Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World by Kathryn Hurlock: How pilgrimages have impacted faith and rituals

Undertaking pilgrimages has been a great traditional practice born out of both faith and curiosity. All the major religions and regions have their pilgrimage centres. However, in modern times and under modern conditions, they have been transformed even as they too have transformed human life and its zone of faith. ‘Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World’ answers both these questions by taking up the histories of 19 major pilgrimage centres across Asia, Europe, Latin America, Australia and Africa. Each pilgrimage is unique, yet all of them share many strands in common. Put together, they tell the story of how pilgrimages have affected the sacred zone of faith and rituals.

Pilgrimages have attracted the faithful since ancient times. Inaccessible terrains, shrines and tombs of saints, repositories of relics or sacred texts have become the centres of pilgrimages where the followers come for a divine experience. In Hinduism, pilgrimage centres also developed along the route of the sacred Ganga. These have played an important role in creating headquarters of the faith: Mecca for Muslims, Vatican for Christians, Amritsar for Sikhs.

These have also brought about a doctrinal centralisation and helped foster a community. It is also true that pilgrimages have enabled religious traditions to reach out to the minds and hearts of the followers, much more than scriptures and written texts have.

Among all the pilgrimage sites, Jerusalem has been the most remarkable. Sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, it has been the most contested. Historically, its fate hinged on who controlled it politically. Christians demolished the Muslim shrines and Muslims did likewise. The structures were restored by the favourable rulers when their turn came. This went on throughout the period of Crusades during the 12th-14th centuries, before establishment of the Ottoman Empire imparted some stability to it.

The technological revolutions in transport in the 19th century transformed the profile of pilgrimage centres, opening them up for much larger numbers. The number of Muslims visiting Mecca was nearly one million at the beginning of the 20th century. By 1970s, it had increased to over 10 million.

Pilgrimages fostered connectivity across spaces and brought people of different nationalities together. Such huge congregations have also carried the risk of spread of diseases. The spread of plague in 14th century Europe, in which nearly 25 million people died, was largely because of pilgrimages. Nearly 30 cholera epidemics spread in Mecca during the second half of the 19th century.

For the faithful, pilgrimages have held meanings very different from those of the stakeholders in possession of the pilgrimage centres. If for the followers these signified reaffirmation of faith, established linkages with fellow members and ensured a passage to salvation, for the leaders, these were invariably tied up with political and commercial considerations. Often pilgrims had to pay a tax for the sacred journey. The British levied a pilgrim tax on those going to sites at the banks of the Ganga — Haridwar, Prayag and Varanasi. People had to pay one rupee if they wanted to bathe in it. Visiting Mecca too was a taxable activity. The pilgrim tax was a major source of income for the Saudi rulers. It was only after the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938 that these taxes were reduced and finally abolished only in the 1970s.

Historically, pilgrimages have removed barriers by facilitating large congregations, cutting across race, class, ethnicity and even nationality; but they have also consolidated barriers of religion. All Muslims have equal access to Mecca, but only Muslims have it. These sites have also been markers of distinctions across religions. More than a sacred destination, the identity of Jerusalem has been that of a site of Christian-Muslim rivalry.

This then is the sociology of pilgrimages. They carry dimensions that are both sacred and profane, religious and political, universal and parochial, altruistic and selfish, inclusive and exclusive, transcendental and this-worldly. The book has highlighted these dimensions through the historical accounts of pilgrimages and different faith systems.

It also provides a general perspective on the fascinating world of pilgrimages and a vantage point from which to make sense of this great phenomenon of both the pre-modern and modern world.

— The reviewer is a Visiting Faculty at BM Munjal University, Manesar

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