Muktidham Kashi: Why Varanasi Is Called the City of Liberation — and How Music Shaped It
Among the many names Varanasi carries — Kashi, Banaras, Avimukta — the one that puzzles first-time visitors most is Muktidham, the abode of liberation. In Hindu tradition, Kashi is held to be the place where the cycle of rebirth can end, and that single belief has shaped the city's architecture, its economy and its temperament for centuries. The idea is visible everywhere. Along the northern ghats stand modest guesthouses, historically called mukti bhavans, where elderly pilgrims from across India come to spend their final days. At Manikarnika Ghat the cremation fires have burned continuously for generations, tended by families whose work is passed down like any other craft. Visitors often arrive expecting something sombre and instead find an unhurried matter-of-factness: in Kashi, death is treated as a passage rather than a rupture, and daily life continues on the same steps. That philosophy is inseparable from the city's artistic life. Banaras has long been one of India's great centres of classical music, home to the Banaras gharana of tabla and thumri, and closely tied to the sitar and shehnai traditions that carried Kashi's sound to the world. Musicians from lineages such as the Etawah gharana — represented today by artists like Ustad Nishat Khan — describe performance itself as a form of devotion, an idea that fits a city where temple bells and riyaaz share the same morning air. For travellers, understanding Muktidham is less about visiting a monument than about slowing down. Sit on a ghat at dawn, listen, and the city explains itself.
Compiled by HelloBanaras from public sources: