When I was leaving for benaras, my mom strictly told me not to buy statues of God in large number. I was also advised to visit kasha vishwanath temple. Benaras, in popular view, is almost synonymous with “Religion”. In my imagination as well, Benaras was a small city with temples, aghori babas and a gypsie culture(“hare ram hare Krishna” culture). I knew that I’ll see a lot of Durkheim in this place. Benaras would be exciting. It did turn out to be exciting but not so predictable. Every moment spent was a different experience. Besides Durkheim, I met a lot of other known sociologist and also found theoretical food which is yet to be served.
As we stepped out of the station,
I looked back to see the station and found religion in the very architecture of
the main railway station. It revealed how the city wanted to present itself. It
was presenting itself not just as a religious city but essentially as a “Hindu”
city. The ‘secular’ in me, however, did not have a problem with it. Benaras is
known to be a sacred city for Hindus.
As we moved towards our guest
house, I was trying to grab the new environment and I saw, though not much to
my surprise, an over-emphasis on religion. Religion was there in the names of
the shops – “kuber optics”, “swastika tailors”, “shivam chashma Kendra” etc.
Again, the names were essentially hindu. However, I did find some “modern”
names and a few with muslim names – “Islam auto engineering”. I also saw a
church, a jain temple and Sikhism on a motor bike. So I wouldn’t narrow down to
one religion but I would definitely say that it was all heavy with religion. The
architecture of the main university – Benaras Hindu University was also in the
form of a temple. The entrance was that of a gateway of a temple. There was
also a temple within the campus. It was too much of “religion” for me.
This trip to benaras was a field
trip. We had come to try and find ‘answers’ to two sociological questions concerning
Buddhist site of sarnath, 15 kms away from Benaras – religious syncretism in
Buddhist sarnath and the concept of a religious economy. But since we stayed in
Benaras, we extended our research(‘unofficially’) to Benaras. I was a part of
the group exploring religious syncretism. What I found was that religious
syncretism is a ‘historical’ process. It is historical in the sense that
religions have interacted with each other historically and almost, ‘naturally’.
They have interacted for centuries and still do, instead of dying out. Religion
and religious identity is very strong. And this is when I saw Durkheim.
Religion is a social fact. It is inevitable. It exists and will always exist.
The second group had explored the
link between religion and economy. They found that there was definitely a deep
bond between the two. Religion sells in Benaras. So the Hindu shopkeeper in
Sarnath worshipped Buddha because Buddhism meant livelihood for him. Religion
is also commercialized to a large extent in Benaras. A temple on the ghat bore
the advertisement of Rupa, a company for underclothes. Near any temple, we
would be called out by shopkeepers asking us to buy goods “important” for puja.
They would tell us how the puja would be incomplete without them and would sell
them at exorbitant rates. In the holy Ganga, we saw “muthoot finance” and
“airtel” flowing. Here, we would get the
impression how religion affects economy.
Roaming on the streets of Benaras
at night, eating street food, observing people who seemed ‘less liberal’,
chewing on the local paan and then going back on the rickshaw…it seemed
‘ideal’. Roaming about in the campus in the moonlight, with wind flowing in
your hair, it is a romantic memory now. I feel like Marx…romanticizing
incessantly about the ‘pre-industrial’ society. But Benaras has also been
changing. The economy has been changing, though not at a very great speed as
there were no factories there. But things have been changing. ‘Modernity’ is
coming in but it co-exists with tradition. A peaceful co-existence is taking
place. So I saw a monk, with a jacket added to his traditional attire, smoking
‘peacefully’.
Another thing which was though
predictable for me about Benaras was the people. In contrast to the “big bad
world” of Delhi, I found that people here were more friendly or maybe this was
just my good fortune. But one thing which is certain is that people here were
much more affiliated to their caste and region. So one of my classmates who was
from Chapra was an instant hit with most people. I accord this to the fact that
maybe this is because economic changes are not very rapid in Benaras. There are
not many of Marx’s industries to alienate men from themselves and from each
other. I feel that maybe Durkheim’s religion may also be a reason. Religion
leads to social solidarity. It binds people and even checks on them. Though a thug for whom I wrote a letter in
English wherein he pleads with foreigners to help him financially does force me
to re-think.
Overall, I would say that it’s
really difficult to explain this city with just one theory. It is difficult to
do that for any place, situation but Benaras particularly has been a difficult
case. With order and disorder(aghori cult), orthodoxy and syncretism, economy
and social values, I feel that it is difficult to really say what goes around
in benaras, how things work here. It is tradition and it is ‘modern’. It is
communal harmony and communal clash. It is conservative and it is liberal. Benaras…
it is simple but contradictory.
Theoretically, Benaras represents
a stage which is capitalist(to some extent) but has retained its
social/religious values. In benaras, it is economy with religion or religion
with economy. It is tradition with modernity and modernity with tradition.
*All pictures clicked by Sunam Thapa
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