by Mark Tully
I stopped short at the large silver Ganesh, the elephant-headed god and son of Shiva, who guards the entrance to the main temple. Non-Hindus are not allowed inside and I wasn’t about to argue with the police, who have become even more officious since the Varanasi bombs. ‘No cameras, no pens,’ they shouted, as they frisked those they did let in.
Even when they worship Shiva as ‘Lord of the World’, pilgrims have to be reminded that he is nothing without his female power. All those who pray at the Vishvanatha temple are obliged to go on to the nearby temple of Annapurna. The scholar Diana Eck translates ‘Annapurna’ as ‘She of Plenteous Food’ and points out that in popular art Shiva is often shown as so dependent on this female deity that he is depicted beseeching her for alms. As I have suggested in Chapter 7, it seems to me that this relationship between male and female, in which neither is complete without the other, has something profoundly important to teach us today.
But for all its long history of sanctity, Varanasi is not perfect. It’s clearly not heaven on earth for many of its citizens. My visit in 2006 coincided with the municipal elections. Flags of different political parties were strung across the streets, and candidates were campaigning at roadside meetings. I couldn’t help wondering why anyone should bother to vote in elections for such an apparently powerless institution as the municipality. The roads were pot-holed, the traffic chaotic even by Indian standards, and the garbage from a dump had spilled onto the main road running parallel to the ghats. The Ganga was still polluted, and on Asi Ghat there was only one meagre hose pipe available for cleaning off the clay, in many places three feet thick, deposited by the Ganga during the monsoon. Speculators may be licking their lips at the prospect of profitable land development, but beggars were still sitting patiently by the roadside, hoping at least for a handful of rice from the worshippers passing to and from Asi Ghat. The large number of cycle rickshaws was an economic indicator too, for no one who can earn a half-reasonable wage would choose to pull a rickshaw. Nevertheless, one rickshaw puller told me, ‘At least here I can fill my stomach; I couldn’t do that in my own city of Patna.’
The boatman who had rowed me down the Ganga during Diwali was, like many poorer Indians, amazingly well informed about politics. He knew the form in the municipal election and the forthcoming State Assembly election too. I asked why the municipal elections were being contested so fiercely when the municipality didn’t seem capable of doing anything for anyone. He replied, ‘Because the municipality has money to spend, and where there is money to spend there is money for those who get elected to steal too.’
A longstanding member of the local BJP, which has been running the Varanasi municipality, told me there wasn’t any money. He blamed Varanasi’s dilapidation on the Samajwadi Party governing the state of Uttar Pradesh, saying that they had not released funds for the municipality. When I asked him why he was campaigning so energetically in what were only municipal elections, he replied, ‘They will be taken as a guide to what is going to happen in the state election. They are a sort of launching pad.’
‘What sort of a launch are they going to give you?’ I asked.
‘Not very good. We are in power in nine municipalities now and I think that is likely to come down to four, which will not include Varanasi.’
Not surprisingly the BJP leader did not want me to use his name.
So democracy does not appear to be the ideal solution in Varanasi, nor is it necessarily the panacea that many Western leaders claim it is when they lecture less developed countries on following the democratic example. But that is not to suggest that Churchill was wrong when he said that, for all democracy’s faults, he didn’t know a better system. What is wrong is to assume that any criticism of democracy is inevitably anti-democratic. It’s right, surely, to recognise that no democracy is perfect, that all can be improved on.
