© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.

org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

Dark tourism concept, features and significance in

India.

Prof. Sandeep Narayan Naik Prof.Pralhad Bhimrao Botre

Asst.Professor Asst.Professor

Dr.D.Y.Patil I.H.M.C.T, Pune 33 Dr.D.Y.Patil I.H.M.C.T, Pune 33

Abstract:

Dark tourism is an occurrence which represents the unfortunate sector of the communal that comprises death,
suffering, bloodshed, grievances, tragedy etc. making it a multifaceted combination of history and heritage,
tourism and tragedies. It has a huge potential and can contribute marginally to the economical accomplishment of
the country. It has the most energetic young tourist customers aged from 35-50 yrs. India lacks behind in
recognising and promoting due to its own perceptions and attitude towards it. India bears a huge significance
with varied destination comprising almost all sub-categories of Dark tourism. India will experience a dominating
marginal change in its revenue from domestic as well as international tourism if it follows the worldwide outlook
towards Dark tourism and draft policies, create infrastructure, withstand controversies, political issues and
promote it worldwide by proper advertisement.

Keywords: Dark tourism, concept, features, significance, India.

Introduction

Definition

The Dark tourism travel guide states, the term dark in dark tourism does not literally mean so, but metaphorically
and it conveys mostly to an ill-fated episode of the history, many cases concerning death of one or more.

According to David Ekesong (2008), it is a deed of travel and visitation to locations, attractions and exhibitions
which have experienced real or recreated death, sorrow or the seemingly gruesome in a main theme.

Panchali Dey of Times Travel (2018) describes it as grief tourism that makes people to take keen interest in
going to destinations that are historically connected to death, tragedy and locations that remind human miseries
and massacre. Dark tourism is a multidimensional combination of history and heritage, tourism and tragedies

Lennon and Foley (2000) define the concept of dark tourism as a 'modern' occurrence and believes that it as a
part of the "conception of modernism”. The fascination of demise and calamity is largely advertised and
popularised by modern media; deprived of which these destinations won’t get the attention of visitors.

Characteristic features:

Dark tourism seemingly was a incommodious conception which started achieving consideration as a tourism
product from the early 90s, but there is no evidence about its conceptualization and the designation.

It is also described with alias terminology as follows:

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 51

© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)
 Black Spot- It is a commercial enhancement of grave and locations at which popular personalities or
corpus people has faced with sudden and violent deaths.
 Thanatourism- It is travelling to a place inspired with an aspiration to watch actual death or symbolic
encounters with death.
 Atrocity Tourism- It is a type of tourism that takes the individual to visit holocaust sites.
 Morbid Tourism-It is the travel to places which emphasis on accidents and sudden violent death.

Even though it seems irrational dark tourism is emerging global tourism trend which makes tourists travel to
destinations that are identified with tragedy, suffering, death and destruction to the destinations that are strange,
dangerous, frightening and often weird.

In other words, it leads people to the destinations that are deliberated as forbidden or taboos that can have
peculiar effects on the travellers psyche and most of the people don’t really like to talk about.

Devyani Nigoskar (2018) describes dark tourism as Places of conflicts that are left abandon due to hypothetical
haunting, places that have experienced wretchedness and places that have potential to provoke a sense of loss.
When one visits these places gets historical inputs and a lesson of obligation from the remembrance. Example:
Nazi concentration and execution camps at Auschwitz, that imprints the visitors’ sensations about vision of
panic, apprehension and adjudication on the moments of slaughtering of humans.

Stone (2006) wrote dark tourism interprets that life and death through a touristic optics but at the same time
pleasure-seeking tourist’s manifestation become concisely pessimistic.

The persistence of Dark Tourism sites is to protect and memorialize noteworthy deeds, making mankind aware
and encourage the domestic and international tourism. The visitors will experience and comprehend the historic
dark events personally through touching, feeling, reading and learning in a more realistic way. It is indeed can be
a rational way to obtain the lessons of the history.

Motives for being a Dark Tourist:

 Enthusiastic to visit and experience the ingenuity, after learning about the destination.

 Self-investigation and gaining knowledge about the sites & exaggerate about it in their social circles.

