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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the social dynamics enhancing the political agency of folk culture in India where community rituals and traditional performances increasingly find themselves under festival arc lights. Folk arts in the Himalayan Mountains, earlier understood as dev-kār ya or ‘work of the gods’, formerly contextualised as work and duty, once presented in festivals transform into art and precious heritage. We examine how a young Himalayan state, formed after a violent and protracted people's movement, comes to terms with its new, localised political dynamic in which folk arts, as represented in a festival, become potent tools of protest and political mobilisation. While grand ritual performances may always have been stages for political appropriation and protest, shifts in contexts and discourses in a marginalised landscape, with society desperately seeking a new impetus towards economic progress and national relevance, led to a festival becoming fertile ground for reaping harvests that re-negotiate the conceptions of selfhood, social identity and otherness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The term implies heritage, and can be interchangeably used in Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu languages.
2. Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India's first Prime Minister stressed secular values for all religions and regions. He promoted Indian minority traditions with the same vigour as the mainstream traditions.
3. India won independence in 1947.
4. The name given to the Indian film industry based at Bombay (now Mumbai).
5. The people of North India generally refer to the blend of values of Hindu and Islamic culture, as a tehzeeb or way of life, adopted by those living in areas flanked by the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. These values are essentially syncretistic and amalgamate Bhakti and Sufi traditions that have witnessed a resurgence of sorts in recent times.
6. This is the traditional fanfare through drumming of the bifocal membranophone, the dhol and its twin drum, the damau, played in the courts of the Tehri Kings of Garhwal in the Himalayas.
7. The erstwhile mountain kingdom and now principal region of Uttarakhand, where the interim capital, Dehradun is located.
8. The principal deity of Garhwal, she is considered the daughter and patron goddess of the mountain regions. A 12 yearly arduous pilgrimage in honour of Nanda Devi is organised in Garhwal. For further details, see Sax (Citation1991).
9. A movement where the clan leaders came together with the people to protest against the king and his policies, quite peculiar to the mountain communities.
10. The well-known “Hug the Trees” movement of the Garhwal Himalayas that became a landmark in environmentalism in the region.
11. The right-wing Hindu organisations in India articulate Hindutva as a preference for Hindu tenets, often referring to other political groups as those appeasing minorities at the cost of the majority.