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The Slum and the Sacred Cave

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http://www.archaeology.org/0705/abstracts/cave.html

 

The Slum and the Sacred Cave Volume 60 Number 3, May/June 2007

text and photographs by Samir S. Patel

 

Neglect overtakes one of Mumbai's most important Hindu sites.

 

Jogeshwari Cave, beneath the slum at Pratap Nagar in Mumbai, is a

place for the locals to drink, study, or pray. Its 1,500-year-old

sculpture of the elephant-headed god Ganesh has been painted bright

orange. [LARGER IMAGE]

 

From an airplane approaching the airport in Mumbai (the mega-city

once called Bombay), a massive slum spreads below like a sea of

rusted metal whipped up by a steady, salty wind. But from a speeding

car on the city's new highways, the slums where 60 percent of the

city's 18 million people live often aren't visible. And that's why

Prabhu, my taxi driver, is asking for directions for a third time.

We're looking for Jogeshwari Cave, a great Hindu monument that now

lies within, and beneath, a dense slum community in northwest Mumbai.

 

 

 

The tight proximity of shops and homes can be seen from the cave's

back

Prabhu and I, along with Shri Manish, from the Archaeological Survey

of India (ASI), turn off the Western Express Highway and onto

progressively smaller roads until we reach a dirt track into a dense

neighborhood called Pratap Nagar. Prabhu needs to use the horn a lot--

as an " excuse me " --to clear the road of bicycles, beggars, and

schoolchildren in tidy uniforms and knee socks. The buildings may be

ramshackle, improvised, and illegal, but they're sturdy, with

multiple floors. Bollywood music pumps out of vendors' stalls. Blue

jeans hang on clotheslines. The smell of street food and burnt

cooking oil tickles my nose. Manish leans forward to guide Prabhu and

we stop in front of a narrow path, muddy with wastewater, that

descends between rising rock walls to a dark doorway.

 

 

 

The " heavy colossi " guarding Jogeshwari

Jogeshwari, created around 1,500 years ago, is a rock-cut cave shrine

to the Hindu god Shiva. In its scale, the cave complex rivals several

UNESCO World Heritage sites nearby: the spectacular cave temples of

Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora. In its design and ornamentation,

Jogeshwari is transitional, with features reminiscent of older

Buddhist caves and Hindu statues less refined than those that would

appear later--a missing link in an evolutionary chain. " It connects

the greatest Buddhist monument [Ajanta] with what many would say is

the greatest Hindu monument [Elephanta], " says Walter Spink, an art

historian at the University of Michigan who has studied Indian cave

temples for decades. Jogeshwari's archaeological and art historical

importance is matched only by its advanced state of neglect. Until

recently, it was filled with garbage and squatters, and now the slum

above closes in tighter and sewage leaks down the walls. Overlooked

by scholars, neglected by the ASI, and forgotten by the people of

Mumbai, Jogeshwari languishes while its progeny, the spectacular cave

on Elephanta Island in Mumbai Harbor, has become one of the city's

most visited and treasured tourist destinations.

 

Samir S. Patel is an associate editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.

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