Banaras Reconstructed

"Desai shows clearly that the city, especially its waterfront, has been a canvas for the inscription of power—of Mughal courtiers, Bengali merchants, British imperial functionaries, Hindu rajas, Maratha nobles, and an array of others trying to create their own narratives of heritage and lineage, whether for political or personal gain."

"An important book that brings new life to one of India’s oldest, holiest, and best-known cities. Nowhere has the longer history of Banaras’s many (re)constructions been more cohesively or persuasively told."

"Madhuri Desai has dexterously attempted to describe and exemplify how varied aspects have contributed in the consecration of Banaras as sacred amidst other buildings which hold a high degree of historical significance. The arguments by the author are meticulously supplemented with original layouts and documentations dating from the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar."

"Banaras Reconstructed is a valuable intervention in the field of early modern and colonial architectural history, one that productively opens up new passages into the complex history and historiography of the “Hindu city.”"

"A painstakingly pieced together work of longue durée urban history."

"Desai recuperates a forgotten history and weaves together various strands of material and religious culture of Banaras from Mughal times to the nineteenth century, when the legend of the city’s eternity crystallized and came to be widely disseminated. This book is a powerful piece of scholarship, a breakthrough in the study of this important South Asian site."

"Banaras Reconstructed astutely integrates a wide range of pilgrimage texts, contemporaneous histories, and visual representations with close analyses of the built environment to give us—at long last—a volume that dynamically brings together the multifarious layers of this city."

"Banaras Reconstructed is a comprehensive and thorough work of research focusing on a pilgrimage city whose ‘timelessness’ is a veneer much in need of historicization."