New monuments for the new India

Heritage-Making in a 'Timeless City

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5700517
AutoresVera Lazzaretti (0000-0002-5621-189X, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen27
Número11
Páginas1085-1100
Fecha de publicación2021-11-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13527258.2021.1954055
OpenAlexW3197223447
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas28

The ambitious Kashi Vishvanath Corridor in Varanasi (India) was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2019. Set to turn the site into a 'world-class' pilgrimage destination, the project entails the construction of a monumental path that connects the Ganges river to the city's main Hindu temple. In the middle of the area under 'beautification', stands the Gyanvapi mosque - a longstanding target of Hindu nationalist campaigns to 'liberate' supposedly originally Hindu places of worship from Muslim presence. By combining ethnographic material collected through longitudinal research with a critical analysis of local Hindi newspapers, I trace the genesis of the Corridor as a 'heritage project'. I suggest that, through it, a new heritage regime is being put forward to suit, and provide evidence for, current Hindu nationalist projections of India as a Hindu nation. However, I also argue that this regime is not just the result of a top-down agenda, but originates from a counter-intuitive process: bottom-up mobilisations of heritage by residents (who were eventually evicted) seem to have informed, if not provoked, subsequent official narratives and the branding of the Corridor as heritage

Timeless · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies