An Update from the University of Missouri

On Monday, November 9, 2015, Tim Wolfe, the president of the four-campus University of Missouri system since February 2012, resigned. Later the same day, the chancellor of the University of Missouri’s main campus in Columbia, R. Bowen Loftin, also stepped down, less than two years after coming to Mizzou. Both were responding to months of protests on campus by graduate students, faculty, local and statewide citizens, and finally black undergraduate students, including members of the football team. One courageous graduate student went on a hunger strike demanding the president’s resignation. These students—grads and undergrads—had formed the group #ConcernedStudent1950 to call attention to the University’s deeply racist history; although founded in 1839, MU did not admit black students until 1950.

The changes brought about by these amazing students are something we all can and should be proud of.  As a faculty member, I can say that I and most of my faculty colleagues—in fact ALL those I’ve spoken to or heard from—feel the changes that have taken place over the past three months have been very positive and very beneficial for the campus as a whole. Personally I am so very proud of our students, and I am so inspired by what they’ve accomplished. And I’m proud of all the faculty who have stood up for and with those students, and have suffered unimaginable attacks and threats from a hostile public for doing so.

To be clear, for those readers who may not be as intimately familiar with the goings-on here in Columbia, the departure of Wolfe and Loftin was not all about race; there were so many issues that troubled students, faculty, staff, and our community (which includes the entire state of Missouri). Opposition to these two leaders was strong among faculty, staff, and even high-level administrators—the deans of all of MU’s schools and colleges signed a letter demanding Loftin’s departure. Two campus departments issued unanimous letters of “no confidence” in the Chancellor. (See this Columbia Tribune article on Long-Standing Issues at MU.)

The issues that had been brewing on campus for months, even for years in some cases, were too many to enumerate fully, but included attacks on graduate student funding and health insurance, attacks on Planned Parenthood, complete lack of transparency in decision-making, and failure to act on racist incidents at the University. It was this last issue that finally brought about the much-needed change on campus, and brought the attention of the national media to our door. Most specifically, it was the decision by black football players to strike in support of the demands of #ConcernedStudent1950 and the hunger-striking student, that made folks from all over the country feel they had a stake in what happened here. After all, what’s more important than football?

There were many, many problems on our campus, but it was the black student protests that finally brought down these two incompetent leaders, Wolfe and Loftin. Strengthened by the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and in the same state as Ferguson, black students at Mizzou (including black football players, who are first and foremost students) felt empowered to demand change that has long been overdue.  But the fact remains, Wolfe and Loftin HAD to go, for a variety of reasons.

Wolfe and Loftin did the right thing by stepping down. But the reactions on social media, as well as on a number of bogus-“news”-sites (like Fox Sports), displayed an outpouring of anger—WHITE anger—from people who have no familiarity with what has been going on at our campus; and of sympathy for the two very powerful white men who were apparently perceived as the poor victims here, giving in to the demands of spoiled children and the so-called “radical left” (i.e., their MU faculty supporters) who have supposedly trampled all over free speech and press freedom.  I have repeatedly heard comments to the effect, “Poor Tim Wolfe, why is he being blamed for some idiots shouting racial slurs on campus? What’s he supposed to do about it? It’s not his fault!” Anyone who thinks this came out of nowhere, or in response to just a one-week-long student protest, is either completely ignorant or deliberately obtuse.  

For some observers outside the University opining via social media, recent incidents of racism on campus sound annoying but harmless.  Some ignorant folks have suggested that black students were overreacting to being called racial slurs on campus. (See this NPR article on "whiny" protesters.)  I’m astonished that anyone could be so insensitive and dismissive of these students’ experiences.  The truth of the matter is, these incidents were NOT isolated, and they were certainly not harmless.  Anyone who knows anything about American history should know that the use of these horrible racial epithets has frequently been accompanied by racial violence, even lynchings, with no repercussions for the perpetrators.  So even if the jerk yelling the n-word at a group of black students gathered on campus was not literally threatening to lynch them then and there, the act of hurling that abusive language is embedded in a historical, entrenched pattern in which that word has been used to threaten, warn, and intimidate its targets, who know that physical violence is always percolating beneath that veneer of “harmless” “free” speech.

I have taught at the University of Missouri since 2003, and I have been aware of many racist incidents on campus over the years, mainly consisting of graffiti and vandalism. (See this New York Times article on racism at MU.) One particularly notorious incident happened in 2010 when two young white men strew cotton balls all over the lawn outside the Gaines/Oldham Black Student Center, referencing picking cotton under slavery. Subsequent forums to address the racial climate were very educational; black community leaders came to campus to talk about the history of the black community in Columbia and to share their historical perspectives; faculty and students listened, and marshalled our expertise on holding “Difficult Dialogues” to promote understanding among members of our campus at various fora. At the Black Studies Conference (which happens every other year), a student in the room asked a panel of faculty and grad students, “why do we have Historically Black Colleges, but there aren’t any Historically White colleges?”  One of my faculty colleagues (who has since left the University, unfortunately) didn’t miss a beat; he replied “There are. You’re in one.”

It was surprising to find that some 20-year-olds were unaware that universities like ours didn’t admit black students for over a century. But these young people don’t have that historical memory, and if people around them don’t talk about history and race, they might never know.  Most of the students who were on campus at that time have moved on, leaving today’s crop of undergraduate students to feel as if these racist incidents have either come out of nowhere, or have been here all along, with no one trying to do anything about the problem.  Today, though, the University IS trying to bring about permanent change, positive change, under our new leadership.

The educational mission of the University demands that we keep working to change the campus culture, in order to make the campus a welcoming place for ALL our students.

My Great-Grandparents' House (Part II in the series "My Louisville")

On my most recent visit to Louisville I asked my mom to take me to see the house of her grandparents.  George Herman Bach (1885?-1943) and Lillian Whitehouse Bach (1899-1954) lived in this brick bungalow on Dixie Highway in Shively; I don't know when they first moved in, but my grandmother, Lillie May Bach (1919-2007), was born here. 

This house is just north of Algonquin Parkway, the third structure from the corner, on the west side of the highway.  This is the house in which my grandmother grew up with her younger sister and brother.  Their dad was a butcher at a nearby butcher's shop on Dixie Highway.

The last time we visited this house it was standing empty with a "For Sale" sign; all the windows were boarded up, and the red brick still looked as it always had.  On this visit (June 2013), the house had gotten a new lease on life:  a new owner had painted the brick a pale yellow, and the interior is in the process of being refurbished.  In this photo you can see a fellow standing on the front porch, talking on the phone; he was working on the house, and talking to the owner.  He asked me if I wanted to talk to the owner myself, and handed me his phone.

My great-grandmother (whom, of course, I never met) lived in this house until she died in 1954, but then it passed out of our family.  The present owner had never heard of the Bachs, but did know the previous family who lived here, I think he said the woman's name was Alma White.

The present owner is fixing it up -- the bags of trash on the front porch are stuff they have taken out of this long-unoccupied building -- he says he hopes to have a residential unit on the second floor and commercial on the first floor.

I love this photo of the front door with its side lights and transom lights.  My mom says that her mom would be really happy to see that her parents' house is getting some TLC.  For my part I was happy to see that it was no longer standing neglected and empty, and I was relieved to see that it's still standing.

This type of brick bungalow is quite common in Louisville, and all over the country, in fact.  Bungalows date from the early 20th century, when streetcars were common and private cars were not.  Bungalows don't have garages, as you can see in this photo.  Once the automobile became more common, detached garages were built.  Later, houses with carports, and eventually attached garages, were built; the ranch house displaced the bungalow as the most popular vernacular architecture type.

On Dixie Highway many houses have disappeared to make way for commercial development, but north of the Watterson many remain residential too.  Just north of my great-grandparents' house is a large discount store called Save-A-Lot, so it's not inconceivable that this house could have succumbed to the bulldozer at some point like its former neighbors.  I'm hoping to see it occupied on my next visit, whenever that happens; and if it's a commercial occupant I might finally get to go inside.

Dixie Highway (Part I in the series "My Louisville")

Northbound on Dixie Highway through Shively; notice the two-story house on the right, now Dixie Florist, just past the Pep Boys.  Note the above-ground power lines that dominate the view.

