India, Sept. 13 -- One of India's holiest sites faces devastating infrastructural apathy. Saving Vrindavan is both a dharmic and a civic duty.

Vrindavan is at once eternal, and relatively new. The Bhakti traditions consider this not a place in the world but the place from which the world is finally understood. But the gap between those two Vrindavans-the one in the tenth canto of the Srimad Bhagavata and the one that exists today-has become intolerable. It is intolerable not only because pilgrims deserve comfort, and cleanliness, though they do, but because a civilisation that cannot look after its holiest ground is telling us something about itself.

A TOWN THAT WAS ALREADY SAVED ONCE

It is worth remembering that Vrindavan is not an un...