Kashi Vishwanath

Kashi is, above all, the city of moksha — Hindus hold that to die within its bounds is to be granted liberation, and Shiva himself is said to whisper the taraka mantra into the ear of the dying. Vishwanath is the presiding lord of that city, and a darshan here, joined with a dip in the Ganga at the ghats below, is among the most cherished acts a Hindu pilgrim can make.

The temple is one of the busiest places of worship in the world, its lanes a ceaseless press of pilgrims, its bells and chants unending from before dawn to late at night. It anchors the wider sacred geography of Kashi — the riverfront of Manikarnika and Dashashwamedh, the Panchakroshi pilgrimage — of which it has always been the heart.

Vishwanath, the 'Lord of the Universe', has drawn pilgrims to Kashi — Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously living cities on earth — for as long as memory reaches. The shrine stands a little back from the west bank of the Ganga, in the dense old lanes of the city, and its Jyotirlinga, a linga of some sixty centimetres set in a silver altar, is among the most venerated in all of Shaivism.

Its history is one of repeated destruction and patient rebuilding. An early temple was pulled down by the armies of Muhammad of Ghori at the close of the twelfth century; rebuilt under Akbar through his minister Todar Mal in 1585, it was demolished again on the orders of Aurangzeb in 1669, and the Gyanvapi mosque raised on the old site — which still stands immediately beside the temple and remains the subject of legal dispute. The present temple was built on an adjoining plot in 1780 by the Maratha queen Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore.

In 1835 Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Punjab gave close to a tonne of gold to plate the spire and dome, and Kashi Vishwanath became the 'Golden Temple' of Varanasi. In December 2021 the Kashi Vishwanath Dham corridor opened, clearing a broad processional way from the sanctum down to the Ganga ghats and greatly enlarging the precinct.

The temple itself is a compact Nagara-style shrine, its shikhara and dome clad in gold above the tight weave of the old city. The 2021 Dham corridor reframed it: where once it was reached only through a maze of narrow galis, it now opens onto a grand riverfront campus of pavilions, halls and gardens running down to the ghats, built to move the enormous crowds.

A gilded finial with flag and trident crowns the spire, catching the light above Varanasi's rooftops. For all the new grandeur around it, the sanctum remains small and close, the Jyotirlinga set low in its silver seat where pilgrims pour Ganga water over it.