I’m from Louisville, Kentucky, but until now haven’t written anything about it in my blog, having spent my entire adult life in other places I liked better.  I grew up less than half a mile from Dixie Highway, in Valley Station, which is in the Southwest part of Jefferson County, and really quite far from downtown.  It’s a good 30 to 45 minutes’ drive to the downtown waterfront, depending on which route you take and the traffic conditions.  I could have walked to Valley High School, had I been a student there, but instead I attended Pleasure Ridge Park High School because I was in the advanced program.  For people who are not from Louisville, the name Pleasure Ridge Park (which is also the name for the part of town it’s in) elicits amused smiles and sometimes smirks – but that’s another story.  People in Louisville know it as PRP, and don’t think twice about the name’s origins.

Dixie Highway in Shively -- six lanes plus a center median

I always hated Dixie Highway when I was growing up.  Oh, I doubt that anyone loves Dixie Highway – for folks in Southwest Jefferson County it’s a long, traffic-clogged obstacle between them and getting anywhere fast.  We lived 6.5 miles from my grandparents’ house in Shively, but that drive – nearly all of it along Dixie Highway – seemed interminable.  

Besides Dixie Highway’s congestion, though, it is a real eyesore.  It is one long hideous stretch of unregulated commercial development dominated by car dealerships, fast food outlets, big box stores, strip malls with crummy chain restaurants in their parking lots, drugstores, gas stations with convenience stores, car washes, grocery stores, and countless small businesses filling in the remaining nooks and crannies.  There is one movie theater, the only one serving this entire vast part of town.  Oh, did I mention dive bars, nasty motels, and adult entertainment?  It has its share of those too in certain parts.  The road is lined with above-ground power lines, telephone lines, and traffic signal wires.  There has been no effort to make it aesthetically pleasing, a direct index of the economic impoverishment of this part of town.

I realize that “hate” is a very strong word, and when I say that I hated Dixie Highway, it’s not only because of the traffic nightmare or the aesthetic impoverishment it presents.  My strong emotional reaction was in part a function of my unhappy childhood.  I lived there from about the middle of 4th grade until I graduated from high school; these nine years were about the most unhappy years of my life, though the unhappiness began a few years earlier when my parents divorced.  Growing up I always associated my personal misery with the apparent squalor of Dixie Highway.  My family was poor – more accurately I should say lower middle class, because we did have all the economic necessities, and were doing better than many folks in this community, but that’s not saying a lot.  In Louisville it is painfully obvious that the better off you are financially, the further east you live – and Valley Station was about as far from the East End as you could get.  My boyfriend lived in St. Matthews (in the East End), about 20 miles from where I lived; one of his friends told him once that I “didn’t look like a girl from Valley Station.”  I knew what he meant, and I had to take that as a compliment.  But I always experienced my childhood home as a real stigma.

But on my most recent trip to Louisville I started to see Dixie Highway from a different perspective, that of a trained architectural historian, and to think about what it might have looked like once upon a time.  I began to pay attention to the many buildings along the highway that clearly began their lives as houses.  Most of these houses south of the Watterson Expressway (I-264) appear to date from the late 1940s and the post-war housing boom that occurred across the nation.  These are modest single-family homes, and look very much like the housing stock from that era that survives in the surrounding neighborhoods.  Before the late 1940s the homes on Dixie Highway were mainly farmhouses, somewhat larger than their later neighbors.  South of the expressway, every last one of them (with one possible exception*) has been converted to commercial use.

Another beautiful old farmhouse converted to commercial use on Dixie Highway.

Fortunately I have a very good source of historical information:  my mother has lived in Louisville for most of her life.  Her parents lived in Louisville for their entire lives, except for a few years during World War II when as newlyweds they lived in Virginia, where my grandfather worked at a shipyard.  (He was a welder, and couldn’t enlist in the services because his eyesight was not good enough.)  In fact my family has lived on or near Dixie Highway for several generations.

My mother remembers a time when Dixie Highway wasn’t six lanes wide with a center median; she says it used to be four lanes, with no median, and all the buildings on the highway were houses with big front yards.  (Think Southern Parkway, a well preserved example of Louisville’s residential thoroughfares.)  When Dixie Highway was widened it took away most of those lawns, and miles and miles of trees.  And when those houses became commercial real estate, much of what remained of those lawns was paved over for parking.

 Left: Dixie Highway north of the Watterson;  right: Some older houses in Shively on Dixie Highway north of the Watterson Expressway.

