Becoming Religious in a Secular Age

301 Pages·2016·84.017 MB·English

by  Mark Elmore

Becoming Religious in a
Secular Age

Becoming Religious in a
Secular Age
MARK ELMORE
university of california press
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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