Gyanvapi - The Centre of the Centre of the Centre

The centre of the centre of the centre of Shaivite Hindooism is a small, unremarkable well in the courtyard of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple – the “Golden” Temple – popularly called ‘Gyanvapi’ (or Gyan Bajee) - ‘The Well of Knowledge’. Benares – or, to give the city its ancient name, Kashi – is as a whole the spiritual centre of the Hindoo world. All roads lead to Kashi, if only because it is here that Hindoos of all stripes come to die and be cremated and have their ashes committed to the Ganges. To die of natural causes in a certain area of the old city is considered to be so fortunate that the soul that meets this end is liberated from the cycle of birth and death. 

Within Kashi – the old city – there are literally hundreds of temples, but the most sacred of them is the Vishwanath, which is marked atop by golden domes. Within Vishwanath, there is the great lingam of Shiva over which hundreds of gallons of milk are poured every day by a priesthood and an unending stream of pilgrims. But the lingam is not, in fact, the most sacred place in the temple compound. That honour is given to a well nearby – Gyanvapi. There are many deep wells along the west bank of the Ganges, obviously fed underground by the river.

For pious Hindoos, the water of the well, Gyanvapi, is more holy than that of the Ganges. They understand that the location of the well marks the place where the world began and the place that will remain when the world ends. That is, Gyanvapi is the Hindoo axis mundi, the world-axis, the very centre of Hindooism’s extensive and madly complex sacred geography. 

Benares in itself is a microcosm with its own sacred geography. For example there are a network of Ganesh (Elephant) Temples around the Vishwanath Temple that are acting as protectors of the Well of Knowledge. There are also five pilgrim routes around to various places within the city - usually to sacred linga - and each route has the well of Knowledge at its centre. 

It is a location steeped in controversy. The Vishwanath Temple that accompanies the sacred well has been sacked and destroyed at several times in its history. The survival of the well in spite of this history is part of its sanctity. It is said that at one sacking the god Shiva himself retired into the well, ‘hiding’ from the invaders. Thus, his ‘presence’ is in the well itself.

The most recent desecration was at the hands of the Mughuls under Orangzeb who tore down the temple and used its stone to construct parts of the Gyanvapi mosque. The mosque is still standing on what (we think) was the original location of the Temple. The current Temple is more recent and sits very un comfortably next to the intruding mosque.

This had made it a flashpoint at several times for Hindoo partisans who seek to correct the historical impositions of the Mahometans. Some have proposed that the mosque should be reclaimed for the Hindoos. This is, after all, the single most sacred area in the cosmos for the Shaivite Hindoo, whereas for the Mahometans it is an undistinguished mosque built by a tyrant as a deliberate affront to the Hindoo faith. 

(The political expression of these Hindoos, let us note, is the BJP party. The official policy of the party is that Hindoos should be able to reclaim any mosque the Mahometans are no longer using. But as the Mahometans insist on keeping the Gyanvapi as an active mosque, the Vishwanath Temple compound is not in that category. Therein is the on-going but low-level friction.)

At the present time, as this author can report, the Vishwanath Temple – and the Gyanpavi Mosque – are under very tight security. There are walls of soldiers and checkpoints. This is India’s version of the ‘Temple Mount’ issue in Jerusalem – a Mahometan building has been constructed on top of someone’s most sacred temple creating a weeping sore of tension and disputes ever after.

The author is renting a room (for $8 a night) literally fifty yards from the Vishwanath Temple (and the Annapoona Temple which is part of the same complex.) He has been watching the pilgrims coming and going, and all the sundry paraphernalia connected with the temple, for three weeks. Every morning he steps out into the laneway to be greeted by long lines of eager pilgrims from all over India – whole familes of them - holding little cups of milk and garlands of flowers. On the corner are half a dozen soldiers with high-powered weapons. In amongst everyone are porters and wallahs and sadhus and beggars and cows.

There are areas of the Temple compound that are officially closed to foreigners, although many people seem to ignore the injunction. There is, all the same, a white marble marker on the side wall of one section saying, ‘GENTLEMEN NOT OF THE HINDOO FAITH ARE REQUESTED NOT TO ENTER’. The author, being a gentleman, and not of the Hindoo faith, respected the request. 

It is remarkable how much one can read about Shaivism – even by scholars who lived and worked in Benares – and yet never read an account of the utterly central importance of this place in Shaivite piety. The act of centring is fundamental to Shaivite piety. The lingham – the sacred icon of this mode of Hindooism – is in itself an emblem of (and functionally a marker for) the axis mundi – this is why the linga of Benares are aligned to the north pole. These dimensions of Shaivite piety are Hyperborean. The essential religious gesture of this piety is to turn to the centre, turn to the axis, turn to the source. Centre–axis–source is symbolized by the Gyanvapi well, the very Font of Knowledge. Shaivism is axial - and here in Benares is the axis.

