Making Pushkar Paradise: Hindu Ritualization and the Environment

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the pilgrimage and tourist town of Pushkar, India, this article looks at the environmental degradation that has befallen the holy lake there and explores efforts on the part of locals to clean it. While local Hindus believe unequivocally that their town is a heavenly place, many nevertheless recognize the need to actualize that belief. The article contends that the broad goal of making Pushkar paradise, and more specifically, the task of cleaning the lake, involves a robust process of ritualization. Thinking alongside the work of Catherine Bell, the article aims to show how environmentalism becomes ritualized, and in turn renders a place sacred. The article concludes with the idea that cleaning the lake is both an activity born out of the understanding that Pushkar is paradise and one that simultaneously sets paradise in the making.