Faith unshaken: Ganga arati sees double rush of devotees

Within 12 hours of the blast, Varanasi was back to its religious routine, as if to deliver a resounding blow to the terrorists’ dark designs. To the utter surprise of police and security forces which had cordoned off the Dashashwamedh Ghat where the blast took place on Tuesday evening, priests and devotees started trickling in with the first rays of sunlight on Wednesday morning.

Right outside the Sheetla Mata temple, blood was strewn on the ghat’s steps but that seemed to matter little to those praying inside the temple. Perhaps, a befitting ode to the “Banarasi” way of life.

What was even more surprising was the large crowd which swelled at the ghats on Wednesday evening for the Ganga arati. A senior police officer told this correspondent that the number of people were almost double as compared to the attendance on Tuesday evening.

Perhaps for the first time in the history of the holy city, the Ganga arati on Wednesday was performed in silence as a sign of condolence to mark the death of little Swastika.

Locals said devotees had, in fact, started returning to the ghat on Tuesday night itself and some of them asked the priest at the Sheetla temple to perform the arati.

“It is difficult to scare the people of Kashi (Varanasi),” said Rakesh Tomar, a local priest who performs puja at the ghats. “This city has a history of more than 5,000 years. It is the seat of Hindu religion. It is the power of dharma which will prevail,” he asserted.

“Kashi has a spirit which is impossible to subdue,” said singer Malini Awasthi, who has spent several years in Varanasi as disciple of the famous thumri vocalist Girija Devi. “It has taken ages to get this halo of holiness, and it would perhaps take a million such terrorist strikes before they (terrorists) can even begin to harm it,” she said.

Varanasi has several ghats, the most prominent being the Assi Ghat. This ghat derives its name from an extensive stretch along the Ganga which has assi or 80 ghats one after the other.

According to locals, Dashashwamedh Ghat, where the blast occurred on Tuesday evening, is the largest and the most crowded at any given time.

Varanasi SP Vijay Bhushan said this ghat also draws the maximum number of foreign tourists, which could perhaps be one of the reasons why the terrorists targeted this place. In view of the alert for the Ayodhya demolition anniversary (December 6), the maximum police deployment was also on this ghat, he said.

But, the ghat is so expansive and the devotees gather here on Tuesday evenings for the special Ganga arati in such large numbers that the men in uniform are preoccupied with crowd control, said a police official posted on the spot. “It’s impossible to thwart a terror attack in such circumstances until and unless one has pinpointed information,” he added.