On the day of pran pratishtha at the Ram mandir in Ayodhya, I saw every big and small temple celebrating it with yagna, kirtana, paath and bhandaras. Every home, shop and temple were lit up with lamps in the evening. It felt like Ayodhya has expanded itself to cover the entire expanse of Bharat. It is a spiritual resurgence like none of my generation or maybe the post-independence generations have seen.
With all cameras focused on Ayodhya, I was reminded of the dusty little town on the banks of Sarayu that I walked around researching for my book Ayodhya Mahatmya. I know the city would have changed completely when I visit again. The new temple has put a spotlight on a city that was always sacred, but was somehow lying low for centuries.
Many other pilgrimage sites are undergoing renovations. The idea is to promote spiritual tourism. However, there is a difference between tourism and pilgrimage. As our population grows and as traveling becomes easier and more affordable, more and more people will visit these places. To accommodate them, these places need to re-invent themselves. While renovating pilgrimage sites, we must keep in mind what the pilgrims need.
As I study pilgrimage traditions of India, I realise that pilgrims desperately need innovation in dharamshalas. We need state-of-the-art dharamshalas that provide comfortable stay to pilgrims while helping them pursue their spiritual goals. For example, they need basic sattvik food or foods suited to different types of fasting done at pilgrimage places. They need to be designed for long stays where families can cook for themselves. Accommodations that allow families to live and pray together need to be designed. These places should be located close to the core tirtha kshetra. Luxury hotels can be away as people who stay there have the resources to travel to and fro.
These dharamshalas can operate by the timings of the tirtha. Like in Ujjain, facilities can be provided for early morning bhasma. Pilgrims visiting Kashi would want to go for Ganga snan early in the morning or arti late in the evening. These can be facilitated as part of the stay. At Braj, pilgrims want to visit goshalas and feed cows. A community place will allow people to come together for satsang, discourses, yagnas and prayers.
Dharamshalas can be designed in such a way that the elderly would find it easy to move around. Sevaks to help them and availability of medical help when needed will keep them free of worries.
Soft infrastructure, which adds to the spiritual environment, needs the next big push once the hard infrastructure is in place. I would love to see kathavachaks or storytellers in Ayodhya narrating Ramayan in multiple languages. Ram Lila being performed by troupes from different parts of the country and the world would also be a cultural treat. More than 140 countries have Ramayan stories in some form or other. I would love to see the Valmiki Ramayan and all its versions, variations, retellings readily available to the visitors. We can of course use technologies such as artificial intelligence to enhance the visitor experience.
Cities like Varanasi, Dwarka, Kanchipuram and Ujjain have tonnes of literature written on them. However, it is not easy for a visitor to find them unless one goes looking for them in obscure libraries. We need to make the history, handicrafts, arts, culture and heritage of these places easily available to pilgrims.
Parikrama or circumambulation paths, integral to atirtha yatra, are walked barefoot. Soft mud paths can help make the walk comfortably while good lighting will allow pilgrims to walk early in the morning or at night. Facilities like drinking water, refreshments and places where the pilgrims can rest must be provided. Drinking water and food should be available free of cost. There would be many donors who would be happy to make this happen.
Every ancient pilgrimage place has an annual festival calendar. There are daily rituals, monthly parvas, annual festivals and sometimes 12-yearly festivals like the Kumbh Mela. Some festivals follow events like solar eclipse or adhik masa, the extra lunar month to adjust solar and lunar calendars. We know of a few big festivals like Dev Deepawali in Varanasi, Kartika Deepam in Tiruvannamalai or Holi in Mathura, but there are lesser-known festivals that take place round the year. In Kashi and Braj, I heard the phrase “Saat vaar, nau tyohaar”, meaning seven days and nine festivals. Now, imagine the joy of a pilgrim who can participate in all these if only the information is easily available. This should be the easiest thing to do in this era of information technology.
Finally, I would like our spiritual spaces to be easily available to everyone, not just to those with money and power. A priority must be to ensure that the elderly and people with special needs have easy access. We need to see sacred spaces bringing the much-needed balance in the society, much bigger purpose than just generating revenue, which seems to be dominating the headlines lately. It is a place to earn punya for both the authorities and the visitors. More than the authorities, it is upon us, the pilgrims, to leave our ego outside the tirtha and become just a devotee seeking the grace of god.
I hope Ayodhya leads India and the world in providing an immersive, equitable, purposeful and unforgettable spiritual experience to visitors that helps them grow inwards and succeed materially.
Anuradha Goyal
Author and founder of IndiTales
Follow her on X @anuradhagoyal