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Why I Wrote This Book On Kashi
The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography
My latest book has just been released in India and will soon be available for sale in the US and on Kindle, too: It is entitled Kashi: The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography — please click on the link to purchase. All royalties will be donated to Dharmic causes in Kashi.
All eyes are on Kashi Vishwanath these days and for good reason. It is the site of litigation around the Gyanvapi/Vishwanath compound, which has indisputably been one of the most sacred sites of Hinduism since ancient times. It is the next and most high-profile contested site, waiting to be resolved by the courts after the Sri Rama janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya, along with Sri Krishna janmabhoomi site in Mathura.
Varanasi / Kashi is also the seat from which PM Modi is contesting his election to become Prime Minister of India for a third consecutive term.
Important books about Kashi have come out recently, including Vikram Sampath’s book, Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyan Vapi, and Meenakshi Jain’s book, Vishwanath Rises and Rises: The Story of Eternal Kashi. These are must-read books to understand the history of the litigation and valiant efforts by Hindus to protect and reclaim the site as well as other sacred sites of Kashi.
The purpose of this book is to take a step back and reframe how we look at this and other similar disputes on sacred sites. This book examines Kashi through the prismic of sacred geography. Sacred geography reframes the focus from ‘sites’ to ‘kshetra’. A site is a singular point of location, limited to a building or a plot of land, with some associated historical significance that parties have to prove claims of ownership to through deeds and titles and the like.
The very way in which we look at this is informed by western notions that are inherently centered on human history. Even when we use Sthala Purana to support our claims…