Place · interfaith hill shrines · India
Ross Hill & three sacred hills
Also known as Ross Hill, Ross Hill Church, Darga Konda, Venkateswara Konda
Three adjacent hills over the harbour, each carrying a different faith’s shrine: the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes on Ross Hill, the dargah of Baba Ishaq Madina on Darga Konda, and a Venkateswara temple on the third. Visible together from the water, they are the compact version of what this coast has been — a port where a European garrison church, a Sufi tomb and a Vaishnava shrine ended up on neighbouring ridges.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 17.687, 83.286 (approximate)
Worth knowing
The hill takes its name from Monsieur Ross, who built a house on the summit in the 1860s that later became the church; the story that he intended a residence and not a shrine is the sort of accident this repository collects. The three hills are climbed by people of all three communities, which is the ordinary condition of a shared site rather than a remarkable one.
Thinly sourced. There is no Wikipedia article for Ross Hill or for the other two hills; the church appears only in a list of religious sites in the “North Andhra” article, and the account of the three hills together rests on local and press description. The coordinates are approximate to the harbour ridge.
Connections (2)
- Shrine within cityVisakhapatnam / Vizag
The three hills stand inside the port, above the harbour they overlook, and they are there because the port was: a garrison church for the European town, a Sufi tomb for the trading and seafaring Muslim population, and a Vaishnava shrine for everyone else, all within sight of the same anchorage. A shared site on this coast is not a curiosity but the ordinary consequence of a harbour that took in whoever arrived.
- AnalogueBābā Budangiri
Bābā Budangiri in Karnataka is one hill claimed at once as Dattātreya’s seat and as the tomb of a Sufi, and the claim is contested in court. Ross Hill is the opposite arrangement to the same end: three faiths on three adjacent hills rather than three claims on one, which is why nobody argues about it. Together they show the two shapes a shared sacred landscape can take.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “North Andhra” (which lists Ross Hill Church) and “Visakhapatnam”; local and press accounts for the three hills together.
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