Managing Hindu festivals in Pilgrimage Sites: Emerging Trends, Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Festivals constitute an integral part of Hindu religious practices and the Hindu festivals assume their fullest expressions in pilgrimage sites - the repositories of religious culture and traditions. Yet, understanding of the celebration of festivals as religious and pilgrimage events is limited and the extent and nature of their transformation under the growing influences of tourism remains relatively unexplored, especially in a non-Western context. This article shows that festivals are organized, celebrated, and transmitted as rituals through social networks and patronage relationships between various kinds of religious functionaries in a pilgrimage center: pilgrims, visitors, and festival attendees. Festivals, by highlighting intersections between mythology, cosmology, and religious rituals and practices, fuel the cultural economy in pilgrimage sites. This article examines changing trends in the organization and management of events surrounding the festival of Holi in Vrindavan, a pilgrimage site in north India, and aims to provide a window of understanding into festival management and burgeoning cultural tourism in Hindu pilgrimage sites in India.