Religious Journeys in India by Andrea Marion Pinkney John Whalen-Bridge

Author:Andrea Marion Pinkney, John Whalen-Bridge [Andrea Marion Pinkney, John Whalen-Bridge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Middle East Religions, Islam, Eastern Religions, Buddhism, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology
ISBN: 9781438466040
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2018-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

If the catchword of postmodernity is “recycling,” as Zygmunt Bauman insists, then spiritual tourism in Rishikesh offers not only empirical evidence but also some food for thought (Bauman 1996, 18). Spiritual tourists in Rishikesh approach the teachers and traditions on offer with a mix of reverence for authenticity, commitment, and pragmatic needs-based interest in which the component parts of religious traditions are free to be taken and used out of context. Teachings, teachers, and practices are all used as solutions to problems and alternatives to what are perceived to be malfunctioning ways of life within an imagined “West,” pieced together in a praxis of mixing and bricolage, as suggested by David Lyon (Lyon 2000, 76). In the case of new religiosity and spiritual tourists in Rishikesh, however, Bauman’s term can be aptly extended to the catchphrase “reuse and recycle,” or perhaps “repurpose and recycle.” For example, spiritual tourists in Rishikesh will have, as a rule, no hesitation in applying mantras uttered originally as part of devotional worship of the deity to their daily rituals of well-being. The lifting of religious content out of original context and its subsequent placement into individuated frameworks speaks more of the heightened agency of the person in postmodern religious praxis than it does of using the same material for the same purpose over again.

By mapping the routes and sites of NRMs and modern spirituality, we may illuminate the unique approaches that tourists take to these spiritual pathways. The novel and the different are often given more space, and experimentation is accepted to a larger degree than at home. For NRMs, the ontic ritual ambiguity of the travel experience makes for rich grounds in terms of conversion and the communication (and selling) of ideas. Rishikesh is certainly understood this way by the teachers and movements there; it is a world stage on which individuals who are inclined to listen will be attentive.

For the fieldworker, this is a rich seam and Rishikesh is just one such vein. The new religious and spiritual landscape there demonstrates the extent to which tourism and new religiosity are combined as part of personal projects of self-examination. For the cohort of international travellers to India considered here, the translation of that project back into everyday life is a future subject for research, but if the sample group from Rishikesh is representative, then it seems that the town acts as sacred center, retreat, proselytizer, and performer for the satsang network and the global yoga movement. As such, its impact ranges from passing to significantly life changing with striking regularity. The methodological lens of tourism offers us a useful means with which to interpret this new religious concentrate. Most importantly, examining locations such as Rishikesh provides us with access to the way individuals do modern spirituality, namely, socially and uncoupled from religion.

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