The photos of this page are historical. Photography is absolutely point-a-machinegun-in-your-face forbidden anywhere near the Well of Knowledge today.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Stable or Cave: The Nativity

With Christmas upon us, this post is dedicated - without much commentary - to traditional depictions of the nativity. The following are a collection of some of the author's favourite versions of this perennial theme in Christian iconography.

Only two things need to be said:

1. In eastern iconography the nativity takes place in a cave. That is, Christ is nurtured in the womb of the earth. This introduces and invites a very rich seam of symbolism, both in regards the nature of the Logos, and in regards the nature of the Virgin Mary. In western iconography, however, depictions of the nativity as having taken place in a stable came to predominate. This has various implications. For a start, let us note, a stable is a man-made structure, as opposed to a cave. Moreover, it gives the scene a strong social element, whereas the eastern type is more cosmological. In the west, the stable underlines the lowly social status of the holy family. The meaning of the stable is that Christ was born among the lowest of the low. In the west, the emphasis is less on the sociology of the scene and more on its cosmic significance.

2. Nothing illustrates the differing temperaments of the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox versions of traditional Christianity than the contrast noted above (1). If you ask, what is the difference between the Catholics and the Orthodox you need only look at the following nativities. Historically, of course, the Orthodox remains focused upon a strictly traditional iconography - its icon tradition remains intact to this day. In Europe, the so-called Renaissance introduced a humanism that broke from the Byzantine icon tradition and, in effect, Western Christianity thereafter set out upon a very different journey. 

The Divine Light (seed) penetrates the womb of the earth. This picture shows the usual elements of the Byzantine prototypes - reclining Mary, the Christ Child in the centre, the mountain, the cave within the mountain, the darkness of the cave punctured by the celestial light. (Note that Mary is usually turned away from the baby, not doting on him. In the anti-Byzantine Renaissance tradition, mother and child become sociological figures. Here they are cosmic figures - their relationship is not 'human' in the humanistic sense. It is an important distinction. In the West, people read the turned-away Virgin as "cold" and "un-maternal". They start to paint the Virgin and Child in a loving embrace. In the eastern iconography, however, it signals a metaphysical relationship, not a human one. See the following Byzantine version by Guido de Sienna:

It is not an accident that the Virgin is turned away from the Child.  But it is a non-human gesture that worries the Western temperament which is less intellectual and more sentimental than the Eastern. Accordingly, Western iconography moves to the 'human' and sentimental plane, as we see in Giotto. Real people, real Mother/child, real emotions. The western (Catholic) temperament approves of this:

(For discussion, see here.)

Giotto. Mary doting on her newborn. Giotto's figures occupy real space. Increasingly, from Giotto onwards, pictorial space becomes 'real' space and events are occuring in history rather than in eternity. 

Bernardo Daddi 

Gentile de Fabriano. Alongside the humanistic and volumistic early Renaissance Giotto style there was also 'International Gothic'. This style emphasizes the magical and the mysterious. The darkness of the forest and the starry night - that is International Gothic. Note, in this painting by Gentile de Fabriano, the supernatural light source. The painting is lit by a divine light, not a natural light as in Giotto. This is a wonderful painting. 

(Master of the Castello Nativity.) 

Duccio tries to have it both ways. His version signals the shifting iconography. His nativity shows a stable but apparently the stable is in a cave.

Fra Angelico 

In this version, note the centrality of the ass and the cow and the manger. Christ is central in the foreground (forward centre stage) but structurally the centre of the image is the doorway between the two panels that frame the heads of Joseph and Mary. This has an astronomical significance and alludes to the birth of the Sun Child on the Solstice. (Ass/Horse and Cow represent active and passive. The symbolism concerns the two halves of the year/zodiac, ascending and descending, and hence the solstice as the turning point.) Below is a further version of the same iconography:

The Mystic Nativity, so-called; a painting championed by Mr.Ruskin. Bottocelli situates the nativity within a total cosmology. The humble stable - which is here an extension of the primordial cave - becomes part of a larger scheme.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Why Benares is sacred

Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend – and it looks twice as old as all of them put together.

- Mark Twain

The sanctity of Benares extends back into the historical past and well beyond. Human occupation at this location – on the west bank of the Ganges river between the Varang River in the north and the Asi River at the south (hence Varan-asi = between the Varang and the Asi) has been continuous for over 3000 years at least, and throughout that time it has always been regarded as a sacred place. Hindoos regard it as the most sacred city in India, the city that is itself a prayer, the city of Shiva.

