Internet,Religion,Hindus: A Study on Virtual Pilgrimage of Temples

Since the 1980s Internet has been used by religious enthusiasts, they started exploring ways by which internet could be used to promote religion, faith or belief. The use of Media for sharing religious themes, experiences, interactions and connections already exists. Today all religions have their online presence in the form of websites, Facebook pages, Whatsapp group, blog posts and many other applications online. Online digital media is interactive and effective medium for religious communication. For millions of believers, the digital media has become a platform where one can easily find God-or at least his followers and participate in public spaces in a private and free manner.

Virtual pilgrimage on the Internet is an important religious phenomenon for understanding the new ways of being spiritual. Virtual pilgrimage has four key characteristics as a form of religious travel. The Characteristics are-(i) it creates a mythscape, (ii) it exists as an interactive visual-auditory medium for experiencing a sense of sacred presence,(iii) it generates symbolic forms of entertainment that are liminoid in character, (iv) as a leisure activity of individuals (MacWillaims;2002) .The accessibility of Internet from their home or office computers, can create ‘virtual travelling communities’ of pilgrims who use the discourse of communitas to describe their experience.

The aim of paper is to carry out qualitative and descriptive analysis of cases of Hindu religion in India. The case studies will be analyzed to answer and understand the ways in which digital media are being used for pilgrimage and the experiences associated with it. The study aims to understand the way religious experiences are gathered with the aid of virtual pilgrimage.