Banaras: Urban Forms and Cultural Histories

Michael S. Dodson

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000365641
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The book presents a rich and surprising account of the recent history of the north Indian city of Banaras. Supplementing traditional accounts, which have focused upon the city's religious imaginary, this volume brings together essays written by acknowledged experts in north Indian culture and history to examine the construction of diverse urban identities in, and after, the British colonial period. Drawing on fields such as archaeology, literature, history, and architecture, these accounts of Banaras understand the narratives which inscribe the city as having been forged substantially in the experiences of British rule. But while British rule transformed the city in many respects, the essays also emphasize the importance of Indian agency in these processes. The book also examines the essential ambiguity of modernization schemes in the city as well as the contingency of elements of religious narrative. The introduction, moreover, attempts to resituate Banaras into a wider tradition of urban studies in South Asia. The book will be of interest to not only scholars and students of north Indian culture and urban history, but also anyone looking to gain a deeper appreciation of this remarkable, and complex, city.

Part I
Constructing Historical Identities for the City

1
City of Negotiations

Urban Space and Narrative in Banaras

MADHURI DESAI

Given the presence of prominent mosques alongside the numerous temples and riverfront ghats of Banaras, narratives of the city as a “Hindu city” have tended to construct chronologies of eternal existence punctuated by instances of iconoclasm (see Plate 1.1). These accounts continually veer between myth, as associated with a Puranic viewpoint, and history, as a sequence of events and dates. Both readings of the past use the city’s built environment as an anchor. However, Banaras’s mansions, temples, ghats, and other structures were largely created against the religious politics of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century northern India and, as I will demonstrate in this essay, were effectively utilized to frame a “story” for the city. A reflection of this process can be glimpsed also in contemporary activities in Banaras, in the creation of new traditions such as the Ganga Arti, a ritual for the Ganges river that is held simultaneously at several ghats along the riverfront every evening. On my first visit to the city in the winter of 2002–3, I learnt that the Ganga Arti was then just three years old, and I noticed that it occurred only at the Dashashvamedha Ghat. By 2005, the ritual had become more elaborate and then took place at several sites, including not only Dashashvamedha, but also Chausatti, Kedar, and Assi Ghats. At each ghat, priests in matching dress lined up against a background of illuminated buildings and conducted the ritual with synchronized motions to the sound of devotional music played on public address systems.¹ Directed at pilgrims and tourists alike, this ritual is positioned as being part of the city’s eternal spiritual traditions. It is also a case in which elements of the city’s built fabric, created relatively recently, come to signify and emphasize a narrative of eternal spirituality.

1 In a shrunken tourist economy during the winter of 2008, I noticed that the ritual had been scaled back compared to its dimensions in 2005.

Plate 1.1 “Benares,” steel-engraving ca. 1864, France. Reproduced courtesy of Michael S. Dodson.

While Banaras is described in texts which date back numerous centuries, the physical structure of the city that we see today has largely been created from the late eighteenth century onwards in order to revive the city as a pilgrimage destination. The purpose of this essay is to explore ideas surrounding urban space in Banaras between the late eighteenth and early twentieth century as they developed in the context of a revived religious sphere. The key moment which I examine, though, is the 1930s, when a group known as the Kashi Tirtha Sudhar Trust (“the trust for the improvement of Banaras’s sacred spaces”) promoted Banaras as a historic and ancient ritual center. The Trust’s members were drawn largely from the city’s elite, and constituted an elite public sphere, I argue. Within that sphere they appropriated a variety of essentially colonial strategies of representation, including forms of a new secularized history, while retaining their belief in the city’s religious associations. The nature of this public sphere also directly influenced the ways in which the city was imagined, represented, and transformed.

Patronage for religious activities and architecture were avenues for elites to participate in a public sphere and to create public space. Jurgen Habermas has defined the “public sphere” as being constituted through general participation in a universal culture of opinion formation.² As Anjan Ghosh has noted, the participants within the public sphere are sovereign citizens who “have rights and responsibilities and it is through their exercise of choice that public opinion is formed.”³ This sphere is largely independent of the state and functions as something of a corrective influence on it. The notion of “public” space and activities refers to universally accessible space, where citizens, as bourgeois equals, assemble and encounter other citizens and share opinions and activities, including protest. Taking Habermas’s formulation as a starting point, one can ask how urban space in the city of Banaras was imagined in the nineteenth century, and how a “public” was conceptualized and constituted. In addition, Sandria Freitag has introduced the concept of a “public arena,” which she defines as a “world of ritual, theatre and symbol,” in which hierarchy and conflict could be expressed among unequals in colonial north India.⁴ This is also an arena that was “tied closely to the social and political contexts of its locale and hence accommodates and reflects change.”⁵ I would like to consider Freitag’s notion along with Mary Ryan’s suggestion that the public sphere as imagined by Habermas was far from being the ideal, universally accommodating space that he suggests.⁶ Rather, there were many divisions and barriers within this sphere, where in practice groups such as minorities and women were excluded.

