Atul Jain

M.A. (Final)
Group I
Q. Examine the construction of the sacred domains in the city of Banaras and how they gets
reshaped with the variations and changes in the city.
A.
Abstract
The essay tries to look for the construction of sacred in Banaras and how it extends beyond
the usual domains of worship and rituals and encompass the day to day life activities as
well. This inclusion of everyday lives of people in the sacred domain is not a smooth
process as it tends to create a homogenous identity for the city, which is contested by the
groups who lack representation in the sacred domain. This contestation roots itself into the
identities, while identities are shaping and being shaped by the sacred spaces in Banaras.
The essay also looks at the social representation of the city as a process of reifying the
sacred perception of the space in the city.

Introduction

!
(Offering tribute to some unseen Sun,
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This city is standing in the water of Ganga,

For centuries,
On one leg,
In oblivion of existence of its other leg!)
-Kedarnath Singh (From his poem Banaras, 1999)
The perception of Banaras city as a whole, worshiping the Sun, is undoubtedly a powerful and
popular symbol of its connection with divinity. This perception of city has become so axiomatic
in any visualization of the city that it almost passes as a representation of reality. But despite all its
power and visually ubiquitous nature, this symbol covers only a fraction of reality. It is the fraction
that emerges from the overpowering idea of sacred in the city and sweeps under the carpet any
interjection of mundane into this cosmological narrative. It might be an extrapolation of all the
existing theoretical narratives of religion and sacred which bring even everyday activities, and
even rather impure activities like death into the domain of sacred. This can be viewed as escalation
of the mundane activities and constituents of the city to the level of sacred, but on the other hand,
it may also be viewed as making them as the vestibule parts of the larger narrative of sacred space,
carefully denying the existence of anything that can't be sacred. It might be a measure to empower
as well as essentialize the mundane.
Exploring beneath the surface of sacred geography of Banaras, there are people who live on the
margins of the domain of sacredness and are allowed either restricted or no entry into it. How they
come to negotiate with the superfluous sacredness is a political question which has a bearing on
the local geography, narratives of history as well as their multiple identities, which may or may
not be interlinked. Since the idea of sacred is deeply attached to the identity of the city, they need
to locate their identities on the surface of sacredness. Looking for this fluidity of identities is akin
to being conscious about the second leg, which is hanging in air, in the city of Kedarnath Singhs
description. Decoding that leg may also be essential to understand the city completely.
Decoding the Sacred in Banaras
To understand a city is also to understand what it was, is and aspires to become. It is also to study
its locational distributions and social relations. Lefebvre's trialectics of historicity-spatiality and
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sociality can be a starting point of such an analysis. (Lefebvre in Soja, 1996) If the city is chosen
as a unit of analysis, then this otherwise inclusive trialectics turns out to be a heuristic measure,
which if applied too generally, is devoid of any insights and if applied narrowly, lets reality slip
through wide gaps between the theoretical categories. It is superior to Marxist dialectical
construction of reality as it is not fixed at a point of the time axis, but provides the headroom to
the analysis to move to and fro and at times to move in a nonlinear fashion as well to construct
reality based on the other two parameters. On the other hand, it fails to accommodate the localized
nuances which are beneath the surface of the construction of the unified surface of city. City is like
a complex machine which might be having moving and non- moving parts. In case of moving parts
as well, the degrees of freedom may differ, making any generalized analysis inadequate.
The creation of sacred space in any otherwise mundane area is the juxtaposition of cosmos on the
chaos of day to day life. The quest of sacred lies with the search for extraordinary, detached and
axiomatic spaces, which might orient the meaningless chaos towards an organized order. (Eliade,
1957) The perception of Banaras, as a place which is a little higher than the rest of the earth is a
neat manifestation of this idea. Banaras is assumed to be at a higher plane of reality, some kind of
conduit between the real and the cosmological, which makes even rather impure idea of death a
sacred one in Banaras. (Eck, 1983) The sacredness is not just identified with some geographical
symbol but is also considered to be emerging from them. The location of Banaras on the bank of
river Ganga, and especially at a juncture where Ganga takes an unusual turn towards north from
its otherwise eastward flow, has a huge bearing with its sacredness. The popular perception of
Banaras is entirely attached to river Ganga, providing the city a perception of antiquity. As the
river has been there for a very long time, so must have been the city. (Deasi, 2003: 27) This rather
non-logical extrapolation of geography firmly establishes Banaras as the oldest city of the world
in the mind of the believers. Banaras, as a place, seems to be propagating and expanding the idea
of sacredness with imitating and encompassing other sacreds even from geographically far-away
places. There are at least six places where Vindhya Devi is worshipped, while the actual shrine is
in Madhya Pradesh. (Humes, 1993) Banaras is the embodiment of all the values, rituals and sacred
in Hinduism, that a pilgrim might feel privilege of having visiting a region which encompasses all
the sacred, even from the broader definition of sacred in Hinduism, which links it directly to the
way of life.
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Sacredness and Banaras: The Distribution

