Title: Cultural triumph
in Kashi
Author: Rakesh Sinha
Publication: The Organiser
Date: March 5, 2000
Much has been written
on Water. In recent times the English media, particularly the big dailies,
devoted a plethora of editorials and news columns to the ill-conceived
film than to ISI's activities. The spontaneous protest in Kashi against
the film's shooting led them to target as usual the BJP Government and
the RSS ideology. One of them compared BJP's regime with Taliban. Another
denounced the Sangh for cultural policing. While the protesters claimed
having access to the script no newspaper apparently knew the details of
the script. Nevertheless they predictably went ahead with their anti-RSSism.
No society is free from socio-cultural contradictions. Islam lives and
proclaims medievalism but 'progressives' do not find anything odd about
it. But Hinduism is treated by them as a cultural laboratory. Apparently
they believe in absolute (and yet selective) right to freedom of expression.
They want the right to convert Hindus, denounce and denigrate Hindu gods
and goddesses and any protest against it is considered negation of Hinduism.
They also expect the state to protect if not reward, M.F. Husain for the
nude paintings of Hindu goddesses. A new theory is surreptitiously propounded,
the theory of cultural laissez faire. Water is a classic example of application
of cultural laissez faire countered by cultural proletariats.
Where were the progressives
of the English media when the office- of the New Indian Express was attacked
by a Muslim mob in Bangalore on January 2 of this year? They violently
reacted against an article written by one T.S. George who quoted an Italian
writer of the 14th century (Renaissance) Dante regarding Prophet Mohammad,
founder of Islam. Ironically no national daily, except The Times of India,
which alone carried the news, although in the most insignificant manner,
even mentioned the incident.
What are Deepa Mehta's
credentials? She is certainly not a social reformer. She exposed herself
when she readily agreed to change her script. Although its contents are
still authoritively not known to the world the dilution of the original
script is clearly indicative of her acceptance, however belated, that the
freedom of thought and expression is subject to public peace and order
as well as the sentiment of the people. She is part of an international
'cultural' mafia who consider Hinduism a mine for raw material to produce
items for the global cultural market. Mehta is no Medha Patkar or Arundhati
Roy. She and others of her ilk see Hinduism from the William Archer not
Maxmuller's perspective. In the beginning of the 20th century, Archer in
his work India and the Future depicted Hinduism as "barbarous, uncivilized...
and unfiltered religion -a paganism which has resolutely declined filtration.
It is this tendency towards pollution rather than purification that assigns
it its place-incomparable to the lowest-in the scale of world religions.
Mehta and her apologists
in. the English press tried to do a cultural Kargil in Kashi which Mehmud
Ghouri or Aurangzeb failed to do. And the nationalists conscientiously
rose to protect the prestige of a centre of faith and devotion. The condition
of some widows is indeed miserable but that does not mm it is the culture
of Kashi and Hinduism. If some old cows are uncared for, does that justify
the butchering of cows? Deepa has not stressed the misery of widowhood;
instead she has deliberately targeted Kashi.
Certainly archers of
the English press are not innocent of the importance of Kashi for the Hindu
heart and mind. No other city in the country attracts as, many western
scholars, devotees as Kashi. M. A. Sherring, long term emissary of the
London Missionary Society in Banaras, wrote in mid-nineteenth century,
"Not only is remarkable for her venerable age but for vitality and vigour
which, so far we know, she has constantly exhibited. While many cities
and nations have fallen into decay and perished, her sun has never gone
down; on the contrary, for long ages past it has shone in almost meridian
splendour. Her illustrious name has descended from generation to generation,
and has over been a household word, venerated and beloved by the vast Hindu
family." Kashi, a city of learning and pilgrimage for Hindus, has been
continuously revered by Hindus with a wish to breathe their last here.
The Puranas mention Kashi
as the most revered city of the Hindus. It is linked with the Hindu pantheon,
Lord. Shiva being- its presiding deity. The earliest Puranas, the Vayu
and the Brahmanda (4th to 6th century AD) narrate Shiva's arrival in the
city driving away the Yakshas and Ganas who had then occupied the city.