2 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 2–3.

3 A. Ghosh, “Spaces of Recognition: Puja and Power in Contemporary Calcutta,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 26, 2 (June 2000): 290.

4 S. B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 19.

5 Ibid.

6 M. P. Ryan, “Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in Nineteenth-century America,” in C. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999 [1992 orig.]), 259–88.

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Banaras, conversations occurred both among equals, and simultaneously also occurred with and among unequals. Patronage for religious activity and religious space was a way to accommodate various groups within the framework of both sets of relationships. The city’s elites were expected to have a public presence and patronize the city’s religious life, their actions being duly noted by colonial observers. For instance, with the intention to acquire all the visible trappings of princedom, the maharaja of Vizianagaram (also known as Vijayanagaram) built a large mansion with an attached temple in the mid-nineteenth century, besides sponsoring rituals and charities in the city. Such visibility enhanced his status within elite and non-elite circles in Banaras. Colonial opinion was clear about the activities and appearance of such “model” rulers. A professor at the Sanskrit college, Archibald Gough, remarked approvingly in 1870 on the maharaja of Vizianagaram, his activities, and public persona:

He is very courteous in his attention to the English residents inviting them to his house on festive occasions … some of the native princes have adopted a semi European costume which does not suit them, but the Maharaja of Vizienagaram, as he is more generally called, continues Oriental dress — his present costume is ordinary, being a white muslin tunic, edged with silver lace; rich purple silk trousers — and a cap of cloth of gold, studded with jewels … he is highly esteemed for his charitable disposition and kind benevolent manner as well as recognized for a refined taste and judgment.⁷

7 British Library (BL), London, Mss Eur E393, “Archibald Gough’s Journal,” Biography No. 2, D. “Residence in India 1869–71,” entry for June 1870, D10.

The maharaja of Vizianagaram straddled two distinct, though related, realms, since he could as easily sponsor elements of the city’s ritual life as participate in newer forms of support for its civic institutions. An instance of the latter is the maharaja’s funding of the construction of the Town Hall (originally known as Alfred Hall), which he later donated to the city in 1876 at the visit of the prince of Wales. This was a structure built in the preferred colonial idiom of the Indo-Saracenic to house a modern institution for the city (see Plate 1.2).⁸ Over the course of the nineteenth century, indigenous elites devised newer ways of channelling patronage in the city, including through newer institutions, and through the emerging rhetoric of nationalism.⁹ These changes were closely related to evolving perceptions and expectations from an urban environment.

8 For more on the Indo-Saracenic, see T. R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

9 The adoption of modern institutions was an essential component of a nationalist sensibility. See P. Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 72–75.

Plate 1.2 Alfred Hall, the old Town Hall situated in Kotwali. This is an early example of the Indo-Saracenic style in Banaras. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Michael S. Dodson, 2008.

I suggest, therefore, that any effort at historicizing the urban space of Banaras must take account of the concept of a religious public sphere in the city, in which, as mentioned before, conversation and negotiation occurred among equals, and simultaneously, among unequals. This sphere encapsulated patronage as an index of connection to the city’s religious traditions and to the larger movement of its regeneration. A major component of exchange in this sphere was the acknowledgment of patronage. Amongst equals, such acknowledgment occurred through mutual recognition and participation in each other’s rituals. Amongst unequals, acknowledgment occurred through the medium of dakshina, or ritual gift-giving, especially between the ruling elite and the city’s Brahmans. Participation in the religious public sphere occurred, in other words, through the invention of tradition.¹⁰

10 E. Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 [1983 orig.]), 1–14.

There were, in fact, numerous new festivals conceived and practised over the course of the nineteenth century. The prevalence of these is testified to by a resident missionary, Matthew A. Sherring, who recorded some forty festivals that occurred throughout the year in Banaras. Sherring also noted the changing and adaptive nature of many of these public celebrations.¹¹ He described this, for example, with respect to the “Ganga-Saptami Mela, held on the banks of the Ganges, on the 7th day of Jeth” in which “formerly, the idol representing the goddess was simply worshipped; but, of late years, a mela has been held, accompanied with the nach or dancing. At night thousands of persons assemble to take part in the festivities.”¹² Other fairs were also newly invented, such as the Dangal Mela, held on the day after the Burhwa Mangal festival, when “singing parties proceed to the temple, accompanied by crowds of listeners; and boats, laden with people, attended by singing and dancing girls, row about the river, proceeding as far as Ramnagar.”¹³ On such occasions, the religious and secular blended together and the city...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Constructing Historical Identities for the City
• Part II: Histories Lost and Recovered
• Part III: Architecture and Fragments of the Modern City
• Part IV: Literature and Urban Identity
• Bibliography
• About the Editor
• Notes on Contributors
• Index