The perseverance of a group of archaeologists paid off as the temples started to emerge from the ruins close to MP’s Morena
Having being ‘born’ and brought up in the Uttar Pradesh cadre, I had known about and even visited the more famous of the two Bateshwars, the one in UP. It is a pilgrimage site situated on the banks of river Yamuna in Agra district. The place has always been famous, at least locally, for multiple reasons - it has been an important pilgrimage site for Hindus because of the group of Shiva temples constructed on the banks of the river where she makes a gentle bend.
It is believed that Lord Shiva himself once rested here under an ancient Banyan tree, ‘bat vriksha’, and hence the place got its name. The place is also an important pilgrimage place for the Jains as their 22nd Tirthankara, Lord Neminath is supposed to have lived nearby.
However, Bateshwar wouldn’t have been so well connected in the days when our Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee lived here as a young boy and participated in the Quit India movement. That association has made Bateshwar even more well-known.
I had visited the place on the day of the annual cattle fair and on the nearby sprawling and dusty grounds, hundreds and thousands of cattle, horses and even camels were standing to be bought and sold. Nearby horse races and cattle races were being arranged and the entire place was full of heat, dust, noise and money exchanges. I have not seen the famous Sonepur animal fair of Bihar or the Pushkar animal fair in Rajasthan but the Bateshwar annual animal fair was certainly big enough.
However, the last time I visited Bateshwar, Agra, I was told of another Bateshwar, situated, as the crow flies, not so far away, but in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. I had never before heard of this other Bateshwar or Batesara group of temples and decided to make an exploratory trip. Some kilometres away from the district headquarters of Morena, near a hill called Padavali, where stands a famous medieval temple, stands this ‘other’ Bateshwar. Today except perhaps for the art, culture and history enthusiasts, this place is not too well known but more than a millennia ago, it must have been an important place for the local Gurjara- Pratihara kings to have built some hundreds of small, stone temples here, all congregated together, around a rock-cut water tank.
The temples were dedicated to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu as well as to Devi. However, when Alexander Cunningham, the legendary and pioneering British Archaeologist visited the site sometime in the late nineteenth century, almost all the temples were in complete ruin.
Thus, the situation remained till around two decades ago when government archaeologists from the Bhopal circle of Archaeology Survey of India - Dr R. C Agarwal, Mr A K Sinha and one K.K Muhammad from distant Kerala — decided to embark on an ambitious project to restore these temples back to their original form.
And so, the team of archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India started the slow and painstaking process of restoration of these temples one by one. It was an arduous process which must have been rather dangerous too as they were operating in, what was then the heart of Chambal Valley dacoit area. But perhaps with the covert blessings of the local dacoits, who might also have been curious to find out what these archaeologists were trying to achieve, the project continued over the years.
Slowly, the temples started to emerge from the ruins and the day I visited dozens of such small stone temples stood together around an ancient rock cut water body. One could see beautifully carved stone lintels showing various Hindu gods and goddesses, the various avtaars of Lord Vishnu and the various avtaars of Maa Durga. I could even see some local villagers as well as some curious visitors from beyond, place their offerings of Marigold and Hibiscus flowers in the dark altars of these temples as their ancestors probably would have done more than a thousand years ago.
I wonder if only those stones could speak out and tell us in their own voice the stories of those ancient kings and their courtiers, of the artisans and artists, the humble devotees and pujaris of those ages long gone by. I wonder if they could tell the stories of their own decline and ruin and then again, their sphinx-like rise in modern India from the ruins of centuries, what stories and histories might emerge. Such are the stories strewn all around us if only we care to listen.
(The writer is a serving IAS officer. The views expressed are personal.)