Karan Saharya

Deities, Demolitions & Development
Spatial Contestations of Modernity, Heritage & Identity in the Kashi Vishwanath Precinct of Varanasi, India

This doctoral research project critically examines urban redevelopment in and around the Kashi Vishwanath Temple–Gyanvapi Mosque precinct in Varanasi, a symbolically charged and historically layered cultural landscape. It argues that recent spatial transformations offer unique insights into the politics of heritage-making in contemporary India, revealing how power, space and identity intersect in the remaking of sacred geographies.

Launched in 2019 as a flagship state-led initiative, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor has emerged as a model for large-scale infrastructural development and tourism-driven urban renewal. Yet its implementation has entailed unprecedented displacement, spatial cleansing and the reconfiguration of a hyperdense urban fabric. The sensitive zone between the 18th-century Kashi Vishwanath Temple and the 17th-century Gyanvapi Mosque has become an arena of ideological contestation, where nationalistic objectives, overlapping legal frameworks, heritage narratives and metaphors of the body politic converge. The Corridor’s curated aesthetic runs along a monumental axis that symbolically recentres the temple and connects it to the mythologised riverfront, while relegating the mosque as “the other.” This axis is flanked by plazas for commerce and tourism, reflecting the convergence of majoritarian nationalism and post-liberalisation urban capitalism. Despite being framed as ‘aspirational’ and ‘modernized’ by the state, the urban vision has been critiqued in popular and academic discourse for ostensibly flattening Varanasi’s pluralistic ritual landscape into a securitised, homogenised and futurised ‘Hinduscape.’ This project foregrounds how architecture is deployed as a tool of both utilitarian development and identitarian assertion, and how state power is ritualised through acts of selective demolition, reconstruction and symbolic purification. It also traces the genealogies of such spatial interventions, connecting them to colonial and orientalist frameworks of archaeology, la and conservation that racialised and exoticised India’s past. These epistemic inheritances continue to inform contemporary narratives of reclamation and authenticity, particularly in a city marked by caste tensions, Islamic iconoclasm and contested sovereignty.

Methodologically, the study combines spatial mapping, fieldwork, archival research and interviews to construct a multi-layered analysis of the precinct’s transformation. Spatial mapping tracks shifts in urban morphology from the Mughal period to the present, revealing how architectural continuities are disrupted or co-opted to produce a heterogenous and complex form. Archival research draws on colonial-era maps, gazettes and drawings to locate modern interventions within longer histories of urban control and ritual territoriality.

Ultimately, this project examines the forms of statecraft, spectacle, and symbolic violence that recode Varanasi not as a neutral site of pilgrimage, but as a politicised urban imaginary. It contributes to global debates on ‘difficult heritage,’ collective memory and modernity. Challenging the assumption that heritage is inherently preservative, technical or inclusive, the research reframes it as a deeply contested and continuous negotiation. It asks: When ‘heritage’ is invoked to reclaim national identity, whose histories are foregrounded, and which spaces are erased? Which architectural modalities underpin the re-imagining of a sacred city? And how can architectural historians and planners critically engage with heritage as a lens to examine the entanglements of power, space and identity?

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Selected Publications

• Saharya, K. (2025) “Hybrid Inheritance: How seemingly contradictory cultural systems continue to shape Indian habitats”, CEPT Essay Prize 2025. CEPT University Press: Ahmedabad
• Saharya, K. (forthcoming, 2025) “Corporal Iconoclasm: Nationalist Narratives of Heritage & the Case of Gyanvapi in Varanasi, India”, Bodies, in, as, of, with, and Identity & Heritage, Berlin
• Saharya K. (2024) “Heritage Conservation & Tourism as Agents of Spatial Cleansing in Mehrauli, New Delhi” in: Maria Gravari-Barbas and Maria Garcia Hernandez (eds.) Cultural Heritage at the Urban & Metropolitan Peripheries. Routledge: Paris
• Saharya, K. (2019) “Dwelling, Development & Displacement: The Politics of Space in Post-Partition Delhi” in: CEPT Essay Prize Journal, CEPT University Press: Ahmedabad
• Saharya, K. (2019) “Exclusionary Geography: UNESCO in Bombay’ in: UD:ID (online), Department of Urban Planning & Design, Harvard University: Cambridge
• Saharya, K. (2019) “The Many Lives of the Qutub Minar”, Harvard South Asia Institute (online)

Select Presentations & Lectures

• “Contested Spaces: Researching Heritage, Identity & the Politics of Development”, Master Talk Series, organized by COOP Design Research, Bauhaus Dessau, 2025
• “Towards a New Articulation of Heritage in Post-Postcolonial India”, International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Atlanta, 2025. Supported by the SAH Annual International Conference Fellowship
•  “God, Tourism and the Erasure of Domestic Space”, ‘Domesticity Under Siege’ International Architectural Conference 2025, organized by University of Brighton, 2025
• “Corporal Iconoclasm”, ‘Bodies in, as, of, with and Identity & Heritage’, 8th Annual Conference organized by DFG Research Training Group 2227 ‘Identity and Heritage’, Technische Universität Berlin, 2024
• “Heritage Conservation & Tourism as Agents of Spatial Cleansing in Mehrauli, New Delhi”, International Conference on Cultural Heritage at the Urban & Metropolitan Peripheries, organized by UNA-Europa, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, 2023
• “In the Name of Heritage”, Design Research Forum organized by Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2021
• Critical Conservation seminar organized by Department of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2020