Temples in Transition

Balancing Sacred Heritage and Urban Ambitions in India

by Aneri Patel

Hindu temples in India have long functioned as dynamic sites of religious practice, cultural memory, and political negotiation. The recent redevelopment of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, a major infrastructure project connecting the Kashi Vishwanath Temple to the Ganges River, exemplifies the tensions between preserving sacred heritage and adapting religious spaces to contemporary urban and political contexts. By modernizing temple infrastructure and improving accessibility, the project reconfigures the sacred landscape to meet the demands of both religious practice and tourism. This transformation raises critical questions about how religious sites are conceptualized in scholarly discourse, particularly in relation to material culture, religious identity, and state power. 

This paper compares Diana Eck’s Banaras: City of Light (1982), Catherine Asher’s Architecture of Mughal India (1992), and Kajri Jain’s Gods in the Time of Democracy (2021) to examine how different methodological and theoretical approaches construct religion in relation to sacred space. While Eck provides a phenomenological and historical account of Banaras that emphasizes lived religion and sacred geography, Asher situates temple transformations within broader political and artistic shifts, analyzing religious spaces as sites of cultural negotiation.¹ These earlier works offer crucial historical context for understanding the evolution of sacred spaces. Jain, in contrast, focuses on contemporary religious iconography and temple projects. She frames religious space as a contested and evolving category shaped by neoliberal development and state-led urbanization.² Examining these works together shows how the past still shapes today’s changes in religion and city life. 

By placing these three perspectives in conversation, this paper investigates how scholarly constructions of religion shape debates on heritage preservation, political symbolism, and urban religious identity in contemporary India. In doing so, it explores how modernization efforts, such as the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project, navigate the tensions between sacred continuity and the imperatives of contemporary urban development. 

In the first section of this paper, I will analyze the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor and its impact on pilgrimage practices, focusing on how it enhances access to the temple and the Ganges River. Thereafter, I reemphasize that sacred spaces like Kashi are not only shaped by religious practices but also by political and economic forces. Ultimately, I conclude that the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor exemplifies how sacred continuity is reimagined within the changing dynamics of urban development and state-led initiatives. 

Pilgrimage and the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor 

The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project plays a crucial role in reconfiguring pilgrimage practices by enhancing access to the temple and the Ganges River, a key site where ritual components of the Kashi pilgrimage circuit take place. Here, modern interventions shape devotional experiences. Traditionally, pilgrimage in Kashi involves a sequence of ritual movements, including darśana (the act of seeing and being seen by the deity) of the deity and bathing in the Ganges to purify oneself.³ By widening pathways and creating direct access between the temple and the river, the corridor project alters the physical and experiential dimensions of pilgrimage. This infrastructural transformation illustrates how pilgrimage is not merely a spiritual journey but also a practice embedded in changing urban geographies. While going to the river for purification remains central to the pilgrimage, the modern urban landscape alters how and where these rituals occur. The redesigned access points and layout facilitate the journey while transforming its significance. Pilgrims now navigate a space that blends sacred and urban elements, illustrating how pilgrimage geography adapts to contemporary urban development. As a result, the corridor exemplifies how pilgrimage practices adapt to new spatial and political configurations. In doing so, it constructs religion through both continuity and change. 

Sacred Space as Adaptive: Ritual, Politics, and Economy 

Understanding the nature of a sacred space lies at the heart of understanding pilgrimage. Sacred spaces are not static; rather, they evolve through the interplay of ritual, political power, and economic forces. Placing Eck, Asher and Jain in conversation illuminates their dynamic nature. Eck frames Kashi as a tirtha, a crossing place between the earthly and the divine, where religious experience is shaped by pilgrimage and ritual rather than material structures.⁵ She argues that the city’s spiritual identity is not dependent on physical permanence but on the continual reenactment of sacred geography: “[To know] what Hindus ‘see’ in Kashi only begins with the city that meets the eye.”⁶ Eck’s phenomenological approach emphasizes the ritual centrality of pilgrimage, where darśana (sacred sight) and ritual bathing reasserts Kashi’s status as a holy city. Pilgrimage is rooted in practice rather than physical structures, which allows it to persist even as the city’s landscape changes. As she explains, “Not only are other tirthas said to be present in Kashi, but Kashi is present elsewhere…”⁷ This shows that Kashi’s sacredness transcends its physical form, existing through ritual practice and replication in other spaces. Eck appears to be arguing that modernization, such as the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, with its widened pathways and new direct routes between temple and river, does not necessarily disrupt the city’s sanctity. Sacredness is maintained through lived practice rather than physical permanence. 