North of the expressway you can see what Dixie Highway used to look like:  here it is still four lanes, and there are many houses still standing, and still residential (though there’s a lot of commercial property here too).  There are a lot of old trees.  I notice there is a narrow center median, and I wonder if this is where the streetcar used to run.  My great grandparents, George Bach and Lillian Whitehouse Bach, lived in a house on Dixie Highway just north of Algonquin Parkway.  My grandmother, Lillie May Bach, grew up in this house, and she once told me that when she was little, it was “out in the country.”  By the time she grew up it was in the city, for Dixie Highway had developed quite a lot during those decades.  This part of town is called Shively, sometimes known as “Lively Shively” according to my mom (who grew up there).

This old farmhouse is now a law office.  It has an old-fashioned port-cochere.

Dixie Highway was (and still is) the road to Fort Knox, and in my grandmother’s youth it mainly ran through farmland.  Based on the style of housing, as mentioned earlier, it appears that the post-World War II housing boom brought a new wave of development and lots of single-family homes to Dixie Highway.  This was the Levittown era, with its modest spec housing built in large numbers for returning war veterans starting their families.

Post-WWII housing boom:  this 1940s house is now an insurance agency.

The next era of big changes for Dixie Highway came along with the development of interstate highways and urban planning of the early 1960s.  The Watterson Expressway was built in 1961-62 – my mom’s freshman year at the University of Kentucky – and it appears to me that this was the catalyst for Dixie Highway’s expansion into six lanes.  It does not become six lanes until you reach the Watterson – north of the Watterson it’s still four lanes – and the six-lane Dixie Highway runs from the Watterson south to Greenwood Road, a distance of 3.2 miles.  South of Greenwood Road it returns to four lanes.  When I was driving through Valley Station a couple days ago I noticed an advertisement for a local business which boasted “50 years on Dixie Highway.”  That would make it 1963 when that business began – part of that wave of commercial development following the construction of the Watterson.

In Valley Station, well south of Greenwood Road, there are long stretches of Dixie Highway lined with trees – in fact an extensive stretch of forest lies opposite the mall containing Target.  South of Ponder Lane you can even find a frontage road with houses and large front yards running next to the highway, again reminiscent of Southern Parkway.

In this essay I don't mean to recapitulate the "narrative of loss" so common among so many descriptions of historical development.  When my mother was growing up in Shively in the 1940s and 50s, "everyone went downtown for everything," as she tells it.  It's nice to be able to find the things you need without going downtown, and today Dixie Highway seems to offer a lot of things people need.  As a metropolitan area of 1.3 million people, the growth of the city was inevitable; I just wish it could have been implemented in a more aesthetically pleasing and history-conscious manner.  Dixie Highway is not a thoroughfare that historic preservationists are likely to champion, but I think some of these old structures deserve some attention and respect.

*I mentioned above that I think I found ONE house on Dixie Highway in Shively, south of the Watterson, that has not been converted to commercial use.  It’s a gray stone house that sits directly opposite Gagel Avenue, minimal traditional in style, one and a half stories.  It has absolutely no signage, plus a white picket fence around the back yard, which makes me think it’s residential.  Unfortunately it is sandwiched between All America Pool and DT’s Bar and Grill, making it a rather unpleasant place to live – not to mention the six-lane highway outside its front door.  Still, I have to hand it to anyone who can resist the many pressures, both economic and otherwise, to give in to the commercialization of the landscape.

This little house on Dixie Highway and Gagel Avenue appears to be still residential.

Note:  When I say that I hated Dixie Highway, and that I felt stigmatized for growing up in Southwest Jefferson County, I do not mean to offend anyone who previously or currently lives in this part of town – i.e., Shively, PRP, and Valley Station.  Lots of people are proud to come from this part of Jefferson County, including my mom and my grandparents, all of whom I love very much.  If anything I deplore what I perceive as the snobbery of many Louisvillians who look down on the Southwest.  (Again, that’s my subjective perception.)  Further, there are many affluent neighborhoods in the Southwest, though mine wasn’t one of them.  What I have tried to convey in this essay is my acknowledgment that it was my own unhappy childhood that made me feel bad about living in this part of town, because at the time the two were closely connected in my mind.  Now that I am 49 years old I am long past those biases formed in childhood.  And as an architectural historian I find the history of Louisville's development quite intriguing.  I offer my sincere apologies to anyone whom I may inadvertently have offended with my discussion.

