The rickshaw driver deftly negotiated the narrow alleyways of Varanasi, teeming with other rickshaws and motorcycles, tourists, pilgrims, priests, school-going children, masticating cows and the occasional heavily loaded mule. The rusty rickshaw clattered past Muslim traditional medical practitioners’ clinics, right next door to Ayurvedic ones. Deafened by the insistent honking, loud voices, peals of temple bells and urgent calls to prayer from local mosques, I have an epiphany.
Varanasi – the constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi of the BJP, and a popular Hindu religious city – is more secular than the rest of India. I don’t use the term in its general meaning of being dissociated from religion. You can’t take religion out of the ethos of the city that Mark Twain had famously said was ‘older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and [which] looks twice as old as all of them put together’. But it does embody the definition of the term as explained in the Indian Constitution as equal treatment of all religions. In this overtly Hindu city of around 23,000 temples, every religion is respected. ‘Varanasi celebrates every religion, every festival,’ Amitabha Bhattacharya, a veteran journalist tells me. Which is perhaps why Modi’s Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) politics is considered somewhat overrated here, where religion is an important part of daily life. Religion is not a novelty in Varanasi; it certainly does not need to be rediscovered or rephrased by politicians.
