Aftab Jassal - Playing in the Rain: Scenes from a Himalayan Pilgrimage

This talk and film screening describe human-divine relations and pilgrimage practices in the north Indian Himalayas. During the monsoon season, deities from across the region of Kumaon, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, travel back to what is referred to as their ‘childhood home,’ a temple called Jhakar Saim. On this pilgrimage, accompanied by devotees and priests who belong to caste-oppressed communities, local divinities are embodied by human mediums as playful, childlike, and feminized presences. During the pilgrimage, deities—who in other contexts are known and experienced as formidable, demanding figures—live out the experiences of their female devotees.” The deities’ emotional journey of homecoming during the rainy season is significant because it softens otherwise rigid (social and ontological) boundaries between divergent contexts of religious knowledge, practice, and authority within Hinduism. However, these movements towards greater integration are not without their limits. For instance, during the pilgrimage, caste-oppressed priests come face-to-face with their Brahmin counterparts in carefully choreographed, yet potentially volatile, public interactions. These moments bring into relief fundamental disjunctures between Brahminical and non-Brahminical epistemologies and ontologies, revealing how religious authority is contested through pilgrimage practices involving moments of both articulation and fissure.