Ayodhya is where exclusivist Hinduvta politics will be eventually defeated: Ashwani Kumar

Why is the book dedicated to Banaras?

Banaras is a new political fantasy representing pain and paradoxes in contemporary India. Ayodhya has become a dull political project, so people are moving to Banaras. Even cleaning of the Ganga is a political project. If you look at the last two years, there's only one voice that's becoming hegemonic of the holy city. But there are many Banaras. I have childhood memories of it.

Like Mark Twain rightly said, 'Banaras is older than history and older than tradition', but it also has its own myth. It's the seat of Lord Bhairava, Lord Shiva's terrifying avatar, who legends and Puranic accounts suggest reached Banaras to expiate his brahmannicide and release himself from the divine punishment. After absolution, he made Banaras his permanent abode and became the 'sin-eater' to devour the karmic impurities of his followers and guide future pilgrims to liberation (moksha). And so, it's never been a hegemonic Hindu city -- Muslims, Buddhists and several heterodox sects also consider it a holy place. In fact, Banarasi Muslims are integral part of a syncretic culture in Banaras. For instance, the mythic -memory of Muslim warrior-saint Ghazi Mia Baba -- who was a protector of cows, brother to a Hindu queen and savior of the honour of low-caste Hindu women -- continues to inform quotidian cultural and religious practices in Banaras. That's why you'll find local women from different communities performing rituals like mehndi and changing of drapery at the dargah of Ghazi Miyan Baba. Despite its various muths and temples, ethos of the essential Indian Civilisation – plurality, diversity and secular traditions – are very strong, symbolizing the extent and depth of the spirit of communal harmony in Banaras. So in a way, it represents a contestation in modern, contemporary India, something that fundamentalists in all religions are unhappy about and so the myth of Banaras is being reconstructed to suit a particular political ideology, making the middle classes and masses increasingly vulnerable to a more authoritarian, totalitarian, understanding of religious city.

Is this new myth 'the other' you're referring to in the book's title?

The 'Other Project' began with the demolition of Babri Masjid. It really set us apart and left permanent scars on the soul of Mumbai. Fundamentalists and nativists have done the impossible by attempting to rid the 'Maximum City' of all so-called foreign bodies and outsiders. Interestingly, as its sky-line has become more opulent, the ground beneath has turned more parochial and intolerant. Mumbai faces the prospect of becoming a 'torture house of being', a scene of sustained political violence against her own self. Oppositional voices are often silenced, books banned, works of art vandalized, and artists, writers and intellectuals threatened and their faces are blackened. Her deep existential crisis is evident in how she's rapidly being de-cosmopolitised and increasingly fancies herself as a country-cousin of authoritarian and illiberal global cities like Shanghai and Singapore. And if Bombay is becoming more majoritarian, same is being done in Banaras. So my book is a protest.

Recasting the narrative of mythical marriage of Lat-Bhairav and Ghazi Miyan Baba, and using the poetic device of ribaldry, the lead poem "Anatomy of Baranassey" journeys from Banaras riots of 1809 to electoral insurgencies of 2014 to expose the fissured, schismatic scenarios of contemporary India. It contests puritanical, Brahmanical and hegemonic Koranic interpretations of ritualization and legitimization of various forms of human violence in our politics. I'm trying to argue against xenophobia, majoritarianism and false gods. If people are deeply religious, I believe they would live in harmony. But instead they are increasingly becoming less religious and more mobilised by a certain political ideology.

That's a very interesting thing to say at a time, when religion, like money, is considered the root of all evil.

In the pre-modern world, religion helped to restrain violent impulses in what Aristotle called 'political animals'. The problem lies with organized religion that today has become not only more patriarchal, sexist, racist, exclusivist, but also cannibalistic; it's like a father devouring its own children. In most cases of massacres, riots and genocides, we see the faces of Godless savagery and brutality. No surprise, organised, institutionalised religion is a collective neurosis; infantile's need for a super-powerful father and a ruthless ruler for managing secular worldly affairs. Thus, organised religion is a catastrophic mistake. As a counter-phobia to organized religion, secularism is also a dangerous idea, insufficiently grounded in Indian ethos and traditions, especially vernacular and folk traditions. I would recommend giving secularism a treatment of euthanasia and re-generate new ways of more humane religiosity amongst us. In this we shall have to liberate religion from the clutches of capital and the state as well.

