Ritual, Space, and Society: Sacred Practices Across Indian Cultural Landscapes

Ritual, Space, and Society: Sacred Practices Across Indian Cultural Landscapes is an interdisciplinary edited volume that investigates the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between India’s living ritual traditions and the physical, social and ecological spaces in which they are embedded. Bringing together perspectives from design studies, heritage conservation, urban planning, cultural sociology, environmental science and communication design, the book argues that ritual practice is not a fixed or static inheritance but a continuously adaptive system one that negotiates between ancient devotion and contemporary challenges of infrastructure, commercialisation, sustainability and technological change.

India’s sacred landscapes are among the most complex human-environment systems on earth. They are simultaneously geological formations and cosmological maps, ancient pilgrimage routes and modern tourism corridors, living communities and UNESCO-inscribed heritage sites. The five studies assembled in this volume collectively reveal how rituals embedded in these landscapes generate meaning, identity and livelihood for millions of people and how they are threatened by the very forces of development and accessibility that seek to honour them. From the world’s largest human gathering to a remote Himalayan shrine, from Tibetan stone cairns to a North Indian folk theatre and a sacred Ganges-bank village, the book spans the full breadth of India’s sacred geography and performative heritage.