Mosques, Temples, and Orientalists: Hegemonic Imaginations in Banaras

In a climate of rising religious fundamentalism, it is relevant and pertinent to examine the processes by which a " religious " site is created. My general premise is that historical narratives are negotiations, rather than simple renditions of fact, and thus are always reflective of their authors' contemporary politics. Within this framework, this essay explores the processes through which the city of Banaras has been created and represented as an indisputably Hindu city. In addition to the revivalist religious agenda of the Marathas, this process has involved the hegemonic imaginations of both nineteenth-century colonial Orientalists and modern-day postcolonial nationalists. Usually described as a Hindu pilgrimage city of riverfront temples, Banaras, India, has long been thought of as a central regenerative source for Hindu tradition and cultural continuity. This image has persisted despite glaring evidence of an Islamic presence in the city in the form of prominent mosques, urban institutions, and a substantial Muslim population. Even the most vociferous defenders of Banaras's antiquity as a Hindu site admit that in terms of built fabric, the contemporary city is largely an eighteenth-century creation. Thus, the present Vishwanath temple, its preeminent shrine, was only built in 1777, and no building can be dated earlier than the sixteenth century. How then, does an image of a Banaras of hoary antiquity persist? As this essay will demonstrate, Banaras was recreated as a site of Hindu pilgrimage, and this remaking occurred within the framework of a revivalist religious agenda. In a climate of rising religious fundamentalism, it is relevant and pertinent to examine the processes by which a " religious " site is created. My larger premise, however, is that historical narratives are negotiations rather than simple renditions of fact, and thus reflect their authors' contemporary politics. As Elizabeth Ermarth has pointed out, we can never actually recreate the past; all we can know are representations of it. 1 In keeping with this understanding, this article presents a historical narrative of the processes of Banaras's creation and representation that is unquestionably colored by my own