The City of Shiva -- Varanasi, India

One of the most memorable experiences while I was in India in July was our visit to Varanasi, the sacred city of Shiva, the most holy of all the Hindu pilgrimage centers (tirthas) in India. I did not really know what to expect, though I knew it would be full of pilgrims as well as devout Hindus wanting to spend their remaining days in the city from which moksha is guaranteed (but only if you die there). I knew about the ghats, or stepped platforms and terraces, along the Ganges –some used for devotion, others for the mundane tasks like laundering clothes. Bathing can occur in either context – sacred or mundane.

The trip began in a jarringly memorable way: as we were boarding our plane, two coffins were sitting on the tarmac, waiting to be loaded into the cargo hold. Devout Hindus on their way to be cremated at the place where Lord Shiva would ferry their souls across the river to the great beyond. I realized that their grieving relatives would most likely be on the same flight with us. Having come to India almost directly from my grandmother's memorial service, I was all the more attuned to death and grieving. My grandmother was with me on that trip to India, in the way that people keep telling me she is always with me, in spirit. I kept wanting to share with her my experiences and impressions, and then realizing I couldn't.

I was not surprised to find in Varanasi extreme contrasts with New Delhi. Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in India, and Delhi, while several centuries old, is also probably the most modern city as well. Delhi’s airport is only one year old, and road-building seems to have kept pace with the boom in population and in automobiles (unlike Hyderabad, for example, where traffic is a total nightmare).

Varanasi is intense – old, dirty, with narrow winding streets thronged with market stalls; the crush of pilgrims and tourists making their way to and from the ghats; religious fervor and fervent hawkers; pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws and automobiles all competing for space; very loud music! All of one’s senses are assaulted, between the fragrant aroma of flowers and the odor of cow dung, the loud music, the visual cacophony of colors and textures, foods both tempting and repellant. The heat, the humidity, the mud, and – once you get to the Ganges – the water (I stepped in up to my ankles) – it all overwhelms. Varanasi is like India itself – intense, larger than life, sometimes too much to handle, but somehow captivating.

We were there during a special month devoted to Shiva; in the lunar calendar it occurs only once every three years (or once every 32.5 months, according to Wikipedia). Pilgrims -- almost all of them young men, dressed entirely in orange -- travel on foot to Varanasi to gather water from the Ganges in small pots, and then to travel on foot to other Shiva temples located throughout the country to pour the sacred water on the Shiva lingam. In these photos you can see the decorated poles used by pilgrims to carry the Ganges water:

According to Subhadra Sen Gupta, Kashi may have been a Dravidian center of worship before the arrival of the Aryans in the subcontinent. The cult of Shiva dates to before the Aryans’ arrival, and Kashi is believed to be Shiva’s sacred city. Remains of a city wall dating back to the 9th century B.C. have been found on the northern edge of the city.

The city is known by many names:

1. Kashi (or Kashika, or Kashi Kshetra for the region of Kashi) is the name used in the oldest literary reference, the epic Mahabharata; it means “the Luminous,” or “the City of Light.” This is where Shiva’s jyotirlingam first appeared, a column of light that symbolized Shiva’s presence.

2. Varanasi – the city lies between two streams, the Varana (to the north) and the Asi (to the south); together they make the name Varanasi.

3. Benares – a mis-hearing of the word Varanasi

4. Anandavana – “Shiva’s forest of bliss”

5. Anandakanana – “Shiva’s garden of happiness”

6. Rudravasa – the abode of Rudra (because one of the aspects of Shiva is as the Vedic god Rudra)

7. Mahashmashana – the Great Cremation Ground

8. Avimukta: the Never-Forsaken, or the city never forsaken by Lord Shiva

There are some 80 ghats in Kashi, built mostly from red sandstone. The five most sacred ghats are the Asi, Kedar, Dasaswamedha, Panchganga, and the Manikarnika. (Some pilgrims prefer the Adi Keshava ghat to the Kedar ghat.) These are said to possess the most spiritual power and sanctity. The only ghat we visited was the Dasaswamedha Ghat, where the virtuous King Divodasa was forced by the gods to perform the horse sacrifice, or ashwamedha yajna, not just one but ten times. In the Vedic religion, the horse sacrifice was the most elaborate and auspicious ritual, and was performed only by kings because it required so much wealth. Divodasa performed his ten horse sacrifices here at this ghat, which thus became the most auspicious of all the ghats. Bathing here at this ghat brings you all the blessings of the ten horse sacrifices.















































