By Dr. Janardan Subedi
Today, I visited the sacred grounds of Pashupatinath Temple—Nepal’s holiest site and a cultural bedrock of Hindu civilization. I had chosen a Sunday in the month of Shrawan, naively assuming the crowds would be thinner. I was wrong—profoundly wrong. The temple complex was overwhelmed with bodies: sweating, pushing, muttering, and waiting. The human tide, rich with the smells of perspiration, worn-out clothes, overpowering perfumes, and—most disturbingly—the acidic stench of pyorrhea, left me both physically nauseated and spiritually exhausted.
This was no longer a pilgrimage. It was a ritualized congestion; a spectacle of bodies and money, not of spirit and devotion.
What struck me most deeply wasn’t the crowd, but the desecration through commercialization. The sacred had become a service, the ritual a commodity. At Pashupati, devotion seems to function within an economy of access: your closeness to the divine is contingent on the thickness of your wallet. If you pay, you are ushered through—fast-track blessings, no questions asked. If not, you are subjected to spiritual bureaucracies reminiscent of Kafka, where your soul must line up behind invisible hierarchies and impatient officers of the divine.
The thekedars—contractors of devotion—and the Bhattas, who once symbolized sacred knowledge and spiritual custodianship, now serve as gatekeepers of privilege. If you arrive alone, with nothing but sincere devotion, you are treated like an intruder in a gated temple estate. The Pashupatinath Temple, once a sanctuary of grace and transcendence, now mimics a corrupted public institution, rife with syndicates, spiritual brokers, and unionized priesthoods.
And as I stood, inching forward in the slow, winding line, I glanced up at the image of Lord Shiva. A question welled up unbidden: “Is He still here? Or has even He departed?” My thoughts drifted to a conversation I once had with a wandering yogi at Mount Kailash in Tibet. “Shiva has moved to Iceland,” he had said with a knowing smile. “There is more silence there. More sincerity. Fewer syndicates.” At the time, we laughed. Now, the joke stings more than it amuses.
I have visited Kailash Mansarovar three times over the past forty years. My most recent pilgrimage, however, mirrored the disillusionment I now felt in Pashupati. Even there—in the sacred geography of cosmic silence—the encroachment of capitalism was unmistakable. Helicopter packages, VIP lanes, oxygen tents as divine upgrades, guides charging corporate-level fees—it felt less like a pilgrimage and more like a curated spiritual product for the elite.
Contrast this with my first journey to Kailash four decades ago. Then, we walked for days, slept under open skies, recited mantras by firelight, and surrendered to hardship as part of the path. There were no plastic tents, no QR codes, no wellness supplements—just wind, earth, and invocation. To behold Kailash—the towering, unmoving black stone of the gods—was to feel silenced by awe. That silence has since been polluted, and the mountain’s transcendence now competes with cellphone towers and logistical chatter.
This shift from sacred to transactional is not unique to Nepal. Across South Asia and beyond, temples have become contested zones of religious capitalism. What sociologists call the “sacral economy”—the commercialization of religious experiences, symbols, and access—has replaced the internal labor of faith with external displays of wealth. The result is not deeper devotion but spiritual alienation, an estrangement of the soul from the site of its own longing.
In Hindu philosophy, the Bhagavad Gita warns against phalashruti—attachment to the fruits of ritual action. True spirituality, Krishna says, lies in detached action, not transaction. In Buddhism, rituals are “upaya”—means to help overcome ego and delusion, not to consolidate social status. Advaita Vedanta insists that the divine is not outside, to be approached with bribes and intermediaries, but within—revealed through self-realization. Yet these philosophies are now smothered by loudspeakers, donation counters, and VIP corridors.
I write not as a cynic, but as a wounded pilgrim. There is pain in seeing one’s sacred spaces defiled not by colonial invaders or ideological enemies, but by the very custodians entrusted with their preservation. The Bhattas have become spiritual landlords; the priests, temple entrepreneurs. Even the vocabulary of prayer now includes terms like “VIP darshan” and “special entry pass.” Our Shiva—the ascetic yogi in tiger skin—has been converted into a brand ambassador of luxury ritualism.
We now offer Him five varieties of milk, gold chains, and thousand-rupee bhogs, not out of reverence, but investment. Spirituality, like the stock market, must yield returns. But this is not devotion—it is a spiritualized neoliberalism, where the sacred is monetized and the faithful are stratified.
Still, amidst this decay, I saw flickers of divinity. A poor woman clutching a single flower, eyes shut in prayer. A child folding his hands not out of habit, but awe. In their silence, Lord Shiva still lives. In their humility, Kailash still breathes.
Yet the question remains: if our temples become transactional marketplaces and our pilgrimages curated luxury experiences, where do we go for the sacred? Perhaps that yogi was right—perhaps Lord Shiva has found refuge in Iceland. But if we are to invite Him back, we must first decolonize our faith from money, hierarchy, and spectacle.
The future of spirituality in Nepal and South Asia lies not in amplifying rituals but in reclaiming meaning. The sacred must once again be about the transformation of the self, not the transaction of services. Faith must become quieter, deeper, and more personal—not louder, richer, and more performative.
Until then, every visit to Pashupatinath will remind us of what we’ve lost, not what we’ve preserved. And every step toward Kailash will echo that haunting question:
Have the gods left us—or have we exiled them with our greed?
Meanwhile, let me find out exactly where in Iceland Lord Shiva resides.
(Dr. Janardan Subedi is Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Ohio. He writes on political ethics, democratic transitions, and institutional accountability in South Asia.)