Abstract
Varanasi, a holy place of Hindu, has a close relationship between the religion and water. The purpose of this study is to propose a method to reconstruct the relationship between the human and environment for the modern time based on the relationship between the symbolic riverbank space and its surrounding community through the Dev Diwali festival. Dev Diwali Festival is the largest festival in Varanasi today. The surrounding community called Mohalla is the center of this festival. In addition to traditional meanings of this festival, it includes a message to improve the current situation of Ganga since it has been severely polluted for the past ten years.
In this study, a hearing research was conducted to the residents in order to define the relationship between Ghat and Mohalla in daily life, and the influence of Dev Diwali Festival on the structure of Mohalla society was studied based on the hearing research and phenomenon observed during the festival. As the result, it was found that there is a structure called the traditional device and modern device that can be useful for the reconstruction of the relationship between the symbolic riverbank space and its surrounding community.
