Religious Journeys in India

Andrea Marion Pinkney is Associate Professor of South Asian Religions at McGill University. John Whalen-Bridge is Associate Professor of English at the National University of Singapore. He is the coeditor (with Gary Storhoff) of many books, including The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature; American Buddhism as a Way of Life; Writing as Enlightenment: Buddhist American Literature into the Twenty-first Century; and Buddhism and American Cinema, all published by SUNY Press. He is also the author of Tibet on Fire: Buddhism, Protest, and the Rhetoric of Self-Immolation.

List of Illustrations

Introduction: New Motivations for Religious Travel in India
Andrea Marion Pinkney and John Whalen-Bridge

Part I. Constructing Community Spaces

1. Making Sacred Islamic Space in Contemporary India
Carla Bellamy

2. Remaking Thai Buddhism through International Pilgrimage to South Asia
Joanna Cook

3. Augmenting Pilgrimages: A Religious Theme Park in Shegaon, India
Kiran A. Shinde

Part II. Pilgrimage as Paradox

4. Appropriating Ayodhya on “Valor Day”: Hindu Nationalism and Pilgrimage as Politics
Dibyesh Anand

5. Bihar as Christian Anti-Pilgrimage Site: Missions, Evangelism, and Religious Geography
Robbie Goh

6. Seeking the Self in a Land of Strangers: New Religiosity and the Spiritual Marketplace of Rishikesh
Alex Norman

7. Proxy Pilgrimage: Seeing Tibet in Dharamsala, India
John Whalen-Bridge

Part III. Reversals and Revisions

8. The Power of the “Little Hajj”: Memory, Ritual, and Pilgrimage in South Indian Islam
Afsar Mohammad

9. What Are Sikhs Doing at “Historical Gurdwaras” If They’re Not on Pilgrimage? Saints, Dust, and Memorial Presence at Sikh Religious Places
Andrea Marion Pinkney

10. “Reverse Pilgrimage”: Performance, Manipuri Identity, and the RanganiketanCultural Arts Troupe
Rodney Sebastian

11. Imagined Place: Missionary Women’s Journeys in Southern India
Roberta Wollons

Contributors
Index