Guest Is God

Guest Is God
Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making
Paradise in India

D R EW T HOM A SE S

1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thomases, Drew, author.
Title: Guest is God : pilgrimage, tourism, and making paradise in India /
Drew Thomases.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019015420| ISBN 9780190883553 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780190883560 (updf) | ISBN 9780190883577 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190883584 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Hindu pilgrims and pilgrimages—India—Pushkar. | Pushkar
(India)—Religious life and customs.
Classification: LCC BL1239.36.P88 T46 2019 | DDC 294.5/3509544—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015420

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Printed by Integrated Books International, Inc., United States of America

 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Note on Transliteration xi

Introduction: Mapping Out Paradise 1

1. Others and Brothers 27
2. Making Pushkar Paradise 52
3. Savitri’s Curse 78
4. Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic 108
5. Peace But No Quiet 130

Epilogue 159
Notes 163
Glossary 193
Works Cited 195
Index 209
 Acknowledgments

Any piece of writing is necessarily the product of many minds. Every book
is made from an assemblage of voices, of hints and gentle nudges, pieces of
advice and long-​held concerns, heads both shaken and nodded. Of this vast
assemblage, I am most grateful for the nods and shakes of two people in par-
ticular: Jack Hawley and Rachel McDermott. Individually and collectively,
they exhibit an enviable balance of brilliance and compassion. Not only has
their work provided a model for academic excellence, but their capacity for
warmth and support has been an enduring source of inspiration for living
life—​both inside and outside of the academy. It is hard to put into words what
I owe them.
This project began as a series of conversations with friends and mentors at
Columbia University. For those conversations and more, I want to thank Joel
Bordeaux, Patton Burchett, Allison Busch, Divya Cherian, Elizabeth Castelli,
Dan del Nido, Ryan Hagen, Udi Halperin, James Hare, Jon Keune, Abby
Kluchin, Joel Lee, Ben Fong, Dalpat Rajpurohit, Jay Ramesh, Rakesh Ranjan,
Simran Jeet Singh, Hamsa Stainton, Michael Taussig, Somadeva Vasudeva,
Anand Venkatkrishnan, and Tyler Williams. Todd Berzon and Sajida Jalalzai
read chapters at an early juncture in the writing, and helped me to clarify and
contextualize many of the ideas that form the basis of this book. I am partic-
ularly indebted to Liane Carlson, who read a number of my chapters at a very
shabby stage and who allowed me to ramble about my work over probably too
many Happy Hours. Thanks also to my dissertation committee—​Courtney
Bender, Katherine Ewing, and Ann Gold—​for helping me to translate those
more difficult ideas locked in my mind into compelling words on a page.
I have presented parts of this book, in various stages and instantiations,
at a number of venues: the American Academy of Religion, the American
Anthropological Association, Columbia University, the International
Conference on the Forum of Contemporary Theory (in Mysore), Syracuse
University, and the University of Wisconsin-​Madison. In those locales, I was
fortunate to speak in front of audiences that were both receptive and generous;
in particular, I appreciate the critiques, encouragements, and well-​wishes of
Carla Bellamy, Koya Edoho-​Eket, Afsar Mohammad, Pritika Nehra, Corrie
viii Acknowledgments

