210. caste
One expression of this process of conceptual clarification is an enormous con-
struction effort long under way on the opposite side of Benares from Sri Govardhan-
pur. There, on a bluff overlooking the Ganges, one of the most important Untouch-
able political figures of recent memory, Deputy Prime Minister Jagjivan Ram, began
building a temple to Ravidas as the last great project of his career. Work proceeds at a
slow but regular pace, and the edifice is splendid indeed. Covered entirely with mar-
ble on the inside, it contains a vast sanctuary, a huge kitchen, and quarters for ascetics
and visiting scholars. It will also house a museum in which will be deposited not only
memorabilia relating to Ravidas but those documenting the life of Jagjivan Ram as
well. In the circular appealing for funds, in fact, these two share the spotlight: a picture
of Jagjivan Ram is on one side of the page, and a picture of Ravidas is on the other.^24
Jagjivan Ram’s temple says many things. First and foremost, of course, it says that
Ravidas belongs on the highlands along the Ganges as much as any other Hindu god
or saint. Fortunately Jagjivan Ram’s political connections enabled him to acquire
from the government the land necessary to make such a statement. Second, the tem-
ple says something about Ravidas’s place among the otherbhaktisaints of North
India: it puts him right in the center. Near the temple ’s entrance a picture of Ravidas
was for many years flanked by others depicting Kabir and Surdas, and in the sanctu-
ary one finds not only a central altar dedicated to Ravidas but an ancillary shrine to
Mirabai. Third, the structure states the relation between the veneration of Ravidas
and India’s major religious communities. Spires on each of the corners symbolize
Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, and in their midst one glimpses the great
spire to Ravidas. The message is that what Ravidas represents stands at the center of
all the great religions and illumines them equally. Hinduism is notably occluded.
Finally there is a political message. The person long charged with day-to-day op-
erations at the temple, Ram Lakhan, a former member of Parliament and minister in
Indira Gandhi’s government, declared it to be “the people ’s temple,” with the impli-
cation that the people provide the basis upon which all other structures rest. To speak
this way is to cast Ravidas in the role of vox populi and to suggest not too subliminally
that the Congress Party, in which both Jagjivan Ram and Ram Lakhan served, is the
organization best able to unite adherents of all communities.^25 But nowadays there is
stiff competition for lower-caste votes from parties whose social base is actually there.
The people of Sri Govardhanpur and their many pilgrim visitors do certainly
visit this new monument, but they are well aware that it was Jagjivan Ram’s estab-
lishment connections that made its construction possible. Some quip that it is less
a temple to their saint than to the political figure who posed as his devotee. And