Every year, the Indian pilgrimage town of Pushkar sees its population of 20,000 swell by two million visitors. Since the 1970s, Pushkar, which is located about 250 miles southwest of the capital of New Delhi, has received considerable attention from international tourists. Originally hippies and backpackers, today's visitors now come from a wide range of social positions. To locals, though, Pushkar is more than just a gathering place for pilgrims and tourists: it is where Brahma, the creator god, made his home; it is where Hindus should feel blessed to stay, if only for a short time; and it is where locals would feel lucky to be reborn, if only as a pigeon. In short, it is their paradise.
But even paradise needs upkeep.
In Guest Is God, Drew Thomases uses ethnographic fieldwork to explore the massive enterprise of building heaven on earth. The articulation of sacred space necessarily works alongside economic changes brought on by tourism and globalization. Here the contours of what actually constitutes paradise are redrawn by developments in, and the agents of, tourism. And as paradise is made and remade, people in Pushkar help to create a brand of Hindu religion that is tailored to its local surroundings while also engaging global ideas. The goal, then, becomes to show how religion and tourism can be mutually constitutive.
DREW THOMASES is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. His work focuses on the anthropology of religion in North India-more specifically, Hindu pilgrimage and practice-though he is broadly interested in tourism, globalization, environmentalism, and theoretical approaches to the study of religion.
Pushkar is a Hindu pilgrimage town in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. India, whose population of roughly 20,000 sees an influx of two million visitors each year. The town's fame comes from Brahma, the creator god, who eons ago established Pushkar as his home by making a lake in the desert and performing a sacrifice there. So, while pilgrims visit for a host of reasons- seeking the favor of the gods for things like a successful marriage, good grades on an exam, the birth of a son, etc.-most make sure to bathe in the holy lake and visit the Brahma temple, the latter regarded as the only temple dedicated to the creator god in the known universe. Since the 1970s, Pushkar has also received considerable attention from the international tourist community, a group that, early on, was composed largely of hippies and backpackers, but now includes visitors from a wide spectrum of social positions and religious affiliations. Tourists, too, come with different goals in mind, from seeing the lake and experiencing the annual camel fair to doing drugs and taking in the peace of a small-town setting.
Thus, it is perhaps a platitude-if a true one-to say that Pushkar is many things to many people. But the most pervasive discourse surrounding the town claims Pushkar to be one thing in particular: paradise. Call it what you will-heaven, paradise, or "no worse than London"-in the eyes of many people who call it home, Pushkar is a remarkable place. And yet, even heaven needs some upkeep. That is, paradise cannot exist without a concerted ef- fort to make it so, and thus on a daily basis the town's locals, and especially those engaged in pilgrimage and tourism, work to make Pushkar paradise. This book explores the massive enterprise of building heaven on earth, and how the articulation of sacred space necessarily works alongside economic changes brought on by tourism and globalization. As such, I not only attend to how tourism affects everyday life in Pushkar but also to how Hindu ideas determine the nature of tourism there; the goal, then, is to show how religion and tourism can be mutually constitutive.
It is precisely within this mutually constitutive realm of religion and travel that the process of "sacred making" happens, where developments in (and agents of) tourism draw and redraw, over and over again, the perimeters of paradise. Said differently, the criteria for what counts as "paradise" have shifted together with the changing economy. And as this takes place-as par- adise is made and remade in a globalized world-Pushkar's type of Hinduism is affected, too. Hinduism here possesses a kind of fluctuating scope, at times focused on Pushkar and the uniqueness of its sacred space, at other times expanding to a more panoramic perspective. This book examines the ways in which Pushkar locals work to incorporate both of these perspectives, claiming allegiances to their home and community while making inroads to a vision of human belonging that attempts to embrace all.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
Hindu (908)
Agriculture (123)
Ancient (1093)
Archaeology (791)
Architecture (550)
Art & Culture (912)
Biography (710)
Buddhist (523)
Cookery (168)
Emperor & Queen (536)
Islam (223)
Jainism (319)
Literary (841)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
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