States: Uttar Pradesh

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Even the Ganga refuses to reduce the distance between the godly and the godforsaken. On the riverbank, it is the arabesque of man, God, animal, flower, smoke, stone, mantra and death-a loud, laminated salvation movement choreographed by water. Elsewhere, far away from the enchanted divinity of the river, beyond the spires soaring in gold-plated velocity and nirvana overdressed in marigold, it is the rustic regalia of power and fear. In election-eve eastern Uttar Pradesh, it is the passion play of the sacred and the profane, perfected by immovable gods in black stone and gods moving around in motor cars.

In Varanasi, the antique city of the Hindu on the Ganga, the most visual politics is still the politics of the soul. Along the ghats and across the temples, the soul politic of religion is in eternal ecstasy. See it at Dasashwamedh ghat-in the morning dip of the pilgrim, in the covenant between his folded hands and the rising sun, in the multicolour chaos of moksha, and ultimately, by the sunset, in Ganga arti, a sacred performance of circling flames and Sanskrit chanting, the special effects provided by the luminous animation in the darkened waters of the Ganga. Or at Manikarnika, the ghat of the dead-in the neverending fire and smoke of liberation.

The other politics is in the galis, Varanasi's trademark labyrinth. At the Vishwanath Gali, which is your gateway to the Vishwanath temple, the defining shrine of Varanasi, politics makes a sudden appearance in the form of Shyamdev Roychowdhury, four-time MLA and still fighting for the BJP. There he is, the candidate amidst his flag-waving campaigners, moving past miniature Shivlingas, precarious hills of sindur, bottled varieties of aniseed, copper gods and silk saris, bangles and perfumes, 12-faced rudrakshas and lacquered curios ... "How is it going?" "Very well." Though his chief Samajwadi Party challenger Rakesh Jain, campaigning in the nearby Kali Tola, busy highlighting the waste and squalor of the city divine, doesn't agree. "Four-time MLA, never a minister ... and has done nothing." Perhaps the definitive answer is with Vishwanath himself-Varanasi's enduring deity of power and survival, and not really untouched by politics of the centuries.

The history of conquest and demolition continues to coexist with the mystery of faith and devotion. Today the custodians of the white marble temple, rebuilt in the 18th century by a benevolent queen of Indore, are not only the pandas-the famed, persistent Brahmin priests of Banares-but armed policemen as well. Cross the back door and see the remains of the original Vishwanath temple, still an architectural appendix to the fury and faith of Aurangzeb-Gyanvapi mosque. There is a 24-hour vigil, for, as a politically conscious Brahmin guide tells you, "Vishwanath is volatile and sensitive." In Varanasi, gods' own constituency, an assembly election cannot hope to be as dramatic as the booth-capturing of history, whose divine victimhood still needs police protection.

Who will protect the Ganga, asks Veer Bhadra Mishra, whose karma is to wash clean the river that washes away the sins of man. Mishra, a former BHU professor and present mahant of a temple, says his scientific education and spiritual background give him the strength to fight. Sitting atop Tulsi ghat, once the favoured space of the poet himself, Mishra talks river and repudiates politics, for the Ganga has been consistently let down by politics, though, at this moment in the night, the river in darkness looks too awesome to be intimidated by politics. "When it is election time, every party wants me to contest." "Perhaps you should, for more power to redeem the river." "They don't care for the ideals I stand for. They have no agenda, and the Ganga has never been their agenda. The Ganga will give them more political mileage than Ram. But they don't realise."

As if the politics of Varanasi cannot fathom the loneliness of the river yogi.

So take a break and try to fathom the politics of Gorakhpur, the capital of Uttar Pradesh's wild east, where power is fear and the grammar of which is caste, where crime is a way of political life (well, 214 candidates in this region have a criminal background). In the city of Gorakhpur, the mandate aspires to be divine, as personified in Mahant Avaidhyanath, the paramount leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, and the highest priest of Gorakhnath temple. The mahant, fresh from his afternoon siesta, meets you in a room inhabited by framed variations of Shiva. Excerpts from his saffron anger: "Pity, the BJP wants to be secular; the party has deserted Ram and gone after the chair; Partition created a separate state for the Muslims and all of them should be there, not here; secularism is about appeasement, the Kashmir policy is about appeasement; when you talk Hinduism, it is a communal act in this country..." But one act of the mahant and his heir apparent, Yogi Adityanath, is giving intimations of damnation to the BJP candidate from the city, Shiv Pratap Shukla. The Hindu Mahasabha has put three rebel candidates in the fray, and one of them, a paediatrician called Radha Mohan Agarwal-perhaps the only candidate in the entire eastern Uttar Pradesh whose campaign dress is permanently formal, even if his tie is in visual combat with the garland round his neck-is serious about "denying Shukla his deposit". The yogi justifies, "It is not against the party but the individual."

Elsewhere in the district, in the hinterland, the individual is the party. "I'm the party, I'm the leader, I'm the flag," declares one with the name Markandeya Chand, for 20 years the elected Rajput helmsman of Dhuriapar. It is the end of another campaign day in the life of Chand. You have waited so long, all the while listening to the Chand mystique as chronicled by Chand junior ("you know, this is a place of hero-worship, and they worship my father"). Chand pere makes the belated appearance, adjusts the ear-plug, and places himself cross-legged across you, and above him on the wall, poor Ram Vilas Paswan, his newest party boss, looks powerless and desperate. You are face to face with one of the stereotypical don of the east. "They say there is only one party in Dhuriapar, and it is the MKD (an acronym for Markandeya Chand Dal)."

If so, a few kilometres down the road, in Chillupar, it has to be the Harishankar Tiwari Party. Tiwari, in the local political lore, is a senior citizen in the private republic of fear in the east. And the soft-spoken Tiwari, quite Gandhian in his sartorial taste, an independent supported by the BJP, looks too benevolent to be a pioneer of overlordship. "Eastern Uttar Pradesh as the epicentre of criminalisation of politics? Can you see it? Have you seen it? It is not the reality, it is a fake assumption. We have produced more freedom fighters." Perhaps only the idealism of Tripti Lal, former journalist and granddaughter of one of those freedom fighters, can change that assumption. An independent in Gorakhpur city, she is the most photogenic face on the poster. You have missed Lal on the stump, so she calls you on the phone to tell you why she is there, caught between the mahant and the mafia. "Gorakhpur is changing, and I want to change it further, and educated people from good families should come forward to fight the system. After all what is politics without idealism?" In eastern Uttar Pradesh, freedom is always in struggle, and it is as conspicuous as Tripti Lal.

It takes a while for the traveller to realise that freedom, after all, is available only in the Ganga. Sinners fight for it in the ghats and temples, and they are not politicians.

-with Subhash Mishra