The spatial practice of religious tourism in India: a destinations perspective

Abstract

Religious tourism refers to contemporary patterns of travel to sacred places and has taken many forms owing to different motivations of visitors. Researchers have discussed motivation, activities, and behaviour of visitors in framing what constitutes religious in religious tourism, but little attention is given to spatial manifestations of religious practice. Towing this direction, I examine the significance of religious practices to spatial arrangements in Hindu pilgrim towns in India by juxtaposing the concept of “spatial practice” from Lefebvre’s theory of production of space with an indigenous approach called the “sacred-complex model”. A fieldwork based collective study of six pilgrim-towns, namely, Alandi, Jejuri, Pandharpur, Tuljapur, Shegaon, and Shirdi, which represent a full spectrum of religious tourism destinations in India, provides a sound comparison of similarities and differences in spatial practice of religious tourism. In this analysis, four themes emerge: (1) the engagement of religious actors in religious rituals and performances over space defines the boundaries and territories of the sacred and religious; (2) the performance area of religious practice has reduced from traditional pilgrimage landscape to specific routes providing access to the main attraction which is a built structure (shrine/temple); (3) religiousness is also created by non-religious and seemingly “profane” commercial activities; (4) without the explicit expression of religiousness there is no opportunity for religious tourism or any other form of tourism. They are organized and presented following different principles from attractions elsewhere in the world, and that they are more important in the lives of the Indian people who visit and maintain them than they are to the Western tourist. Using spatial lens has reinforced that religious as a prefix, is a stronger and an essential concept for religious tourism in the non-western context of India, that needs to be factored in for sustainable management of religious tourism destinations.

摘要：

宗教旅游是指当代的圣地旅游方式, 由于游客动机的不同, 其形式也多种多样。研究人员讨论了游客的动机、活动和行为, 以确定宗教旅游中构成宗教的内涵, 但很少关注宗教实践的空间表现。沿着这个方向, 我将列斐伏尔的空间生产理论中的“空间实践”概念与一种被称为“神圣-组合模型”的本土方法并置, 考察宗教实践对印度朝圣者城镇空间安排的意义。通过对印度六大宗教旅游目的地——Alandi、Jejuri、Pandharpur、Tuljapur、Shegaon和Shirdi的实地考察, 可以比较宗教旅游空间实践的异同。在这种分析中, 出现了四个主题:(1)宗教演员在宗教仪式和表演中超越空间的参与定义了神圣和宗教的边界和领地;(2)宗教活动的表演区域从传统的朝圣景观减少为特定的路线, 提供通往主要吸引力的建筑(神龛/寺庙)的通道;(3)非宗教的、看似“亵渎”的商业活动也创造了宗教性; (4)没有明确的宗教性表达, 就没有机会进行宗教旅游或任何其他形式的旅游。它们遵循着与世界其他地方的景点不同的原则进行组织和展示, 在参观和维护它们的印度人的生活中, 它们比西方游客更重要。使用空间镜头加强了宗教作为前缀, 是印度非西方背景下的宗教旅游的一个更强的和基本的概念, 需要考虑到可持续管理的宗教旅游目的地。

Keywords:

• Religious tourism
• India
• pilgrim-towns
• pilgrimage
• Maharashtra
• ritual-economy

关键词:

• 宗教旅游
• 印度;朝圣小镇；朝圣
• 马哈拉施特拉邦;仪式经济

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 SSST, at present, is under total control of the state government through an Act called the Shri Shirdi Sai Sansthan Trust Act, 2004. It has a Board of Trustees consisting of 20 members and an executive officer appointed by the state government. However, this is a revised structure that has been in place after a long history of litigations around management of the endowments and income related to the shrine (for details see Shinde, 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kiran Shinde

Kiran teaches in the planning program at La Trobe University, Australia. He has been working in the field of religious tourism and published about 50 research articles across cultural heritage, religious tourism, policy analysis, destination planning and management besides presenting research at conferences in Canada, Turkey, Australia, Portugal, Singapore, UK, and USA. His qualifications include a Ph.D. (Monash University, Australia); M. Sc. (Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand); M.Tech. (CEPT University, India). Email: [email protected]