What, though, makes it sacred? Why is this particular location especially holy? The entire Ganges River – Mother Ganga - is sacred, of course, but this particular area of the river is regarded as most sacred of all. Why?

One can read many explanations, most of them mythological, and most of them unhelpful. It was not until the present author actually came to the city and looked at its location – its topography – and experienced it as a place, that the answer to this question became obvious. And simple. There is a simple reason why Benares is a sacred place, and it is immediately plain to anyone who goes there and views the landscape. 

The reason is this: it is at this point in the Ganga valley – and only at this point – that the river changes direction and flows northward. At Benares the Ganges turns around and flows directly south to north with the city on the western bank. That is, it aligns itself to the celestial axis and its course suddenly conforms to the north/south/east/west alignments. Moreover – and this is the key point – by turning to flow northward the river seems to turn back to her source. This only happens here. It is the conspicuous feature of the landscape. One expects the river to be flowing south towards the sea, but at Benares it flows the other way, towards the Himalayas. One stands on the ghat watching the river. It flows the opposite way to what one expects. The Ganges – as it were – turns back upon itself, turns from its inevitable downhill south-eastwards flow, and goes briefly northwards, back towards the mountains from which she came.

The key idea is: returning to the source. The Ganges turning back northwards is a geographical expression of the idea – inherently spiritual in its implications - of returning to the source. The source is the mountains of the north, the Himalayas. But by extension the northern mountains point to, or imply, the northern pole. The mountains of the north are axial. They represent the celestial pole and the Ganga, then, correlates to its Milky Way. Such is the most fundamental (Hyperborean) symbolism at the heart of Hindoo spirituality. 

This order of symbolism is, it happens, especially Shaivite. The Lord Shiva is identified with the northern pole. Thus it is said that wherever Shiva looks, he looks south. The Shiva lingham, accordingly, is aligned northwards. This is easily observed in a place like Benares – a city hosting countless Shiva linghams. The shaft of the lingham is axial and so represents the pole (and the mountain). The yoni which supports it, and which collects and drains the offerings of milk poured over the lingham, represents the Milky Way/Ganga. The neck of the yoni is aligned northwards. The guardian bull, Nandi, usually stands in the same alignment. Every Shiva lingham refers to the celestial north, and the entire symbol refers to the basic correspondences between the stars and the earthly terrain. On the basis of this symbolism, the city of Benares – on the northward flowing turn of the Ganges – is sacred to Shiva.

There is a secondary reason that explains why the location should be sacred to Shiva, of all gods. This is a conspicuous feature of the riverscape as well. It is this: the valley that extends from the Sarang River to the Asi River is naturally crescent shaped. This can be seen very clearly from any highpoint in the present city and it must have been very apparent from on top the rocky rises on the west bank of the river before the city was ever there. In the hazy distance the river winds in a perfect steady curve. Its course has not changed for thousands of years because it here meets and is guided by a solid bedrock of hard sedimentary stone – the same stone from which the temples and steps and laneways of the city have been constructed. Where the river flows northwards – making the gesture of returning to the source – and flows against a long, perfect crescent of bedrock stone – there is the city of Shiva, Shiva who wears a crescent on his forehead. It is here that the riverscape forms an almost perfect crescent of Shiva. 

Above. The author's photograph of the northern cremation ghat in Benares where the cremation workers perform over 300 cremations per day. Hindoos are cremated here and their ashes are strewn in the Ganges. It is as a place signifying return to the source that Benares has served as a cremation ground for thousands of years. In Benares the river seems to be flowing back to its source - it is therefore a place for the dead and dying. 

* * * 

There are two truly worthy guides to Benares in print that the author strongly recommends. The first is the ultimate study of the city by Mdm. Mireille-Josephine Guezennee which at this time is only available in French. Madam Guezennee, a French academic also known by her Hindoo initiatory named Himabindu, has visited Benares for over twenty years and made a profound study of the city. The present author first met her Calcutta several months ago and discussed aspects of her work, and her deep love for Benares, at some length. She was kind enough to give the author tips on what to see and who to meet there. Her book, published with the assistance of UNESCO, subtitled An Initiatory Voyage to the Spiritual Capital of India, extends to over 500 pages and includes hundreds of Himabindu's own photographs. 

