Tourist Inflow in a Temple City: A Study of Cultural Tourism in Bishnupur, India

Tourist Inflow in a Temple City: A Study of Cultural Tourism in Bishnupur, India

Atanu Sengupta, Anirban Hazra
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8699-1.ch016
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Abstract

This paper wishes to study the visitors' outlook & evaluation of a tourist place as experienced by them. We have selected Bishnupur in West Bengal, India as our sample sight. Our study reveals that opinion about Bishnupur as a tourist destination is negatively related with the problems & positively with the advantages. Socio economic factors such as occupation, caste as well as sub situational variables such as number of visits, reason for visit are important. In all Bishnupur is not a very attractive place as a tourist center even within the state. Given that Bishnupur has a long cultural history as well as cited in the official tourist website, the issue is alarming. The Government has started a number of initiatives (such a Bishnupur mela, renovation of the temple structure of Bishnupur & so on) to facilitated the place & make it attractive to the tourists. Our analysis show that there is a lot yet to done to bring up Bishnupur in the tourist center of the state, not to speak the Indian perspective.
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2. Survey Methodology

We conducted a Socio-Economic survey on cultural tourism in Bishnupur in Bankura district of West Bengal. It is a town of terracotta temples & man-made lakes echoes with the history of Malla Rulers, who made it their 16th century`s capital. Since Bishnupur had no stone for construction, the Malla kings build terracotta temples to celebrate their love for Krishna, the Blue God. These temples have elaborate architecture that merges hybrid style. Filigreed terracotta tiles crave out stories from the Ramayana & Mahabharata. Beside temples, Bishnupur is known for its pottery, specially the lovable terracotta horses, which are the mascot of Bankura handicraft, Baluchari, Tussar silk sarees, bell metal & shell handicraft & the quaint circular playing cards called Ganjifa are other specialties of Bishnupur that tourists look out for.

In the month of August Bishnupur resound with the mesmerizing lilt of snake charmers pipes. The annual festival of Jhapan is celebrated with snake shows & snake fights, to revere Goddess Manasa, the dominant deity of the snake worship cult. The weeklong Bishnupur fair brings the entire town alive with the cultural retrospective towards the end of December.

The survey was a part of the socio-economic survey organized by The Department of Economics, The University of Burdwan. Our destination was at Bishnupur in Bankura district, from where we were to collect our sample data. The survey samples were selected arbitrarily from the pre-selected spots. We specifically collected the data related to cultural tourism, from two groups viz. Tourist, the sample size is 109 & Local hospitality providers the sample size is 106.

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