March 22, 2006--Maybe We Can Just Get Along

While Hindus and Muslims kill each other in Kashmir and while Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq still today seek revenge for an event that occurred in 670 AD, there is at least one remote place where these kinds of religious and sectarian differences do not seem to matter. In Varanasi, India.

Varanasi is considered to be Hinduism’s holist city, a city which embodies the spiritual soul of India, and whose beginnings over 2,500 years ago, are steeped in Hindu mythology. The Ganges, India's holiest river, flows past Varanasi in the course of its 2,600-mile journey--from its remote source in the Himalayas, across the fertile northern plains of India, to the Bay of Bengal.

For a Hindu to die in Varanasi, and to be cremated there on the banks of the Ganges, is to be absolved of karma, freed from the wheel of reincarnation and absorbed into the Infinite.

But to Muslims Varanasi too is a holy city and thus one would suspect an ideal place to foment and perpetrate violence. In fact, earlier this month, the NY Times reported (see below) that homemade bombs were set off there most likely by an Islamic militant group. But unlike other places this did not set off rounds of retaliation. Life continued as it has for centuries with Muslins and Hindus living side by side and sharing one of the city’s most sacred temples like the Bahadur Shahid shrine where Hindu and Muslim pilgrims come to pray and seek to have evil spirits banished. This is accomplished by holy men with the wave of a peacock feather duster.

Varanasi has long been a place that has attracted mystics, including the 15th-century poet Kabir who, though he ejected both Muslim and Hindu practice, was fought over by both when he died. They eventually made a deal to literally divide his remains between them, but when they unwrapped his shroud there was nothing there.

Maybe that’s the answer we have been seeking—after all the fighting, after all is said and done, there is nothing there.