A 11-foot statue of Lord Hanuman rose above the crossroads of Banbasa, Champawat on Sunday, 18 October 2026, as Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami performed the formal unveiling and joined devotees in a Sundarkand paath — a communal recitation from the Ramcharitmanas. Before the prayers had ended, he made it official: Patni Tiraha would henceforth be known as Hanuman Chowk.

Sharing the moment on X, CM Dhami wrote: 'Sanatan sanskriti hamari pehchaan aur hamari amulya dharohar hai' — 'Sanatan culture is our identity and our priceless heritage' — framing the occasion as a collective responsibility to preserve traditions, religious faith, and cultural values for future generations.

A border town gets a new landmark

Banbasa sits at the edge of Champawat district, close to the Indo-Nepal border crossing, making it a transit point for pilgrims and traders alike. The installation of a prominent Hanuman idol at a busy tiraha — a three-way intersection that anchors daily public life — places a devotional landmark at one of the town's most visible nodes. The renaming to Hanuman Chowk embeds that religious identity into the town's street-level geography.

BJP's pattern of statues and renamings across Uttarakhand

This is not an isolated gesture. Since 2022, the Uttarakhand government under CM Dhami has backed public religious installations and temple-related works across multiple districts, part of a broader BJP-state pattern of supporting deity statue projects and renaming public spaces with culturally significant names. The moves are presented as efforts to preserve traditional practices and, in Uttarakhand's case, align with the state's aggressive push to deepen religious tourism.

The Sundarkand paath — devoted to Hanuman's heroic journey to Lanka in Valmiki's Ramayana — carries particular resonance in the hill state, where temples dedicated to Hanuman dot pilgrimage corridors from the plains to the high Himalayas. A chief minister joining the recitation in person, rather than sending a representative, signals the political weight attached to such community religious events.

Cultural conservation as governance language

CM Dhami's post framed the event in the language of intergenerational duty — not just devotion, but stewardship. 'Protecting our traditions, religious beliefs, and cultural values and passing them on to future generations is the responsibility of all of us,' he wrote. That framing positions cultural preservation alongside infrastructure or welfare as a deliverable of governance — a rhetorical move increasingly common in BJP-ruled states where religious heritage is woven into the development narrative.

For Champawat — a district that CM Dhami has represented as MLA and where he has announced several flagship projects since winning a by-election there in 2022 — events like Sunday's carry extra personal resonance, reinforcing a bond between the CM and the constituency that first returned him to office.

The chowk has a new name. The question now is what infrastructure and footfall follow the signboard.