Sunday, January 11, 2015

Varanasi a city within a firing range


After 5 days of our nine day tour to Varanasi with Srishti school of art design and technology foundation students for their social ecology course at Varanasi, we let the students to pursue their identified areas of subject in and around the ghats and gallies of Ganga and my self and my fellow faculty Urvashi Jallali went to see the Vishwanath temple.
Urvashi hails from Kashmir, who along with her family was uprooted from her homeland in two hours time during the mass murder and displacement mayhem took place during early eighties in Kashmir. The chilling story how they escaped and how their houses were burnt down within minutes of their escape almost seemed like an action thriller for me, but tragically real. Strangely but she continued that “ if you ask me I will feel more safe among the Kashmiri Muslims than main land Hindus”.
She narrated a story of a shop owner she met in one of the Indian cities, where she was on a vacation with her family. As the shop owner realised that she is a Kashmiri pandit, the man, muslim by birth took out an old 3rd standard note book of his and told her how he revere his Pandit teacher’s memory through that book. He told her how majority of Kashmiri Muslims now feel for Pandits, as they paid the heavy price for that ethnic cleansing. Between Security forces and militants how two generations have lost their life in Kashmir.
Before she ended the story we reached the first barricade of assault rifle wielding policemen, a common site around Kashi vishwnath temple. Somewhere down my spine I had a chilling sensation. All the roads to Kashi Vishwanath temple are full of these policemen. Their guns are loaded, their eyes are always roving and you could feel the fear as if they are waiting for something: something too dangerous or bizarre.
Seeing the long queue I decided to stay back and sit next to a flower shop and policemen as Urvashi Jalali went for the darshan. During the trip every day morning we set the agenda with students and at the night we discussed the engagements, findings and analysis. During the first day everyone in the group felt the desperate need to change the city. Roads are crowded, drainages are broken, traffic is near bursting , no one followed any rules, ganga is polluted, Ghats and gallis are dirty, they felt nothing works in that city. As the days progressed and as they zero down upon their individual subject of common men and mundane subjects they concluded Varasi doesn’t have any problem, it the outsider’s perception have the problem. The city survive on temple pilgrimage and they come for that old charm of the city, the near broken down civic sense of living.
May be owing to my baggage of forty seven years of living and roaming around this country, unfortunately I could sense an imminent breakdown in this city. As the accessibility and affluence of rest of the country grown, the population influx to this city also have grown many fold during the last few years. Interestingly the city tourism survives on people from Andhra and Karnataka than rest of the nation. Of course, there still exist those Bangla and Marathi pockets in and around those Ghats telling the tale of a foregone era. Your could see, lane after lane with those old colonial architectures and an evidently Bangali stamp on it, displaying Telugu boards of shops and services. You will get Dosa and fried idli everywhere and as the queues of south Indians gets longer and longer in front of all temples, the alienation and frustration of the locals are also growing day by day with it. The traders may be happy, so are the boatmen, but other city dwellers are feeling their god, their temple and their city slowly but steadily are being taken over by the outsiders.
Apart from Gyanvapi mosque lane to temple, there are these two other lanes – Kachoudi galli and dalmandi lane that intersect and lead to the temple. One lane is inhabited by Hindus and the other one is by Muslims. Strangely on the Hindu lane rarely you will find a Muslim but on Muslim lane you will certainly find many Hindus and sadly under the belly there is an evidently shown discontent exist among these two communities. A small flare up is all that needed for a large conflict!.
These long serpentine gallies where thousands and thousands of people are living in the event of a tragedy, no security force or no vehicle can ever reach or save anyone from there . Also with God or temple at every three meters, no one will ever be able to do anything either to change the situation. This part of the city, the core of Varanasi will remain like this for ever as the heritage of thousands of years remain laid out in those gallies every inch and every millimeter. Only change will be the ever-increasing population and tourists in those gallies, that already is on a verge of collapse.
Suddenly I saw a commotion-taking place in the galli where Urvashi had gone to visit the Temple and within minutes she came running gasping for breath. There was a fight broke out near the temple between pilgrims of Andhra and Bihar and she along with many other caught in between. Interestingly there were five levels of police corridors with machine guns upto there and still there could be a fight!.
Prime minister Modi had assured the city that he will transform the place, most of the people in Varanasi believes the same but only question in front of them is “ how?” . The gallies can not be changed, the structures can not be touched and the tourism and population is growing day by day. Mr. Modi may be able to do things around the new Kashi suburbs but that wouldn’t affect his core BJP constituency. This gap between the reality and peoples aspiration based on his promise are going to cost Prime minister Modi a lot.
And most importantly but sadly there is an anger and fear that something is going to happen could be sensed everywhere in the city. Anyone with a criminal intent can unleash the waterloo for Mr Modi without much effort in that city. All one might require is a simple criminal intent or political agenda: the stage is already set.
Before the nine days, Uravashi could finally visit the temple and all the students for whom she was like a mother, critique and companion loved that city as well. They all wanted to go back and do some design contribution there. Perhaps only I had the fear, like me I felt the city was within a firing range just few meters away from a loaded machine gun....
Urvashi Jalali with students
Buzzling ghats
Muharram procession
Rampant commercialisation of ghat visual culture
A typical Galli crowd
The temple queue
Dominant presence of policemen
BHU Lanka gate traffic block due to vip movement


vedic mathematics

A must read for the champions of the trick calculation called Vedic Mathematics, a term unknown in ancient India. Certainly there were lots of mathematicians in India but one should not forget that from the time of Mohenjo Daro/ harappa period India has always been part of trade routes that survive on navigation (mapping,astronomy and astrology) and numbers. It is for any common mind's basic understanding that in such scenario knowledge exchange would have certainly taken place and enriched human wisdom in India and abroad. This new found pseudo concoction of patriotic hallucination and chest thumping on exaggerated achievements is hilarious like the redundant Eurocentric world view.
Certainly Dr. Harshvardhan's claim on Pythagoras theorem has merits as umpteen number of evidences available in the works of Indian mathematicians to that effect, says the learned. Who discovered it first or later may be questionable but Indian Mathematicians had the knowledge of it.
Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Mahāvīra (mathematician), Bhaskara II, Madhava of Sangamagrama and Nilakantha Somayaji are few who had made immense contribution to lay foundation for infinite series, zero, trigonometry, calculus, negative numbers, arithmetic,geometry and spherical geometry etc. from 1200 bce. Mahavira to Nilaknatha but lived between 9 to 16th century AD. (fortunately I am lucky to have an hand written copy of Neelkantha somayji's text from my great grand father (my mother's grandfather), who was an astrologer and ayurvedic vaid with good collection of books on varied subjects)
Interestingly this parochial arguments of chest thumping makes it laughable once we learn about the fight among north Indians and South Indians to claim the legacy of Aryabhata's place of birth, even as many don't know what is Aryabhata's contribution to maths