But despite all that is far from ideal in Varanasi, for me the city still represents much that is essential to living a balanced life; most particularly to living a life in which there is a place for the transcendent as well as the concerns of this world. Richard Lannoy, who is one of the most profound modern Western writers about India I know, has written in the preface to his book Benares: A World Within a World: ‘Living among the people of this extraordinary city opened my eyes to levels of psychological and spiritual awareness which we in the West, with our most externalised preoccupations had thrust into the unconscious.’ I have not spent as long in Varanasi as Richard Lannoy, nor would I claim to be anywhere near as spiritually aware as he is; nevertheless, Varanasi makes me aware through parables of much that I believe to be important. The relationship between the Mahant and the Mufti teaches me that it is possible for communities to live with each other while respecting their differences. The Shiva legend reminds me of the importance of restoring a balance between men and women that grants them equality but does not obscure their differences. The threat to Varanasi’s economy and heritage adds to my conviction that GDP is an inadequate measure of progress and that the market must not rule our lives. The sanctity of the Ganga symbolises our relationship with nature, and its pollution is an indication of how poorly we have sometimes treated our partner. The Mahant, with his views on the importance of science and religion, and the combination in him of a priest and a scientist, represents the need for non-rational as well as rational understanding of reality.
Varanasi’s attitude to death is also for me a parable. Richard Lannoy says, ‘Benares has a way of persuading one to confront hidden, but universal, human proclivities. This is especially apparent in the city’s unflinching attitude to mortality.’ In the West we try to hide death. In Varanasi we cannot fail to be reminded of it. Traditionally, cremation grounds in India were sited outside towns and cities because Hindus regarded them as polluted places, but in Varanasi they are in the heart of the city. When I floated in a boat down the Ganga after dark and saw the flames of funeral pyres still burning on the two cremation ghats, I was reminded that Varanasi is probably the only city in the world where cremation grounds are tourist attractions. Those tourists who are too squeamish to face the two ghats, or who prefer not to be reminded of death, will still almost certainly see a funeral procession passing through the streets on their way to these cremation grounds, with the mourners chanting, ‘Rama nam satya hai, Rama nam satya hai’ (‘Rama’s name is Truth, Rama’s name is Truth’).
In Varanasi death is transformed into liberation. The dead are brought from far and wide to have their last rites performed on the ghats, for there, according to Hindu tradition, the dying are guaranteed to secure the goal of moksha, freedom from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. On one of the ghats, I once saw a frail old woman drawing her last shallow breaths as she lay on a low cot looking towards the river. She was surrounded by her relatives, who had brought her there to die. As I watched she gently passed away.
Why do we try to hide death in the West? I suspect because we don’t want to be reminded that the things modern life cherishes are ephemeral. Fame, wealth, possessions only last one lifetime. I suspect it is also because most people no longer have the comfort of religion; they no longer believe, as St Paul did, that death cannot separate us from the love of God. In a materialist society death is the end. The awareness of death in Varanasi reminds me that I am part of nature and, like all living things, I will die; that all I take pride in is only temporary; and that there is going to be one time when I will have to trust in God, not in myself. It is a parable about humility.
The final parable Varanasi offers me lies in its unique position as the only one of the world’s ancient living cities whose original culture and faith are still intact. To find out how that has happened and why it remains important, I went to see a Swami, or Hindu teacher, who speaks in parables. Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati is one of the two principal disciples of the Shankaracharya of Joyotispith and Dwarka, two historic and highly respected Hindu offices. The Swami wore the traditional saffron robes, which also covered his head, a
nd a necklace of bulky rudraksha beads round his neck. There was a statue of Saraswati, the goddess of learning, in one corner of the room where we spoke. Like the Mufti, the Swami seemed remarkably young to be holding a high religious office in India and to be the head of a Math, or monastery.
When I asked him how Varanasi’s culture had survived, a smile lit up his broad handsome face. He was clearly a man who enjoyed discourse. ‘A tree that bends in the wind will not break,’ he said. ‘We have one rule: there has to be liquidity in our traditions and our teaching. To be flexible like that tree you need to accept that there are many ways to God. There are many rivers flowing into the sea, and they are different; some twist and turn, some are straighter, but they all want to merge in the sea. So with God’s grace there are many ways we can reach God. Don’t pay attention to the way but to the goal. If the goal is good the way will be good.’
