The ‘Benaras experience’ is being redesigned. The narrow and winding lanes around the Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, which gave the place its character of timelessness, of repose in the middle of chaos, is giving way to an architecture of designed order. The temple is at the centre of the project that promises to change the ‘eternal city’ like nothing else has. It marks the western end of Vishwanath Dham, spread over about 11.6 acres, and a 20m-wide pedestrian pathway, forked towards the end, will connect it to the ghats on the Ganga. Coupled with the open space—the Mandir Chowk—envisaged in front of the temple and a smaller such space foregrounding the adjacent Gyan Vapi mosque, the design gives the temple unrivalled visual prominence in the Varanasi cityscape. If the project is completed as planned in November, just a few months ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, it will likely be showcased in the ruling BJP’s poll campaign as a major accomplishment. After all, much of political rhetoric in modern times taps into the latent yearning for a return to a glorious past—refracted through our present-day imagination—and the promise of a similarly glorious future built upon those past glories. The Vishwanath temple, demolished in the 17th century and rebuilt in the 18th beside the Gyan Vapi mosque that had been constructed on the old plinth, has long evoked memories of ‘Hindu pride’ and, along with the Ram temple in Ayodhya, served as a template for Hindutva articulation of cultural nationalism.