The Grass-Roots Urbanism of the Hindu Temple

406 SEEKING THE CITY From the Sacred Tree to the City of Gopurams: - The Grass-Roots Urbanism of the Hindu Temple VINAYAK BHARNE Woodbury University “Religion is the general theory of this world, its en- ‘objects’. Even as their formal and stylistic canons cyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, are repeatedly elaborated, their elusive urbanistic its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its 2 moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its patterns remain underestimated . As alternative universal basis of consolation and justifi cation1.” dialogues on place-making and populist informal- ity, and as contradictions to mainstream prac- Karl Marx tices, these patterns reveal another paradigm of urbanism - of spontaneity, bricolage, multiplicity Though the magnifi cent Meenakshi Temple in and ambiguity. Madurai in south-India appears at fi rst glance to be the result of an exclusive, solo architectural THE TREE design, a closer examination reveals quite the op- posite. It is in fact a piecemeal cohesion of mul- As the antediluvian allegories of Hindu India, tiple buildings and open spaces, beginning with trees have since Vedic times connoted the idea an anonymous stone lingam (phallic symbol of of supernatural abodes: where things happen as Shiva) in around 1600 B.C., and the subsequent part of larger cosmic orders and under whose commemoration of that sacred spot over centu- branches lies a place of enlightenment. Not sur- ries of communal worship, patronage and crafts- prisingly the origins of many Hindu temples have manship. In this sense, the entire temple town begun with a tree, and, shading a smeared stone of Madurai as its stands today represents the te- or a diminutive portrait of divinity, or marked with leological end of an ancient lineage of grass-roots fl ags and banners, the devasthana (literally ‘place activism powerful enough to bear the makings of of the Gods’)3 has mysteriously appeared under an entire city. its boughs - be it along the roadside or remote in the fi elds. As the anointed abode of the gramade- Some three millennia since Madurai’s inception, vata4- the deity synonymous with the surrounding such patterns continue to exert a dominant infl u- locality and everything within it – it is worshipped ence on the contemporary Indian city. With the through diurnal and seasonal rituals directly un- daily infl ux of village migrants into the Indian me- der that ‘possessed’ canopy. In time, a smeared tropolis also comes the ‘import’ of rural patterns stone may seem to bear the spiritual weight of an of life, bringing among other things a sacred sub- entire community, and with prayers increasingly stratum into the public and private dimensions of answered, elicit its transformation into the rudi- urbanity. The Indian city turns ‘supernatural’ (a ments of a Hindu shrine. When such a tree dies, mountain is not just a mountain but the abode the spot remains sacred, believed to be vibrant of the Gods) sprinkled with a thousand nameless with the energies of the innumerable rituals that spots of religious solace that transcend all norms became the focus of community worship. In short, of law and nurture a parallel urbanism associated a tree marks the genius loci of a place to be. with Hindu temples. This notion of a ‘place’ under a tree remains a While Hindu Temples have long been the subject central rural to urban transfer from the idea of of signifi cant architectural scholarship, much of it the chaupal - the village center under a Banyan or has remained focused on their idea as embellished Peepul tree where elders gather to discuss mat- FROM THE SACRED TREE TO THE CITY OF GOPURAMS 407 coming the centers of various invisible cults where the urbanite and the villager, the aristocrat and the gentry (and even the cow, the dog, and the pigeon) can strangely coexist despite their differ- ences. In his essay Look Out! Darshana Ahead, Ranjit Hoskote observes how the 1990s streetside shrines in Mumbai’s suburbs in fact “follow a stan- dard evolutionary graph: fi rst the platform, then the parapet; in due course, an archway, this ad- ditive process culminating in the consecration of a miniature temple, rendered in grey-veined marble, complete with grille-guarded, white-tiled sanctum, bells, saffron pennant, and that vital basis of the shrine’s fi nancial model, a collection box.”6 In the city of Panaji, around its 3.5-mile long promenade along the Mandovi River, one can trace such an elusive sacred trail. Beginning with a miniature temple at Miramar Beach and ending with another at the City Bus Stand, as many as a dozen shrines at different stages of evolution along taxi- stands and roadsides embody the silent activism and spiritual will behind this informal cartogra- phy of belief. For instance, the Maruti Deul grew in about three decades from a diminutive altar into a franchised shrine backed by a respectable Image 1 – The shrine under the tree as a ‘community center’ (photo – author) bourgeois patronage, and served