The second book is a 'Spiritual & Cultural Guide' to the Benares region by Rana P. B. Singh and Pravin S. Rana. This is the essential text for any visitor to the city who has more than a passing interest in the spiritual and religious character of Benares and the extended region thereabout. It is an excellent practical guide that includes intelligent, detailed, informative descriptions of the cosmogonic and religious landscape. It gives an account of all the major temples, and many of the minor ones, along with their history, significance and symbolism.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Kabir the Weaver

There is, it is estimated, some 20,000+ Hindoo temples and shrine in Benares. This is not to mention the mosques and other Mahometan holy places. There is more religion per square inch in Benares than any other city on earth. The city has survived on the religion business for thousands of years. That, and weaving. Specifically the weaving of silk. For many hundreds of years Benares has been the silk weaving centre of India and one of the silk capitals of the world. Benares produces exquisite silks. Every Indian you meet in Benares is either in the religion business, or he wants to sell you a silk scarf.

These two industries - religion and weaving - come together in the figure of Kabir, the city's favorite son. It is uncertain in exactly what year he was born, and the whole matter is mired in legend to the extent that we cannot be sure about anything about him, but every tradition asserts that he was born in Benares, and most traditions assert, furthermore, that he was the son of a Mahometan weaver. Accordingly, by tradition, and on the evidence of the images and metaphors in his poems, he was a weaver. He wove silk throughout his long life.

There is no need to rehearse his full biography here. It is very well known. He is the most quoted poet in India - outside of the sacred canon - and he enjoys an enthusiastic readership in the West as well. He is counted as one of the major figures in the Bhakti (devotional) movement in early modern Hindooism and is widely revered as one of the great mystics of the world. He was persecuted and condemned for his irreverent attacks upon official religion and advocated a devotional non-dualism rooted in Advaita Vedanta.

The context of his opposition to religious formalism is to be found in Benares. The city is filled with pilgrims and devotees, and they busy themselves with temple attending and ritual observances. It is easy to imagine that a certain temperament of the spirit – such as we find in an especially pure and natural form in Kabir – could rebel against the cults of external practice and insist that the real temple is within. He links this to the non-dualist doctrine that identifies the self with the Self, atman with Brahman. His poetry explores the paradoxes that follow from this truth. He advocates a path of love.

The modern enthusiasm for Kabir, however, is responding to a different context altogether. The present author views it with suspicion. There is no question that the “real” Temple is within, and that external observances are empty without the participation of the heart – all religion, finally, is internal – but what would modern people know about any observances anymore? It is strange to find people who have never been to a church or a temple or a mosque in their numb secular lives reading Kabir and cheering every time he slags off the Brahmins and the Imams. Kabir was criticizing an age of excessive ritual; why he is so popular in an age of no ritual at all? When he sings “you will not find God in cathedrals, or masses, or synagogues…” why do modern readers thrill with approval and agreement? What would they know about a stultifying ritual formalism? 

In Benares, where the author presently resides, though, Kabir’s critique has an obvious and legitimate relevance. One sees sadhus who are devoted to severe austerities as a means to salvation. One sees Brahmin priests muttering long incantations of Sanskrit before images of the Monkey God. There are statues and idols and icons at every turn. One does not need to be occupied with it all for very long before one needs to be reminded that, in the end, all that is really required is a simple movement of the heart. Men go to extraordinary lengths in search of God, but in reality God is always present and easily accessed – no contortions and austerities required.

That is not a modern man’s predicament. Modern man is senseless with comfort and ease and remote from any real religious feeling. He has never experienced austerities or tied himself into contortions. He doesn’t go on pilgrimage. He doesn’t fast at Lent or go to Mass on his knees. He reads a poet like Kabir through the lens of his ego, seeking approval and endorsement for his spiritual indolence. Kabir, today, is just a baby boomer’s excuse not to go to Church anymore and to indulge in the thought that he will be saved just for being nice.

* * * 

The author has collected together lines from various Kabir poems on the theme of the inner path in the City of Temples, and has strung them together as follows:


WHEREVER YOU ARE IS THE ENTRY POINT

Wherever you are is the entry point.
Throw away all thoughts of imaginary things
and stand firm in that which you are.

Whether you are in the temple or in the balcony,
in the camp or the flower garden,
every moment your Lord is taking His delight in you.

If God is within the mosque, 

then to whom does the rest of the world belong?
If Ram is within the image which you find upon your pilgrimage,
then who is there to know what happens outside?
Hari is in the East, Allah is in the West.
Look within your heart,
There you will find both Karim and Ram;
All the men and women of the world are His living forms.
Kabir is the child of Allah and of Ram:
God is my Guru, God is my Pir.

You don't grasp the fact that 

what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: 

go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
the world will never be real to you!

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

The home is the abiding place;
in the home is reality;
the home helps to attain Him Who is real.
So stay where you are,
All things shall come to you in time.

