Pilgrimage Tourists of Palani Temple: Socio-Economic Analysis

People in general and pilgrims in particular go on pilgrimages to temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras for worshipping their religious gods and goddesses. But, tourism and pilgrimage are intertwined with little differences. Religious tourism is based on time involved and distance travelled namely short-and long-term religious tourism. The short-term type involves travel to nearby pilgrimage centers or religious conferences, or religious discourses while the long-term religious tourism involves travel to religious sites and religious conferences around the world. Pilgrimage is “the result of a vow”. India is a land of temples, mosques and churches. They play significant role in the development of any economy. Temples in India, particularly in Tamil Nadu play different roles such as redistributor of income, producer, consumer, land owner, employer, trustee, tourist centre, religious, cultural, social and economic institution. Pilgrimage is aimed to attain moksa, -the ultimate aim of individual. Moreover, pilgrimage tourism is considered as an instrument of stress relief and it is one of the most understudied and least researched areas in tourism and leisure economics. With this backdrop, the present empirical and analytical study entitled “Pilgrimage Tourists of Palani Temple: A Socio-Economic Analysis is initiated and found majority of the pilgrims are cheated in the name of rituals by the brokers and exorbitant price.