 Enthrallment, thrill, adventure and exhilaration about the destination.

 Self- motives such as demonstrate self-maturity or adulthood.

 Pay tribute, homage to the humans who faced the disaster’s outcome.

 Ambition to search the truth through peculiar investigations

 Instinct to visit such sites

Sub-categories of Dark Tourism

Grave tourism – Visit to famed cemeteries, graves of popular personalities or grand tombs of some real cult-of-
leader billionaire. (Example :Atatürk's in Ankara, Biwi-ka Makbara Aurangabad ).
Holocaust tourism – Visit to detention camp memorial sites, former ghettos, or sites.
(Example: US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C)
Genocide tourism – Visit to a location witnessed slaughtering or mass massacre.
(Example: The Jallianwalla baug massacre, the most recently terror attack in Pulwama in Kashmir)

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 52

© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)
Prison and persecution site tourism –Places of harassment, suppression and imprisonment. (Example: The
Cellular Jail Andaman & Nicobar).
Communism tourism – A very distinctive and exceptionally weird kind of destination
(Example: Communal and socialist art museum at Berlin, Prague, etc.)
Even visiting places that are still faithfully communist .( Example: North Korea - Kims).
Cult of personality tourism –
It edges communist tourism but goes beyond. It's a cult of personality of extended or recently deceased
leaders.(Example: Turkey's Atatürk , Saddam Hussain Palace)
War zones tourism – This involves looking out traces and remains of the Berlin Wall and Visiting War zones of
history like Panipat, India, etc.
Nuclear tourism – It includes visiting sites of nuclear testing like Pokran, India, Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan or
missile silos like Titan Missile Museum, Arizona, or two places where atom bombs where actually used for
real: Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Nuclear dedicated museums, in Japan or USA
Disaster area tourism – It comprises places of other man-made or natural disasters like sites of volcanic
destruction (Pompeii,Italy.) , earthquake (Khilarri , India), floods (Uttarakhand floods), storms, fires, etc.,which
are temporary in nature but remains visitable for longer times after that occurred event.
Icky medical tourism –Not means same as the nomenclature i.e. medical treatment, but to see medical exhibits
like Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, USA, which displays longitudinal slices of heads (showing the brain),
Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo, which has "Bodies Exhibition that is dead on display.
Ghost /Haunted tourism: It involves visiting to destination with death, dying and disaster, where locals believe
the presence of soul or spirit of a dead person by experiencing images, sound or actions.
Example: The Bhangarh Fort, India, Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry, USA.

Significance of Dark tourism in India:

The concept of Dark tourism in India sound somewhat weird or difficult to accept but apparently it is a fast
catching niche trend in the modern India, since it has experienced many outrageous events in the history like
multiple rulers, long battles , massacres and a variety events which are often argued rather than celebrated. It
aids the transmission of information about the history including unsung heroes and their struggles to the new
generation. The tourists after visiting the actual sites learn and visualise a great deal of struggles and tragedies
that provokes interest in them. It is a blessing to ones who hate to read history books and get inquisitive about the
past by actually visiting and confirming with their own eyes with the philosophy that- seeing is believing! It
virtually makes the tourist visualize the event and feel the pain that has occurred in the past like disastrous
incidents man-made or naturally. Even the dark historical image created make the region known to the world on
the map.
India has a varied potential dark destination like the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, the Kuldhara village
in Rajasthan, the haunted Savoy Hotel in Mussoorie or the ‘Remember Bhopal’ Museum in Madhya Pradesh.
India’s tourism industry is consistently sprouting with a 10% annual growth with domestic and foreign tourists.
Though this figure may be hard to quantify in the Indian market, Times of India report(8th Oct 2018) proposed
that, “Dark tourism has been one of the reasons for a 10% year-on-year growth in Indian travellers to offbeat
European destinations.”

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 53

© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

Karan Anand, Head of Relationships, Cox & Kings in an interview with The Hindu stated that “Contemporarily
a growing demand is seen for creepy characters, unpleasant history and mysterious places. People find it
exhilarating and pleasurable, while others are keen to know the truth behind the told stories. This trend has
picked up since last four or five years and is attracting to tourists between the ages of 35-50.”

