“For us, the deity’s command is supreme”: deity traditions and the cosmopolitical mediations of sovereignty in Kullu, Western Himalayas

Abstract

This thesis explores the complex cosmopolitical expressions of sovereignty in the context of the deity traditions in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, India. In the predominantly rural Himalayan region of Kullu, villages are governed by deities who exercise sovereignty over their territories by regulating everything from the weather to political activity. The deities ‘rule’ with the help of their temple attendants such as kardar (manager), gur (medium), mandhari (store-keeper), bajantari (musicians) and pujari (priest), among others. The agency of these deities emerges in their social and political milieu as they speak through their mediums, and move in the form of chariots (rath), and other sacred objects (nishan). There are over four hundred territorial deities that constitute the larger deity community across the district. They are ritually tied to the figure of the ‘king’ of the erstwhile kingdom of Kullu, who is also an active participant in state and national politics within the contemporary Indian context. Furthermore, the Indian State legally recognises the deities’ status as land-owning individuals whose revenue records are maintained by the district administration. Moreover, the district-wide unions of temple attendants such as the Kardar Sangh (kardars’ union), Gur Sangh (gurs’ union) and Bajantari Sangh (bajantaris’ union), act as state-recognised representatives of the deities’ collective interests alongside their own. Together, the deities and their followers, temple attendants, district administration, the ‘king’, and the various unions of temple attendants compose the cosmopolitical landscape of the Kullu district where the deities’ sovereignty is mediated through multiple, interlinked actors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kullu as my main method of enquiry, I explore how the deities’ collective sovereignty is projected and maintained through a network of agents. I begin with the ritual journeys and festivals where the deities’ chariots, moving along with their followers in walking processions, map their shared sovereignty over the landscape. Along with the chariots’ anthropomorphic movements driven by divine music, the deities’ territorial sovereignty is also tied to the evolving oral traditions that continually frame their relationship with the landscape amidst the transformative forces of capitalism and Hindu majoritarianism. Deities’ land-ownership, moreover, is also recognised by the state which exercises its authority in safeguarding the deities’ land. Operating at the threshold of the state and the deity, the kardar (manager) facilitates the legibility of the deity’s sovereignty within the bureaucratic framework of the state. Moreover, the district-wide union of kardars, known as the Kardar Sangh, draws the deities’ sovereignty into the document-centric machinery of the state, gaining legitimacy through identity cards, notices, proposals and profusely-signatured memoranda. The role played by unions such as the Kardar Sangh in regulating the extent of the state’s authority over the deities’ affairs, emerges in cases such as Covid-19 restrictions, large-scale tourism projects, and the documentation and representation of the deities’ identities. The deities’ identities, particularly their names, emerge as strategic spaces for projecting their sovereignty across multiple audiences. The writing down of deities’ names, especially in state-commissioned census surveys, facilitates the stabilisation of the Sanskritised identities ascribed to deities which support their recognisability across greater audiences in a tourism-dominated region. Even as the Sanskritised identities are often destabilised by the deities’ existing networks of kinship and ritual, it is essential to understand that the process of Sanskritisation itself is facilitated by the larger ideological and structural proliferation of Hindu nationalism. This proliferation extends into the questions of animal sacrifice, use of Sanskrit scriptures in temples, and the relevance of ritual possession itself, all of which are tied to the articulations of the deities’ sovereignty. Within this nexus, the figure of the gur (medium) becomes crucial, inside as well as outside the ritual space, in reinforcing the deity’s sovereign authority when it is undermined. Moreover, in declaring the deity’s disapproval in cases such as the state-commissioned Bijli Mahadev Ropeway Project in Kullu, the gur’s position becomes vital in terms of expanding the scope of resistance against the state’s large-scale projects around deities’ lands, reinforcing the deity’s sovereignty as paramount. Sovereignty of the deities in Kullu, and the surrounding Himalayan regions, emerges as greater than the sum of its human parts, especially during natural calamities and disruptive events that shift the scales of power in the hands of the divine rulers of the Himalayan landscape. Nonetheless, the deities’ sovereignty also exists as a relational phenomenon, drawing in multiple interconnected actors such as the temple attendants, unions, the ‘king’, and the state, that exist in dynamic relationships of collaboration, negotiation and conflict. Together, these actors not only reproduce the complex articulations of the deities’ sovereignty but also reinforce the cosmopolitical constitution of the Kullu district, where their own sovereign agency is sustained