Kiran Keswani
Everyday City Lab
kiranmkeswani@gmail.com
This paper examines the ashwath katte, a shrine space centred around the peepul tree (Ficus religiosa) as a site of nature worship and informal placemaking in the city of Bengaluru, India. These spaces reflect an enduring spiritual relationship with the natural world that is expressed not only through festival or temple rituals but also through the ordinary rhythm of everyday life. Rather than interpreting kattes solely as religious sites, this research positions them as informal yet critical urban infrastructure that support social ties, ecological conservation, and climate resilience.
Figure 1: The Sirsi Circle katte as a node of community interaction
The origin of the katte lies in agrarian villages where a peepul tree or a boundary stone was considered as an embodiment of the deity offering protection from natural calamity (Whitehead, 1921). Typically located along village peripheries, they became physical thresholds – markers of transition, protection and health. As urban expansion absorbed many of Bengaluru’s villages, several ashwath kattes have remained, bridging the rural past and urban present. (Nair, 2005). For Hindus, divinity assumes a variety of physical forms, however, the most accessible one is a neighbourhood tree (Haberman, 2013). Today, the everyday ritual practices at the ashwath katte continue to create an awareness that nature needs to be revered besides generating immersive experiences that bring tranquillity. These spaces have also evolved into places that one visits to pause, to converse or to build social connections. One finds here the presence of flower-sellers, vegetable vendors and tea stalls that illustrates how the ashwath kattes have also become sites for informal vending.
From an ecological perspective, the peepul tree, also considered a key-stone species by ecologists, offers benefits that are increasingly valuable in dense, overheated urban environments (Colding and Folke 1997). Urban ecologists note their role in providing shade, filtering polluted air, and preserving soil moisture in concretized zones (Nagendra 2016). In the context of climate crisis, the paper argues that integrating these hybrid, everyday spaces into formal planning can enhance urban climate resilience and support an inclusive model of ecological and spatial planning.
The research draws on a long-term ethnographic engagement with ashwath kattes in Bengaluru, spanning from 2015 onwards. The initial phase involved mapping and documenting 100 kattes with the support of students, volunteers, and research associates between 2015 and 2020. A more focused study of 20 kattes over the course of a year (2018–2019) employed spatial mapping, participant observation, and stakeholder interviews. These empirical findings are framed within a broader theoretical discourse in urban design and planning, building on previous scholarship on tree worship and the production of space.
The paper uses the lens of nature as threshold space to understand and analyse how ashwath kattes as traditional, religious spaces continue to be relevant today. It reveals how the ‘katte’ as a natural environment works simultaneously as a physical threshold (where the boundary between public and sacred space is porous), a conceptual threshold (the transition between the states of mind, a crossing over from the material to the spiritual) and a social threshold (where interactions occur across different stakeholder groups and take us from the individual to the collective).
The paper shares three case studies to exemplify these dynamics. One, the Sirsi Circle katte which acts as a node of community interaction, where the sacred function coexists with daily life. Here, devotees light lamps in the morning, while by afternoon, workers, vendors and youngsters are seen using the shaded platform as a gathering space. Two, the Bisilu Mariamma shrine and katte in Dodda Mavalli, where ritual practices are oriented toward the sun, a tradition linked to older health beliefs around sunlight exposure and plague resilience. This one-acre space has grown to also hold an informal marketplace and a marriage hall, managed by the local residents. And finally, the Sampangiramnagar katte, adjacent to the popular Siddappa Mess eatery which represents a secular katte that continues to also operate as a popular, social space. Across all three, the peepul tree serves not only as a symbol of divinity but also as vital urban infrastructure in sacred, ecological and social terms.
In closing, this paper proposes that ashwath kattes be recognized not simply as sacred space or cultural heritage, but as dynamic, participatory infrastructures that sustain both ecological systems and social cohesion. Their modest scale belies their significance: they are places where the natural and the man-made meet, forming human activity nodes (Salingaros, 1998) that are simultaneously spiritual and social, mythic and material, ephemeral and enduring. These spaces exemplify how a reverence for nature as a part of the everyday life of a neighbourhood contributes to urban resilience as well as public well-being.
References
- Colding, Johan, and Carl Folke. “The relations among threatened species, their protection, and taboos.” Conservation ecology 1, no. 1 (1997).
- Haberman, David L. People trees: worship of trees in northern India. Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Nagendra, Harini. Nature in the city: Bengaluru in the past, present, and future. Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Nair, Janaki. The promise of the metropolis: Bangalore’s twentieth century. Oxford University Press, (2005).
- Salingaros, Nikos A. “Theory of the urban web.” Journal of urban design 3, no. 1 (1998): 53-71.Whitehead, Henry. The village gods of South India. Vol. 1. H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921.
