“Don’t call it ‘party’.”
“How about a ‘spiritual ceremony to welcome in the new year’?”
We all laugh. A number of us are discussing plans for new year’s eve with the manager of our guesthouse. It’s pretty tame – dinner here, look at the colourful rangolis that will begin to adorn the streets around 8 or 9pm, reconvene for cake later in the evening, maybe be in the restaurant until 12:30 or 1am. Will the police allow the restaurant to be open that late? Sounds likely, but we don’t want to risk their wrath with rash talk of “party”.
Hampi has an image problem. It’s been more than 20 years in the making, and much of the bad behaviour that created it is no longer a central feature of the Hampi experience today. But bad reps die hard.
Whose bad behaviour? For the most part, ours, foreign tourists.
In digging into the details of the Hampi crisis that has already put more than 200 families on the street and threatens many more, I’ve spent some time reading the 2009 court petition by several local and state religious leaders that seems to have led to the destruction of Hampi bazaar in July of this year, and is driving continued efforts by the authorities to implement the Hampi ‘master plan’.
The case was the culmination of efforts by these religious leaders going back at least to the early 1990s. While the 2009 case itself focuses on the “illegal and unauthorized construction in the Hampi World Heritage Area,” most of their protests, letters to government and threats of hunger strikes amassed over the previous 15 years were far more concerned with preventing the “attack on our culture and heritage by foreign visitors [due to their] free luxurious life style….”
“Today, both sacredness and historical significance of Hampi are under great threat. Hampi, which was the place of worship, has become the land of luxury of semi-nude, thousands of men and women foreigners under the guise of tourism, under alcoholic impact and other bad habits…”
“Everyone can see and hear about the obscene at the bank of the River Tungabhadra, on mountains, in the gaps of hills during full moon nights! The scene of movement of male and female hugging each other during the day time is not meagre.”
“Seeing these red bare bodies of these foreigners has been pleasure to our youth. Bunking college, High schools, these boys come to Hampi only to see the foreigners at this place. It is not that there are no well mannered foreigners who visit this place, but our boys don’t spare even them.”
“Here [in the Hampi colony], music would be played continuously. There would always be noise of Beer and whiskey bottles. The foreign music such as “Everything I do it for you” dominate here. Nude midnight films are telecasted in the Restaurant televisions.”
Oh, Bryan Adams, you’re a bad, bad man. Who knew.
While it might be easy to poke fun at the language and seemingly exaggerated fears (though it helps to know that “nude” and “semi-nude” here refer to bikinis and flimsy, revealing clothing, and “hugging” in this context refers to sex) the threats claimed are taken very seriously in India. This is especially true when talking about a sacred place like Hampi.
Religious leaders have been beating this drum for many years, resulting in strict enforcement of no alcohol and no meat rules in Hampi itself, and a curfew that effectively negates any attempt at organizing a ‘full moon party’, at least on this side.
Restrictions aren’t so strict in Virupapurgadde, a short boat ride away, so tourists looking to replicate some of the Goan hippy scene largely congregate there. But even it’s but a shadow of its hard-partying ‘90s self. Drug sale and use was a big concern throughout this period, but again, strict enforcement has made it much more limited. (Though I was recently personally offended to find out a fellow traveler has been offered hash three times in her few walks by the river (declined) yet I’ve never been targeted. What gives?)
Despite the significant reduction in the tourist party scene, the pressure remains to remove the guesthouses and restaurants that effectively attract and facilitate the “hippies” and other “anti-social elements.” It’s not clear if they’re aware of the degree to which Hampi has been reformed, or if they were so thoroughly outraged at the “moral pollution” that has been wrought on Hampi nothing but a complete cleansing will satisfy them.
There are other forces at work here as well, of course: there is a move throughout India to enforce better protection for historic monuments, including greater restrictions on commercial activities nearby. And much of Hampi’s and Virupapurgadde’s development has been unauthorized. But I can’t help but feel that the sentiments laid out in the court case underlie the righteous vigour of the authorities’ actions, and the disdain with which they deal with the business operators. The criticisms have clearly gained Hampi some very powerful enemies.
