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pratibimba (reflection)
A documentary film.
Ideas and Approaches
Stop. Look around you. Imagine for one minute
that there are invisible forces all around. Imagine the final
scenes from The Return of the King. Now place yourself on that
mountain and add scores of other unseen beings who affect every
detail of your life. This is a small glimpse of daily life in
Eastern Himachal Pradesh where the world is pervaded by snake
deities, forest sprites, village guardians and the spirits of
fallen heroes. These are not mythic or cinematic beings, nor
reifications of social relations. They are as real as corn and
rain, drought and death.When we speak in the name of religions,
we often speak of “beliefs” and “world-views.”
Yet, as practitioners of militant Islam and many American homosexuals
can attest, religion in the public sphere is very rarely about
beliefs. More often it is about doing rather than thinking rather,
actions rather than words. Mapping interiorized “beliefs”
onto bodily practices is not only a protestant strategy of interpretation;
it is a powerful political tool as operative in the speeches
of our president as in the rhetoric of Iran’s fledgling
reformist government. My film explores what happens when state
officials deploy a discourse of religion-as-belief in a small
state in Northwest India. |
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Hindus are vegetarians, or so says the global
myth machine. In practice, only a small portion of Hindus are
actually vegetarians. From our earliest records the inhabitants
of the western Himalayas have eaten meat and offered it to their
gods. Animal sacrifice (bali) opens major endeavors, accompanies
most requests and is offered in gratitude for wishes granted.
Goat sacrifice can alleviate the machinations of malevolent
spirits or entice a strong guardian spirit to protect a village.
In short, goats—not ideas or beliefs—are the currency
of religious exchange in Himachal Pradesh.
While sacrifice may be written indelibly into history, its future
is less certain. Once ubiquitous and unquestioned, the rite
is now a point of contention in debates about development, modernity,
globalization and the nation. My film tells the story of this
debate. Beginning in the villages where these rites are most
prevalent, the film is organized around five characters: a villager
who is the custodian of a meat-eating god, the minister of tourism
who wants to eradicate this “barbaric practice,”
a member of the cultural elite who performs the practice but
is opposed to it, a journalist who is accused of vilifying sacrifice
and a local Hindu scholar who offers the viewer guidance. The
film climaxes around one of the biggest controversies in recent
years. The government outlawed all sacrifice at a major temple
and an extended drought immediately followed. Villagers interpreted
this as the anger of the goddess and after many months of drought
they slaughtered a buffalo (a rare practice). Rain fell soon
thereafter. The villagers felt vindicated and forced the removal
of prohibition, but not without creating a state-wide controversy
complete with death threats and murderous sorcery.
The central tension in the film revolves around differing definitions
of Hinduism and modernity. While the villagers adamantly assert
that their deities demand the death of goats, both state officials
and other cultural elites suggest that “Hindu beliefs”
allow the sacrifice to be substituted. Villagers can offer vegetable
or mental offerings. These critics have constructed a compelling
case based on extensive textual precedents and comparisons with
other areas in India, but for most villagers offering intellectual
gratitude is like giving their children the idea of a toy.
Objectives, Significance and Originality
I hope to make three contributions with this film. The relationship
between religion and politics is at the center of a number of
contemporary national and international debates. Indeed, recent
global and domestic trends suggest that religion may be the
issue that continues to divide the world even as market forces
bring us together. My film offers a visual contribution to the
study of religion and politics by showing how state officials
and cultural elites use religion-as-belief to create a homogeneous
and innocuous version of Himachali religion suitable for national
and international distribution. Its goal is to find the most
humane way to negotiate the conflicting interests of local communities
and translocal entities. The film suggests that defining religion
as belief is integral to state unification—a process that
can offer Himachalis a place in national and global markets
as both consumers and producers—but then questions the
cost of such a redefinition. The film searches for new understandings
of religion and culture not tied to static notions of tradition
or locality and looks to Himachali history to offer examples
of diversity and tolerance that can be drawn on to calm the
controversy without overtly rejecting the claims of either side.
Second, the making of this film brings together academics and
visual artists. While I am a scholar of religion in South Asia
and an avid photographer, this film is my first attempt at a
serious documentary (though I have shot many hours of footage
for other documentaries). To help craft the film I worked with
Suzanne Shultz a documentary filmmaker who is also a scholar
of Pakistani cinema. We spent more than two months together
shooting and organizing the footage. Hopefully, we are a harbinger
of a future where artists and scholars not only collaborate,
but combine the best of both worlds in themselves and their
work. This type of hybridity, though growing rapidly, is all
too rare in both filmmaking and academia. In Indian urban settings
such hybridity is common and has produced a vibrant public space
where academics, artists, technicians, and the public engage
one another. Initiatives such as the Interdisciplinary Humanities
Center are laudable in this regard.
Finally, the film offers a substantial contribution to our understanding
of religion and politics in the border regions of India. These
areas of the nation-state, whether east or west, have largely
been ignored by scholars. Indeed, there is not a single significant
academic manuscript in English on this entire state since the
colonial period! The only time it figures in visual representations
is as an idyllic background in contemporary Hindi cinema. It
has been systematically marginalized by historians, anthropologists,
economists and political scientists. With this film, I hope
to begin to fill this lacuna. |
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