Policemen and women inside the Kashi Vishwanath Temple will mingle with the crowd clad in priest-like garb on a trial basis. But beyond the optics, there is no point in this brainwave
By Vikram L Kilpady
The essential quality of a police uniform is not felt by its wearer, but by those who see it; the outfit evokes a mix of feelings: fear, awe, distrust, confidence. The sight of khaki has been a restraining factor in preventing many a violent skirmish at long ticket queues at theatres, bus stands and zoos. Not to mention in university campuses during student union elections.
The Varanasi Police seem to see a negative side to the uniform they wear. For a 15-day trial period, the four policemen and four policewomen on duty at the sanctum sanctorum of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi will forsake khaki for kurtas and dhotis. Luckily, the new mandate is to last just over a fortnight, after which it will be reviewed. A similar trial in 2018 didn’t convince anyone.
All this is being done to make the devotees feel respected and to make the environment more welcoming, Varanasi Police Commissioner Mohit Agrawal was quoted as saying in a newspaper report. It’s not that all police in the temple will need to change their uniform, those not at the sanctum sanctorum need not look as aligned with kurta-clad tradition.
For decades, people have visited the shrine—one of the 12 jyotirlinga sites, where Lord Shiva is said to have appeared as a column of light, thus one of the important Shiva shrines—without finding it at all irksome to have policemen in khaki hectoring them to move ahead, instead of hogging more time for individual darshan.
What must have happened, as one can only hazard a guess, is that the temple is replete with big VIP visits, and the police may have been extra curt, even rough perhaps, with some devotees while making way for a VIP arrival. Obviously, some of those who may have been nudged or jostled or simply ousted may have been VIPs in the making and would have made their feelings of hurt, bruised egos known to senior leaders or police officials, leading to this brainwave. Other officials, anonymous this time, quoted in the report said this would ward off negative perceptions of police presence. Besides if policemen dressed in kurtas mimic the priests, the idea is that people will be more than willing to accommodate their requests than those of a person in khaki.
The negative perceptions of police are a pan-India phenomenon. Police are uniformly respected across the country, but with a wary undertone attached. Any police visit in the neighbourhood becomes the talk of the colony and the nearby ones as well. People in India will remember a police jeep coming into the colony on such and such errand or inquiry even after decades, as if it was Vasco Da Gama’s arrival to meet the Zamorin in Calicut. Since Kerala has already made an entry into this UP specific, nay Varanasi temple specific article, one must remember that policemen and policewomen still wear their khakis at the Sabarimala shrine for Lord Ayyappa, they do the same at Tirupati where people come from far and wide for a darshan of Lord Venkateshwara aka Balaji, the lord of the seven hills. Nobody has had negative perceptions in these locations, but most have been reassured that an officer of the law is at hand to help in case something goes wrong. And to keep order in the melee of people jumping queues mentioned at the outset.
Similarly, the kutcheri season in Chennai also has its share of police duty. Policemen are welcomed and fed in the makeshift canteen for the concerts for just ensuring nothing goes awry and the rasikas can enjoy their ragas in relative peace. Further, when celebrated singers and instrumentalists bring more crowds to the margazhi concerts, the police become doubly essential. It’s same at the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health at Velankanni in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, the same at the Infant Jesus Church in Bengaluru, the same at Kalkaji mandir and Nizamuddin in New Delhi and is also found in the winding alleys leading to the Mehrauli shrine to Sufi saint Qutubuddin Kaki. It’s the same at Ajmer Sharif and Vaishno Devi and wherever else you may look.
If we strike out the motives beyond the said negative perception and the devotees being made to feel respected, the intent to prettify seems to be the main reason for this exercise at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. The temple town has been for generations a symbol of the syncretic Ganga Jamuni psyche. A cursory search on YouTube will get you to the clip of Shehnai maestro late Ustad Bismillah Khan, a Bharat Ratna no less, extolling the virtues of syncretic Varanasi where the Vishwanath temple is the main draw. But times they change, now the Kashi Vishwanath corridor has come about, leaving the shrine at the centre of it after numerous smaller shrines were overrun in the drive to attract and cater to the insatiable domestic tourist inflow. The ghats of Kashi also turn into celeb magnets for the evening aarti of the Ganga, especially when its MP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lands there to thank the river for bestowing her bounty on his party after its 2019 re-election.
The police accord a reverence to their khaki uniform as to a demigod, the uniform is possibly second only to their dedication to the country. Now, it may well come third in these times when one’s faith also needs to be assuaged that it matters. One may smirk at the casual and petty corruption in the force, but they do wear their khaki uniform with great pride. The colour has been the colour of choice for the police since 1847, a full 10 years before the First War of Indian Independence, Mangal Pandey and the cartridge. It was chosen by Sir Henry Lawrence to replace the whites that would be sweat-stained and dusty in the country’s barren hinterland. Since then, many variations of the colour coexist state to state, although PM Modi had suggested a few years ago having one shade of khaki for the police nationwide.
The power that khaki exudes is so confidence enhancing that even scamsters use it. Recently, one such tried an online fraud model to attempt to dupe this writer, saying he had picked up a few kids and one of them was the writer’s offspring. The call had come from WhatsApp, the picture showed a moustachioed police officer of a healthy disposition. The number, however, was a +92, which meant it was from Pakistan, the land of the Indus, Harappa, and mercurial cricketers. Realising he had been caught out, the scamster cut the call short. Similarly, the Fedex scam also has a policeman in uniform making a video call and threatening legal action if some Rs 4 lakh is not deposited in an account, until the “narcotics case” is cleared. A journalist in Bengaluru lost lakhs and lakhs of money like this. So even thieves and crooks use the khaki colour to con reasonably intelligent people, god knows only how easily the gullible are defrauded.
What’s a uniform change for police within a temple in the scheme of life and time? Kashi, Varanasi, Banaras—the ancient town has seen so many things come and go. Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s destruction of the Vishwanath temple leading to the creation of the Gyanvapi mosque, now in the courts, was just another bad day. The Ganga will still flow calmly and at peace with itself, the ashes of the many Hindus poured into it for the deliverance of their souls, leaving behind the gunk and the junk to lap at the granite steps of the ghat.