Remembering Benares

This is false. The real story is well known that the temples were recovered from the buildings demolished to create access to Kashi Vishwanath temple. These buildings were encroachments. The opposition leaders decided to use it as an opportunity to attack Modi. The tragedy is that Indian leftists will cite any nonsense as long as it supports their anti-BJP, anti-Modi narrative. Here is the news: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/demolition...

It is comparable to looking at poor people in the zoo and celebrating yourself for it under the guise of "broadening your perspective". After 2 weeks you take your brand new Air Force sneakers into an Airbus A350 and simply fly back to wealth and convenience.

It baffles my mind but maybe that's because my SO is Filipina from a poor village who hates white assholes pretending to do something meaningful (and advertising themselves as saints on Insta of course). Imagine seeing some white moron with dreadlocks diving into your life of poverty for a week "to get the experience".

The arrogance and hubris is unbelievable.

>> The confrontation between the two groups—between those disenchanted by modern civilization and those despairingly seek­ing a foothold in it—was not something I had seen described in any of the books I read. The many ironies of the situation, and the historical inequities behind them, should have alerted me to my material. But I kept waiting for a great subject, something com­mensurate with the great literature I read, to reveal itself to me.

The contrast between these two groups (the disenchanted and the desperate let's call them) is something I recall seeing when I visited India in the 2000's (which is odd how long ago that seems now...) On one hand you have people who are born and raised in what are apparently these very holy and sacred cities (at least as the religious population considers them to be) and there are some who are doing everything they can do get out and live the American dream. On the other hand, there are those who do the opposite, wealthy heirs to tens and hundred million dollar estates who forsake everything to meditate in an Ashram on the banks of the Ganga.

What a world to live in. And then you have others who live desperately straddling the two, never quite at home in one or the other.

The problem with RSS/BJP is that their focus is more on demolition; their 'new' department lacks things like basic aesthetic sense. Their vision lacks originality, indigenuity in all things. They seem to simply imitate dominant forms (currently western culture and capitalism), and make surface-level adjustments and call it 'Indian'.

One would argue even their vision of neo-Hinduism itself is essentially a copy of traits from Abrahamic religion, but surface level adjustments such as what deities to worship. There is no philosophical inquiry any more, in fact anything other branch than _Bhakti_ ("devotion", or personally I would call "blind devotion") is rejected. Anything that doesn't conform to hierarchy is rejected.

Their monuments aren't inspiring, their plans for the future are lazily researched, everything they do seems a shallow copy something else. The very currency notes they introduced are ugly.

Yet BJP/modi is bad. The author very well knows how fast organized crime in the country and at the state level has continued to declined since the rise of bjp in the center and the state.