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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2016
This article explores the strategies of pandas (Hindu pilgrimage priests) in Vrindavan, relating changes in their trade (pandagiri) to tourism. These changes are the result of the pandas’ creative adjustments to shifting travel patterns that affect their market niche. Utilizing audio-recordings of the pandas’ guided tours, the article first portrays how pandas acquire ritual income from pilgrims by ‘inspiring’ donations of which they get a percentage. While commercial interests and economic conditions have always been crucial in shaping and perpetuating pilgrimage institutions and practices, global tourism has become an increasingly significant factor. Pandas all over India modify their services while the traditional exchange model (jajmani system) wanes. Changing travel patterns have made the guided tour a crucial component in the operation of Hindu pilgrimage. Vrindavan pandas have therefore turned into guides conducting religious sightseeing tours (darshan yatra). These tours are core to the new strategy for acquiring ritual income. To secure clients, pandas build connections with travel agencies and drivers and, in some cases, establish their own travel agencies that combine priestly and tourism services. The pandas’ own understandings of their methods and contemporary travel trends further reflect the dynamic interplay between pilgrimage and tourism in India.
Thanks to Håkon Tandberg, Kathinka Frøystad, Knut Melvær, Michael Stausberg, the South Asia symposium group in Oslo, and the anonymous Modern Asian Studies reviewers for feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Amitanshu Verma and Dhiren Borisa assisted in translating the audio-recordings. I am also grateful to Laxminarayan Tiwari at the Braj Culture Research Institute for sharing his local expertise. Finally, I would like to thank to Moumita Sen for collaborative fieldwork in Vrindavan in 2015.
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19 Darshan is a religious concept that typically refers to the auspicious beholding of deities and their manifestations on earth, while yatra typically means journey, though it can also refer to pilgrimage. The concept of a darshan yatra is therefore a reformatting of a typical guided tour or sightseeing tour of cultural tourism into a religious concept.
20 I return to the specific details of the Nanda Rai system below.
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24 I am currently working on a manuscript dealing with Prem Mandir, Vaishno Devi Ashram, and other religious attractions in northern India.
25 The panda’s narrative during the tour was audio-recorded on 16 March 2015.
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34 ‘Lapka’ generally refers to unauthorized guides, photographers, and others who are seen to cheat and harass tourists.
35 For an on-going case in Nandagao see: http://news.vrindavantoday.org/2014/11/steps-taken-contain-miscreant-pandas-nandgaon/, [accessed 20 February 2016].
36 Parry, Death in Banaras, p. 104, notes a less favourable saying among people in Banares: ‘Brahmans and dogs are two castes that cannot live together [in peace].’
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51 Ibid., p. 97. Parry observed that while ‘panda’ was used as a generic term for various pilgrimage priests, ‘tirth purohit’ was the term used by local priests to describe those keeping registers and maintaining long-term relationships with clients.
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60 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
61 Ibid., pp. 245–6; Parry, Death in Banaras, p. 99.
62 van der Veer, Gods on Earth, pp. 185–8, 250–9; Parry, Death in Banaras, pp. 97–109.
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74 Ibid., p. 208, fn. 16; Lochtefeld, God's Gateway, pp. 243–4.
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92 Cf. Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, p. 66.
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94 Ibid., p. 104.
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100 Ibid., p. 243.
101 ‘Setting’ is one of those terms used in the informal sector (and otherwise) to indicate an agreement, arrangement or unwritten contract between two parties.
102 Shinde, ‘Religious tourism: Exploring a new form of sacred journey in North India’ in Asian Tourism: Growth and Change, J. Cochrane (ed.), Elsevier, Amsterdam/Boston/London, 2008, p. 255, notes that more than 50 tour operators have established agencies between 2001–2006.
104 I got the idea that this not the case today, in particular from one senior panda sitting in a Nanda Rai waiting for incoming clients, who aggressively asserted that they do not give anything to widows.
105 Gold, Fruitful Journeys, p. 275.
106 The idea of going on or ‘making a picnic’ (piknik banate hai) in this context refers to a wide range of outdoor leisure activities beyond the specific act of having a packed meal or bringing food on an outing.
107 Whitmore, ‘In Pursuit of Maheshvara’, pp. 67–8.
108 Tirthyatra is the standard Hindi term for pilgrimage, whereas the traditional pilgrimage route that all the sites related to Krishna in the Braj region, including Vrindavan, is known as the Braj yatra. See Shinde, ‘Religious tourism’, for a description of a car Braj yatra.
