The Pandharpur pilgrimage has been studied by both historians and anthropologists.While historians have tried to establish the historicity of the pilgrimage or to establish its historical links to its geographic settings mainly the pastoral nomadic routes underlying the pilgrimage routes(See eg. A. Dandekar 'Landscapes in Conflict:Flocks,Hero Stones and Cult in the early medieval Maharashtra' in Studies in History,Sage(1992),anthropologists like Victor Turner have tried to demonstrate the we feeling or the çommunitas the pilgrimage generated(Victor Turner, Dramas,Fields and Metaphors,Cornell University Press,!974).My attempt in this paper is to use both archival records and ethnographic documentation done by me to unveil the concerns around health,sanitation and ecology which have also been concerns of both the pilgrims(the varkaris) and the local administration.My argument is that the sense of communitas or we feeling which the anthropologists talk about and the sense of the pastoral which the historians talk about in the context of the pilgrimage is taken further in the campaigns of health and sanitation by the local colonial administration and by the varkari pilgrims.In the process the 'political' either in shape of the national movement of the early twentieth century or later post independence developments hardly figures as a concern amongst the varkaris ie the pilgrims or the local people.Another remarkable aspect of the pilgrimage in the recent times is that one of its dindis proceeds entirely by boat, highlighting the concerns of health and ecology to the villagers on the way.I have documented and shot videos of these which I will bring along.The paper thus tries to make its argument in the interdisciplinarity of history and anthropology.
