, a circumambulation of the outer boundary of the urban landscape covering 24 kms. In many ways, this pilgrimage circuit defines a perceived outer limit for the urban territory of Banaras today. Does the city’s current planning model recognise this? Are such boundaries informing Banaras’ ongoing planning visions?

In my opinion the plan for the expansion and outward development of Banaras should be conceived taking the Panchakroshi Yatra pilgrimage route as the outer limit, because it delimits the cosmic territory of Banaras (Fig. 5). For example, if an outer ring road were to be developed alongside the Panchakroshi route, it would create a bridge between the sacred landscape and urban growth. Also, this will further promote pilgrimage tourism and spiritual tourism enhancing the ecological character of the landscape.

Greater emphasis should be given to pilgrim tourists who have to undergo the process of deep feeling, which depends upon certain pre-requisites, e.g. reverence and respect, belief and faith and, more importantly, deep insight to understand the revelations and a developed sensitiveness to feel spiritual bliss. For the successful operation of this kind of pilgrimage tourism, it needs to be well organised. This stage involves many supporting agencies to provide infrastructural facilities, promoting certain ‘necessary preconditions’ of integration like organisational, motivational, financial, functional and spatial, for the efficient functioning of this model. All of these seem to be equally essential in the case of pilgrimage-based alternative tourism that remains oriented more towards the health of heritage than commercial profits.

The sense of attachment to a place is a prerequisite for maintaining the spirit of the place and should also be an inherent force behind framing the government missions of HRIDAY (Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana) and PRASAD (Pilgrimage Rejuvenation And Spiritual Augmentation Drive). In both these programmes, the ministries of Culture and Tourism and Urban Development are collaborating to strengthen and promote the heritage sites and centres of pilgrimage tourism in making the environment green and sustainable while fitting into the roots of culture, traditions and society and also the image of the site. The progress is slow, but it is moving. Community-based development should be promoted within the purview of cultural life together with technology. This also seems to be the aim of smart city development. But these strategies are at the initial stage. The challenge for Banaras has been that the age-old traditional holiness has constantly been resisting modern and planned developments. We need to remember that an action is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the site as a living organism.

A sacred landscape combines the absoluteness of space, relativeness of places and comprehensiveness of landscape

As former Head of the Geography Department (2013-2015) at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), could you describe some of the most important research projects you undertook with your students that extended the Banaras discourse beyond stereotypes and well-worn clichés?

Being the head of the department was a strenuous, administrative and thankless job, which ultimately took a toll on my creativity and research activities, mostly due to stereotyped faculties that do not want to grasp the contemporary research debate and accept new challenges. In spite of all my efforts to develop departmental and joint projects, I failed due to the lack of cooperation and support from my colleagues; I wasted three years trying to adjust. At a personal level, however, I promoted research projects to study the heritage of Bodh Gaya, Varanasi and Ayodhya with the help of my research students. UNESCO’s concepts of Urban Cultural Landscape (UCL) and Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) have been praised and tested in these studies. Additionally, I promoted studies of the cultural landscapes and sacredscapes in Japan and Korea with the collaboration of colleagues there. I also serve as Vice-President of the Asian Cultural Landscape Association (SNU Seoul, Korea), and Big History Association of India (Mumbai), through international seminars and thematic publications and I am fully involved with them.

The challenge for Banaras has been that the age-old traditional holiness has constantly been resisting modern and planned developments

From 1979 to 2017, you have authored more than 100 papers and six books on Banaras. Which ones stand out for you and why?

All these writings have their own ways and representations – from cultural identity and development strategies, to critique of the plans and appraisal of the present Master Plan. But I think my paper Banaras, the Cultural Capital of India: Visioning Cultural Heritage and Planning (Sandhi, vol. 1 (1), February 2015; ref. 428.15 in my web, academia.edu) stands out for me. 
My book, Banaras, Making of India’s Heritage City (2009, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K.) is also worth reading. My ongoing paper will deal with the critical appraisal of the inclusive heritage development strategy of Banaras, taking into view UNO SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), Habitat III Resilience of the City and Smart City development programme, where culture will be taken as part of sustainable development.

Everyone wants to study Banaras. What remains to be excavated? What needs urgent study?

According to my selected Bibliographic sourcebook on Banaras, there are already 335 books (mostly in English), 640 research papers, 120 books/papers in Hindi, over 150 doctoral dissertations, and several projects under way. They cover varying, distinct and diversified aspects of the Banaras culture and landscape – evidence that the city presents a good laboratory to test one’s own taste, perspectives and orientations. But, to date, there is no single or multi-volume work that covers the multifaceted personality of the city. This is my life-long wish, which I have not yet completed! I am hopeful that somebody will take this up. There is a folk tale about Banaras: whatever good or bad, complex or simple aspects one can imagine in Indian culture – they are all present and alive in this city and one is free to choose them. Banaras’ sacredscape, heritagescape and faithscape should be studied with ‘open-mindedness’, that is, having interfaces and balance between an ‘insider’s’ (naïve) and an ‘outsider’s’ (reflective) perspective.