Planning for urbanization in religious tourism destinations: insights from Shirdi, India

Abstract

This paper examines the urbanization process in religious tourism destinations using the example of Shirdi in India. Shirdi, a town dedicated to worship of a twentieth-century Saint Sai Baba, attracts more than eight million visitors every year. The paper explains how religious tourism economy drives rapid urbanization including demographic change and land-use conversion owing to the infrastructure needs of visitors. It is found that planning mechanisms including the conventional master plan approach have been ineffective in adequately responding to issues such as the proliferation of unauthorized commercial establishments, hotels, lodging and boarding houses; strained infrastructure; and environmental pollution that characterize urbanization in religious tourism destinations.

Keywords:

• Urbanization
• land-use planning
• religious tourism destinations
• India
• Shirdi

Notes

1. I refer to Hindu pilgrim-towns and they are categorized in numerous ways but for this paper, it is necessary to focus on the discrete physical spatial forms that emerge due to the nature of religious activities. At one end of the range are towns built around a single shrine dedicated to one deity (Jindel, 1976) – notable examples include Puri, Nathdwara, Tirumala-Tirupati. At the other end are towns that have multiple shrines dedicated to one presiding deity or multiple deities; archetypal examples include places such as Banaras which has temples dedicated to several deities including Vishnu, Ganehsa, and Shiva, and Hanuman temples or Vrindavan that has more than 5,000 temples .

2. In 1921, after Sai Baba’s death, the District Court devised a scheme for administration of the temple and management of the endowments and income that were donated in his name. This scheme called Sai Baba Santhan was revised on regular basis and in 1952 this arrangement was institutionalized as a public trust under the Bombay Public Trust Act. Following litigations, in 1960 the state government appointed a Court Receiver for its management and in 1982 the charity commissioner and the court decided to appoint members of public as Trustees to look after the functioning of the Sansthan.

3. Outside the temple complex are five temples; Khandoba temple is the place where Sai Baba was first greeted by local villagers; and four temples of Gram Devatas (village deities). Shani, Hanuman, Mahadeo and Ganesh. Other supporting activities exist outside the core.

4. At present, SSST comprises a Board of Trustees consisting of 20 members and an executive officer appointed by the state government who heads the executive wing comprising of about 1,300 employees working across 13 departments. The department for temple management draws up the rituals to be performed daily, weekly and on special occasions, including festivals, and appoints priests to perform rituals in the temple.

5. SSST engages in multifarious activities, which include financial aid for local infrastructure development, health care, employment generation and economic revival of local industry, education and patronizing local culture and tradition.

6. For undertaking such measures, it collected revenue from pilgrimage through a pilgrim tax and a fee from stall-holders during fairs. However, around 1990s, the pilgrim tax was repealed making the Gram Panchayat weak in resources and rendering it incapable of doing much for the increasing influx of visitors.

7. There are also instances of changes in purpose of reservations and that leads to conflicts as seen in case of plot near the temple that was reserved for ‘garden’ but later was ‘deserved and proposed to be developed as a commercial complex’ [and rightly so] … ‘such decisions could lead to congestion in the temple area defeating an important purpose of the DP’(Wilbur Smith Associates, 2004, p. 5).