Tirtha Yatra in the modern age: A Tirumala reflection
Many pilgrims have interesting and strange narrations to tell about Lord Venkateshwara’s blessings, which often happen suddenly and momentarily. While devotees pray and seek favours in a direct and linear manner, God’s blessings happen hypersonically, in most unexpected ways.
To get blessings, Hindus embark on Tirtha Yatras, where individuals travel to holy places (tirthas)—such as rivers, temples, or shrines—for spiritual purification, to gain merit (punya), or to fulfil vows. It is both an outward journey to venerated sites and an inward journey to connect with the divine. Tirtha Yatra also involves Sadhu-Sanga, Hari-katha, Vigraha-aradhana, Dharma-seva, Prasada-sevana, Dana-kriya, and Bhajana. Tirtha means “crossing place” or “ford” (a holy spot), and Yatra means journey. It is undertaken to earn spiritual merit, seek blessings, perform rituals (like bathing in holy rivers), and foster spiritual growth.
Tirupati and the surrounding Tirumala hills feature several significant sacred Teertham (holy water bodies/ waterfalls). The most prominent ones are Swamy Pushkarini (adjacent to the main temple), Kapila Teertham at the foot of the hills, and Chakra Theertham in Tirumala.
Pilgrimages to renowned divine places are for spiritual growth, but in the present era, it has downgraded to pilgrims seeking continuous material benefits and pleasures. When prayers become just a wish list, and pilgrims seek luxurious facilities for stay and travel, the spiritual quantum gets diminished, and Tirtha yatras become mere picnics.
Mountains that are created for silence, devotion, and spiritual discipline are being transformed into crowded picnic destinations in the name of development and commercial gain. Instead of preserving their natural purity, pilgrims are constantly demanding the widening of roads, constructing posh hotels, multi-cuisine restaurants, and governments are marketing divinity to invite massive footfalls into regions that were never meant to carry such a burden. The result is massive, and continuous crowds, all wanting quick darshan, not willing to stand in queue but willing to pay fat sums of money to purchase high-priced darshan tickets, constantly demanding luxurious comforts without responsibility, devotion without discipline, and apathetic government officials who believe that ‘service to VIPs is the highest form of service’.
True pilgrimage is about respect, humility, and living in harmony with nature, not about comfort, selfies, shortcuts, and consumerism. Every time we treat our holy sites as tourist hubs, we strip away their sanctity and accelerate irreversible environmental damage. When profit becomes priority for everyone and authorities are callous about accountability, then spiritual decline accelerates. When pilgrimage centres and temples are compelled by politicians to adopt a business model, the sanctity of sacred spaces is impacted.
As for pilgrims, the prayers are no longer for ‘Mukti’ and ‘Moksha’; pilgrimages are just gambling journeys filled with rituals and practices, aimed at earning only monetary boons in lotteries and share markets, for which the divine is invoked, bargained with, and negotiated. Compliant priests recommend expensive pujas and rituals for gaining incredible wealth and riches.
Devotees also dress up fashionably, as though they are coming to attend a fashion event. Men and women are often seen wearing jeans, shorts, and also wearing garish clothes. There are loud protests if a dress code is insisted upon, but these very same people keep quiet when dress codes are strictly implemented in other organizations and offices. Lawyers, judges, defence personnel, police, forest, excise, railways, business executives, all have dress codes that are obeyed in letter and spirit. But when entering a temple, performing a puja, or going on a pilgrimage, there is an uproar; nobody wants to wear simple traditional clothes. Why?
Hindu Gen Z even refuse to go to temples, forget about reading holy scriptures and reciting mantras, whereas those pursuing other faiths are diligent about their prayer schedules on Friday or Sunday. Most ironically, these same irreverent Hindus, when converted to foreign faiths, become obsessively besotted about adhering to and respecting their new faith!
Andhra Pradesh Deputy CM Pawan Kalyan rightly emphasized that when pilgrimages transform into mere picnics, they lose their sacredness, purpose, and spiritual significance, and become trivial social outings. Ironically, the government itself is responsible for promoting ‘Spiritual Tourism’. Many spiritual destinations in Bharat are unwittingly contributing to the erosion of spiritual values, promoting inequality, materialism, and VIP culture. For the majority of the pilgrims, who are on budget pilgrimages, they have to undergo frustrating ordeals and uncontrollable fleecing by hotels, restaurants, taxis, and autos, obscuring their spiritual experience. Temple staff, on instructions from political masters, deliberately build up crowds, detaining pilgrims for hours, in order to compel them to purchase expensive, paid darshan tickets. Most of the queue complexes resemble jails, with inadequate ventilation, a lack of cooling facilities, drinking water, and clean toilets. Most of the ‘Prasadams’ are commercially made and marketed with no guarantee of the quality of the ingredients used. Spiritual tourism should not be misunderstood and misinterpreted by pilgrims, the government, and the temple bureaucracy.
While I was thinking about all the above issues plaguing Hindu temples, the queue in which I was standing was crawling into the outer sanctum sanctorum of Tirupathi Temple. The serpentine queue of pilgrims, in the wee hours of the morning, was resonating with chants of ‘Govinda, Govinda’. A priest was seen coming out of the inner sanctum sanctorum and heading in my direction. Suddenly, it became evident that he was coming towards me, staring intently at me. Soon we were face-to-face, and he sternly said “Prasadam”. I instinctively stretched both my hands towards him, and he gently placed a small packet of “Kasthuri” and some Tulsi leaves. A gasp went up from the onlookers in the queue, but before I could even thank him for the divine gift, he had turned and walked back into the inner sanctum sanctorum quickly. In stunned disbelief, I watched him disappear into the crowded sanctum sanctorum!
In vain I tried to locate him inside the overcrowded sanctum sanctorum. But there was a deep satisfaction that the early morning darshan of that day was a reciprocal experience—a moment of seeing and being seen by the Divine. As another priest gave the holy Tirtha with a blessing “Punardarshanam praptirastu” (Sanskrit: पुनर्दर्शन), which translates as blessing to see the deity again, it was a blissful divine experience.
Blessings coming in hypersonic fashion!
“Om Sri Venkatesaya Namaha”
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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