Modi Has Made a 'Kashi Vishvanath Mall', Not Mandir, Says the Temple's Mahant | UP Elections 2022 Mar 1, 2022
In an interview to The Wire's Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Rajendra Prasad Tiwari, mahant of the Kashi Vishvanath temple in Varanasi accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of making a business out of religion. Kashi is a place of devotion (saadhana), not money-making (saadhan), he says
Some questions, but no contest in Narendra Modi’s Varanasi https://www.livemint.com/elections/lok-sabha-elections/some-questions-but-no-contest-in-narendra-modi-s-varanasi-1558033740946.html 17 May 2019
Several citizens of Varanasi are apprehensive about the Kashi-Vishwanath Corridor project. (Pradeep Gaur/Mint) https://www.livemint.com/elections/lok-sabha-elections/some-questions-but-no-contest-in-narendra-modi-s-varanasi-1558033740946.html
Being undertaken at a cost of ₹600 crore, the project is clearing an estimated 4.6 hectares around the city’s most important temple to create dedicated pathways to ease congestion and improve facilities for pilgrims.
The project has also antagonized a section of Modi’s core constituency, the Brahmins. Rajendra Tiwari, the former mahant of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, for one, is upset. “This corridor has been an attack on our cultural heritage just so that some people could bring their cars right up to the temple," he says.
Tiwari’s long-drawn campaign against the corridor, however, fizzled out when the courts did not entertain his public interest litigation. “This project is killing the identity of Kashi," he says, adding that not all of the 300,000 Brahmin votes in Varanasi will go to Modi this time.
Tiwari is not the only priest vocal about his displeasure with Modi. The mahant of Sankat Mochan temple, Vishambhar Nath Mishra, says there have only been cosmetic changes in the city in the last five years.