Popular and potential Dark tourism destination in India:

(i) Bhangarh Fort, Rajasthan, built by Man Singh,a most haunted and scary place is considered to be
cursed by a magician. Entering to this place after sunset is strictly prohibited.
(ii) Kuldhara Village, Rajasthan where 83 villages lost their existence in just one night. This place is
considered to be cursed and no one live there right now
(iii) “The Jallianwala Bagh” in Amritsar , the British Dyer ordered to shoot the people gathered in the
garden on the day of “Baisakhi , till the ammunition supply ended, which converted the whole ground
canopy with bloodshed in 10 min.
(iv) Jamali-Kamali Masjid, Delhi, an archaeological site has more glory with its numerous haunted
tales about the Jinns which are still thought to exist in the walls of Jamali- Kamali.
(v) Jatinga, Assam , a place popular worldwide for its unexplained occurrence of bird suicides. between
06:00 p.m. to 09:30 p.m. on the new moon nights of September and October.
(vi) Towers of Silence, Mumbai the supernatural incidents happening in Grand Pararri Towers, Mumbai
due to the spectral forces originating from this Parsi cemetery at Malabar hills .
(vii) Dumas Beach, Surat (Gujarat), the beach covered with black sand and various ghostlike activities
occuring here like, persons walking around the beach at night disappearing. It is considered as a dark
Spot in India.
(viii) “Three Kings Church” in Goa, It is believed that three kings murdered each other so as to rule over
the this church and people believe that their spirits still roam about in the Premises.
(ix) The Lambi Dehar Mines in Mussoorie , Millions of workers died in the mine while working
making it a spookiest places
(x) Savoy Hotel” at Mussoorie , a haunted place with various unusual activities been observed in this
hotel.
(xi) “Shaniwarwada Fort” in Pune, It is believed that a prince Narayanrao Peshwe was wickedly
murdered and various supernatural activities done by his soulis experienced by people nearby.

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 54

© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

(xii) Hyderabad’s notorious “Ramoji film City” the biggest and famous film cities of India where
hotels experience supernatural activities like strange marks are left on the mirror, the leftover food
scatters around the room, etc. making it haunted.
(xiii) Andaman & Nicobar Islands: The Cellular Jail at Andamans which which was known for Sajaye
kala pani.
(xiv) Panipat: The considered turning points in Indian history , three famous battles were fought in the city
,where The Kala Amb Tree is a popular sightseeing spot of Panipat.
(xv) Bhopal: The Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked gas methyl
isoccynate on 2nd and 3rd of December in the year 1984, making it one of the world's worst industrial
disaster killing 8000 peopledue to exposure of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals.
(xvi) The Shaheed-e-Azam Sardar Bhagat Singh Museum at Khatkar Kalan, Punjab.
(xvii) The Martyr's Column at the Gandhi Smriti, (Birla House), the spot where Mahatama Gandhi was
assassinated
(xviii) The Memorial of Smt. Indira Gandhi, the 3rd Prime Minister of India who was assassinated on
October 31st, 1984, at her 1, Safdarjung Road, New Delhi residence.
(xix) The stone mosaic & the seven pillars, each featuring a human value surrounds the site of the blast
that stands at the location where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai.
(xx) Jammu& Kashmir, the terrorist affected areas have great potential of becoming a dark tourism
destination.

The Scope of Dark Tourism in India:

 It has an immense potential .
 It will enlighten tourists and also bring in foreign exchange.
 If the funds are regulated properly, it can be converted in to creating funds for the survivors and those
affected.
 It is a tool to educate the irresponsible so that the industry’s desired effect is not counterproductive.
 Dark tourism holds valuable lessons for everyone.
Moreover, people do not wish to intellectualize or take dark tourism seriously. This is exactly what we need to
change before anything else. If practiced well, dark tourism, especially
for Indian tourists, it may be a new and dark space to navigate, but there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel
provided our navigators show us the way.

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 55

© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)
OBSTACLES TO GROWTH OF DARK TOURISM IN INDIA

Lack of Advertising: The government don’t support these destination may be with an intention of the fear
factors and emotions of the locals, hence the advertisement is hampered resulting in less popularity in tourism
market.

