Abstract
In North India, political leaders are referred to as netās, and the term netāgirī is broadly and pejoratively used to describe the self-promotion, political maneuvering, and public rhetoric in which politicians engage. However, my ethnographic fieldwork in the state of Uttarakhand, India, shows that local divinities can also be netās: they vie for their constituents’ support, make decisions that materially impact people’s lives, and threaten to use force in implementing those decisions. These “political divinities” are routinely encountered as possessed dancers in large-scale public rituals in this region. In this article, I focus on how political divinities affect, and are affected by, audiences in tangible and far-reaching ways. I argue that public possession rituals open up a highly charged zone for inherently fluid, situational, and pragmatic negotiations between humans and divinities. While anthropological studies of possession view it as a sociopolitical event that trades in power relations, this article calls for a rhetorical approach to possession, which foregrounds possession as a way of persuading particular audiences of certain ways of thinking and acting in matters of collective importance.
Highlights
In the North Indian state of Uttarakhand, local Hindu deities become present in the lives of their devotees through divine embodiment or “spirit possession.1 Scholars of religion have defined possession as “the experience by an individual of an altered state of consciousness and behavior attributed to the presence of a spirit, deity, or other supernatural being in or on a human body” ([1], p. 204)
While anthropological studies of possession view it as a sociopolitical event that trades in power relations, this article calls for a rhetorical approach to possession, which foregrounds possession as a way of persuading particular audiences of certain ways of thinking and acting in matters of collective importance
In addition to large-scale, public possession rituals such as panno, my research focused on two other major religious contexts involving spirit possession: first, private, one-on-one interactions between a deity and his/her devotee, mediated by a divination and healing expert known as a bakkyā (“speaker”)
Summary
In the North Indian state of Uttarakhand, local Hindu deities become present in the lives of their devotees through divine embodiment or “spirit possession. Scholars of religion have defined possession as “the experience by an individual of an altered state of consciousness and behavior attributed to the presence of a spirit, deity, or other supernatural being in or on a human body” ([1], p. 204). During public possession rituals, political divinities appear to their worshippers immediately and in person when they are called, whereas human politicians are less accessible, seldom travelling to and interacting with ordinary citizens in remote villages of Uttarakhand. In addition to large-scale, public possession rituals such as panno, my research focused on two other major religious contexts involving spirit possession: first, private, one-on-one interactions between a deity and his/her devotee, mediated by a divination and healing expert known as a bakkyā (“speaker”). Such rituals usually take place in the home of the bakkyā. A deity’s designation as a political divinity is not an essential trait, but is rather dependent on the ritual context and place wherein the deity is encountered.
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