The Ganga Aarti is performed at the Dasaswamedha Ghat every morning and every night; this is a worship ceremony (puja) in honor of the goddess Ganga Ma (Mother Ganges):

Our group got to watch the evening ceremony while seated in a boat on the Ganges. Several priests performed it in unison, circling fire, water vessels, incense, bells, and the other gifts made to the goddess. The ceremony signifies waking up the goddess in the morning, and putting her to bed at night. For the devout Hindu, the river IS the goddess, the living and energetic form of the divine; as we watched the puja being performed, we floated atop her divine presence, occupying the space between worshipers and worshiped.

Early on Sunday morning a small group of us went back to the ghat and in pursuit of the main Shiva temple in the city, the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Not only are you not allowed to bring a camera into the temple, but you aren’t even allowed to bring a camera anywhere near the temple. There were two security checkpoints leading up to the temple, and I took a photo of this sign at the first security checkpoint saying that cameras are not allowed (plus I got yelled at for taking this photo as I walked past!):

Foreigners are generally not allowed to enter the temple, either, so not surprisingly we did not get in. I was able to look into the two doors leading into and out of the temple, and could only see that it was really crowded with worshipers. We could see the tops of towers rising above the wall (at the point where we had already left our cameras behind). I stood in line hoping to get in, and came temptingly close, but an argument in line right in front of me slowed things down to a halt and I had to leave.

I’m not sure why foreigners are not allowed, but a couple of explanations occur. According to one of the leaders of our group, the Brahmins (priests) do not want non-Hindus in the temple, and are very adamant about it. For them this is the holiest of the holies, so that attitude is not surprising. A second explanation offered by an historian in the group is that Kashi is witness to quite a lot of communal violence, so in order to preserve security they are quite strict about controlling who visits important sacred sites.

Our final visit was to the cremation grounds, the “burning ghat,” where there were, indeed, a few cremation fires still burning. A yard filled with enormous piles of wood stood next to it; they performed about 100 cremations every day, so lots of wood was needed:

The photo of the cremation grounds was also not allowed, “for privacy,” but I couldn’t resist taking one picture:

The fires were attended only by the workers whose job was to take all the ashes into the Ganges after the cremation was over. One of them invited me to walk closer to one of the fires, and the heat was really intense. He pointed out where the skull was still burning, and explained that after burning for two hours, they would smash the skull so that the soul could escape; then the fire would be allowed to burn for another hour, so that the cremation was complete. (I thought of my grandmother, whose body was cremated in January -- the Indian method is so much more visible and hence more tangible.) During roughly 24 hours spent in and around Varanasi, we saw numerous cars and trucks traveling with dead bodies, wrapped in shrouds, attached to the roof -- bringing them to be cremated here.

In my yoga practice, my teacher / guru, Sienna, talks about feeling cosmic vibrations, and reverberating with the universe. The sacred sound "OM" is supposed to help you get in touch with it, but even during practice -- even during shavasana, corpse pose -- one should be able to contact this place that's latent in consciousness. In Varanasi, this feeling came upon me, it snuck up on me unawares. After spending about two hours on foot exploring the oldest and most important areas of this sacred city, my body was shaking involuntarily, microscopically. It was as if every atom of my being was suffused with the energy of Lord Shiva. Maybe it was from the close proximity to death, beginning with the coffins at the Delhi airport and culminating in the corpse burning a few feet away from me. Maybe it was the cumulative energy of religious faith taken to its most extreme form. Maybe it was the opportunity, at last, to see a side of India that had eluded me in my visits to modernized cities -- Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi. I am still struggling to understand why I felt how I did.

I would have needed to sit for several hours in contemplation to absorb everything I had seen. The experience left me speechless, and I'm still trying to make sense of the emotional intensity I felt on that gray morning on the banks of the Ganges.

Sources:
Diana L. Eck, Banaras City of Light (New York: Columbia U.P., 1999).
Subhadra Sen Gupta, Tirtha: Holy Pilgrim Centres of the Hindus (Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2001).