Sacred Journeys and Profane Travellers: Representation and Spatial Practice in Varanasi (India) Cristiana Zara Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2011 DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Declaration of Authorship I Cristiana Zara hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is concerned with tourist representations and practices in India. Orientalist aesthetics have often associated this country with notions of spirituality and mysticism; tourist narratives sustain and reinforce such representations by describing India as a land of ancient rituals and timeless traditions. The visual construction of India’s ‘spiritual landscapes’ has been largely deployed as a powerful tool for subduing the unfamiliar Other within reassuring epistemological categories. However, tourism research has recently become interested in exploring the role of tourist practices in landscape production. Not only do tourists ‘gaze upon’ landscapes, they also script landscapes through practices and performances. By focusing on the case of Varanasi, the Indian pilgrimage city on the banks of the Ganges, this thesis shows how tourist practices (re)produce and make sense of the city’s ‘sacredscape’. Special attention is paid to the riverfront, which epitomizes the cultural and spiritual significance ascribed to the city. Both Hindu and tourist narratives depict the riverfront as embodying a special power, a unique meaning, whether this uniqueness is held to be a ‘spiritual’ or a ‘picturesque’ one. The thesis analyses the city’s riverfront as the place where tourist, ritual, and day-to-day activities are played out and negotiated, and where the aesthetics of landscape is confronted with the materialities and the practices inherent to this place. The research has adopted an ethnographic approach, combining participant observation, interviews and questionnaires, visual methods, and textual analysis of popular tourist literature. 3 CONTENTS Abstract..................................................................................................................................................... 3 Contents .................................................................................................................................................... 4 List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 9 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................. 12 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 1 Theorising Tourism and Landscape in Varanasi ............................................... 24 1.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 24 PART I: SOME ‘THREADS’ IN TOURISM STUDIES ..................................................................... 26 1.2 Tourism: a modern experience ......................................................................................... 26 1.3 The tourist gaze ................................................................................................................ 33 1.4 The ‘performative turn’ .................................................................................................... 35 1.5 New developments in tourism research: the contribution of cultural geographers ........ 38 PART II: LANDSCAPE AND TOURISM ....................................................................................... 42 1.6 The tourist landscape ........................................................................................................ 42 PART III: LANDSCAPE AND TOURISM IN VARANASI ................................................................ 55 1.7 Framing the other: the tourist landscape of Varanasi ...................................................... 55 1.8 Theoretical encounters: gaze and darshan, practice and karma ..................................... 64 1.8.1 Gaze and darshan ...................................................................................................... 66 1.8.2 Practice and karma .................................................................................................... 68 1.9 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 2 Theory in Practice: Methodological Reflections in Context .......................... 73 2.1 From London to Varanasi .................................................................................................. 73 2.2 How to investigate tourist practices? Methodological choices ........................................ 76 2.3 The time-space context of research: doing fieldwork in Varanasi ................................... 80 2.4 Participant Observation .................................................................................................... 84 2.5 Visual Methods (and beyond) ........................................................................................... 87 4 2.6 Questionnaires .................................................................................................................. 90 2.7 Interviews .......................................................................................................................... 93 2.8 Documentary Research ..................................................................................................... 95 2.9 Issues of Language and Translation .................................................................................. 97 2.9.1 Language in the field .................................................................................................. 98 2.9.2 Back home ................................................................................................................ 100 2.10 Ethical Issues ................................................................................................................. 102 2.11 Being in the field: positionality and reflexivity ............................................................. 108 2.11.1 At Karki’s ................................................................................................................ 109 2.11.2 Photo kijiye! ........................................................................................................... 111 2.11.3 The field as a gendered space ................................................................................ 112 2.11.4 The researcher as an embodied subject ................................................................ 115 2.12 Analysis: from ‘field work’ to ‘filed work’ ..................................................................... 116 Chapter 3 The Aesthetics of Landscape Representation: The ‘Sacredscape’ of Varanasi ...............................................................................................................................................121 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 121 3.2 Western images of Varanasi: an overview...................................................................... 125 PART I: HINDU NARRATIVES .................................................................................................. 136 3.3 The ghatscape and the blessing darshan of Ganga-ji ..................................................... 136 3.4 Varanasi, the city of Shiva ............................................................................................... 139 3.5 Kashi the Eternal ............................................................................................................. 144 PART II: TOURIST NARRATIVES .............................................................................................. 148 3.6 Spirituality in the City of Light ......................................................................................... 148 3.7 Antiquity: Banaras older than history… .......................................................................... 153 3.8 Landscape of death and disease .................................................................................... 156 PART III: PLACE NARRATIVES ................................................................................................. 162 3.9 Stories on the ghats ........................................................................................................ 162 3.10 Halò madam, boat? Tourist mantras ............................................................................ 167 3.11 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 175 Chapter 4 Tourist Practice in the Sacred City .......................................................................178 4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 178 PART I: GAZING UPON THE LANDSCAPE ..............................................................................