‘But this requires humility, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ the Swami replied, tapping the small desk he was sitting behind cross-legged. ‘It’s like the guru who asked his disciple, “Do you know the Truth?” The disciple replied, “I know,” and the guru sent him away to think again. Back came the disciple and this time he said, “I don’t know,” but he was sent away again. Finally he returned saying, “I don’t know whether I know or not.” That, you see, is the humility I mean, the humility to admit the limit of our knowledge.’
I told the Swami that this was what I was trying to say in my book. He smiled again, ‘So you are saying that you know, aren’t you?’
‘In a way yes and in a way no,’ I replied, getting myself tied up in knots.
The Swami was amused at my confusion. ‘There are some people who do discover the truth,’ he said. ‘But the trouble is that when you discover the truth, you become part of it, there is no other, and you no longer have a self left to tell the truth. You are like the man made of salt who said he wanted to find out how deep the ocean was but by the time he reached its bed, he had dissolved into the ocean.’
I thought the time had come to bring the discussion back onto a more practical plain, so I asked the Swami why he was so confident that Varanasi would not be swept off its feet by modern materialist culture. He came up with another parable.
‘Materialists are like the man who is driving at night with his headlights on but no light inside the car. He can see what is outside but he can’t see what is inside. A materialist society is not a society at all.’ He continued, ‘It is nothing more than a bazaar. I believe a time comes when people realise there is such emptiness within themselves that they turn to what will fill them. Hunger starts small and it’s only when you are fully hungry that you go to a restaurant. When they are totally empty, people will go back to their old ways to fill that emptiness.’
*
Varanasi and India have taught me to respect the faith I was born into. For me to become a Hindu would be to deny that Christianity is also a way to God and to reject the teaching in Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati’s parable about the many rivers flowing to the sea. The Swami told me, ‘Your well-being lies within your own tradition.’ I was born a Christian and I believe that by remaining a Christian I am respecting fate and tradition, both of which are such important aspects of a balanced life. There is also a question of loyalty to the Church and to the priests and others who have kept my faith alive at those times when I had almost abandoned it. Bede Griffiths, whose whole life was dedicated to God in a way mine certainly has not been, wrote of a marriage of East and West. He didn’t divorce the West and marry the East.
Varanasi demonstrates that a marriage of East and West is possible. For me, as someone brought up as a Westerner yet much influenced by India, it also confirms that if the marriage is to take place the West must be flexible in its thinking and suspicious of certainties. It must seek for balance between the material and the spiritual, between reason and other means of perceiving reality, between tradition and change, between individuals and society, between humans and nature. It must have the humility to live respectfully with different faiths and cultures, and to be prepared to learn from them too. That, of course, means that the East also has to have the humility to learn from the West. Throughout this book I have argued that we should not fall into the error of assuming that the East has got it all right and the West has got it all wrong. For me, India acknowledges that we can never find absolute answers to the most important questions in life, but we must go on asking them. This is why I have called my book India’s Unending Journey. It is a journey that we can all learn from.
