The Underbelly of a Picture-perfect India

Acute Angle

- Anand Neelakantan

This was my second visit to Varanasi in six months. Though the city oozes its own charm, it is heartbreaking to see how chaotic it remains. The entrance of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor—more like a shopping mall—has been built with incongruent red sandstone, resembling the buildings of Lutyens’ Delhi, which itself was inspired by Mughal architecture. The result is that the area around this ancient temple, which is arguably Indian civilisation’s holiest site looks like a cross between the sarkari building of Mughal Delhi, Lutyens’ Delhi and an ill-designed shopping mall. Admittedly, it has widened the area and given some much-wanted space for congregation, but in the process has a building complex that sticks out like a sore thumb. With plain red stone walls, shopping centres and guest houses, it is the most Mughal-looking building in this ancient city now. Even the infamous mosque, built by Aurangzeb over an ancient temple structure still retains the intricate carvings of the destroyed temple.

Despite its explosive political connotations, the late medieval structure built by a religious bigot looks more artistic than the modern complex. The existing temple inside this complex was built during Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar and this structure with its beautiful carvings, in contrast, stands with exquisite beauty. Apart from re-establishing and building the Kashi Vishwanath temple, the Maharani had rebuilt the Manikarnika Ghat, Shri Tarkeshwar temple, Dashashwamedh Ghat and many others, and undoubtedly, they are some of the few buildings in this crumbling city that exude architectural charm of a bygone era that valued aesthetics.