ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

印度瓦拉纳西雄心勃勃的 Kashi Vishvanath Corridor 走廊于 2019 年 3 月由总理纳伦德拉·莫迪 (Narendra Modi) 揭幕。该项目将把该地点变成“世界级”的朝圣目的地，该项目需要建造一条连接恒河的纪念性道路到城市的主要印度教寺庙。在“美化”区域的中间，矗立着 Gyanvapi 清真寺——这是印度教民族主义运动的长期目标，旨在从穆斯林的存在中“解放”原本应该是印度教的礼拜场所。通过将纵向研究收集的民族志材料与对当地印地语报纸的批判性分析相结合，我追溯了走廊作为“遗产项目”的起源。我建议，通过它，一个新的遗产制度正在被提出来适应，并提供证据，当前印度民族主义对印度作为一个印度教国家的预测。然而，我也认为，这种制度不仅仅是自上而下议程的结果，而是源于一个反直觉的过程：居民（最终被驱逐的）自下而上的遗产动员似乎已经告知，如果不是激起了随后的官方叙述和走廊作为遗产的烙印。