FURTHER READING
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God (Vintage, 1999)
— The Battle for God (HarperCollins, 2001)
— A Short History of Myth (Canongate, 2006)
Badrinath, Chaturvedi, Dharma, India and the World Order (Saint Andrew Press & Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993)
— The Mahabharata: An Inquiry in the Human Condition (Orient Longman, 2006)
Beames, John, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian (Chatto & Windus, 1961)
Bhalla, Surjit S., Imagine There Is No Country: Poverty Inequality and Growth in the Era of Globalization (Institute for International Economics, 2002)
Bharati, Swami Veda, God (The Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, 1979)
Birt, John, The Harder Path (Little, Brown & Co, 2002)
Brar, Lt Gen K.S., Operation Blue Star: The True Story (UBS, 1993)
Brendon, Vyvyen, Children of the Raj (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005)
Brown, Judith M., Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Yale University Press, 1989)
Cato, Molly Scott, Market, Shmarket: Building the Post-Capitalist Economy (New Clarion Press, 2006)
Chapman, Mark D., Blair’s Britain (Darton, L. & T., 2005)
Clarke, Richard, And Is It True? (Dominican Publications, 2000)
the Dalai Lama and Bstan-’Dzin Rqy, Ethics for the New Millennium (Riverhead Books, 2001)
Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006)
Dupuis, Jacques, Towards A Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis, 1997)
Eck, Diana, Banaras, City of Light (Arkana, 2003)
Fermor, Patrick Leigh, A Time to Keep Silence (John Murray, 1994)
Ford, Adam, Faith and Science (Epworth Press, 1999)
Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Affluent Society (Penguin Books, 1999)
Goodall, Dominic (trans. & ed.), Hindu Scriptures (J.M. Dent, 1996)
Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (3 vols.) (OUP, 1984)
Gray, John, Straw Dogs (Granta, 2003)
— Heresies (Granta, 2004)
Griffiths, Bede, The Marriage of East and West (Canterbury Press, 2003)
Hamilton, Clive, Growth Fetish (Pluto Press, 2004)
Handy, Charles, The Hungry Spirit (Arrow, 1998)
Hannon, Patrick, Church, State, Morality and Law (Gill and MacMillan, 1992)
— Moral Decision Making (Veritas, 2005)
Heifetz, Hank (trans.), The Origin of the Young God: Kalidas’ Kumarasambhava, (The Regents of the University of California, 1990)
Hines, Colin, Localization: A Global Manifesto (Earthscan Publications, 2000)
Hopper, Ken and Will, The Puritan Gift: Triumph, Collapse and Revival of an American Dream (I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007)
Hughes, Gerard, The God of Surprises (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1996)
Imhasly-Gandhy, Rashna, The Psychology of Love: the Wisdom of Indian Mythology (Roli Books, 2001)
Iyengar, B.K.S, Light on Life (Rodale, 2005)
Jaffrelot, Christophe, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (C.Hurst, 1996)
Johnson, Robert A., We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (Harper San Francisco, 1983)
Kakar, Sudhir, Intimate Relations (University of Chicago Press, 1990)
— The Ascetic of Desire (Overlook Press, 2002)
Lannoy, Richard, Benares: a World Within a World (Indica Books, 2002)
Lipner, Julius, Hindus:
Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge, 1994)
McGahern, John, Memoir (Faber and Faber, 2006)
McWilliams, David, The Pope’s Children (Gill & Macmillan, 2006)
Miller, Barbara Stoler (trans.), The Hermit and the Love Thief (Columbia University Press, 1978)
Nanda, B.R., Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (OUP, 1958)
— In Search of Gandhi: Essays and Reflections (OUP, 2002)
O’Donovan, Gerald, Father Ralph (Brandon, 1993)
O’Muyrchu, Diarmuid, Religion in Exile (Gateway, 2000)
O’Siadhail, Michael, Poems 1975-1995 (Bloodaxe Books, 1999)
Pande, G.C., Foundations of Indian Culture (2 vols.) (Motilal Banarsidass, 1984)
Punja, Shobita, Daughters of the Ocean: Discovering the Goddess Within (Viking, 1996)
— Divine Ecstasy, The Story of Khajuraho (Viking, 2003)
Radhakrishnan, Dr Sarvepalli, The Hindu View of Life (Allen & Unwin, 1926)
— Eastern Religions and Western Thought (OUP, 1939)
— Bhagavadgita (George Allen and Unwin, 1948)
— The Principal Upanishads (OUP, 1953)
Rama, Swami, Living with the Himalayan Masters (The Himalayan Institute Press, 1978)
Ramanujan, A.K., Speaking of Siva (Penguin, 1973)
Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi, Eastern Philosophy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)
Richman, Paula (ed.), Many Ramanayas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (OUP, 1991)
Sachs, Jeffrey The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Life Time (Penguin Books, 2005)
Sacks, Chief Rabbi Jonathan, The Dignity of Difference (Penguin Books, 2005)
Sen, Amartya, The Argumentative Indian (Penguin Books, 2006)
