Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi's Gyan Vapi

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Few places in the world carry the heavy burden of history as effortlessly as Kashi, or Varanasi, has. The holy city embodies the very soul of our civilization and personifies the resilience that we have displayed over centuries in the face of numerous adversities and fatal attacks.

Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi's Gyan Vapi recreates the history, antiquity and sanctity of Kashi as the abode of Bhagwan Shiva in the form of Vishweshwara, or Vishwanath. Shiva himself assured his devotees of salvation if they leave their mortal coils in the city. The book delves into the history of this self-manifested swayambhu jyotirlinga shrine of Vishweshwara, which for centuries has been both a refuge for the devout and a target of the bloodiest waves of iconoclasm. However, each time an attempt was made to obliterate the temple by demolishing it, it managed to rise and prosper.

Waiting for Shiva documents these cataclysmic events in the temple's history. The final death blow was dealt in 1669 by the Mughal despot Aurangzeb, who demolished the temple and erected few domes on the partially destroyed western wall to call it a mosque. The area that is now called the Gyan Vapi mosque and the surrounding land that lies adjacent to the new temple of Vishwanath, which came up towards the end of the 18th century, have always been one of intense contestation. Bloody riots overran Varanasi over this issue multiple times in the past. During the colonial era, the doors of the British courts were knocked at to settle the occupancy issue, and they adjudicated the matter several times. Post-Independence, too, the desire to 'liberate' the complex has been seething in the Hindu imagination. A new suit filed in 2021 before the Varanasi civil court reopened a long-festering historical wound. Despite several appeals right up to the Supreme Court to dismiss the plaint, a survey by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was ordered, which laid bare the truth in its findings in January 2024.

Vikram Sampath's latest offering retraces the long history of this bitterly disputed site and the dramatic twists and turns in the checkered past of this hoary shrine. The long-suppressed secrets that lay hidden in Gyan Vapi finally finds a voice through this book.

Dr. Vikram Sampath is a historian based in Bangalore. He is the author of eight acclaimed books, including Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars, Voice of the Veena: S. Balachander, Women of the Records and Indian Classical Music and the Gramophone, 1900-1930. His two-volume biography of V.D. Savarkar, Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1881-1924 and Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966, and his latest book, Bravehearts of Bharat: Vignettes from Indian History, have gone on to become national bestsellers.

In 2021, Vikram was elected a fellow of the prestigious Royal Historical Society. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi's first Yuva Puraskar in English literature and the ARSC International Award for excellence in historical research in New York for his book My Name Is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician. The book has been adapted for a play, Gauhar, by Lillette Dubey. He was among four writers and artists selected as writers-in-residence at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 2015.

Vikram has a doctorate in history and music from the University of Queensland, Australia, and was a senior research fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (2017-2019). He was also a fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and Eisenhower Fellowships 2020 and a visiting fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2010. Currently, he is an adjunct senior fellow at Monash University, Australia.

Bharat is the oldest civilization in the world, and yet, it is a B common lamentation among scholars that this culture does not record its history well. This lack of meticulous record-keeping has, in particular, confounded the Western mind and frustrated historians trying to make chronological sense of this complex kaleidoscope. Bharat's rendition of its itihasa may appear whimsical to the modern mind straight-jacketed in logic. But we need to understand: for a civilization that has brought out some of the most astounding work in areas as diverse as art, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, science, epistemology, mathematics, spirituality, and recording facts and linear events should have been fairly easy. But this is, as is every aspect of this culture, a conscious choice. Bharat tells its history in a dialectic way, not as facts and dates and events, but as stories or Puranas that stay relevant for all time and to every human being. Especially when it comes to Kashi, whose hoary past predates all human records, it is almost impossible to untangle the mystical and mysterious threads that weave its history.

Fact or legend, itihasa or Purana, Kashi's seminal influence on Bharat's spiritual trajectory is profound and undeniable. However, more important than 'When' are 'What' and 'Why'. What is Kashi? Why was it created? The most complex and sophisticated machine on the planet, that's Kashi. It was built as a magnificent yantra, an instrument in the form of a city. A complex machine of perfect geometrical proportions in five concentric layers across a 54-km radius with a tower of light-kashi-at its centre.

While I sit down to write this, the excitement and unprecedented fervour that grips my country is unmissable. We are at the cusp of a momentous occasion with the Ram mandir in Ayodhya all set for a historic inauguration on 22 January 2024. While all the competitive politics surrounding it, especially in a year when the country gears itself up for a bitterly contested general election, is inevitable and also insignificant for several of us, the confident expression of hope and faith for a multitude of common Indians who have no overt political or ideological tilts is heartwarming. For a meta-civilizational hero like Bhagwan Shri Rama, who inspires adoration and respect across nations, be it Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, and so on; where art forms, murals, and dance dramas like Kecak in Bali or Khon in Thailand are inspired by his life story; where the Ramakien, his biography is a national epic in Thailand-to not have a grand temple at his believed birthplace was a national shame. This is being rectified now. It is therefore truly an epochal moment when the soul of a civilization long-suppressed seems to be finally finding utterance-seventy-five years after the nation found that voice. Common people are sending in their meagre contributions for the ceremony. Temples all over India are planning to light up in delight on that day. Mass prayers and marathon chanting sprees of Ram Naam or Hanuman Chalisa are being assiduously planned. In an off-season Diwali, people plan to place earthen lamps in front of their homes to commemorate the return of Bhagwan Shri Rama from his exile. Hindu temples across the world, including America, are organizing celebrations and live broadcasts. In short, everyone is being that proverbial squirrel that did its tiny bit in building Rama's ambitious bridge to Lanka.