HistoriCity | How the turbulent history of Banaras was shaped by syncretism, dynasties, and long-standing conflicts
The city of Banaras, steeped in both political and cultural history, has played a pivotal role from the Mughal era to British colonial times.
With the conclusion of the seventh and final phase of general elections, some constituencies were more closely watched than others. Banaras, the Prime Minister’s constituency, is one such example. While well-known as a holy city, its political history, particularly over the last few centuries, too demands a closer examination.
Babur and his lineage’s connection with Banaras
In 1526 CE, Babur had successfully captured Delhi after his victory over Ibrahim Lodhi at the battle of Panipat, however, he had yet to subdue the various Afghan clans that were scattered over North and East India.
Banaras, in particular, became an important part of this conquest, as it was a vital trading hub set alongside the Ganga. However, it is noteworthy that the fort that controlled Banaras stood a short distance (30 kms) away in Chunar.
Babar’s memoirs, The Babarnama, however, tell us that his victory in Banaras proved short-lived. Soon after, Sher Shah Suri besieged the Chunar fort, leading Babur to march back towards Chunar. After arduous battles, he recaptured Chunar on March 5, 1529. However, a year later, at 47 years old, Babur passed away in Agra.
After Babur’s passing, his son, Humayun, took control of Banaras and this vulnerable new empire in the winter of 1530. Turbulence, once again, took the form of Sher Shah Suri, who sought to reclaim control over the strategic fort. After nearly six months of failed negotiations on both sides, Humayun finally reconquered the fort by force.
Humayun lost the Battle of Chausa (1539) and the Battle of Kannauj (1540) and fled to Iran. Suri declared himself king and remained in control of Banaras and Chunar till 1545. This region remained virtually outside the Mughal empire till well after Humayun’s son Akbar became emperor and regained the region during his campaign in 1565.
According to H M Elliot’s The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, Akbar spent three days in Banaras on his way to subdue Afghan rebels in Bengal in 1574. Moti Chandra, a historian from Banaras and author of Kashi ka Itihas (History of Kashi), writes, “This was not a permanent peace, as soon as Akbar left Banaras, local Afghans led by Khan Zaman revolted.”
Jahangir’s reign (1605-1627) is unremarkable in regards to Banaras except for the plague of 1626, and the passing away of Vaishnav poet Tulsidas who remains immortalized for his simple recension of Valmiki’s Ramayan in Awadhi, the language of the masses.
Banaras’s syncretism during Akbar’s rule
Todarmal, who belonged to a modest Khatri family in the present-day Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh, rose from rags to riches in the court of Suri. Despite the fall of his master, his administrative acumen enabled him to become a key advisor to Akbar.
The great litterateur and Mughal chronicler Abdul Qadir Badayuni’s 16th-century account Muntakhab at-Tawarikh, notes that Akbar himself supervised the administrative work of Banaras, Jaunpur and Chunar.
Under the stable rule of Akbar, Todarmal guided the town out of its obscurity. It is this period that witnessed the rise of Banaras as both a centre of trade and a centre of pilgrimage. Todarmal is credited, albeit not adequately as compared to the later rulers such as Ranjit Singh of Patiala and Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore, for strengthening the pilgrim town’s religious infrastructure.
In 1585, the Vishveshwar (Vishwanath) temple was built under the patronage of a local Brahmin, Narayan Bhatt. A few years later in 1589, at nearby Shivpur, a pond was named Draupadi Kund after the queen of the Pandava brothers in the epic Mahabharat. Interestingly, according to Chandra, these two structures were built by Gobardhan in the name of his father Todarmal.
Raja Man Singh of Amber (Jaipur), another important Hindu courtier of Akbar and some other smaller Hindu feudatories, constructed various bathing ghats and other structures. Notably, Kumaraswamy, a south Indian priest from Tirunelveli also received royal firman from Akbar to build a monastery at Kedar Ghat.
Thanks to the detailed account of Banaras left by British traveller Ralph Fitch (1583-99), we also have a vivid picture of life in Banaras with religious rituals, thriving trade and the shivling of Vishveshwar as the pre-eminent idol in the town.
Banaras: The rule of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb
In Shah Jahan’s reign (1627-58), the inclusive legacy of Akbar was undone after Shah Jahan prohibited the construction of any new temples in the empire. Naturally, Banaras, which had witnessed a temple boom, was one of the worst affected places. Following his order, it is believed that several under-construction temples were either demolished or remained unfinished.
