Sacred Spaces and the ‘Other’: Social Distance, Functional Distance, and Two Pilgrimage Sites in Asia

Modern pilgrimage has become more complex due to ever increasing numbers of people who engage in pilgrimage-like travel. Another complicating factor is that changing national boundaries has led to some religious sites being located in places whose surrounding populations no longer adhere to the religion that originally created them or which contemporarily venerate them. This has created a ‘social distance’ between residents, site owners, and those who visit these places for pilgrimage purposes. This chapter examines two unique cases in Asia where religious sites are located at significant social and functional distances from the original faith community that built them and are presently surrounded by a host community that does not belong to the faith tradition that the monuments represent. After discussing the role of social distance and state border-induced functional distance in the context of religious mobility and pilgrimage, two case study sites are presented: the birthplace of Buddha in Lumbini, Nepal, and the holy site of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Pakistan. The authors then examine the implications related to social distance and functional distance in these cases before concluding.