Religious tourism: Intersection of contemporary pilgrimage and tourism in India

Pilgrimage and tourism provide human beings with opportunities of travel, the former driven by religious needs and the latter by recreational needs. Contemporary expression of traditional pilgrimage travel in India is increasingly changing in its meanings, character, form, organisation and societal functions. Though religiously motivated it exhibits certain characteristics of mass tourism and has a potential to be considered as 'religious tourism'. Even though it accounts for more than 90 percent of domestic tourism in India, it is not readily acknowledged in current public policy. This paper explores the changing meaning of such religiously motivated travel from traditional patterns of pilgrimage to religious place tourism. It focuses on the religious complex of Braj and Vrindavan in Northern India, which receives over 3.5 million visitors each year. The paper argues that conventional accounts of pilgrimage travel are no longer relevant or adequate to explain the contemporary movements of people in to these sacred sites. The paper emphasises the need to examine influences of modern transport, growth of package tours, and new consumption patterns on the journey to describe and analyse the emerging form of religious tourism.