An English traveller and East India Company official, Peter Mundy’s account from this period writes: “Haider Beg, the governor of Allahabad province, dispatched his officials to demolish certain temples in Banaras, but, a disgruntled Rajput ambushed them on the way and killed at least seven officials before being killed himself. His body was hung from a tree”.
However, Mundy’s account doesn’t tell us whether this enmity was personal or not. Unlike in Fitch’s time, it seems establishments belonging to various Hindu sects and Muslim pirs had taken root in Banaras by the time of Mundy’s visit in 1632.
The century between Shah Jahan’s ascension and that of Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 is a period of religious eclecticism backed by Dara Shukoh and the growing orthodoxy during Aurangzeb’s rule. Shukoh, who was the governor of Allahabad province, started an unprecedented project of assimilating various religious texts, thoughts and practices into one thread in the form of a Sufi text called Majmu al Bahrain. According to local oral traditions in Banaras, Dara Shukoh had strong ties with Hindu pandits and learned men and therefore facilitated the removal of jaziya (a form of tax on non-Muslims) in Banaras.
Aurangzeb (1658-1707) took over the reins of the Mughal empire after a bloody succession battle. He employed the largest share of Hindu officials in his administration. Meena Bhargava, in Understanding Mughal India: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, states that Rajput mansabdars (rank holder) rose significantly from Akbar’s time to Aurangzeb’s rule in 1689. She writes, “There is well-documented evidence of Aurangzeb’s patronage of various Hindu religious institutions, namely temples, maths, grants to Brahmins and pujaris”.
Under Aurangzeb, however, the empire was stretched too thin, with numerous revolts, including the Maratha ruler Shivaji. In Banaras, Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of the Vishwanath temple, an act that has singularly and wrongly come to represent him and his reign. “In 1669, during a zamindar revolt in Banaras, it was suspected that some of them had assisted Shivaji in his escape from imperial detention. It was also believed that Shivaji’s escape was initially facilitated by Jai Singh, the great-grandson of Raja Man Singh, who had built the Vishwanath temple. It was against this background that Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of that temple in September 1669”, Bhargava writes.
With Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the Mughal empire rapidly slipped into an irreversible decline and the rise of several independent powers like the Marathas and the Nizam of Golconda. Within less than three decades of his death, Saadat Ali Khan became the Nawab of Awadh in 1722, which was one of the largest provinces of the empire and included Banaras.
The rise of a dynasty and a company
Against this backdrop of a dissipating empire, the first local dynasty emerged in Banaras. Balwant Singh rose to power as the Maharaja of Banaras in 1740 on the back of the support of a strong clan organisation of an estimated 100,000 Bhumihars, land-owning Brahmins from Bihar and eastern UP. He built the Ramnagar fort, changed teams more than once in the Battle of Buxar and through deft politics managed to pick the winning side: that of the East India Company.
It was at the decisive Battle of Buxar (1764) that the East India Company defeated the Nawab of Awadh and secured from him not only the payment of a massive annual tribute but also the revenues of Banaras, whose rulers now became grateful vassals of the English.
It is also necessary to mention the two crucial Treaties of Banaras, which managed relations between the British government of Bengal and the ruler of the Muslim state of Oudh (Ayodhya). The security of Oudh had been guaranteed in 1765 on the condition that the Shuja-ud-Daula, its ruler, pay the cost of maintaining the army. The First Treaty of Banaras (1773) was the result of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam’s cession of Allahabad and Kora to the Marathas in return for their support.
The Second Treaty of Banaras (1775), known as the Treaty of Faizabad, was forced on Asaf-ud-Daulah of Oudh after the death of Shuja. Asaf was compelled to pay a higher subsidy for the use of the British army, and also cede Banaras to the East India Company.
This was, of course, not without some resistance. In 1781, Warren Hastings suppressed a revolt, the first major one against the British after 1764, by the then-ruler of Benares, Chait Singh, who was expelled and replaced by a new king under the control of the British. Due to this revolt, Chait Singh remains a hero even today for ordinary Banarsis.
The British initiated several reforms in the city including hospitals, education institutions (both secular and on religious lines), sanitation and a water treatment facility.
Perhaps one of the best-known examples of Edward Said’s Orientalism, Banaras was deliberately ‘imagined’, ‘exoticised’ or ‘constructed’, rather than being ‘analysed’ or ‘studied’, as the counterpart of the West. This sought to justify colonial domination. In colonial writings, Banaras became a microcosm of everything that the ‘Orient’ stood for timeless, eternal, sacred, spiritual, and dominantly Hindu. This, incidentally, is something the post-colonial State continues to thrive on as well.
HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal
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