Nationalist Frames & Colonial Frameworks: Contested Narratives of Space, Heritage & Identity in the Gyanvapi-Vishwanath Precinct of Varanasi

Abstract

The research will put forth three key hypotheses. Firstly that the racialized epistemologies used by colonial archaeologists are ironically echoed in the way in which neonationalists historicize and taxonomize monuments. Secondly that the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor utilized imperial-era planning precedents to commodify ‘heritage’, expropriate land, and transfer property to the deity as a juristic person. Thirdly that the legal contestation of the Gyanvapi Mosque, which began pre-Independence, is now being conducted in a manner that will have irrevocable effects on the discourse about the very meaning and identity of the nation-state. The paper seeks to address the question: how can architectural historians move beyond outdated models of ‘postcoloniality’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘value’, to instead study the role of culturally mutable objects, to examine the embedded links between power, space and identity, and to critically reframe ‘heritage’ in an age of ‘post-secular’ neonationalism?