Asher, on the other hand, complicates this view by highlighting how religious spaces have historically been reshaped by political power.⁸ Whilst Eck places emphasis on what persists at sacred spaces and is integral to their identity, Asher appears to place emphasis on what changes. Asher illustrates how pilgrimage sites have historically evolved in response to changing political and social dynamics.⁹ Detailing how temple renovations under Mughal rule both restricted and facilitated access to certain religious communities, Asher argues that state intervention has long shaped pilgrimage routes and temple structures.¹⁰ She notes how Mughal rulers patronized and reconstructed temples as a means of asserting imperial authority, demonstrating that sacred spaces are never isolated from political agendas: “The evolution of imperial Mughal architectural taste and idiom was directly related to political and cultural ideology.”¹¹ These two differing views need not be seen as contradictory but merely two sides of the same coin. Eck might respond to Asher by suggesting that, despite these political interventions, the sacredness of Kashi persists through oral and textual traditions that preserve its significance, ensuring that even when rituals could not be performed on the land, the space retained its sanctity in the collective imagination. 

In the contemporary era, Jain extends this analysis by focusing on how neoliberal forces shape religious spaces, arguing that temple projects are now entangled with state-led development and market capitalism.¹² Pilgrimage has long functioned as a bridge between sacred tradition and modern infrastructure, adapting to shifting social and political conditions. Jain observes that religious sites are increasingly leveraged for tourism and economic gain, making them “part of the temporal, territorial, and moral-economic infrastructures [especially through the mobilization of annual religious festivals].”¹³ Thus, she argues that contemporary pilgrimage is embedded within India’s neoliberal economy, where religious infrastructure projects like the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor facilitate not just devotion but also state-controlled religious tourism. She notes that “the resignification of the land itself as landscape” supports this transformation.¹⁴ This suggests that pilgrimage is not merely a religious act but a mechanism for sustaining sacred continuity in urbanized, commercialized environments. Rather than being opposed to modernity, pilgrimage adapts to it, making the experience compatible with infrastructural expansion. 

Together, these perspectives reveal not only that Kashi’s sacredness is continually reimagined through religious, political, and economic transformations, but also that it is scholars themselves who shape this reimagining, by choosing which forces to foreground in their accounts of the sacred 

Sacred Spaces at the Intersection of Power, Commerce, and Devotion 

While religious experience may transcend material changes, the state and market nonetheless play significant roles in shaping how sacred spaces are accessed, regulated, and reconstructed. Sacred continuity is maintained through religious engagement, suggesting an assumption, common in phenomenological accounts: spiritual meaning remains intact despite material transformation. However, Asher, a more contemporary author, challenges this assumption by demonstrating that sacred landscapes are actively shaped by political and economic forces. The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, for example, is presented as a project that enhances spiritual access, but it also aligns with broader state-led urban renewal initiatives. This perspective highlights the dual nature of urban redevelopment. While it may facilitate pilgrimage and religious continuity, it also subjects sacred space to governance, commodification, and political spectacle. Still, for many devotees, these changes are not necessarily disruptive. Sacred presence endures through embodied practice, even within transformed environments. Often these elements are intertwined and difficult to disassemble analytically, depending on scholarly emphasis.  

A closer look at the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor illustrates these complexities. The project has significantly improved accessibility for pilgrims, particularly the elderly and disabled, by widening pathways and creating direct access to the Ganges. Yet, this transformation also involved the demolition of over 300 homes and smaller structures, displacing local communities and altering the intimate spatial relationships between devotees and the sacred landscape.¹⁵ Similarly, Jain’s analysis of religious infrastructure projects shows how the expansion of pilgrimage circuits and the construction of monumental religious icons serve devotional purposes.¹⁶ These projects also align with state and market agendas by boosting tourism and local economies.¹⁷ Modernization, while enhancing religious access and visibility, also reconfigures the socio-religious fabric of sacred sites, embedding them within broader networks of governance and commerce. 

