In this video interview for The Wire, Niharika Gupta of Sahapedia is in a conversation with John Stratton Hawley, a professor of Religion at the Barnard College in New York on his latest book, Krishna’s Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century.Hawley talks about how in the reimagination of Vrindavan in the 21st century, the beauty of the old Vrindavan is eroding.He says that the 70-floor Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir that is under-construction in Mathura could take the essential pastoral elements of Vrindavan away from it.He also says that the acceptance of Vrindavan as just a ‘Hindu site’ is a narrow sense of looking at it because Vrindavan was established in the 16th and 17th centuries as a result of an explicit treaty between Muslims and Hindu Emperors. The stones used to build temples there were officially granted by the Mughals in Fatehpur Sikri at the time.
