Author: Joshua M. Greene, Religion
News Service
Publication: Beliefnet
Date:
URL: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/167/story_16704_1.html
Who will protect the holy sites
in the sacred town of Vrindavan, India, where Krishna first appreared?
For centuries, this 27-square-mile
town on the road from Delhi to Agra has been the holiest of holy places
for devotional Hindus. Drums, brass hand cymbals, and the chanting of ancient
prayers echo out each morning from Vrindavan's 5,000 temples.
Yet recent changes such as satellite
television, digital phone service, and real estate development have brought
this medieval site on the banks of the Yamuna River into the 21st century.
Not everyone is happy with the transition.
"It is a painful subject," says
Shrivatsa Goswami, whose family traces its roots to Vrindavan's 16th-century
restorers. "In those days, this place had the most beautiful riverside
architecture in India's history. It was like a miniature painting come
alive."
Goswami notes that previous generations
of temple authorities understood the importance of holy places and took
responsibility for their maintenance. Today, he says, that sense of stewardship
is absent.
"Many religious leaders here have
a narrow view," Goswami says. "They don't see the universality of their
own message. They don't see how a sacred site such as this can inspire
people of all faiths. What they see is commercial opportunities, and the
result is garbage and sewage backing up. In a few more years, my own children
will not want to come here."
Beginning in the 17th century, Moguls
and other invading forces razed Vrindavan's temple domes and left the town
in architectural ruin. But according to Goswami, the real damage began
with India's independence in 1947. Rather than return to its spiritual
roots, the nation became a secular industrial power. India's cultural heritage
in general, and holy places in particular, suffered.
"We are only two hours from Delhi,"
says Goswami, "and people are feverishly spending millions to turn Vrindavan
into a suburb. Because there is so little appreciation for holy places,
developers get away with using the Yamuna as a dump for their construction.
Instead of dredging to restore the river's natural beauty, they have laid
a tar road along its banks and in the riverbed to facilitate more traffic.
I refuse to walk on it."
Indic scriptures identify Vrindavan
as the place where Krishna, the Sanskrit name for God in personal form,
appeared 5,000 years ago. Followers consider Vrindavan as having its genesis
in the spiritual world. Devotees consequently worshipped the town as fervently
as Krishna himself.
Yet with modernization, the nature
of pilgrimage to this holy spot has shifted dramatically. As recently as
the 1980s, hardly one car a day arrived here, and there was little to distract
from an all-day walking tour of medieval sites. Today, traffic backs up
along the newly completed six-lane National Highway. A water park has opened
less than seven miles from Govardhan, a hill that is among Vrindavan's
most sacred spots. Near the actual site of Krishna's appearance in nearby
Mathura, Pepsi-Cola has constructed a production plant. Cell phone towers
loom up into the sky over temple domes.
"There is a risk of the spiritual
experience becoming diluted," says Braja Bihari, an American scholar who
has lived in Vrindavan for 27 years. "Previously, you never saw people
playing boomboxes or contaminating the roads with plastic bags. They came
here to get away from those influences. The deep, contemplative experience
is still available, but you have to work a little harder to find it now."
Some environmental organizations
such as the World Wide Fund for Nature are working to restore Vrindavan
through programs of reforestation. Ranchor Prime, the project's India liaison,
notes that ecological values have always played an important role in Hinduism
but have suffered in the rush of modernization.
"If the faith leaders brought back
their own tradition of cleanliness and respect for nature here, in one
of the greatest holy places of India," says Prime, "it could have a dramatic
impact nationwide. Environmental awareness is not a hollow religious sentiment.
It makes practical sense."
Not everyone sees the changes in
dire terms. Lokanath Swami, a religious leader from South India, sees an
upside to modernization: comfortable facilities attract clients.
"First, people have to want to come
to a holy place," he says. "Then the inner experience can occur."
Still, he agrees with Goswami's
assessment that leadership must take an active role in protecting the site's
integrity.
"The scriptures tell us that the
real pilgrimage is not bathing in a river," he says, "but taking instruction
from the saintly people who make such places their home. And certainly
they have an added degree of responsibility."
Historically, holy places have been
the refuge of ascetics seeking escape from the material world. It would
take days or weeks to arrive at a holy place. Once there, pilgrims confronted
austere conditions that quickly separated spiritual dabblers from the truly
devout. Today, the opposite holds true as developers encourage tourism
and Vrindavan struggles to adjust, for the first time in history, to market
economics. Like many other places of pilgrimage in India, this is a town
faced with reconciling its cultural and spiritual purposes with its need
for a stronger economic infrastructure.
Even staunch defenders of Vrindavan's
innate sanctity acknowledge the inevitability of modernization and accept,
as well, its potential value. From the roof of his art institute, called
Sri Caitanya Prema Samsthana, Goswami can see solar panels on buildings
in surrounding villages. The panels feed energy to satellite dishes that
connect farmers to Hindi-language Internet Web sites, which provide district-specific
weather reports, current market prices and tips on modern growing methods.
More than half the residents in
the Vrindavan area live off the land, and Goswami acknowledges that the
technology could lead to improved quality of life and possibilities for
saving Vrindavan from urban blight.
"Spirituality has never been an
enemy of science and technology," he says. "Devotion and knowledge have
always gone together. That is the Indian approach. I'm not afraid of laptops
and satellites. It is losing the spiritual content of Vrindavan that has
me concerned. That cannot be stopped by better technology alone. That can
only be stopped if the religious leaders come out of their shells and renew
their emotional bond with their own culture and history."