Unlike western idea of religion, Hinduism does not have strict boundaries between the acts which
are sacred. It rather excludes certain acts as impure and the rest of the acts fall into the domain of
sacredness. The normal day to day activities like bathing, eating, working, swimming can also
constitute the idea of sacred in Hinduism.
In Banaras, the ideas of sacred and political are deeply intertwined. The city is inherently linked
to Lord Shiva, an ascetic; but the most widely celebrated public festival is Ramlila, which is the
celebration of life and achievements of Ram, the noble king God. During the Ramlila, the whole
city acts as a stage as different events occur at different venues across the city. This manifestation
not just establishes the political domain of the king over the whole city but also makes the boundary
of sacred and mundane in the city rather fluid. (Schechner, 1993) The extension of sacred over
mundane is not just extended to spaces. Various modern groups like Akharas find legitimate roles
as the defenders of the religion and society in these enactments, establishing a linkage to a shared
perception of past and providing them a firm footing into the imagination of roles in that past. The
contestation for the spaces in the city are also included in the enactments when a number of acts,
of rather martial nature, are conducted in the areas dominated by the Muslims. (Alter, 1993) These
political usages of the idea of sacred create a consistent battlefield in the city to have the areas
subsumed by the overarching sacred, which belongs to one community only.
Apart from this overarching nature of sacred, there are shrines of Birs, which form the sacred
figurehead identities for smaller communities. (Coccari, 1989) They create a localized sacred
geography and rootedness for communities inferior, either in their geographical span, i.e. spread
in a few localities; or in the ritual hierarchy. This multilayered structure of sacred creates the net
of sacred so wide, that it is unlikely to be in Banaras without a God nearby!
The Others in Banaras
In spite of the dominant imagination of Banaras as a Hindu city, almost a quarter of city's
population is Muslim. Within the overarching framework of Banarasi identity, they create and
preserve a niche for themselves as bystanders, since the city accommodates them into the narrow
domain of identity related to their religion. Their relative location in a sacred city of Hindus can
lead to unique juxtaposition to democratic urban landscape offering unique and individual
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citizenship to everyone and the ritual mapping of the terrain which remain exclusive, and marks
the spaces belonging to others as desecrated. Whether this is unique due to the framework of the
context of the city or it is a function of the way Muslim identity is defined, becomes a pertinent
question here. (Das, 1984) Observing with the city as the unit of analysis, and using other
parameters of categorization like occupation, it becomes clear that the identity if the others is in
constant exchange with the city spaces. The weavers of Banaras, who call themselves Ansari,
instead of traditional caste name of Julaha, form a group which is essential to Banarasi identity.
They contribute important factors like Banarasi saari in the shaping of a unique identity of the
city. They socially and economically can be easily clubbed with the lower caste of Hindus. Their
renaming their caste group is a tool of reassertion of their unique identity and construction of an
identity group resisting the usurping by the Hindu caste system and thus essentialization of their
identity. (Kumar, 1989) They form inter-mohalla rivalry and divide themselves in spatial units like
tola and mohalla. The city space tries to encompass them but by creating a horizontal identity
across the mohallas, they encompass the geography of the city.
The process of othering also uses the sacred dimensions of the city and reinforces them. In this
perfect feedback system, many big mosques, which share the locations with the important temples,
like Gyan Vapi Mosque or Alamgiri Mosque, establish the Muslim community as one which has
plundered the erstwhile Hindu temples. On the other hand, it creates a narrative, in which temples
get shifted from once place to another, creating a sense of antiquity in rather newly constructed
temples in the form of continuity and also stamps more and more real physical space as sacred site
for Hindus which needs to be acquired. (Desai, 2003) Historically Banaras has been relatively free
of communal riots as the explosion of communal tensions is neutralized in constant contestation
over spaces with relative more sacred to one community than the other. The demarcation of sacred
has been used as an effective tool of excluding the rightful claim of other community on the places.
Be it the juxtaposition of competing sacreds at the same site or tracking more and more non-sacred
spaces to establish spatial hegemony, the boundaries are flexible and change shapes and
perceptions with every activity attached to religion. Unlike Mumbai's Dharavi, such demarcation
does not need a violent contest among communities. (Mehta, 2006) On a micro level, this
demarcation is established conclusively by the naming of mohallas and also flagging them as the
alien territory, like Pakistan in Dharavi. (Mehta, 2006) In case of Banaras, this is achieved at the
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macro level as well by projecting the whole city as a Hindu sacred territory. This social
representation creates a sense of confluence in the identity of the city outside of it in a monolithic
way.
Banaras has a unique status as a sacred city, as it is a place to die. Dying at Banaras is something