Norman, Christian Novetzke, Andrea Pinkney, Sheipra Rajanikanth, and Sue

Wadley. This book would not have been possible without the institutional
and financial support of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), the
Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the Fulbright IIE, the Charlotte W. Newcombe
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and Columbia University’s Institute for
Religion, Culture, and Public Life. The AIIS program in Jaipur was so impor-
tant to me—​a year in which I solidified my grasp of Hindi, found a fieldsite in
Pushkar and, most importantly, met my wife. For their support throughout
that year, I want to offer special thanks to Vidhu Chaturvedi, Neelam Bohra
Singh, and Anita Tripathi.
In Pushkar, there are so many people to thank. First, I extend my grati-
tude to all the fine folks by Brahm Ghat, who welcomed me and my prying
eyes. I  want to thank the Pandey family, and Hemant Pandey in partic-
ular, for making me feel as if their home was mine, too. Dharma and Ravi
Parashar were especially supportive, providing love and laughs and chai on
a daily basis. As a research assistant, Ravi helped me access ideas and people
who would have otherwise remained inaccessible. I am also deeply grateful
to Ashok and Madhu Parashar—​and their sons Kuldeep and Pradeep—​my
family in India. Their support I will never be able to pay back.
There are several friends and colleagues who have read chapters, offered
insight, or shared their thoughts on some facet of my work. I am grateful to
Carol Babiracki, Adam Becker, Sravani Biswas, Arun Brahmbhatt, Stephen
Christopher, Greg Clines, Ruthie Dibble, Elaine Fisher, Anya Foxen, Dan
Heifetz, Carter Higgins, Amy Hirschtick, Yoshina Hurgobin, Borayin Larios,
Andrew Nicholson, Elayne Oliphant, Jenn Ortegren, Jef Pierce, Geoff Pollick,
James Reich, Nidhi Vij, Emera Bridger Wilson, Ian Wilson, and Angela Zito.
I have to single out Kali Handelman, my dear friend and editor, who read the
manuscript multiple times and who was able to airlift me out of the forest
of this book when my nose was rubbing against the bark of a tree. Kali’s pa-
tience and incisiveness made this book many times better than it would have
been. Thank you, Kali.
San Diego State University has been my institutional home since 2016,
and there I  have found friends and colleagues who—​whether through
books, lunches, or soccer—​have made my life richer. I thank Rebecca Bartel,
Raechel Dumas, Stephen Goggin, Risa Levitt Kohn, John McDonald, Khaleel
Mohammed, Javier Núñez, Casey Roulette, Kate Rubin, Sthaneshwar
Timalsina, Kim Twist, Isaac Ullah, and Roy Whitaker. At Oxford University
Press, Cynthia Read and Drew Anderla have been encouraging from the
 Acknowledgments  ix

start. My thanks to them for their guidance and positivity, and for doing all
of the nitty-​gritty stuff that went into making this book. The reviewers for the
book were also extremely helpful. The feedback of Jim Lochtefeld, in partic-
ular, was thorough yet sympathetic, pushing me to make substantive changes
while still keeping faith in the overall project.
Parts of this book have been published elsewhere. An earlier version of
­chapter 1 was published as “In Defense of Brothering: the ‘Eternal Religion’
and Tourism in North India,” in the Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 84.4 (2016): 973–​1005. An earlier version of c­ hapter 2 was published
as “Making Pushkar Paradise: Hindu Ritualization and the Environment,” in
the International Journal of Hindu Studies 21.2 (2017): 187–​210. And small
sections of c­ hapter 5 were initially part of “Spreading Peace in Pushkar: Shanti,
Tourism, and Hindu Hybridity,” in the Journal of Contemporary Thought 38
(2013):  65–​71. I  am grateful to Oxford University Press, Springer Nature,
and the Forum on Contemporary Theory for permission to reprint materials
from these articles.
I thank my father and mother, Mark and Doreen Thomases, for not being
too horrified when I  decided to study religion and for encouraging me—​
despite their worries—​to live far away, in India. My daughter Zinnia was
born when I was in the middle of writing this book. Her spontaneity and
charm have been such striking reminders of what matters in life. She has
helped me so much, all the while not knowing or caring for a single second
about this book. Finally, to Jocelyn Killmer I owe too much. She has read
nearly every page that I have written over the past many years, and it is only
because of her love that I have managed to keep writing. This book, and eve-
rything else, is dedicated to her.
 Note on Transliteration

In an effort to make this book more accessible to a wider audience, I have de-
cided to go without diacritical marks. This necessarily elides certain sounds
common to Hindi and Sanskrit and entails a whole host of compromises. For
example, ṣ and ś both appear as sh. Similarly, nasalized vowels (ṇ, ṅ, ñ, etc.)
are rendered as n. Without macrons, long and short vowels are indistinguish-
able (ā and a both appear as a). Without dots, that’s true too of dental and ret-
roflex consonants (t and ṭ both appear as t). And while the ch sound in “chai”
is usually marked as a c in popular systems of transliteration, I have chosen to
use the more immediately obvious ch. For the sake of consistency, I have also
eliminated the diacritical marks from quotations written by other authors.
This is largely without consequence, except in a few places where a quoted
author, using both diacritics and Sanskrit-​based transliteration conventions,
refers to the town of Pushkar as “Puṣkara.” I have omitted the diacritical mark
while keeping the original spelling, leaving “Puskara.” For the most part, my
transliteration reflects local pronunciation. This means that I have dropped
the medial and final vowel a, which Hindi speakers in Pushkar tend not to
pronounce (e.g., Ramcharitmanas instead of Ramacharitamanasa). However,
for words that are either increasingly familiar to an English-​reading audi-
ence (e.g., karma, yoga, Shiva), or whose Sanskrit-​based spelling is especially
common (e.g., Ramayana, Mahabharata, sanatana dharma), I retain the final
vowel. There is a glossary of frequently used terms at the end of the book.
 Introduction
Mapping Out Paradise

