Md. Nurul HODA, Department of Geography, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, India
Pritha ROYCHOWDHURY, Department of Geography, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, India
Taruna BANSAL, Department of Geography, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, India
Pankaj RAWAT, Department of Geography, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, India, India
Religion has an enormous influence on the day-to-day life of human beings. Its importance is more visible in Asian societies where people follow four different faiths – Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In such a scenario, religious tourism is evident in all religions.
Religious tourism, in simple terms, can be defined as travel that takes place outside the usual environment for spiritual purposes. In India, this is the most common form of tourism. The country has many temples, mosques, churches, and other religious places associated with all the religions practiced within the country. The reason is that the individuals possess vital religious perspectives that their aspirations would get fulfilled if they visited specific sacred sites. Interestingly, these places have acquired a separate form of activity as tourism space over time. It is to be wondered that this tourism space, to a large extent, overlaps the ‘sacred space’; the space often referred to as the ‘holy space.’
But, the breakout of Covid 19 has massively impacted such religious events. As most of the events were either canceled or postponed. The pandemic gave another dimension to this activity as when things started calming, people moved more towards pilgrimage than religious tourism. Various researches show that the significant impact of the pandemic was that spiritualism enabled them to morph into a new creature to come over this pandemic.
In this framework, the present study firstly tries to identify the relationships that can be established between the sacred space, pilgrimage, and religious tourism. In the second section, the study looks into the sacred spaces in Delhi and how these spaces have been transformed into places of religious tourism. And the third section analyses the impact of the pandemic on religious tourism in Delhi in the pre and post-Covid period.
Mots clés : Sacred space|Pilgrimage|Religious Tourism|Delhi|Covid-19
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