revered and worth celebrating as it fulfills the Hindu aim of attaining Moksha. For this reason,
while in most of the cities, the crematoriums are located outside the city, for the reason of impurity;
in Banaras, the cremation ghats are right in the middle of the city on the bank of Ganga.
Manikarnika Ghat and Harishchandra Ghats are sites of reverence not of repulsion. The dom
caste, which is very low in the purity hierarchy and is generally located in the areas on the outside
on the city, are allowed to reside and work at the heart of the city. But this uniqueness of spatial
structure is not able to encompass the socialability aspect of the dom community in terms of the
rest of the social practices. In Masaan, (Director: Neeraj Ghaywan, 2015) a boy form dom
community can aspire to lead a life free of the caste pollution by the means of modern tools of
education. His falling in love with an upper caste girl needed the support of another technological
tool of social media, as there was no other space they could share. To attain some intimacy, they
had to venture out of the boundaries of the sacred city, where the layers in their Banarasi identity
are not exposed. In the end to get rid of the hierarchy and the memories attached with loss, he goes
to Allahabad, a city with the same Ganga, but having a colonial narrative about it, where Ganga is
for joyrides, not for evening aarti. The perception of the space and his location vis a vis it outlines
his restricted acceptability to the domain, where he is supposed to perform a necessary function,
thus contributing to the formation of sacred; but is not allowed to be in it as its own. Banaras might
be the encompassment of the sacred spaces in India, but the all-inclusive encompassment has its
strategic gaps which lets the others pass through it to the peripheries of the narrative of Banaras.
Sacred and power: A feedback system
The creation of sacred is not just linked with antiquity. With the change in the power contours and
the ability of various symbols to recall the linkages with a revered segment of identity, whether
real or imagined, the sacred keeps getting recreated again and again. Natural landscapes and their
distribution and location in the domain of the city become important signifiers of this shifting
equilibrium of sacred signifieds, In Hinduism, natural features have always constituted a part of
sacred. Their linkages with power differentials in the urban space imbibe a sense of reinforcement
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of not just this sacred but also a pro-elite environmentalism. In medieval Delhi, the basic strategy
to keep river Yamuna clean was to make sure that the Kings palace was the last consumer of its
downstream water. (Dasgupta, 2014) Whether this strategy is piggybacking on the sacred of the
river or it plays a part in maintaining the sacred of river, is a chicken egg question. Without getting
into the attempts to solve it, it can be safely stated that they formed a neat feedback system.
Occupation of spaces as sacred has not been aloof to the social dynamics. The location of various
Ambedkar shrines in the city of Mumbai at busy squares of the city, underline the contestation for
the sacred identities of the city. As the sacred keeps piling up, some of it takes a different form and
becomes a site of consumption instead of reverence. The notion of states usurping the Marine
Drive area of Mumbai and converting that to an imitation of Manhattan skyline, is opening up of
the iconic sacred spaces of the city for consumption for some and aspiration for others. (Mehta,
2004)
In Banaras as well, the decision of the Prime Ministerial candidate to contest election for there, in
spite of his Gujarati origin, is a clear attempt to juxtapose political identity with the domain of
religious sacredness. It is locating the political aspiration at the centre of the religious legitimacy
and forms a neat cohesion of religious-political legitimacy, which is absolutely in sync with the
superior nature of mandate aspired by a leader trying to establish a personality cult. Taking an
extrapolation in time, may be in future his presence and linkages to the city of Banaras will add a
dimension to the multifaceted sacred structure of the city, enforcing yet another feedback system.
Conclusion
Sacred identity takes various shapes and forms in Hinduism. Its connection to the physical spaces
makes it enduring and tangible to recall and hold on to. It also adds a sense of permanence in the
construction of sacred in the city. Banaras, as a place is full of such symbols, which have been
carefully created over years, to draw a neat lineage from the past and to create possibilities of
possible extrapolations on the time axis, to make the analysis of its sacredness diachronic in nature.
This aspect of sacred needs to work with the reality on the ground, which is diverse and seeing
social fissures all the time. The sacred, thus, allows a window for fresh sacreds to be revered and
created as well. Whether that window is a methodology to make the sacred universe more
overarching or its a forced barging in of new identities and ideals in the sacred space, is a question
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which has contrasting answers based on contexts. But it can be safely stated that sacred spaces do
not follow a zero sum approach, thus expansion of them is possible as long as they have mundane
domains as well to create an opposition. The cycle of mundane, slipping into sacred and then
sacred slipping into consumption domain, forming modern sacred; is the process feedback which
makes the sacred really everlasting. In the capitalist state oriented age, this process itself is fast
acquiring a sacred status. Whether this sacred will be challenged, and how, will make an interesting
watch for sure.

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