If a mirror ever makes you sad
you should know that it does not know you.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Pattachitra Engraving of Sanjay Patra

The richness of Benares extends beyond its 20,000 Shiva temples. The city is one of the most culturally active in the world and is populated not just with priests and pilgrims but artists and musicians. The Indian Prime Minister has proposed that it be universally acknowledged as the “spiritual capital of the world”; an integral part of this is its creative wealth – it is certainly one of the artistic capitals of the world. 

Several posts ago, the author related the life and work of the Swiss sculptor and painter Miss Alice Boner, noting the excellent standing exhibition of her work at the Bharat Kala Bhavan museum on the campus of Benares Hindu University. There is, moreover, an excellent collection of miniatures in the Rahjistani, Mughul, and other traditional styles at the same venue. The living art of the city, however is to be found in the laneways, restaurants, cafes and lassi shops of the old city area behind the central ghats to the Ganges River. And the artists to be found there are almost all of them engaged with, immersed in or otherwise advancing the traditional and sacred arts of India. This is one of the things that makes Benares sacred – it is a living centre of the traditional arts and crafts some of which have unbroken traditions extending back thousands of years. 

In a restaurant on the south side of the main ghat, the author encountered a young artist, Sanjay Patra, trained in and keeping alive the tradition of Pattachitra, a miniature painting tradition from Puri in the province of Odessa. Having just come from the exhibition of miniatures in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, the work of Sanjay Patra caught the author’s attention and jostled him out of the complacent assumption that India’s heritage of miniatures is just a matter for museums. Mr. Patra, twenty-seven years old, has been painting and inscribing engraved miniatures in the tradition of Pattachitra since he was in his early teens. He has now – perforce – set up a studio under the stairs at Spicy Bites where he works. He will occasionally sell work from here to tourists and travelers, but primarily this is where he works, not a store but a workshop. 

He happily demonstrates his technique. He paints on cloth and – in the Odessean style – he engraves on dried palm leaf strips using a simple metal tool and natural inks. The authentic examples of this art are particular to the area around Puri in Odessa. This is a tradition of miniature painting that extends back deep into the ancient past, and it has largely remained unchanged in that time. The subject matter of the work made in this style is typically from Hindoo mythology. In Mr. Patra’s case his work is largely depicting incidents and scenes and themes from the Ramayana and the life of Krishna. 

Although he now resides in sacred Benares, he was born in Puri – and has the documentation to prove it. He learnt Pittachitra – along with classical dance - from his grandfather, a celebrated actor and dramatist, Sri Kalu Patra. Quite apart from the great technical skill to be seen in his work, its quality and intricacy, there is the remarkable fact that Sanjay has a vast mythology at his command, inherited verbally from an early age and held in memory. The tourists and travelers marvel at the detailed beauty of his paintings, but his art serves a sacred purpose, the celebration of the lives of Rama and Krishna, the two great avatars of the Hindoo order. After growing up in Puri he travelled as a young man to Delhi looking for a living; he often went hungry, but he pursued his vocation regardless. Now he has found a niche in the great creative city of Benares (Varanasi). 

The medium is dried palm leaf slats which are then bound together. Each composition can be folded up in the manner of a fan or blinds. The design is scratched into the hard smooth surface of the dried slat and then various coloured inks are rubbed into the design. 

(Readers might contact Mr.Patra concerning his work at: sanjay.patrachittra@gmail.com.)

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Cow Protection

We have searched the Turk's religion, 

These teachers throw many thunderbolts,

Recklessly they display boundless pride, 

while explaining their own aims, they kill cows.

How can they kill the mother, 

whose milk they drink like that of a wet nurse?

The young and the old drink milk pudding, 

but these fools eat the cow's body.

These morons know nothing, they wander about in ignorance,

Without looking into one's heart, 

how can one reach paradise?

— Kabir

Although it hosts a number of minority religious communities, notably the Mahometans – about a fifth of the population -, Benares is the quintessentially Hindoo city. Accordingly – as the author's photographs on this page illustrate - its laneways and streets and river steps (ghats) abound with cows, sacred to the Hindoo. The author currently resides in Benares; the sight of cows wandering by as he sits in cafes and lassi houses and strolls the streets is one of the most conspicuous features of the experience. 

The cow is protected under Hindoo religious codes and in some places under civil law, although this is a matter of contemporary controversy. The sanctity of the cow in India is ancient, but in the Middle Ages, corresponding with the invasions of the beef-eating Mughuls, cow protection came to prominence as a touchstone of Hindoo religiosity. Then, during British rule, the Cow Protection Movement, started in 1892 by Swami Dayananda, famously agitated for an end to the slaughter and eating of cows, bringing the issue to the very forefront of Hindoo identity. Today, Hindoo nationalists are again vocal on the matter, and some state jurisdictions have recently banned the consumption of beef. Modern India is a nation where McDonald’s stores assure customers that their burgers are ‘100% Beef Free’. 

