Becoming Religious in a Secular Age PDF
Preview Becoming Religious in a Secular Age
Becoming Religious in a Secular Age Becoming Religious in a Secular Age MARK ELMORE university of california press University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2016 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Elmore, Mark, author. Title: Becoming religious in a secular age / Mark Elmore. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016] | “2016 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: lccn 2016000006 | isbn 9780520290532 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520290549 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520964648 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Himachal Pradesh (India)—Religion— 20th century. | Himachal Pradesh (India)—Religion— 21st century. Classifi cation: lcc bl2016.h56 e46 2016 | ddc 200.954/52—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000006 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Introduction: What Is This Thing Called Religion? 1 PART ONE. POWER: HOW HIMACHAL DISCOVERED ITSELF AND ITS RELIGION 1. Becoming Suffi ciently Developed in Himachal Pradesh, or How Religion Became a Problem 35 2. God Is a Beggar: Land Reforms Create Religion as a Separate Sphere 58 PART TWO. KNOWLEDGE: MAKING AND MANAGING THEOLOGICAL CULTURE 3. Ordinary Miraculousness: Farmers and Pharmacists Practice the Science of Religion 93 4. Managing Religion: Government, Gu–rs, and Gods 133 PART THREE. ETHICS: BECOMING RELIGIOUS AND THE MYSTERIES OF BEING 5. Negotiating Religion: Normalization, Abjection, and Enrichment 173 6. Cultivating Religion amid the Confl icting Desires of Goats, Gods, and Government 212 Afterword: Religion Is a Verb 235 Notes 243 Bibliography 273 Index 287 Illustrations 1. Child and drummers at Bushahar festival 2 2. Gūr “playing” during a festival 9 3. Road to Sangla Valley 21 4. The mall in Shimla 23 5. GPS-located fi eldwork sites 25 6. Sign in Malana 36 7. Lohri festival near the Tibetan border 42 8. Man in front of Kullu temple 59 9. Deity being moved from storage to Rāth 84 10. A ko.thī in the Satluj Valley 89 11. Somasī journal cover 94 12. A popular pamphlet 97 13. Himachal Tourism offi ce in Manali 113 14. Yashwant Singh Parmar 117 15. Anointing a fresh-cut cedar for Biśu 125 16. Gūrs performing diagnostic rites 134 17. Deities entering a village during Mandi Śivarātri 148 vii viii / Illustrations 18. Various powerful substances used in Tantric rites 165 19. Grandmother and child in Bushahar 174 20. Bhunda (human sacrifi ce) rite 182 21. Himachal Darshan photo gallery 189 22. Goat sacrifi ce 192 23. Malana village 208 24. Had.imbā temple 214 25. Bhīmākālī Temple 224 INTRODUCTION What Is This Thing Called Religion? THE SACRED WAS EVERYWHERE, UNTIL IT WASN’T When I discovered Mircea Eliade’s theory of religion as an enthusias- tic, if impetuous, undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I felt as though I had found the skeleton key that could unlock the mysteries of cultural diff erence, revealing a world of infi nite variety unifi ed by an undeniable unity. Amid the bewildering chaos of the world’s people and the seemingly infi nite permutations of time, Eliade showed me an undeniable pattern. Whether looking around campus, remembering the Quechuan people I encountered during my high school study abroad program, or even considering the primitivist visions of radical environmentalists, I saw worlds of meaning founded by the eruption of the sacred, dividing the world into sacred and pro- fane and giving structure to the passage of time. I saw my confused peers fl oating in the homogenous space of unfounded worlds. Every- where I looked, I saw hierophanies. I used Eliade’s theory to interpret everything, from national parks to yogic postures, (shamefully) seduc- ing those around me with the smarmy elegance of a magician who can turn anything into the same thing. Comforted by this vision of amniotic simplicity, I traveled to India in the year before starting graduate school. With an innocence that now 1
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