God, King, and Subject: On the Development of Composite Political Cultures in the Western Himalaya, circa 1800–1900

Abstract

The history of British rule in the Indian Himalaya exemplifies the mutual enforcement of social identities and political cultures in modern South Asia. For the Khas ethnic majority of the Himachal Pradesh–Uttarakhand borderland, the colonial power's differentiation between “secular” and “religious” authorities engendered the division of substantially commensurable groups into “caste Hindu” and “tribal” societies. In demarcating borders along the “natural barrier” between the states, the British had severed a politically potent grassroots theocracy from its underlings, consolidated the fragmentation of the Shimla Hill States, and ultimately encouraged the development of a composite political cultures that complemented Khas traditions with Brahmanical creeds from the plains.

Encountering the Goddess in the Indian Himalaya: On the Contribution of Ethnographic Film to the Study of Religion

“…In addressing a region that was peripheral to the regulatory Rajput kingdoms that surrounded it and that is therefore poorly documented in historical sources, this article draws upon a substantial body of anthropological literature about Khas society and its traditions (Berreman [1963] 1999; Berti 2001Berti , 2009Halperin 2019;Luchesi 2018;Moran 2018Moran , 2019aSax 1991Sax , 2003Sax , 2009Sutherland 1998Sutherland , 2003. The abundant information that these studies hold about the Khas and their highly political form of civil religion provides the context for the investigation of popular belief in the goddess (śakti).…”

History, Zomia, Closure

“…35 Others have taken the argument farther west, beyond the accepted confines of what northeast India is considered by most academics today. 36 We will return to that impulse in a moment, but it is safe to say that the tiny and often tumultuous states of eastern India are often associated with these ideas in ways that have made intellectual sense to many scholars working on these problems.…”