Encountering Epic India

Despite the diversity of Haḍimbā’s character, in recent decades the goddess has become primarily identified with the demoness Hiḍimbā, a renowned figure from the Mahabharata. Drawing on diverse types of materials, this chapter analyzes this identification in light of the different processes indicated by the term Sanskritization, which is also closely explored. Whereas the origins of Haḍimbā’s epic associations remain uncertain, it becomes clear that their current foregrounding is the result of yet another set of encounters and interactions with local, regional, and extraregional forces and ideas. Haḍimbā again emerges here as a complex persona, who serves as a conceptual arena for her devotees to reflect on their self-perception and sense of belonging and to recast their own cultural marginality in a new, inclusive, and rather flattering light. The chapter concludes by showing how the process of Haḍimbā’s Mahabharatization projects outward in ever-growing circles.

Narrating the Local Web of Associations

This chapter continues to explore the local web of associations in which Haḍimbā is embedded and through which she and her community are constituted. Turning from the world of ritual to that of narrative, the chapter critically introduces five major stories about Haḍimbā, showing how each of them sheds a different light on the goddess’s character, biography, and social roles. It becomes clear that, while Haḍimbā is explicitly presented by her devotees as a single, unitary being, the narratives reveal a persona who is multilayered, multifaceted, and continuously changing. Haḍimbā emerges as a storehouse of fragmented memories of multiple origins and events, as well as a product of interactions among deities, people, interests, and ideals. It is evident that all the stories contain elements of power and reflect Haḍimbā’s involvement in the local web of sociopolitical relations and the developments she has undergone as a result.

Confronting the Global

As local residents report and scientific evidence shows, the Kullu Valley is warming up. This chapter analyzes practitioners’ interpretations of and engagement with the changing climate, as well as Haḍimbā’s centrality to their reasoning in this regard. It presents the holistic worldview held by Haḍimbā’s devotees, namely their notions about dharma and cosmic interconnectedness and the ways this worldview underlies their thoughts about and actions concerning the changing climate. It also traces how villagers associate the weather irregularities with the socioeconomic transformations that have taken place in their lives in recent years, following the introduction of modernity, capitalism, and tourism in the region, as well as their creeping doubts concerning the very validity of their holistic worldview. The chapter illustrates both the continuities and the shifts in how followers perceive Haḍimbā’s command over the weather and her agency more broadly.

Negotiating National Hinduism

The chapter explores a heated controversy that has developed in the Kullu Valley in recent decades, as blood sacrifices to Haḍimbā have come under severe theological, moral, and very practical attack. These sacrifices have turned into an arena for struggle over matters of cosmology, society, ethics, religious freedom, and political sovereignty. In the process, Haḍimbā’s own character has become part of the debate, as has her devotees’ perception of themselves and how they present themselves to others. Sacrifice to the goddess—its performance as well as its accompanying theological discourse—has thus become an arena in which local identity, of divine and human actors alike, is presented, debated, and reconstructed in ways that are mutually formative and closely intertwined.

Introduction

The book opens with a firsthand account of a grand buffalo sacrifice that was offered to the goddess Haḍimbā in 2009. The author, sitting on the roof of a nearby structure from which he could view the event, realized that this position was detached from the intense activities on the ground. As people below shouted, pushed, and clung to each other in an attempt to find a better spot, the author remained high and far away. This charged moment serves as an ethnographic starting point for a discussion of the methodology employed in the book: a multiperspective, interdisciplinary, and context-dependent portrayal of the goddess Haḍimbā and her cult, which is expansive in orientation and emphasizes the role of encounters. This is preferred to an allegedly all-encompassing account that imposes a single historical or theological narrative, articulated from a fictitious, transcendent viewpoint held by no one on the ground.

Conclusion

The conclusion provides brief remarks about Haḍimbā emerging from the book as a whole. It offers several final insights about the goddess and her associations with her people and argues that Haḍimbā provides her followers with a model for living, acting, interpreting, and engaging in the world. In a broad sense, Haḍimbā is revealed in this study as a ritual and conceptual compound that serves as an index of, a platform for, and an agent in her community. Methodologically, by allowing the inconsistent and often internally conflicting character of Haḍimbā to surface, it becomes clear that it is exactly this trait that makes her potent, relevant, long-lasting, and attractive. The conclusion thus outlines what the case of Haḍimbā teaches us about Hinduism, India, and religion more broadly.

Assembling the Ritual Core

This chapter presents the vivid core of the ritual embodiment of the goddess Haḍimbā, namely her rath, a palanquin-like structure carried on devotees’ shoulders. It is through the movements of this ritual vehicle and the accompanying sessions of oracular possession that the goddess manifests and interacts with her devotees. Haḍimbā is revealed in these performances as an assembled entity, whose cognition and knowledge are distributed in networks of humans, objects, and environments, and whose actions are shaped in ritual arenas. Furthermore, the ritual encounters of her rath with those of other village deities integrate Haḍimbā into the regional web of ritual associations and establish her as a representative of her community. These rituals thus contribute to social formations of Haḍimbā’s community of followers, and she herself is established in them as a complex social agent who is pivotal to both communal stability and change.

Getting There

This chapter provides a broad historical, cultural, and sociopolitical background on the goddess Haḍimbā, her community, and the region. It begins by describing a typical bus journey from Delhi to Manali, which introduces the reader to the area experientially and reproduces the point of view of visiting tourists and scholars alike. This is followed by a description of the “devtā system,” the indigenous religious tradition of this area, which is known as the Land of the Gods (Dev Bhūmi). There is an overview of the available sources for our knowledge about the Kullu Valley’s past and a brief history of its ruling dynasty. The chapter ends with a description of the recent introduction of modernity, capitalism, and tourism to the region and of how these have affected the local economy, sociopolitics, and religion, as well as the goddess Haḍimbā and her cult.