The Matsya Purana (7th to 12th centuries AD) glorifies Kashi as the city
of Shiva. Furthermore, the Tirtha section of Kartakalpataru, the famous
digest compiled by Lakshmidhara, a minister to the Garhval king Govindachandra,
who was a ruler of the region with Kashi as his capital from 1104 to 1134,
mentions more than 300 tirthas (pilgrim spots) in Kashi. There is a Kashikhanda
in the Skanda Purana which was compiled in the mid 14th century after the
invasion of Muhammad Ghouri. In addition to them, Narada Purana mentions
Bindu Madhav, the Vaishnava temple in the city. Lord Buddha had chosen
Sarnath in Kashi from where to launch his spiritual campaign. As Sherring
rightly points out, "it is plain that Benaras must have been at this (the
Buddha's) time a city of power and importance, the weightage of whose opinion
on religious matters was considerable and that this was the real reason
why Gautama wished to commence his career at Benaras, admits of no controversy...
in any case Benaras was a city of no mean antiquity. Twenty-five centuries
ago, at least, it was famous. When Babylon was struggling with Nineveh
for supermacy, when Athens was growing in strength, before Rome had become
known, or Greece had contained Persia or Cyrus had added lustre to the
Persian monarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem, and the inhabitants
of Judea had been carried into captivity, she had already risen to greatness,
if not to glory".
The Vallabha sampradaya
attained its glory in this city. In the 16th century Brahmans of the South
came to settle in Benaras. The philosphers of the Nyaya and Sankhya schools
also congregated in Kashi. In 1850 there were 193 Sanskrit schools with
a total 1939 scholars. As William Robertson wrote in 1791, "Benaras has
been from time immemorial the Athens of India, the residence of the most
learned Brahmins, and the scat of both science and literature." Nevertheless
the orthodoxy dominated the religious life of Kashi. And the revolutionary
Kabir, enlightened Hindi literary figures Bharatendu Harishchandra, Jayshankar
Prasad and Premchand lived and died in Benaras as fighters against orthodoxy.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati visited the city a number of times and made the
severest attacks on orthodoxy which perhaps appalled the sanatanis who
formed the Dharma Sabha. One distinctive feature of Hindu culture is its
legitimate and popular I mandate for constructive reforms. The champions
of Hindu culture Raja Ram Mohan Roy or Swami Vivekananda had been much
critical of the state of religion and culture than any other outside observer.
These sociological dimensions of Hindu religion and society are beyond
the comprehension of Mehta and her ilk.
The Hindu holy city is
venerated not only for the Kashi Vishwanath temple of Lord Shiva which
also faced destruction by Mohammad Ghouri and Aurangzeb, but it is largely
considered a place to attain moksha by the common Hindu. Everything from
trees to every inch of the bank of the Ganga known as Ghat water and even
the mud of Kashi, always a dirty city, is venerated by common Hindus. As
Sherring remarked, "her thousands of temples, her myriads of idols, her
swarms of pilgrims, her hosts of daily worshippers, together with the pomp
and circumstance of and multifarious representations of idolatry, in their
vast aggregate, cause the Hindu religion to be visible to the eye, in the
city, in a manner and degree unknown elsewhere." It is this reverence which
provoked the people of Banaras to show people like Mehta or Husain that
Hinduism is not for sale, a platform to earn cheap publicity and prove
an ultra liberal outlook. Aggressive Hinduism is not fascism. And if Chennai's
riots and Bangalore's violence are not fascism how do the angry mobs of
Varanasi become fascism? Why didn't Mehta stand to fight the fascism? The
'General' surrendered while the secularist army was making its 'plans to
push the BJP government once again into the dock. The classical work Banaras:
City Light (1983) of Diana Eck says, "there are few cities in India as
traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as the
city of Benaras. And there are few cities in India, or in the world for
that matter, as challenging and bewildering to the Western visitor as Benaras.
It is not an easy to comprehend for those of us who stand outside the Hindu
tradition, as we survey the river front at dawn, we are challenged to comprehend
whole of India in one sweeping glance." Cultural lumpenism was rightly
and bodily encountered in Kashi. While Swami Vivekananda and Swami, Dayananda
saved Hinduism from becoming a dying race Hedgewar and Savarkar removed
the mental lethargy, that made it a demoralised race.
(The author teaches Political
Science in Delhi University, email address: rakeshksinha@hotmail.com)