Cow protection, however, is, and always has been, perceived as an attack upon the rights of the Mahometans who have often responded angrily to restrictions on beef eating. When the British, conceding to Hindoo demands to some degree and seeking to regulate the matter, ordered that Mahometans would need to register for permission to slaughter cows, riots broke out all over northern India. Beef is explicitly mentioned in the Koran as a permitted food, and for Mahometans in Hindoostan beef-eating is an emblem of freedom from what they deem as Hindoo idolatry. Any restrictions on eating beef is seen as a direct assault upon the Mahometan faith. In a modern context, moreover, it is seen as an attack upon the rights of a minority religion in an ostensibly secular and multi-faith polity. 

This is a particularly volatile issue under the strongly Hindoo Prime Ministership of Mr. Modi (who, incidentally, the present author saw in person during his visit to the Ganges several days ago.) There has been renewed agitation for cow protection in recent times, to which Mr. Modi has given his tacit (unspoken) approval. This has outraged secular Leftists who are – as they are in the West - siding with and speaking for the Mahometans and the complaint of “Islamophobia”. The conservative Mr. Modi represents a resurgent Hindoo identity – but given the religious demographics of India this is necessarily at the expense of the Mahometans. It is said that Mr. Modi is the first truly Hindoo leader of this land in 500 years. First there were the Moghuls, then the British, and since independence the secular Leftists of the Congress Party have dominated. Mr. Modi is an advocate for a more Hindoo India and champions the nation’s Hindoo heritage. He is loved and loathed for the same. In any case, once again cow protection has become a symbolic issue, a dividing line in the struggle for India’s soul. 

While there are no doubt complexities to the issue, the present author is generally but cautiously sympathetic to the cause of the Hindoos in this case – or at least he resists the excesses of the relativism that now defines (and distorts) the (ever-outraged) political Left. The immutable fact is that Mother India is, if not officially a Hindoo nation, then most definitely a Hindoo majority one, and this – by the very nature of things - demands some recognition. Reality trumps ideology.

The Hindooness of India – ancient, primordial, autochthonous - is an inescapable reality and it is an impossible absurdity for India not to have a Hindoo identity. Hindooism is in the soil. Secular India is a contrivance. The principle involved here is that the rights of minority groups, though important, cannot be allowed to dissolve the identity of the dominant culture, or else – as we see in the cringing cultural sickness that besets the West today - a society descends very quickly into the churning quicksand of relativism. 

By all means, the ever-present shadow of overbearing chauvinism is to be avoided, but minorities are still minorities, and to suppose that they are ‘equals’ in a total sense is a dangerous abstraction. The necessary protection of minorities under law should not be at the expense of a strong and vibrant dominant culture. No society should indulge in self-harm in order to accommodate diversity. You do not shoot your foot off to make the lame equals. Diversity – religious, ethnic, linguistic – is always a negotiated balance of factors, but there is no sense in pretending that there is not, and should not be, a dominant player in the arrangement. Of course there is. And in multi-faith India, it is Hindooism. The Mahometans, the Sikhs, others, are minorities, and it is proper that they admit this and understand it is a fact of life. They remain partners in modern India, but by the sheer force of numbers – not to mention history – they can never be ‘equals’ in the total sense. 

Arguably, in any case, modern India has already conceded too much. This is the argument of the Hindoo advocates. As any Hindoo will remind you, independence surrendered a good third of India – the whole Indus valley and the Ganges delta, no less! – to the Mahometans by way of the east and west Pakistans. The entire rationale of those Muslim-only nations was that the Mahometans – like a peculiar species that needs its own special habitat - could not bear a shared identity. India, in contrast, settled on a multi-faith modernity, and very deliberately chose not to be ‘Hindoo’ in any official sense. Pakistan – an appalling mess from the beginning, to be frank - is an ‘Islamic Republic’ (of which there is not a single successful example anywhere in the world), but India, let us note, is not a ‘Hindoo Republic’. And nor – so this writer believes, insofar it is any of his business - should it be. But, for all of that, it remains a Hindoo majority nation, and this fact must mean something. 

