ABSTRACT

This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys.

The book advances the conceptual scope of ‘classical’ Pilgrimage Studies and provides empirical depth through individual case studies. A key concern is the strategies of ritualization through which actors create, assemble and (re-)articulate certain modes of displacement to differentiate themselves from everyday forms of locomotion. Ritual journeys are understood as being both productive of and produced by South Asia’s socio-economically uneven, politically charged and culturally variegated landscapes. From various disciplinary angles, each chapter explores how spaces and movements in space are continually created, contested and transformed through ritual journeys. By focusing on this co-production of space and mobility, the book delivers a conceptually driven and empirically grounded engagement with the diverse and changing traditions of ritual journeying in South Asia.

Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book is a must-have reference work for academics interested in South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology and Human Geography with a focus on pilgrimage and the socio-spatial ideas and practices of ritualized movements in South Asia.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Constellations and contestations of mobility and space in South Asian ritual journeys

chapter 2|18 pages

In fear of the past

The pilgrimage to Badrinath in perspective

chapter 3|34 pages

Journeying sovereignties

Ritual travelling and networks of power in a West Himalayan kingdom

chapter 4|22 pages

Wandering god

How young Himalayans negotiate religion, caste identity and modernity

chapter 5|34 pages

Places, rituals and past worlds

Encounters on a Tibetan pilgrimage in North India

chapter 7|18 pages

“To worship our ‘boss’ (the Buddha)”

Youth religiosity in a popular pilgrimage site in Sri Lanka

chapter 8|24 pages

Vailankanni Mata and Anglo-Indian Catholics

Rising postcolonial devotion and her unlikely pilgrim devotees

chapter 9|16 pages

Muslim-Marathi pilgrimage

The Sufi-shrine of Viśālgaḍh 1

chapter 10|20 pages

Approaches to pilgrimage

Reading some post-Independence pilgrimage accounts in modern South Asian languages 1

chapter 11|4 pages

Afterword

On pilgrimage and plural paradigms