Varanasi
February 2-3, 2008
Later in January 2008 a
larger group of scholars came from China to visit India, building on the
precedent that the Littles had set. Jade Yim (OSC 06 Beijing), Steve Smith
(OSC 06 Shanghai), Jennifer Hinkle (OSC 06 Shangahai), Jaime Waters (OSC 07
Taipei), and Brian and Akiko Denaro (OSC 06 Guangzhou) all came to India for
about 2 weeks. They each had slightly different arrival times and
itineraries, but we set up the same Golden Triangle trip the Littles took
(minus Ranthambore) and sent them in a hired bus as a group. I was unable
to accompany them for the triangle tour (school was in session at JNU), but
I did go with them on a separate journey to India’s holiest city, Varanasi.
We took the overnight train from Delhi both there and back, and on these
legs our group got to see India go by slowly – much like our train ride to
Pushkar. But in Uttar Pradesh the larger numbers of people gave a different
feeling than the bleak beauty of Rajasthan. The sights and smells were much
more pronounced, as was the poverty and the squalor.
Varanasi was a city defined
by its importance to Hindus as the place where the cycle of birth and
rebirth could be broken, and hence millions of Hindus try to die in Varanasi
to accomplish this escape to enlightenment. The sights and smells of death
were unavoidable along the ghats (steps on the river bank) on the River
Ganges, as the preparation and burning of corpses continued day and night.
Seeing these Hindu rituals is not for the faint of heart or stomach, and
their sacredness dictates that direct photography of the deceased not be
done. We also visited the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, also known as the Golden
Temple, which is a site holy to both Hindus and Muslims (since the Mughal
emporer Aurangzeb razed it once and built a mosque in its place) and hence a
flash point of tensions between the communities. Although Varanasi is
undeniably a very dirty city, it is also undeniably an important city for
the majority of India’s Hindu citizens. I would therefore recommend that
India scholars (and visiting scholars) should visit Varanasi, perhaps alone
if they felt their families may not appreciate or be prepared for what they
would see there.
