Laat Bhairav: A guarded deity

Notes from Laat Bhairav

And edited version of this piece appears in the Hindu Sunday Magazine. Thanks are due to the team there. 

I am indebted to Ajay Pandey, Rakeshbhai and Shagufta Siddhi for taking out to help with the images. And of course the photographers – Devendra Singh and Beat Niederer. 

Image: Devendra Singh

Newspaper reports had got me intrigued of the place. They had images of Ramleela being played on one side and prayers being offered at the idgah on the other. Descriptions went like ‘To the east of the platform Ramcharit Manas’ chaupais were sung while to the west Namaz took place’ and ‘on the one hand azaan took place and on the other Narayan muni went on with his Narayan, Narayan as the Ramleela played’. This is the Laat Bhairav in Banaras.

Couple of colleagues I talked with had never been there. Both of them stayed less than 5 kms from the compound! The third colleague I asked conveyed that I could access it from the road that branches towards Sarnath from the Grand Trunk Road. If one comes from the Dufferin bridge this falls to the right, not far from Rajghat - the oldest recorded settlement of the town. A police chowky stands at the junction. This police chowky also carries the name Laat Bhairav.

Diana L Eck who has been able to capture that ‘essence’ of Banaras like few others, writes in Banaras: City of Light, ‘Lat Bhairava, known to the Puranas as Kapali Bhairava, is of particular interest. This image of Bhairava is a pillar, encased in copper, and smeared with vermillion. Thus, it has the name Lat, the ‘staff’ of Bhairava’. She adds, on the pillar, ‘When Sherring examined the site in the 1860s, he was convinced that the most ancient remains there were not those of the Hindu temple, but of a much earlier Buddhist complex, and that the Lat itself was really an Ashokan pillar, with just the dimensions of the Ashokan pillar found at Sarnath a few miles to the north’. Vincent A Smith too argues on the later point in Identification of the Asoka pillar N. E. of Benares City described by Hiuen Tsang.

I decided to visit the temple + idgah compound. Before climbing the stairs, I came across a clean pond. Locked. It is out of bounds for most of the day I was told and opens only for a short while early in the day. While ponds adjacent to temples are common in Banaras, clean ponds are not! Ram Lila is performed near Kapalamocana tank every year since 350 years state Elizabeth-Chalier Visuvalingam & Sunthar Visuvalingam in Between Mecca and Benares: The Marriage of Lat Bhairava & Ghazi Miyan. 

Image: Devendra Singh

I then came across specimen of a species whose existence I had doubts of – smart and young policemen. Few police men appear to have been posted – a tent sits on one corner; outside electricity wires hang lazily for the tent occupants to charge their equipment. A railway line runs parallel to the boundary on one side. The Varanasi City railway station sits few hundred metres further. Whatever reasons guide the hierarchy of religious spaces this place, so far, is away from both the tourist rush and that bane of religious spaces – loud-speakers. Some spaces give positive vibes during one’s first visit and entice one to re-visit. Laat Bhairav is one such space for me.

One of my visits was on the day of Moharram. People had gathered in healthy numbers. I sat and watched in silence as they shared bakery items a little further. Sounds of happy conversations floated in the air. In 2’s and 3’s people occupied different parts of the campus; some washed their hands and feet. The road on one side had Tajiyas passing (under police bandobast) while that on the other side was graced by a mela.

Once I also went during the Ramleela. This Ramleela – in one word – was sad. Atop a small platform children performed under guidance from the elders. Each of these elders was a male. Couple of these I had brief conversations with expressed pride in the Ramleela. Very few people though watched; almost all of them either very old or very young – reminded of my visits to churches in Garo Hills: long ago. The Ramleela I saw perhaps was relic that remained - a tradition being forcefully continued. A sign of the time to come. Of the few spectators around one chatted on his phone while another fidgeted on his device. I had witnessed the spectacle that the Ramleela at Ramnagar offers. Each visit there I have been overwhelmed, one way or the other, here – on reaching - I had wondered if I had got the date and time correct. The effigies used in the Ramnagar Ramleela are made by the same family which makes Tajiyas for Moharram!

Another visit I walked up and down the courtyard for a while and then sat taking support of a neem tree; no one bothered about me. I saw some people sit in silence – they appeared as if they had found the space they were looking for. The large courtyard is shaded and has an inviting feel to it. Trees were integral to places of peace and prayers for a reason. The pippal tree worshipped beside the stump is said to be the scion of an earlier tree destroyed in the riot states John Irwin in The Lat Bhairo at Benares (Varanasi): Another pre-Asokan monument? 

Image: Beat Niederer

Intrigued I looked up more. The Visuvalingams also write that ‘The "Lat Bhairo riots" of 1809 have played a crucial role in colonial historiography not only because of their gravity and magnitude comparable, we are told, only to the Kanpur outbreak of 1931 but also because they are among the first to be recorded in the colonial period’.

I wondered why we talk of either the Ganga Jumna tehzeeb, more rosy than roses, or of animosity and riots that could put barbarians to shame. Truth, like someone wiser said, most of the times exists between the extremes. This is one such truth of this ancient town. And like a lot else in the town this too is not easy to comprehend.

Irwin perhaps described Laat Bhairav aptly when he wrote, ‘The modern visitor has an impression that he is witnessing a relatively late stage in the history of a site that had once been sacred to all Indian religions and was probably older than any of them. What a strange medley’!