Regenerating and Reclaiming the Contested Spaces in Sacred Landscapes

A sacred landscape is the result of human actions and subsequent evolution, and it serves as a backdrop for mytho-historical re-enactments. While it may represent divinity and spirituality, sacred landscapes are more complex, dynamic landscapes built on an unrestrained and chaotic environment, which can be easily juxtaposed for a tourist destination. This paper investigates this ideology based on the study of two major holy towns, Vrindavan and Pushkar. Both sites, being integral parts of the Hindu pilgrimage, invite millions of pilgrims annually who are in search of spiritual essence and religiosity. However, along with pilgrimage these towns also tend to act as a destination for leisure tourism, leading to an inevitable contestation between the urban development process of these towns, where the spatial structure of the town is constantly evolving to cater the need of the pilgrims as well as the tourists. It can be evidently observed in both the towns that the spiritual construct that once bound the meanings associated with several spiritual activities have lost their significance over time. These towns are now heavily promoted as tourist destinations, which has altered the traveling patterns and have led to a widespread commodification and commercialization of culture and heritage, where new emerging economic buoyancy and changing urban structure have given these towns homogeneous character and have led to the formation of new building typologies, which dominate the skyline of these towns, ultimately resulting in the formation of numerous commodified sacred spaces with diminishing place-based memories and associations. Using a case study approach and a purposive survey method, the paper attempts to identify such contested areas that impede not only the spiritual experience of these cities but also the community's well-being, eventually proposing strategies to regenerate and reclaim these spaces in such sacred territories.