Paper short abstract:

In 1984 the Uttar Pradesh Government seized control of the important Kashi Vishvanath temple in Varanasi from Brahmin priests who were formerly its custodians. This has had economically pauperizing and culturally disruptive effects on these pandits, reflected in trans/formation of masculinities and rivalries.

Paper long abstract:

In approximately 1784, Ahalya Bai, Holkar Queen of Indore raised the Kashi Vishvanath mandir - the Golden temple of Varanasi - that which Aurengzeb the moghul emperor had razed and afterwards replaced with the mosque known as Gyanvapi masjid. For this and other Hindu restorations she acquired enduring fame in Varanasi and beyond as a great and valiant queen.

The Golden temple has been destroyed more than once alone. In its numerous incarnations, the Kashi Vishvanath mandir is a site that has been and continues to be highly contested, a locus now reflecting both local and national communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims that share parallels with neighbouring Ayodhya. In 1992 militant Hindus tore down its Babri masjid because it had (allegedly) been built over the birthplace of Rama.

In 1984 the UP Government seized control of the Kashi Vishvanath temple from the priests who were formerly its custodians. Barbed wire separates mosque and mandir, police appointed by the government to guard the temple daily interfere with movement of priests, pilgrims and populace, this escalating since 9/11 and its aftermath. This has all created ongoing economically pauperizing and culturally disruptive effects on pandits who have been displaced to margins of temple operations and pushed into mercantile domains, largely the silk trade. Yet these Brahmins fiercely defend their identity, one intimately involved in relationship with the temple and the formation of masculinity on the basis of continuity of high status in Varanasi via self-assertion against police, verbal struggle and occasional strikes.