Holy Places and People of India 
What draws pilgrims to sacred sites and sacred people? 
by Colin Turnbull 
Apart from a few professional climb- 
ers, only the most devoted pilgrims seek 
out such inaccessible natural shrines as 
the Himalayan sources of the Jumna 
and Ganga rivers. Yet in more acces- 
sible places, such as Kashmir and Dar- 
jeeling, tourists experience the same 
sense of awe at nature’s beauty. Shrines 
may be built at such sites, but at best, 
nature works its miracle of inspiring 
faith without any human help. Else- 
where, in places where the greatness of 
nature is less apparent, monuments and 
temples are built as witness to some su- 
prahuman greatness. There is nothing 
special about the holy river Ganga at 
Varanasi (Benares); the countryside is 
the same flat expanse of farmland that 
follows the river’s course throughout 
the plains. But at Varanasi, the river, 
which once it has descended from the 
northern mountains runs mainly from 
west to east, turns and briefly flows 
from the south back up toward the 
north. Every morning it seems as if all 
of India’s millions descend the ghat 
steps in the sacred city of Varanasi and 
enter the water to perform surya- 
pranam, welcoming the rising sun and 
chanting the sacred gayatri mantra. At 
that time Varanasi is one of the most 
beautiful cities in the whole of India, 
particularly for the pilgrim. For the 
tourist, however, it may forever remain 
merely one of the dirtiest. 
Grossly overcrowded, Varanasi is 
marked by disease and poverty; the most 
luxurious palaces have an unkempt and 
shoddy look about them, and the tem- 
ples are no architectural wonders. What 
attracts pilgrims by the millions is some- 
thing very human, rather than divine, 
but sacred nonetheless: the ancient his- 
tory of at least three thousand years of 
uninterrupted faith that has permeated 
the city from its holiest shrines to its 
filthiest residential areas. In Varanasi, 
crime, poverty, disease, and sanctity 
walk together with confounding ease 
and assurance in a strangely inoffensive 
kind of mutual support. Man and man’s 
unquenchable faith give the city this 
quality; the very squalor that would oth- 
erwise only repel is transformed into a 
honeyed bait that, throughout the ages, 
has attracted India’s greatest, as both 
tourists and pilgrims. 
Other holy cities have arisen in areas 
that have even less to offer by way of 
natural wonders than Varanasi, but 
have been chosen to become great po- 
litical centers. One such city, Khaju- 
raho, capital of the Chandela dynasty, 
reached its height in the tenth century. 
Today, out of some eighty-fi\e great 
temples, only twenty-two survive. Kha- 
juraho is now a dead city, a national 
park opened up and managed for the 
exclusive use of tourists attracted by 
the erotic carvings that seem to cover 
every square inch of the ornate struc- 
tures. Most of these tourists, Indian 
and foreign alike, fail to visit the nearby 
village, which — taking pride in its sud- 
den rise to fame again after centuries of 
neglect — has turned itself into one of 
the cleanest and most attractive villages 
in India. And surprisingly few of the 
foreign tourists take more than a sec- 
ond look at a temple that stands just 
outside the entrance gateway where 
you pay your admission fee, only a 
stone’s throw from the first temple 
within the tourist compound. Although 
it looks much like all the others, this 
temple is alive. Anyone who climbs the 
long flight of stone steps as night falls 
will witness the worship of a gigantic, 
eight-foot carved stone phallus, or liti- 
gant, a form of worship that transforms 
what is politely referred to as erotic art 
from tourist pornography into a surg- 
ing, massively powerful religious quest. 
The puja performed in the inner sanc- 
tum of that temple attacks all the senses 
at once; it transforms one’s whole being 
in an experience that at first seems en- 
tirely physical, but that culminates in a 
gentle act of blessing, an offering of 
food and water, a touch of a finger on 
the forehead — so soft that only the eyes 
of the priest tell you it has been done. 
With all the evidence of erotica around, 
an objective observer might construe 
the puja itself as erotic, particularly at 
its loudest, when the temple drums 
seem to force the body to move, even to 
dance. Some tourists do indeed think 
so — from the outside steps. But a few, 
those who want to understand rather 
than just observe, climb the steps, enter 
the shrine, and find, to their surprise, 
that they are made as welcome as pil- 
grims and treated with the same re- 
spect. Shrines need people to bring 
them to life and give them meaning. 
Another tourist resort that used to be 
a major pilgrim shrine is Mahabali- 
puram, on the west coast, south of Ma- 
dras. Here as with the Chandela 
capital, Khajuraho, the faith that 
caused the temples and rock shrines to 
be built is mute, and the only form of 
worship is that practiced by tourists 
with their cameras. Yet not far inland is 
Kanchipuram, whose many temples, 
separated by miles of busy streets, are 
filled with pilgrims from morning to 
night, testifying to the magnitude and 
vitality of pilgrimage as a social institu- 
tion. The temples also testify, in more 
ways than one, to the similarity be- 
tween pilgrimage and tourism. 
Each of the larger temples consists of 
five walled courtyards, laid out one 
within the other. Each wall is pierced 
by a huge gateway surmounted by a 
richly decorated gopuram, or “tower,” 
which soars up into the sky. The towers 
lead the spirit upward as they lead the 
body inward, and the mood of the pil- 
grims is one of excitement and expect- 
ancy, precisely that of tourists arriving 
at their destination. There is an urge to 
accomplish, to see all there is to be seen, 
to do everything there is to be done. In 
some temples the outermost courtyard 
may be filled with attractions; in others 
it may just be a narrow empty space, 
somewhat like the moat surrounding a 
castle. On either side of the first gate- 
way there are invariably stalls with ven- 
dors selling their wares: guidebooks to 
the temple, scriptures, writings by holy 
people associated with the temple, gar- 
lands of flowers to offer at the various 
shrines within. And, of course, there 
are guides everywhere, waiting like 
hawks for the unwary. 
76 
