Banaras: A Journey into the Heart of the City

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Banaras has been home to sages, artists, poets, musicians and seekers from all parts of India. The ancient canon of texts passed down orally by the sages was written and transcribed in the lanes and by-lanes of this city. Over the centuries, the art of grafting and subsuming the religious and cultural ethos became the hallmark of Banaras.

In this book, Vertul Singh presents a kaleidoscopic view of Banaras that charts a narrative spanning from the present-day city and its origins as Kashi to the fin de siècle of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which witnessed the city's inclusionary development as a cultural and pilgrimage centre, an opulent trading hub and a basilica of political power.

Weaving facts, interesting anecdotes and untold stories to make a rich tapestry, this book is an insider's account and an unparalleled portrait of the city.

VERTUL SINGH holds a postgraduate diploma in journalism and mass communication. He was commissioned in the Indian Army and left as a captain when he was selected for the Central Industrial Security Force in the 1994 batch of the Union Public Service Commission. Apart from his other assignments, he has served as a spokesperson for the United Nations Police in Kosovo and been on deputation to the Ministry of Home Affairs. He currently holds a senior position with the Government of India. His compendium Hindi Literature of the Twentieth Century is under publication. Vertul has a keen interest in music, culture and parallel cinema, besides literature.

There is a beautiful word in Bengali-boi, which literally means a book. The word was commonly used in the vernacular for cinema and later came to be picked up by the Bengali elite while referring to an artsy movie and continues to be used to imply films. It has a deep connotation in that cinema is not just seen, it is also read. While walking through a city, one also reads it. Even after my journey into the lanes and by-lanes of Banaras for close to five decades, I realized I must rely on the metaphors of the city, akin to the proverbial elephant in the room. And well, a la the cinematic term 'Rashomon effect', one must carefully draw inference from one's own perception as well, because it is said that Banaras is not what you see; rather, it is what you don't see. The famous Hindi poet Kedarnath Singh succinctly captures this uniqueness of the city in his poem 'Banaras', translated rhapsodically by another great poet and critic, K. Satchidanandan: Enter this city one day

at dawn or dusk

without announcing yourself

Observe it unobtrusively

in the glow of prayer-lights.

For the great poet Mirza Ghalib, Banaras is the place that came closest to the spiritual garden to which he wished to belong. He called this city the 'supreme place of worship the Kaaba of Hindustan'. Ghalib visited Banaras during his journey from Calcutta (now Kolkata) and back during 1826-29. He stayed in what is called the Ghughrani Gali, near Dalmandi, and at a few other places, pouring his heart out for Banaras in his entire Masnavi of 108 verses. Writing to Nawab Muhammad Ali Khan of Banda, his letter in prose form is the best tribute a poet can pay to a city that has the gift of nature's bounties and aesthetics of the built-up space in equal measure: Its breeze blows life into dead bodies. Its every fleck of dust has the qualities to pull thorns and needles away like magnets from the feet of travellers. The river Ganga would not have been considered so noble had it not rubbed its forehead at its feet.

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, on being asked who could possibly represent the real life of India, replied tersely: 'Mountains, rivers and plateaus.

To paraphrase him in the context of Banaras: they will be the Vindhyas, Ganga and Rajghat. The ancient, medieval and the modern, all orbit around these three chorographical lineaments. Here, the sacred, the temporal and the profane, all reverberate in unison to give this city its uniqueness. That is the reason Jawaharlal Nehru advised his daughter, Indira Gandhi, to 'go to Benares or Kashi, that most ancient of cities, and give ear to her murmuring'.

He further elaborates in his Discovery of India poetically: 'At Sarnath, near Benares, I would almost see the Buddha preaching his first sermon, Ashoka's pillars of stone with their inscriptions would speak to me in their magnificent language and tell me of a man who, though an emperor, was greater than any king or emperor.

I have elsewhere in the book quoted Ralph Fitch, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Bishop Reginald Heber and François Bernier. All of them wrote on Banaras some with inherent prejudices, some in a very patronizing tone and some rather grudgingly accepted the idea of Banaras vis-à-vis Hinduism, but what was common to all of them was that they were overawed.

Lieutenant Colonel Davidson calls it 'the Hindoo Jerusalem'; Norman Macleod, like al-Biruni in 1000 CE, exclaims: 'What Mecca is to Mohammedans, and what Jerusalem was to the Jews of old times, it is the holy city of Hindostan.