Varanasi is India’s sacred city; where ancient palaces look out over sacred ghats washed by the eternal Ganges. But can an unholy alliance of development, corruption and neglect be prevented from causing irreversible damage? Mark Stratton reports
Older than history, older than tradition, and twice as old as all of them put together.’ Such was American author Mark Twain’s comment on Varanasi. Yet there are clear signs advanced age is creeping up on this ancient north Indian city. This is the eternal abode of Lord Shiva, whose spellbinding riverfront of temples and palaces – which line six kilometres of ghats, the steps by a river where Hindu funeral pyres are lit – is coming under increasing pressure from modern development and creeping dereliction.
I have made many trips to Varanasi and I never fail to be captivated by the place. There is no greater cultural or architectural spectacle in India. The rituals and customs of Hinduism’s most spiritual city, many of them based around Mother Ganga, the River Ganges, are seemingly as old as time.
Days begin with sunrise scything through a milky morning light and thousands of pilgrims pouring into the Ganges to purify themselves of their sins. During the day, corpses wreathed in golden shrouds are carried aloft on stretchers along the disorientating galis (lanes) towards Manikarnika Ghat for riverside cremation. ‘Varanasi’s not a place to live,’ I was once told, ‘but a place to come to die’.
By night, Dashashwamedh Ghat teems with astrologers, snake charmers, ash-covered ascetics and hustlers hawking ten-rupee (¢25) massages. Fire-waving young men perform a choreographed aarti – a ritual in which lit wicks are offered to the deities – that would not be out of place in a Bollywood film.
Along Varanasi’s west-bank riverfront are some 3,000 Hindu and 1,400 Muslim shrines. The juxtaposition of palaces, Hindu temples (from Nepalese to south Indian), havelis (private residences), and mosques has historically been as fluid as the Ganges itself. In the centuries since the city became a centre of learning and civilisation over 3,000 years ago, buildings have toppled into the Ganges during seasonal floods.
‘The heritage zone is at risk of being irreversibly modified or even destroyed due to immense pressures from tourism, economic development and population pressures,’ says leading Varanasi scholar Professor Rana Singh, of Banaras Hindu University. ‘Along the riverfront there has been a spate of illegal encroachments, such as new restaurants and guesthouses built without planning consent.’
I experience these problems first-hand during a walk along the ghats with Vishwanath Shukla of the Kautilya Society, an organisation that is attempting to preserve Varanasi’s cultural heritage.
‘All illegal,’ says Vishwanath dismissively as we pass numerous modern concrete guesthouses and restaurants dotted along the riverfront. At Manmandir Ghat, a 1586 Rajasthan-style palace with exquisite ornately carved jharoka balconies, there is one of only four observatories in India built by the great astronomer-king Maharaja Jai Singh of Jaipur. Supposedly a National Archaeological Monument, and therefore protected from inappropriate development within 300m, it is now dwarfed by an ugly new guesthouse and restaurant. The newcomer even has had the audacity to steal its sunlight, rendering the observatory’s sundials useless.
‘There’s a local government order prohibiting development within 200m of the Ganges, but nobody cares,’ adds Vishwanath, after passing a new-build silk emporium standing incongruously close to the ornate south Indian temple of Kedar Ghat.
Elsewhere the problem is neglect. Two minarets of another National Archaeological Monument, the 17th-century Aurangzeb Mosque, have fallen, while the Balaji Temple collapsed in 1998 killing nine pilgrims. Finally, Vishwanath and I come to the magnificent, Mughal-style, 18th-century Chet Singh Palace, built in 1770 and owned by the present Maharaja of Varanasi. It is derelict; weeds and tree roots swallowing it up inch by inch. ‘The king has no money to repair it,’ says Vishwanath, with a shake of his head. t the forefront of saving Varanasi’s heritage is Kautilya Society general secretary, Vrinda Dar. She has little doubt where the problems lie. ‘Weak legislation and weak enforcement are the biggest threats,’ she says.
She tells me orders, such as that prohibiting inappropriate building within 300m of a National Archaeological Monument, are being ignored. I later discover the local government is aware of 300 illegal riverfront developments. ‘Law enforcement is weak,’ says Dar, adding that there is also no legislation to stop the demolition of historic private buildings and that the onus is on individual owners or local authorities to conserve heritage.
Her campaign received intense local media coverage several years ago with the case of Darbhanga Palace. I had long admired this building. Two centuries old, it was built by a former finance minister of Nagpur. Its bold façade, fronted by three mighty pillars, is constructed in peach-coloured Chunar sandstone with a remarkable square tower that housed a manual lift to lower incumbents (presumably too lazy to hike down the stairs) for their morning Ganges dip.
In the mid-1990s it was sold to Clarks Group of Hotels, which gained permission from the Varanasi Development Authority (VDA) to create a new five-star hotel on the proviso they did not change the original structure. What followed was a legal battle after the Kautilya Society complained that the hotel group had demolished all but the palace’s façade, building a modern hotel behind it. Development was suspended after the society argued in court that the hotel would infringe Varanasi’s skyline and its enlarged presence would create further pollution of the Ganges.
The only beneficiaries of the whole affair have been the monkeys, who now disport themselves amid the wreckage of the venture. Dar shrugs: ‘All that’s left is a half-demolished palace and half-built hotel. It all epitomises the indecision of the city in implementing any effective plan for conservation management of the historic centre.’
Hoteliers hungry for prime riverfront locations to meet growing international tourism are not the only ones putting pressure on Varanasi’s heritage. She explains the city’s expanding population is creating intense demands on the urban space, while there is also concern that excessive silting on the Ganges’ eastern bank is ‘squeezing’ the river and intensifying erosion of the western bank’s ghats, leaving buildings undermined or sinking into unstable ground.