Rather than viewing modernization and religious tradition as opposing forces, these scholars show how sacred continuity is negotiated within shifting political and economic landscapes. Eck demonstrates that religious engagement sustains Kashi’s sacredness, Asher highlights political intervention in temple spaces, and Jain reveals how infrastructure projects integrate religious sites into state and market agendas.^18 19 20 The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor exemplifies this process, enhancing pilgrimage accessibility while reflecting broader urban planning strategies. However, modernization often involves trade-offs, such as the removal of smaller shrines or the streamlining of pathways, which alters the intimate, organic nature of devotion. These changes reflect the ongoing tension between maintaining sacred practices and accommodating urban growth. Urban redevelopment thus becomes a new medium through which the sacred is expressed and institutionalized in contemporary India. 

Negotiating Sacred Continuity in Urban Modernity 

The transformation of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor exemplifies how sacred spaces are reimagined at the intersection of religion, politics, and economy. Drawing on Eck’s phenomenological emphasis on sacred geography, Asher’s exploration of political patronage, and Jain’s analysis of neoliberal urbanization, this paper has shown that religious spaces like Kashi do not only endure modernization but actively integrate new spatial and ideological frameworks. Though, what becomes labeled as “religious” in this transformation is subjective and depends on the scholar’s theoretical lens or focus. 

Additionally, Victor Turner’s concept of communitas (1969) offers a useful lens to understand pilgrimage.²¹ Even when reshaped by urban redevelopment, it fosters a collective religious experience that transcends individual identities and reaffirms sacred bonds. The liminal nature of pilgrimage, where devotees navigate between the profane and the sacred, is reconfigured by infrastructural changes, yet the ritual journey itself sustains continuity in meaning. On the contrary, Simon Coleman’s work on pilgrimage (2002) highlights how mobility and space in religious practice are not static but responsive to socio-political transformations.²² This emphasizes that pilgrimage can embody both resistance to and accommodation of modernity. The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, while facilitating state-led tourism and commercial interests, simultaneously reinforces the spiritual significance of Kashi by enabling “uninterrupted” ritual practices.²³ This duality shows that sacred spaces, rather than being passive sites of heritage, are dynamic arenas where religious identity, political power, and economic forces are negotiated. As India’s urban landscapes evolve, the reconfiguration of pilgrimage and temple infrastructure demonstrates that sacred continuity is not merely preserved but creatively rearticulated within shifting social and political contexts. 

1. Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. 1982. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Asher, Catherine B. Architecture of Mughal India. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ↩︎
2. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Time of Democracy. 2021. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ↩︎
3. Morgan, David. “Visual Practice and the Function of Images.” The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2014. ↩︎
4. HCP Design Planning and Management. “Architectural Model of the Kashi Vishwanath Dhan Project.” ↩︎
5. Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. 1982. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 6. ↩︎
6. Ibid, 7. ↩︎
7. Ibid, 40. ↩︎
8. Asher, Catherine B. Architecture of Mughal India. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ↩︎
9. Ibid. ↩︎
10. Ibid. ↩︎
11. Ibid, xvii. ↩︎
12. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Time of Democracy. 2021. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 42. ↩︎
13. Ibid, 46. ↩︎
14. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Time of Democracy. 2021. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 64. ↩︎
15. Lazzaretti, Vera. “Security and Heritage in the Making of Urban Futures: A New Research Avenue.” 2021. Urban Studies 58 (9): 1791–1808. ↩︎
16. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Time of Democracy. 2021. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ↩︎
17. Pati, Ananya, and Mujahid Husain. “People’s Perspectives on Heritage Conservation and Tourism Development: A Case Study of Varanasi.” 2020. Journal of Heritage Management 5 (1): 1–18. ↩︎
18. Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light. 1982. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ↩︎
19. Asher, Catherine B. Architecture of Mughal India. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ↩︎
20. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Time of Democracy. 2021. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ↩︎
21. Turner, Victor W. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. 1969. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. ↩︎
22. Coleman, Simon. “Do You Believe in Pilgrimage?: Communitas, Contestation and Beyond.” 2002. Anthropological Theory 2 (3): 355–68. ↩︎
23. Pati, Ananya, and Mujahid Husain. “People’s Perspectives on Heritage Conservation and Tourism Development: A Case Study of Varanasi.” 2020. Journal of Heritage Management 5 (1): 1–18. ↩︎