Bad habits are hard to break
The thing is, if one of the revered swamis named in the petition were to walk the streets of Hampi today, during the day, I don’t know how mollified they’d feel. Lord Shiva knows I cringe daily at the travelers’ fashion paraded before me, and it’s not just the clashing colours and prints.
Just on my way to a café to write this post I passed a young woman in a very light-weight cotton tank top, obviously (obviously!) bra-less. You wouldn’t see someone walking around like that at home – maybe you would in Israel/France/Russia? – but it’s so obviously (obviously!) inappropriate in India that…that…I’m speechless. I want to go up and shake her and ask does she not understand where she is?? But then I’m afraid a breast would fall out and make it all worse. So I have to content myself with a disapproving look and a feeling of smugness that my skirt is well below my knees and my T-shirt is demurely cut.
But events in Hampi in recent months indicate that my disapproving looks, however stabbing, and my smugness, however self-satisfying, aren’t enough.
When I first arrived in Hampi back in 2006, one of the first things I noticed about this charming little village was a sign near the entrance to the guesthouse area directed at foreign tourists: “don’t litter, don’t give money to children, dress respectfully.” It was an initiative of local guesthouse operators, responding to local concerns about the impact of foreigners on the moral well-being of this sacred place (the ‘don’t litter’ part is a bit rich here in India, but good advice for everyone). It’s disappeared now, but the sign in the photo at the top of this post hangs in a friend’s guesthouse in Virupapurgadde, seemingly to little effect: he pointed it out to me as we were discussing – hopefully loud enough to be heard – the shockingly short shorts being worn by a Spanish tourist at his guesthouse with an unfortunate penchant for bending over. His problem: how do you tell your customer they’re inappropriately dressed, especially with language barriers often thrown in?
What usually happens is that nothing is said to the tourists, and those of us conscious of the message our attire sends are satisfied with our silent disapproval. But the local business operators that serve the foreign tourists bear the brunt of local disapproval, for everything from our inappropriate dress sense to our careless partying, even to our poor hygiene.
(“Hippies” have a bad rap in much of India, even in the places where they dominate the tourist scene, for being “dirty”, spreading bed bugs and doing drugs. Even if you’re none of those things if you present as such, you’re in that category. And Indians can’t fathom why ‘rich’ foreigners would choose to dress in ripped/tattered/dirty clothing.)
Hampi has become a perhaps extreme example of what can happen when those cumulative transgressions reach some sort of breaking point. Where that point is differs from place to place, of course – Hampi is not anything-goes Goa, though even there I’m sure many of the locals are unimpressed with foreigners’ behaviour but tolerate it in beach areas and non-sacred sites for the revenue generated.
So it’s hard to generalize rules that apply everywhere, but for the most part it’s not rocket science. The less skin the better, especially when it comes to legs and necklines. (And yes, this applies mainly to women: this isn’t fair, this is India.) While the range of fashion for Indian women is broadening from traditional to rapidly westernizing, especially in larger cities, and you’re likely to see more tank tops and more fitted clothing, you’re highly unlikely to see deep necklines and lots of leg.
The swamis are right that, for the most part, we foreign tourists come from places where we live relatively “free and luxurious life styles.” In the context of the cultures we live in those lifestyles are probably appropriate. But the point of travel should not be to impose my lifestyle choices from home onto a place where I’m a guest. Surely it’s not that much of a hardship to cover up a bit more skin than I would at home, to restrict my partying to those places (and to those degrees) where it really is okay, and to not look like I rescued a chunk of my wardrobe from the trash. In the ‘70s.
Most importantly, I’d like to bring with me enough curiosity to want to understand the cultural significance of the places I visit. It makes my travel much more interesting, and allows me to better calibrate how I show up and how I minimize my potential impact on the place and the people. I’m not above asking a guesthouse operator: “Is this okay to wear? No really, tell me.”
Einstein taught us that the impact of the observer on the observed is not neutral. Our presence brings lots of benefits for local economies, but it is incumbent upon travelers to ensure our negative impacts don’t ultimately make use unwelcome.
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