Your relationship with religion?

I don't subscribe to the binary of believer or non-believer. I am agnostic, but not faithless. I am fully respectful of the religion I belong to and make no attempt to assault its essential principles . I don't deceive myself with so-called holy scriptures and texts, but I am deeply religious and spiritual in the manner of the sacred union of the self and the universe.

Although being religious may be considered inferior to belonging to organized religion or political secularism, it's a far more preferred way of living than dreading the prospects of genocides in the shadows of state secularism.

Being religious means living with open-ended interpretations of us, ambiguities and contradictions in diverse societies. You don't have to reconcile contradictions; this is the basis of tolerance. So become a pagan again and live without any distinctions of social and religious boundaries. Embedded in this idea of 'hospitality', religiosity is a non-secular alternative to majoritarianism of various kinds. I see poetry and promise in the God; the most beautiful, most tolerant and most loving- the prophet of freedom and dissent. So for me, holy cities are reservoir of creativity and freedom. Like Gandhi, I would say: I can live without air and water, but not without God. But my god is certainly Humanity. That's my religion as a poet.

And so as a poet, how do you practice this religion of humanity?

As I have said earlier, the power of poetry is the power of powerlessness. The power of prose is the power of power, ruthless and blood-hungry. This is why I write poetry.

I practice my religion in an ethical and political sense of pursing creativity and speaking truth to the power that be. Unless you are an unconventional, offensive, heretic and occasionally blasphemous, you can't be a true poet. Like Lord Shiva, poets have to be wild, eccentric, untraditional and unaccountable. Betrayal of tradition is a crime poets must do and suffer punishments too. Transgression from so-called 'original myth' or 'primeval truth' is necessary for re-inventing ascetic values in art, literature and culture. This is what neo-Hindus and neo-middle class nationalists neither understand nor appreciate.

How does that reflect in the book?

'The other' in the book is agnostic to social and anthropological categories. It could be anyone facing persecution, oppression, and marginalization at the hands of majority (numerical, material or symbolic).

Although English poetry is very mature in its craft, talking to my fellow poets I realised that it is too cosmopolitan and urban and more importantly, it lacks protest. So I am migrating my own language (various dialects of Hindi) and my profession into English poetry, and bringing to fore small cities, towns, vernacular worlds and their life experiences. For me, English poetry is like refugees living in temporary shelters in many countries without any passport or visa.

I hope my poetic journey through the proposed trilogy on holy cities helps raise voices against increasing furies of religious and political violence in India. Let Banaras be a burial ground of all our violence!

Which are the other two places that will complete the trilogy?

After Banaras, I am rushing to Ayodhya and re-telling Lord Ram's story from a mytho-poetic perspective. Though it's passive for the time being, Ayodhya can explode any day. Whether we like it or not, it remains the most symbolic site for testing the alternations and reconfigurations in Hindu-selves, the dominant and recessive selves. That's because, if Banaras is a city of death, Ayodhya is the city of BIRTH. It's also the site where I suspect exclusivist politics of Hinduvta will be eventually defeated and Hinduism as a faith will triumph and regain its ethical and moral flourishing. Only Lord Ram, the God of love and harmony, can redeem us from our-self-inflicted miseries. The place has always fascinated me. In Waking Early in Ayodhya, a poem in my earlier volume 'My Grandfather's Imaginary Typewriter', I touched upon imaginary and unorthodox ways of love making in Ayodhya amidst blood –thirsty war cries of communal forces. An excerpt:

"He spreads his teflon-coated legs/ Bends his artificial arrow/ She quivers, moans in ecstasy/ They mate all day shamelessly/ And the bricks of the mosque fall; screaming/ With each fatal stroke."

I am still speculating on the final part of the trilogy, there's much to imagine and perhaps re-imagine. But I hope to publish Ayodhya by early 2019.