Lack of Tourist facilities at destinations: If tourists wish to go to the destination out of curiosity they face lot
of distress due to lack of basic services and guides at the destination.

Improper Conservation of Dark Tourism Sites: The sites remain to be maintained making them worst
condition year by year losing the charm and genuineness of the place. It becomes more haunted and
unacceptable.

Low Accessibility Status: The tourism infrastructure is least developed impairing the accessibility of the place.

Branding Image of India: The Government and travel agents if identifies Dark tourism they will find
difficulties in branding its image because of the democratic society opposition. But if they can develop and brand
this domain it will add on to a varied tourism portfolio destination to the world

Co-operation by Locals: The local’s cooperation is minimal due to fear, feelings, emotions and physiological
trench. This can be sorted out with the help of NGOs activated in that region or influencing personalities that
believe in the concept.

Governmental Policies: Lack of supportive government policies applied at the dark tourism destination
hindering the possibilities of development of tourism. Government should positively follow and accept Dark
tourism destination as it is done around the world.

Misrepresentation/Rumours: Rumours about the place creating unjustified fear and anxiety among the locals
and tourists

As a matter of fact we are in a country where caste and religion are politicized, tête-à-tête about conflict feels
taboo and the concept of sustainable tourism is still extra-terrestrial, will it be healthy is it to promote dark
tourism in India? Are we mature enough to toe the thin line between appreciating history and exploiting the
dead?
CONCLUSION
India has experienced a long history with many conqueror and ruler, its rich culture, heritage and diversity. This
has blessed it with all sub-categories of dark tourism hence making it worthy to be the most preferred destination
for all the dark tourists worldwide. India has always ignored or undermined the potentials of dark tourism. It still
thinks in an orthodox outlook towards dark tourism. It is slowly catching up on this global phenomenon. We still
have a long way to go, but there is a beginning. India can encash this huge potential in coordination with the
local community keeping away the taboos, avoiding controversies. The government has to take the lead by
formulating favourable policies, advertise dark tourism following the world tourism strategies. India will
definitely experience a marginal increase in the tourism turnover of both domestic as well as international tourist
flowing in to explore a wide variety of Dark tourism product available in our country.
IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 56
© 2019 IJRAR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 2 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

REFERENCES:

 Travel Trends, India (Oct 8, 2018) Dark Tourism in India—walking through the alleys of India’s dark
past Panchali Dey |Times Travel Editor|
 Home grown (2016) Death, Tragedy, Conflict – Is India Ready for Dark Tourism?
 Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR) Vol-2, Issue-9, 2016 ISSN: 2454-1362 Dark
Tourism in India- Introduction, Places Of Interest, Challenges and Strategies to Overcome Them
Sukhpreet Singh , Gurminder Kaur & Gursimranjit Singh
 The Hindu (October 26, 2017) and Telegraph (2015)- Natalie Paris
 Fonseca et al., J Tourism Res Hospitality (2016), Dark Tourism: Concepts, Typologies and Sites Ana
Paula Fonseca, Claudia Seabra and Carla Silva
 The Travelzine for today’s Vagabond , Tuesday Edition / (October 28, 2008) -Dark Tourism: A Fine Line
Between Curiosity and Exploitation
 Travel Daily magazine (Aug 31, 2018) Dark tourism: The destinations we don’t talk about
By Christian On
 Cengage Learning EMEA, (2000) ISBN – 10:0-82645-064-4 Dark Tourism" by J. John Lennon, Malcolm
Foley.
 Travel weekly magazine (March 20, 2012) - Tour operator Dark tourism.
 Taylor & Francis in Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research on (1/7/2016
) Dark London: Dimensions and Characteristics of Dark Tourism Supply in the UK Capital by Raymond
Powell
 Stone,P.R.(2006). An Interdisciplinary International Journal, 54 (2). pp. 145160. ISSN 17908418 A dark
tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and
exhibitions. Tourism
 www.dark-tourism.com

IJRAR19K6314 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR)www.ijrar.org 57