The sanctity of the cow is the issue at hand. Is it too much to ask of the Mahometans that they eat mutton? Religious tensions rise whenever a cow wanders into the Muslim quarter of the city and duly disappears into the butcher shops. The present author has seen actual cases of this in Calcutta and elsewhere. Slaughtered cows, herded from the streets, are strung up in butcher’s shops in the laneways around the mosque. The Hindoos rightly see this as provocation and sacrilege. The Mahometan, in response, holds up his Koran and cries “Halal! Halal!” – beef is permitted by Allah! Maybe so, but it ignores the fact that, whatever the ideals of the secular nation might be, Islam is a minority faith living under the ecumenical umbrella of Hindoo hospitality. And where, in any case, does Allah say that beef-eating is required? Mahometans choose to eat beef. They need not. It is surely a matter of respect to their Hindoo compatriots and neighbours that they refrain from doing so. Would it hurt for Mahomatens to say, "The cow is sacred to you. Okay, we'll eat chicken."? No one is asking the Mahometans to become vegetarians, as good Hindoos are. The Hindoos understand that they are meat eaters. But the cow is sacred. 

The present author eats beef too – but not when he is in India. He is in a Hindoo majority nation. He modifies his behavior according to this fact. He doesn’t march into a McDonald’s and demand a quarter pounder as one of his inalienable human rights. Respect.Not to mention prudence. 

True, the author is a visitor to India, whereas Mahometan Indians are full citizens, which implies equality, but – once again – this “equality” is an abstraction that is, at best, an ideal rather than a reality, and it does not apply to all things or prevail in all domains, except as an approximation. Any member of any minority in any polity knows this as a fact of existence, which is merely to say we do not and cannot ever live in an ideal world. All the mischief of life consists in refusing to acknowledge this. The most dangerous people in the world are those who want to force abstractions upon the gritty facts of life. The rights of a minority do not negate the right of a majority to maintain a living culture. Whatever ideals of “equality” and other abstractions we entertain, minorities must always adjust to the legitimate dominance of a majority, if not in theory, certainly in practice.

Mahometans deserve to be equal partners in modern India, but they need to appreciate that Hindooism was here long before the arrival of Islam and that Hindoo spirituality - to which the sanctity of the cow is emblematic - is the very essence of the land. This is nowhere more apparent than in the sacred city of Benares. Is the Ganga sacred to Islam? We have reached an impasse in Indian history at which a responsibility falls upon the Mahometans to recognise the reality of Hindoo India and to accommodate it to the potentially (but tragically unfulfilled) universalism of the Islamic spiritual perspective. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Alice Boner of Benares

Alice Boner 1889-1981

There are many wonderful treasures in the extensive and well-curated collection of the museum at Benares Hindu University, the Bharat Kala Bhavan, including a superb display of original paintings by the ‘Master of Mountains’ Nicholas Roerich, but a surprise treasure is the exhibition dedicated to the life and work of the Swiss artist Alice Boner. Miss Boner made Benares her home for several decades, living in a small house at Assi Ghat in the south of the city, and immersed herself in the spiritual and artistic culture of both the city and, by extension, India as a whole. Few Europeans of her generation had such a deep and profound acquaintance with India and with Hindooism. The exhibition celebrates her own work – sculpture and painting – as well as her intellectual engagement with traditional India art.

Her time in Benares, and her struggle to synthesize her European identity with her deep feelings for Hindoo spirituality, is recorded in her extensive dairies (written in part in German, but mainly in English) which have now been published thus:

Much of her intellectual work was devoted to translating and publishing a long forgotten Hindoo text, the Vastusutra Upanishad, which she regarded as a key to traditional Hindoo aesthetics and image making:

Miss Boner spent years studying Hindoo temple architecture and traditional sculpture in an attempt to ascertain their geometrical underpinnings. Most of her published writings are on this topic. She believed she had identified the geometric principles that form the basis for the traditional Hindoo plastic arts.

Although she was herself trained as a sculptor, and there are many fine examples of her work on display at the exhibition at the Bharat Kala Bhavan, she explains in her diaries that sculpture proved too slow as a medium for her rapid assimilation of Hindoo aesthetic principles. Accordingly, she turned to drawing and to painting. The feature of the exhibition in Benares today is her masterwork, a triptych on metaphysical and mythological themes entitled Prakriti-Visvarupa-Kali. A picture of the triptych in situ can be seen below. Unfortunately, no detailed digital images of this substantial and very powerful work is available at this time, and the Bharat Kala Bhavan is most meticulous in the ‘No photography’ policy. The beauty and depth of the painting must therefore remain a mystery to readers online, until they can see it for themselves. 

A quotation by Miss Boner displayed with the work says that traditional aesthetics appeal first and foremost to transcendental principles and metaphysical realities, and that if a work of art is also beautiful it is so because it is true. Beauty is truth and truth beauty, as Keats wrote. The Alice Boner triptych exemplifies this fact. She devoted over a decade to its completion. An exploration of the three metaphysical principles of Hindooism – creation, consolidation, destruction - its unquestionable beauty is incidental to its penetrating truth. 

