Kings, Gods, and Political Leaders in Kullu (Himachal Pradesh)

Abstract

This article focuses on the political role that royal festivals have in contemporary India. In former times, royal festivals were a privileged framework where politics were strictly combined with ritual and religious activity. With the end of the kingdoms, these ritual contexts, far from being abandoned, have been integrated and reinterpreted by the new democratic state. By involving the state in royal festivals post-independence political leaders have implicitly created the conditions for keeping alive pre-colonial politico-religious roles and relationships in the contemporary democracy. I study this process by analysing the complex overlap of two systems in people's discourses and behaviour: one still embedded in values and models of interactions pertaining to royalty, the other emerging from the "secular" politics of the democratic state. I will focus on a long-standing conflict between different groups of villagers, who quarrelled over assuring their respective god a right of precedence during the festival. The arguments and the multiple interpretations of this conflict, as exposed by its different protagonists (king, gods' mediums, villagers and politicians), will show the multiplicity of registers used to construct and legitimize both divine and political authority.