Dar highlights a lack of will from national, state and local government to intercede. ‘They do not see the socio-economic benefits or importance of heritage protection,’ she says. More specifically, she blames localised corruption among officers employed to enforce planning. ‘Legislation and government orders state that construction along the ghats is illegal, but VDA officers continue to earn money from people who want to build there.’ nsurprisingly, not everyone is supportive of Dar’s aims. ‘We’re not here to conserve heritage,’ says Veena Kumari, a district magistrate and vice-chairperson of the VDA. ‘But if I am made aware of a problem I can send my officers to see no construction takes place unless approved by the VDA.’ Kumari adds that her organisation has identified 311 illegal constructions that have been built along the riverfront and that have since been served with demolition notices. To date, however, just one, a hotel built high above a historic Jain temple, has been forced to lower the height of its walls.
Kumari may rely on her officers’ reports, but allegations are rife that those same officers have been receiving payments to allow illegal construction to go ahead. ‘I can’t comment and I’m not aware of it,’ she says. ‘There was a period some years ago when three or four staff were identified and removed from their jobs, but the damage was done.’
The Kautilya Society has taken the fight for Varanasi’s heritage to the courts – and has begun to gather support. Businessman Amrish Singh helped initiate the public interest litigation that halted Darbanga Palace’s redevelopment, while advocate Tripurari Shankar engineered an amendment to the Uttar Pradesh state government’s existing Urban Planning Development Act that will include mechanisms for both declaring and conserving heritage sites. But, says Shankur, the problem of any legislation in India is implementation of laws. ‘The people involved in the process are not interested in getting it stopped. They’re interested in making money from it.’
He believes heritage conservation should be limited to the historic districts along the riverfront, though. ‘You cannot make the whole city a museum,’ he says. ‘People have a right to make a living. But it is imperative to get them behind heritage conservation by fostering an atmosphere of goodwill – for example, by turning old buildings into museums to generate income.
Further complicating the matter of Varanasi’s future is the complex ownership issue of its riverfront heritage. ‘Forget the wealthy maharajas. They’re history,’ Shankur says. ‘Many do not have the financial liquidity to maintain these properties. Chet Singh Palace is a case in point. It is waiting for development, but is being damaged because the current Maharaja of Varanasi can’t afford to maintain it. That’s why so many palaces are being sold for development.’
Varanasi’s plight may soon draw more international attention as the Kautilya Society presses for the ancient city’s accession onto Unesco’s World Heritage List. ‘If we achieve this we can help gain international recognition and draw greater attention to our problems. It will also assist us in formulating heritage protection laws,’ says Dar.
It seems astonishing that India currently has no cities on Unesco’s list. At first glance Varanasi, with its worldwide reputation for academia, music, art, worship and ritual, seems like a strong candidate for inclusion.
Minja Yang, director of Unesco’s New Delhi office, highlights a fundamental flaw with the process, however. ‘The government of India has not yet filed an application. No matter how important a property is, unless the national government requests recognition it cannot become World Heritage-listed,’ she says.
‘It is surprising there are no cities in India on the list when India is home to some of the oldest cities in the world,’ Yang adds. ‘Regrettable, unplanned growth has led to the loss of much incredible cultural heritage across India.’
Unesco has been working behind the scenes in preparing Varanasi for possible accession, however. ‘We are hopeful and encouraged things are moving in the right direction,’ says Yang. ‘The question is, however, will any listing come quickly enough to prevent irreversible damage?’ autilya Society’s general secretary Dar believes that, with proper heritage protection, some of riverfront’s glorious buildings could be appropriately utilised as cultural centres, boutique hotels, museums and centres of learning. With careful restoration and enough money, she adds, they could be returned to their former glory.
I witness what is possible when I visit a beautifully restored, 200-year-old haveli owned by Gopal Goel, a silk exporter. He leads me into a columned hall supported by sandstone pillars and topped by ornate honeycomb capitals. It was once an auditorium capable of holding 400 people and took 17 years to restore.
‘I heard about plans to demolish it in the 1980s to make way for a new shopping centre,’ says Goel. ‘It had been abandoned for 40 years and was in bad condition. Now, it costs 80,000 rupees ($2,000) annually to maintain, but it was a dream to restore.
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Varanasi will not be saved by money alone,’ he adds, ‘but by political will’.
On my final day in the city, I take a farewell boat ride, passing the burning ghats where pyres are ablaze and pilgrims are bathing at the Ganges’ edge alongside wallowing buffalo and laundry-pounding dhobi wallahs. With its backdrop of bustling ghats and ancient architecture, this is one of the most dramatically attractive waterfronts in the world.
Saving Varanasi may involve changing the city’s paradoxical sense of natural order. ‘It’s where life and death coexist; where refined culture and total neglect of heritage coexist; and spirituality and materialism coexist,’ Dar says. ‘But it would be a great loss to humanity if the city is allowed to be ruined.’
HOW TO GET THERE
The author travelled with Finnair which offers daily flights to Delhi via Helsinki from London’s Heathrow airport.
www.finnair.com
From Delhi take the overnight train to Varanasi. Book online before travelling with SD Enterprises. Seven- to 90-day rail passes are available.
www.indiarail.co.uk
More information
The Kautilya Society aims to protect the city’s heritage.
www.kautilyasociety.org
Where to stay
Taj Ganges
Nadesar Palace
Varanasi
Uttar Pradesh
Tel: (+91) 542
250 3001
www.tajhotels.com
Taj Residency
Gomti Nagar
Lucknow
Uttar Pradesh
Tel: (+91) 522
239 3939
www.tajhotels.com