It is surprising that Alice Boner's work - both her visual work and her intellectual studies - are not more widely appreciated, especially among those with an interest in sacred art and sacred geometry, fields to which she dedicated her life and made a profound and enduring contribution. The permanent exhibition at Bharat Kala Bhavan is a very fine monument to her work and celebrates her as one of the most important European denizens of Benares in the twentieth century.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Hashish: The Lost Legend

"Excuse me, sir, hashish?" asked the young Indian man on the corner near the small tumble-down Kali temple. The author had just been sitting in the famous Blue Lassi Cafe in the back alleys of the Benares old city, not far from the Burning Ghats, sipping on a pomegranate lassi and watching as no less than three funeral processions - groups of men carrying a body on a bamboo stretcher - hurried by down to the banks of the Ganges for the cremation. He looked over the young man. "Hashish?" he asked. "Yes sir," said the vendor. And at this the young man produced a large slab of dark brown aromatic hashish putty under which he waved a lit match so that a prospective buyer might smell the authenticity of the goods. He described it as "Afghani." He furthermore explained that the six or seven soldiers seated on the street corner two buildings back, armed with machine guns and other deadly weaponry, were only concerned with terrorists, not tourists.  "This is a holy city, sir," he said. "Bhang is sacred to Lord Shiva." The author was well aware of this fact, but also realised that it is not necessary to purchase the stuff from random Hindoos on the street when it can be procured from government approved bhang stores, of which there is one immediately across from the Blue Lassi Cafe. 

Nevertheless, the episode, and the scent of the hashish, did remind the author of a certain book that may be of interest to readers of this web log. There is, needless to relate, a small library of orientalist literature devoted to hashish, and the author has read the chief volumes. The sensuality of the drug was once synonymous with the sensuality of the east and it was celebrated in prose, poetry and the visual arts as a distinct orientalist theme. Beyond this sensuality, like opium it was renowned as a vehicle of the imagination. 

This, of course, was before prohibition, and before the advent of puritanical Mahometan nation states in the violent and chaotic catastrophe that has been the post-colonial age. Hindoo India has not been immune to this, but a city such as Benares - where the author now resides - resists change and the stupidities of modernity better than most. There has never been prohibition in Benares, although - as the street vendor said - "bhang" was and remains in a sacred rather than merely recreational context. It is a pity, it must be said, that Western hippys and ferals and the useless offspring of baby boomers frequent the city dressed as secular cheesecloth parodies of sadhoos abusing the sanctity of the herb and its celestial oils. 

The book that comes to mind, a classic of the genre, is the rare and intoxicating Hashish: the Lost Legend, by Fritz Lemmermayer, first published 1898. The present author has had the privilege of seeing a hard copy of this wonderful literary gem but was not able to purchase it at the time. Instead, he has had to read the text as an ebook, which is a travesty for such a work. One day, perhaps, when he is flush with cash, a hard copy will come his way. 

Hashish: the Lost Legend is a tale of star-crossed romance between a certain Ali and a voluptuous woman named Zuleyka. They fall in love even though they come from warring tribes. Of course. One day, however, Zuleyka bathes naked in an alleged fountain of youth and is seen by the villainous Rustan who determines to own her for himself. In a time honoured tradition, the evil Rustan raids their wedding, kills half the guests and makes off with the bride. So what is poor Ali to do? He is approached at this point by a certain "Yusuf" who introduces him to hashish, and fired by dreams, he is transformed into a passionate warrior. The story proceeds from there. It is a predictable tale of the oriental type - quasi-oriental, we might say, and an orientalist indulgence in that respect - and more like the plot of an opera than of a novel, but it is a famous book all the same and considered an orientalist treasure. In the genre of romantic hashish tales it deserves a prominent place. It celebrates the hashish dream as a mode of the romantic imagination. A very fine English edition - that rescued the text from Yiddish - was published by Process Books not long ago. 

(The other work that comes to mind here is Paul Verlaine's Hashish & Incense, but it is utterly impossible to find.)

The role of bhang in Shaivite spirituality is a matter for another post. Hashish, in fact, is a particular preparation of bhang and is preferred by the Mahometans rather than by the Hindoos. These things have a particular history and a particular affinity for certain spiritual modes, certain temperaments and certain ethnic propensities. The orientalists were struck by the powers of hashish upon the imagination, which, like all romantics, they regarded as the spiritual faculty par excellence. It does need to be said, though, that this was not a rootless and vapid imagination such as is known by the diminished rogues of our own time; it was axial and exact. Choofing on bhang - in whatever preparation - was not some idle indulgence but a method of transport to higher states. The ancient labyrinthine streets of Benares old city is perhaps the one place on earth today where this fact still seems a credible ideal.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black