Learning, Weaving and Music on the Ganges

Banaras Hindu University, founded in 1916 by the nationalist leader Madan Mohan Malaviya, grew into one of Asia's largest residential universities and includes the New Vishwanath Temple, built on campus in the twentieth century and open, unlike the old Kashi Vishwanath temple in the city, to visitors of every faith. The university sits alongside older centers of Sanskrit scholarship that made Varanasi a seat of traditional Hindu learning long before it, drawing students and pandits from across India.

The city is equally known for the Banarasi silk sari, woven on handlooms by families that are, in large part, Muslim, a craft economy that binds Varanasi's two largest religious communities together in daily commerce even where their sacred geography stays separate. Varanasi's classical music lineage, the Banaras gharana, produced the sitar player Ravi Shankar and the shehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan, both born in the city and both closely identified with its riverside temples, since the shehnai was traditionally played at the Vishwanath temple itself. Ten kilometres north, the town of Sarnath, where the Buddha is said to have preached his first sermon in the deer park after his enlightenment, is administratively separate but functions as part of greater Varanasi's pilgrimage economy today.