ABSTRACT
The Historical Backdrop The construction and representation of Banaras as sacred and Hindu has been a very significant feature of the city for the last 200 years. But, the construction of Banaras as a Hindu city by definition blots out certain other features of the city’s character. While the construction of Banaras as a Hindu city has been dealt with in Chapter 1, here I would like to focus on the manner in which Hindu-Muslim relations and the problem of ‘communalism’ have been constructed and played out in the 1990s. Associated with this is the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims.