by an assigned priest. Likewise the shrine today commonly known ters of importance - tracing back the Vedic image as Campal Ganesh transformed within a decade of a guru preaching to his disciples under a tree, from a street tree into a small chamber with a and implying the need for little more than a shad- communal guardianship strong enough to warrant ed space to impart wisdom. The ancient Vedic al- a law suit against the municipality that threatened tar is a variation on this theme: a simple stone its removal for the purposes of road-widening7. or brick platform demarcating sacred space, cen- tered around a smoking fi re that consumes offer- Ironically, for all such populist paranoia, these 5 ings and chants made to the Gods . With the rural shrines are illegal encroachments on the pub- to urban emulsifi cation, selected street trees now lic domain, blatantly violating zoning ordinances become the local shrines of markets, taxi stands and by-laws, and it is not that they always escape and squatters; anaconic places regularly adorned their infractions. In Mumbai for instance, in Octo- with vermilion and fl owers and venerated with ber 2003, the municipal authorities, undeterred earthen oil-lamps. Clearly it does not take much by citizen protest, launched a campaign to de- to make a ‘center’ in urban India, these minimal molish street shrines. But though several illegal places beneath a tree representing the simplest shrines and temples have vanished leaving behind prototypes of an Indian urbanism (Image 1). traces of their trees or paving, their continuing veneration as sacred ‘ruins’ implies possible re- THE SHRINE incarnations through a rigorous religiosity that could compete with the best of their accredited As parallel components of this urbanism, anony- city temple counterparts. mous wayside shrines like their biological counterparts shroud all sources of their existence. Yet for all their semiotic association, these shrines Growing as mysteriously as their inception, these are contradictions to the canonized symbolism of sacred impregnations into the public realm are a Hindu Temple. Their orientation to the cardinal nurtured through silent communal consensus, be- directions is ad-hoc as opposed to the strict east- 408 SEEKING THE CITY west alignment of franchised city temples; they er shrines arranged in careful relation to it. The all face any and every way, as if no canon mat- side and rear enclosures of the compound contain tered at all, and unlike the managed hygienic en- rooms for lodging, storing sacred appurtenances vironment one associates with city temples, most and follies, a kitchen, and administrative and ser- are so wonderfully raucous and ‘dirty’, open to all vice facilities; and gates within these walls lead to people and practices. Perhaps it is this legal and the residences of priests and other staff, eventu- sectarian immunity that augments their presence ally dissolving into the village beyond9. as artifacts charging urban space. For the fi eld of space that surrounds these shrines gradually Within this defi ned realm, the patterns of an ev- garners a complex social signifi cance. It is from eryday urbanism reach a crescendo during festive where one prays to the deity; it is the pradak- gatherings. The annual jatra (fair) at the Nava- shina-patha or path of ritualistic circumambula- durga Temple in the village of Madkai in Goa typi- tion symbolizing holy union8; it is the setting for fi es this polarity. Organized through meticulous communal festive gatherings. And with this open planning by various committees comprising both space as important as the object itself, the shrine villagers and urbanites, an elaborate event re- as an activity magnet now attracts not just daily peats its timeless festive rituals on that appointed worshippers, but entities interested in commercial day each November. The temple compound sits on dealings with this evolving destination - the mo- a hillock connected to the road by an enormous bile food shack, the craft stand, the fl ower seller, stone stairway. On the night before the festivities, the alm-seeker, even the loud-speaker playing this road is closed to traffi c, and transformed into devotional music all represent integral elements a transient ‘plaza’, with temporary stalls of bam- of this evolving larger urbanism. boo and cloth. The stairway itself becomes the setting for fl ower sellers that occupy its edges along THE COMPOUND the entire length. An enormous shed of bamboo and thatch erected in front of the temple, further The enlargement of a shrine into a larger temple, serves the fl ower, bangle and color sellers. And and the erection of a fence to secure its sacred around the temple various bamboo and canvas contents and demarcate it from the secular world stalls transform the otherwise serene enclave into is not just a sign of its growing repute, but also a bazaar-like setting for buying and selling food, of its changing status-quo from anonymous il- toys and daily appurtenances.

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