Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to be - and with the wisdom of Solomon. The mess Rajiv had
generously added to had been piling up for centuries.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who scared the British, not the
intellectual Marxist Jawaharlal Nehru. The sheer power of
Hinduism terrified the Christian soldiers, and Gandhi embodied
that, embraced it, used it. He was, or his public image was, Vedic
Hinduism incarnate. Fortunately for the British, he was genuinely
spiritual, and his principles were unshakeable. One could argue
that Partition was pushed so hard because, beyond a farewell divide-
and-rule, it would also guarantee that Mahatma Gandhi would not
pull the strings of India's first independent government.
Opposed to the division of India, convinced that Hindu and
Muslim could live side by side, as they had done, Gandhi chose to
face chaos rather than partition. Finally he lost even Nehru's support
over the issue. Thus Britain got the man it had nurtured for the role,
Nehru, in power, his umbilical cord to Gandhi severed. And the
imperialists left their man to cope with insoluble problems, problems
that could not fail to lead to war with Pakistan. Gandhi realised this.
Those naive days of exhilaration following independence after so
very long, freedom's euphoria, have evaporated now. It was a long
party, but India is sober once more, finally learning to take control.
Such are the effects of colonialization that a whole generation must
pass before the paralysing spell wears off.
Everything in India has subtext upon subtext, a palimpsest. And
Benares, along with all else, is an architectural palimpsest. Buildings
built upon buildings, palaces on palaces, temples upon temples, the
place is a layer cake of history. But it's unlikely any archaeologist
will ever get permission to excavate it: every inch is holy ground.
Rishikesh, Allahabad, Hardwar: the great Mother Ganges
sanctifies many cities as she flows from the sacred Himalayan peaks,
twisting and turning south through the parched lowlands. Like so
many rivers in myth and imagination, the meanderings of Mother
Ganges represent the inexorable wanderings of life itself. The image,
of course, is in the Vedas, part of that great cycle: sun, cloud, rain,
river, ocean, sun, cloud.
The Ganges is not always a gentle mother. Sometimes she
