A few years
ago I had an opportunity to visit, along with my wife, the holy temple of
Viswanatha in Varanasi. Every Hindu looks forward to visit Kasi once in his/her
lifetime. There is a general belief in Hindu ethos about Kasi: “Even if you
cannot die in Kasi – a fortune not easily won by one and all – at least visit
it once while you are still alive.” So there was a lot of expectation.
But what we
saw there was a contradiction, a mockery of that expectation. We went slightly
late in the night when the crowds have dispersed and they were about to close
the temple. The queue lines were nearly empty of people but there were other
things that slowed our progression. Clay tumblers in which Kasi-ites like to drink
their milk were strewn around in gay abandon. We had to walk slowly,
calibrating our footfalls, just to avoid the shards from penetrating our
souls….err… soles. Cows were roaming the queue lines too, depositing everywhere
the famously sacred dung and urine. There were also open toilets as you walk
along the queue lines, giving the pilgrims a way to unburden, not just their
world-weary hearts, but their kidneys too, all under the public eye. When we entered
the main temple building, the sanctum sanctotum, we could see entire walls that
had collapsed, with no signs of any effort towards restoration. The Darshan
itself was quite quick and undramatic, thankfully, since we were too eager to
get out. We came out with a feeling, quite contrary to what you would expect to
feel after a visit to one of the greatest and the most ancient Hindu temples.
Pilgrims at Varanasi
Coincidentally,
only a few days ago I happened to get a copy of the book “Wasted: The messy
story of Sanitation in India, a Manifesto for Change” by Ankur Bisen. In this most remarkable book, in the very first
chapter titled “We the people,” the author describes Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to the
temple of Viswanatha in 1903. Gandhi did not like what he saw in the temple.
“The swarming flies and the noise made by the shopkeepers and pilgrims were
perfectly insufferable… Here one expected an atmosphere of meditation and
communion, it was conspicuous by its absence.” Gandhi visited the temple again
thirteen years later to attend the stone-laying ceremony of Banaras Hindu
Temple. This time he wrote: “If a stranger dropped from above on to this great
temple and he had to consider what we as Hindus were, would he not be justified
in condemning us? Is not this great temple a reflection of our own character?”
Not much
seemed to have changed from 1903 to the second decade of the third millennium.
Why?
(Just about
10 km from Kasi, however, in the Buddhist temple of Sarnath, a very different
spectacle greeted us. The place was far cleaner and quieter. People were
speaking in hushed tones. The only notable sounds were those of the quaint
spinning bells that you see in Buddhist temples. There were pilgrims from Sri
Lanka and Japan saying their prayers in low tones.)
It is not
just the main temple, the city of Varanasi is itself a specimen for
demonstrating the kind of decadence that one witnesses in most Indian towns,
particularly so in the northern part of India. As we were driving through the
city, at places I could see large dilapidated buildings filled with garbage up to
the second floor. There were canals filled with dark, inky flowing material, a
stream that can only be compared to the river Styx that adorns Hell in Greek
mythology.
We also
visited one of the fabled ghats of Ganga. The river was at that time in spate.
The waters were dark brown in color and not exactly inviting. We could see
pilgrims waddling and struggling to swim in that waist deep dirty water. One
the way back, we began to pour out our despair to the cab driver, lecturing
about the virtues of hygiene. He heard us for a few minutes and retorted
angrily in Hindi: “Please don’t talk like that. Ganga mayya is always pure!”
Where are the
roots of India’s social backwardness? As an educated Indian one asks oneself this
question quite often. The answer I tell myself, which is repeatedly confirmed
by experiences like the above, is as follows. “We have adopted a world-view
that is inspired by our religion, perpetuated by tradition, a world view in
which what is actually horrifying and unacceptable, seems to be a picture of
perfect harmony.” We have fixed ourselves for all eternity in a perspective for
which the problem is simply non-existent. Our problem is that there is no
problem!
My visit to
another temple, this time in the north-eastern city of Guwahati is slightly
different but essentially the same. The Kamakhya temple is one of the Shakti
Pithas, temples dedicated to the Goddess in her various forms. I wanted to take
the pedestrian route, hoping to enjoy the natural beauty of the hillside, and
climbed the mountain path. The steps were broken at most places and pilgrim is
greeted often by the stench of human feces.
The temple premises are occupied not just by pilgrims looking for
salvation. It was goats this time around
– not cows. You could see them roaming the marble floors depositing their solid
waste, as a solid demonstration of our spiritual egalitatianism that treats all
creatures equally.
(Priest getting ready for goat sacrifice at Kamakhya Temple)
There is an
interesting theory that all the stench and struggle, the pushing and the
shoving that one often experiences in Hindu temples is there by design. The
negative has to be there so that you can truly appreciate the positive. Without
the ugly façade you cannot truly appreciate the enshrined Divine who is, by His
very nature, the All-beautiful. But when we visited temples or hallowed spaces
of other cultures we realized that such a theory is merely a perversion created
by our unwillingness to change.
A case in
point is our visit to the delightful little Kinkakuji temple of Japan. Kinkakuji
is a Zen temple on the outskirts of Kyoto, a cultural center of Japan. The
temple is called the Temple of the Golden Pavilion because the main temple, rather small in
size, has a golden plating. It is perhaps much smaller than the Golden temple
of Amritsar, or the one in Tirumala. But what is most remarkable is the
pristine pure manner in which its surroundings are kept. The only sounds you
hear on the temple premises – in addition to the incessant chirping that fills
the wooded surroundings – is the constant scraping sounds of rakes with which
the monks, clad in spotless white robes, clear dry leaves off the pebbled
paths. Actually it appeared that there is no need to clear the leaves all the
time. Perhaps twice a day should do. Perhaps once a week. But for the monks the
act of cleaning seems to be a kind of prayer that one does with one’s body, it
is a way to do their devotions.
Kinkakuji temple
Even minor
temples in Kyoto, small street side temples, temples made of wood without the
luxury of gold and silver, uniformly present one characteristic: unostentatious
yet perfectly clean and tranquil surroundings.
Why is it
such a hard ideal to achieve back home, everywhere, all the time?
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