Academic literature on the topic 'Pushkarna Brahmans'

This book is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Pushkar, a Hindu pilgrimage site in northwestern India whose population of 20,000 sees an influx of two million visitors each year. Since the 1970s, the town has also received considerable attention from international tourists, a group with distinctly hippie beginnings but that now includes visitors from a wide spectrum of social positions and religious affiliations. To locals, though, Pushkar is more than just a gathering place for pilgrims and tourists: it is where Brahma, the creator god, made his home; it is where pilgrims feel blessed to stay, if only for a short time; and it is where Hindus would feel lucky to be reborn, if only as an insect. In short, it is their paradise. But even paradise needs upkeep. Thus, on a daily basis the town’s locals, and especially those engaged in pilgrimage and tourism, work to make Pushkar paradise. The book explores this massive enterprise to build “heaven on earth,” paying particular attention to how the articulation of sacred space becomes entangled with economic changes brought on by globalization and tourism. As such, the author not only attends to how tourism affects everyday life in Pushkar but also to how Hindu ideas determine the nature of tourism there; the goal, then, is to show how religion and tourism can be mutually constitutive.

Chapter 3 focuses on Pushkar’s new generation of tour guides. Departing from the caste-based and hereditary position of brahman priest, these young men see in guiding a “new form of the priesthood.” They are the mediators of knowledge about Brahma and Pushkar and, when guiding foreigners, about the wider world of Hinduism. In this capacity, they are cultural translators and comparative religionists of the highest order. But their jobs are not perfect. Limited opportunities and fierce competition for clients have created friction with foreign tourists. Those who do not want to do this work find it hard to get a steady job outside of Pushkar’s industries of tourism and pilgrimage. Bounded to both Brahma and Pushkar, brahmans believe themselves cursed, sometimes metaphorically and literally, to a life on the lake.