States of religion: Postcolonialism, power, and the formation of Himachal Pradesh (India)

When India achieved independence in 1947, the Western Himalayas were politically, theologically, and linguistically divided into more than thirty independent areas. The next two decades witnessed a powerful effort to unify the region and erode local control culminating politically in the grant of full statehood in 1971. This political consolidation was in turn accompanied by a massive cultural transformation. My dissertation examines the cultural consolidation of the Western Himalayas through the creation of new institutions, practices, and fields of knowledge. Using ethnographic fieldwork in conjunction with colonial records, archival documents from government ministries, and a wide array of Hindi texts from the early nineteen fifties onward, I examine what happens to local deity traditions once they are included within the armature of the state. The argument of the dissertation is thus two-fold. On the one hand, I examine how the discourses and interdictions of the state have transformed local religious practice, reshaping ritual and decreasing dependence on local deity institutions. On the other, I examine how the very constitution of the state is itself tied to the practices and everyday talk in those very 'religious' spaces.; My dissertation tells the story of the establishment of state control and the definition of religion as one particular aspect of life distinct from others. I argue that the definition of "religion" is inextricably tied to the formation of the modern state in the Western Himalayas, that this redefinition has profoundly reshaped local deity traditions, and that this transformation forms the boundaries of contemporary Himachali subjection. In so doing, I contribute to the growing body of scholarship working to historicize the category of religion in relation to its colonial and governmental histories. Further, by examining the state from the local perspectives I argue that 'the state' derives its enchanting power, like the Siddhas of medieval India, by being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.