Tourism: Celebrating the sublime and the sensual

As Khajuraho celebrates 1,000 years of existence next year, both the Government and industry hope it will give a boost to a declining tourist traffic.

As Annemarie, a French tourist, and Keso, a local Gond village youth, walked the dusty, smelly road leading to the western group of temples in Khajuraho last week, there was an unmistakable glint of warmth in their eyes. Keso was waxing eloquent in his smattering of English, French and Bundeli to a smiling Annemarie. But the powerful ambience of the temples of love didn't obviously inspire the posse of policemen which rudely stopped the couple some 200 m away from the temple gates. "Wait by the roadside till the CM sahib has passed," they were ordered. And soon enough riding a shining bullock cart and followed by a throng of glitterati and press from Delhi and Bhopal, came Digvijay Singh, Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and Uma Bharti, the BJP MP from Khajuraho. The uneasy couple in the rather contrived cart had arrived to declare plans for the Khajuraho Millennium to be celebrated with much fanfare from March 1999 to February 2000. And with the state elections around the corner, unlike Annemarie and Keso, there was obviously no love lost between the two political leaders as they paid cautious tributes to the world's oldest temples of love.

EVENTS AT A GLANCE
March 1999: Dance Festival
Site-specific compositions by leading dancers
April 1999: Sculptors' Meet
Indian and international sculptors to work in the inspiring environs
October 1999: Health Workshop
Alternative medicine programme
December 1999: Millennium Night
Party of the century
January 2000: Theatre Production
Nissar and Amal Allana to produce a special play on Khajuraho

However, couples often throw caution to the winds when in Khajuraho. The many Eurasian children on the streets of Khajuraho are a living testimony to the inspired union of love between foreign women visitors and their local guides. "Japani, Italian sab jaat ki bahuen hain hamari basti mein (we have daughters-in-law of all nationalities)," says Ramesh who works in a restaurant opposite the famous Lakshmana temple. And some of these couples have even set up "authentic" European food restaurants and Swiss-type hotels in this small hamlet of 6,000 or 7,000 people. Still deemed a village, there is very little by way of government administration here: a subdivisional magistrate and a station house officer rule the roost. Even the tehsildar sits in Chhattarpur, the district headquarters, roughly 35 km away.

Khajuraho was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO last year along with Abu Symbel in Egypt and the Coliseum in Rome. Yet it is surprising that almost 1,000 years after they were first built and 179 years after they were re-discovered by a British military surveyor named Cornet James Franklin, the attitude towards the magnificent temples of Khajuraho remains coyly ambiguous. Even a nationalist like Gandhi wanted the temples "curtained off". It required experts like Ananda Coomaraswamy and Nandalal Bose to explain the ethical and spiritual significance of eroticism in Hindu philosophy and aesthetics to save the 22 sandstone temples from sinking into ruin and oblivion.

Given this ambivalence and the fact that the Congress rules the state and BJP at the Centre, it is not surprising that the initiative for organising the Khajuraho Millennium lies with local hoteliers and travel tycoons led by Kanti and Promila Poddar -- the "Shiva and Parvati of Khajuraho", as Bharti calls them. While the Centre and state have promised to beef up the elaborate programmes of dance, music, folk crafts, art camps, yoga and alternative medicine, the bulk of activities will be funded by private sponsors. In a major coup Bharti got the prime minister and railways minister to visit Khajuraho two weeks ago and declare that a railway track from Jhansi would be laid out soon. This will bring Indian budget tourists to Khajuraho who till now have shied away from the sheer discomfort of travelling the strenuous four-hour journey on the narrow and extremely bumpy road from Jhansi. This road is also to be upgraded shortly. As of now the ratio of foreign and Indian tourists is a dismal 5:1. Nor are the luxury tourist facilities being utilised optimally; the five luxury hotels register an average occupancy of 36 to 38 per cent annually.

While there is an airport in Khajuraho it has only one daily flight from Delhi. Bharti has been bullying the Civil Aviation Ministry to start a flight from Mumbai too. While she may just swing this by next March, the long-term effects of the flights and the proposed rail links on the temples are yet to be assessed. "We will send a team of experts to study the effects of vibrations caused by flights and the proposed railway station," says Ajay Shankar, director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India.

The idea is not only to promote Khajuraho as a major tourist destination worldwide -- with promotional events planned in Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris and London -- but also to develop other attractions within motorable distances. These include the Panna National Park with its 27 tigers (besides other animals and birds), mahseer fishing on the Ken river, the breathtaking Raneh waterfalls, the Kalijar and the Orchha forts. But with the forts in a pitiable state of disrepair and the forest and river sites lacking in even basic infrastructure, these claims seem to be mere pipe dreams.

Tourism has been Madhya Pradesh's weakest point. Unlike Rajasthan which has achieved marvels in this field, Madhya Pradesh has done little to make its tourist spots attractive and comfortable. With the national tourism graph showing a steep decline last year, it is hoped the Khajuraho Millennium will reverse the trend. But whether the facilities in Khajuraho will be able to rise to the occasion and the numbers is another matter.