Governing Space: Caste,Infrastructure and State in a Sacred Town in India

Abstract

This article examines how caste hierarchy is spatially reorganised through state-led religious infrastructure development in an Indian pilgrimage town. It argues that sacred infrastructure functions not merely as economic investment but as a sociological mechanism that reorders ritual authority, property relations and everyday access to urban space. Drawing on qualitative political sociology and spatial ethnography, it analyses Tuljapur, a major Hindu pilgrimage town in India, undergoing state-led infrastructure expansion centred on a historic temple complex. The study shows that sacred infrastructure functions as a critical mode of regional political economy, organising economic activity, settlement morphology and access to institutional authority. Rather than producing inclusive growth, temple-centred development consolidates spatial hierarchies by embedding caste-based regimes of access within the material fabric of planning and infrastructure. The article further demonstrates how state actors mobilise sacred space as a site of governance and legitimacy, rescaling state power through selective infrastructural investment while reproducing existing inequalities. By foregrounding religion and caste as spatial and political–economic forces, the article advances debates in regional and spatial theory on hierarchy, governance and uneven development. It argues that sacred towns are not exceptional or marginal spaces but key sites through which contemporary state and regional transformation are enacted.