Banaras is a lifetime of expertise, delving into its innermost social cloth. This deep plunge could depart one intrigued and enthralled, eager for a rounded definition to what Banaras is and its archetypal Banarasipan. Apparently, this insistent inquiry compelled me to handle the corollary query of identification.
There isn’t a final definition to Banaras.
There are encounters, connections, and entanglements between the historic and the cultural, the social and the spiritual, and imagined antiquity, in Banaras. It’s not about an age-old metropolis, however maybe, most intricately, about its individuals and their practices, which have stemmed, been formed and reshaped throughout time, marked by what’s actual, literal, and what has been represented. To grasp these ever-engaging intersections, because it varieties a novel spatial and cultural identification for its residents, is an advanced job for outsiders. For a lot of, Banaras stands naked in its ceaseless chaos and confusion and but it’s timeless and meditative, somewhat layered, and arduous to decipher. It continues to be an anagram for me, very like its supply religion system, Swayambhu (the mythology of Shiva in Banaras), that’s believed to have emerged by itself, highly effective and overwhelming. The purely spiritual standpoint is the extensively accepted lens to decode Banaras and its individuals, and to that, Banaras is effectively outlined; it doesn’t maintain any definition past being “holy.” The crucial conclusion can be thus of the individuals dwelling right here stuffed with piety and of being the vanguard of Hindu sacred practices. Nonetheless, this understanding is just not sufficient for me.
What can be extra fascinating is to deconstruct the enmeshed parts of the political and spiritual with the sociocultural narratives of what’s Banaras, who’s a Banarasi, what Banarasipan is, and the way it has emerged.
All of it begins with the distinctive query of whose metropolis it’s. As it’s believed by tens of millions, the town belongs to Shiva. Banaras or Kashi is his selection of earthly residence, a good looking location that parallels no different. For eons of time, Shiva has resided on this metropolis, since even earlier than the town was embraced by the Ganges. Why would the Vedic god select Banaras as his website of abode on earth? Why would he even depart his celestial residence within the sacred mountains?—the questions are many. And the solutions are imagined and prescribed, each rooted by the eulogy literatures, in addition to within the folks narratives.
On the core of Shiva’s idea lies the notion of a free spirited, content material, carefree wanderer, who even inside the gambit of cosmic establishments (construction of heaven) is an itinerant at coronary heart, all the time rebelling towards the norms. He’s jovial, broad-hearted, and might be interpreted as a “khula dil” persona—a vital attribute related to a typical Banarasi.
Shiva’s description is advanced and awe-inspiring within the texts. He’s actual, plausible, and liberating, very like what Banaras and its persons are.
He wanders bare or clothed within the bloody pores and skin of a slain elephant or tiger. When he leaves the Himalayas to dwell within the coronary heart of tradition, he makes his residence within the cremation floor. He anoints his physique with the ashes of the lifeless from the cremation pyre. He wears snakes about his neck for ornaments. He rides upon a bull and carries a trident as a weapon. He has no wealth, no household, no lineage, nothing of worldly worth to advocate him.
Shiva thus challenges any facile distinctions between the sacred and the profane, the wealthy and the poor, excessive and low.
Primarily, the credibility within the notion of Shiva is mirrored within the Banarasi lifestyle, an odd undefined happiness, contentment, large-hearted, fun-loving group of individuals, who welcome all guests who make it to their metropolis. This might even result in a metaphorical interpretation of Banarasipan, the place the sacred and the profane coexist in the identical breath, the place there isn’t a wealthy and poor or excessive or low, for all would love to hunt the worldly pleasures of having fun with the savouries and sweets—the rabris, thandais, kachoris, and gilohrees, having fun with days of spring in Holi or Ramleela in autumn.
This sense of achievement within the little joys of life, which can be usually termed as “small traditions” by the students of South Asian research, cuts throughout boundaries of religion and sophistication in Banaras. There’s a profound join that each Banarasi feels in the direction of their metropolis. From the chaiwallah on the ghats, to the previous retired wrestler, to the third technology snack maker, to grasp Banarasi craftsmen, to the youngest assistant of the undertaker, to the veteran Sanskrit scholar, to the learner of Hindustani classical music, and the widespread man on the highway, Banaras is conceived, cherished, and lived in the identical means. A daily dialog isn’t steered by caste, faith, or ethnicity; the larger identification of being a citizen of Banaras emerges at first. Everybody residing in Banaras is a Banarasi. In demise too, there’s not a lot stratification among the many wealthy or the poor, aside from the variations in final rites.
And nevertheless sentimental it could learn, the Ganges too belongs to all. Primarily, it acts as a leveller erasing the minutest of variations within the metropolis’s advanced social cloth. The river is revered and liked by all. A secular Kabir refers back to the Ganges; a Brahmin scholar, Tulsi Das Goswami, creates his devotional guide, Ramcharitmanas, on the riverfront; a repentant poet, Jagannatha Panditaraja, surrenders to the Ganges; a person of letters, Bharatendu Harishchandra, writes his novels on its banks. A lot later, the famed exponent of Kathak, Sitara Devi, would swim throughout the Ganges; the maestro of shehnai, Bismillah Khan, would apply for hours on the ghats solely. The city lore says that Khan by no means left Banaras, citing the absence of the Ganges in some other metropolis.
[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Banaras: Of Gods, Humans and Stories, Nilosree Biswas and Irfan Nabi, Niyogi Books, 2021.]
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Truthful Observer’s editorial coverage.