October 2

I descended the broad marble stairs (ghats) toward the lake. It was a
bright and cool morning, the sky an unbroken blue. A teenager named
Vishnu sat on a huge metal trunk selling birdseed by the bowlful.1 Close
to the water’s edge, a few pilgrims removed their sandals and tossed
seed to a flock of pigeons. There were nearly a hundred of the birds, all
flapping and strutting around the morning’s meal. Trying to strike up a
conversation, I told Vishnu that where I was from, in the United States,
pigeons are usually considered a nuisance. He countered, saying, “Well,
in a future life, I would like to be a pigeon in Pushkar.” “But why?” His
answer: “Because Pushkar is heaven” (pushkar svarg to hai).

November 16

Sitting on my favorite stone bench, I looked out over the water. Faraway
loudspeakers crackled and hummed as they discharged distorted
sounds of a Hindu recitation on the other side of the lake, utterances
I’d been told transmit positive vibrations out into the ether. I scribbled
some thoughts in my notebook, its pages stained with chai and oil, tur-
meric and spaghetti sauce. A brahman priest by the name of Mukesh
came to look over my shoulder and see what I was writing. He feigned
interest for a minute, and then asked for the notebook and my pen. He
wanted to share with me a Hindi couplet he had thought up years before,
something that brought a wide smile to his dimpled cheeks:

nim ka per chandan se kam nahin

pushkar shahar london se kam nahin.

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
2  Guest Is God

The neem tree is no worse than the sandalwood

Nor is the town of Pushkar worse than London.

February 10

After a long day of wandering around the lake and its surrounding
temples, I  returned to my room and opened my computer. Before
committing myself to writing the day’s fieldnotes, I  went straight to
Facebook. Even there, my research followed me like a hungry street dog;
someone from Pushkar, a brahman and restaurant owner, shared a pic-
ture of the town. Taken at sunset, the picture showed the waterfront,
ghats, and nearby buildings all blanketed in a warm and orangey glow.
Temple to the left. Mosque in the back. Arched windows and doorways
on all sides. In addition to the thousand words told by the picture, my
friend captioned two more: “our heaven.”

November 20

Nick and I sat at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant as the day’s dust became
visible in the refracted light of the setting sun. He was eating chana ma-
sala while I  polished off my pizza. Hemant, the hotel’s owner, joined
us too. We chatted about the fast-​approaching camel fair, which had
brought Nick to Pushkar for the first time, and which inevitably filled
every bed in every hotel. Hemant was visibly excited, not just because of
the business but because of the opportunity to make new friends from
all over: “I really love that I live here, and that so many people from all
over the world come to this one place.” He sighed and said, “For me,
Pushkar is paradise.”

~
Pushkar is a Hindu pilgrimage town in the northwestern state of Rajasthan,
India, whose population of roughly 20,000 sees an influx of two million
visitors each year. The town’s fame comes from Brahma, the creator god, who
eons ago established Pushkar as his home by making a lake in the desert and
 Introduction  3

performing a sacrifice there. So, while pilgrims visit for a host of reasons—​
seeking the favor of the gods for things like a successful marriage, good grades
on an exam, the birth of a son, etc.—​most make sure to bathe in the holy lake
and visit the Brahma temple, the latter regarded as the only temple dedicated
to the creator god in the known universe.2 Since the 1970s, Pushkar has also
received considerable attention from the international tourist community, a
group that, early on, was composed largely of hippies and backpackers, but
now includes visitors from a wide spectrum of social positions and religious
affiliations. Tourists, too, come with different goals in mind, from seeing the
lake and experiencing the annual camel fair to doing drugs and taking in the
peace of a small-​town setting.
Thus, it is perhaps a platitude—​if a true one—​to say that Pushkar is many
things to many people. But the most pervasive discourse surrounding the
town claims Pushkar to be one thing in particular: paradise. Call it what you
will—​heaven, paradise, or “no worse than London”—​in the eyes of many
people who call it home, Pushkar is a remarkable place. And yet, even heaven
needs some upkeep. That is, paradise cannot exist without a concerted ef-
fort to make it so, and thus on a daily basis the town’s locals, and especially
those engaged in pilgrimage and tourism, work to make Pushkar paradise.
This book explores the massive enterprise of building heaven on earth, and
how the articulation of sacred space necessarily works alongside economic
changes brought on by tourism and globalization. As such, I not only attend
to how tourism affects everyday life in Pushkar but also to how Hindu ideas
determine the nature of tourism there; the goal, then, is to show how religion
and tourism can be mutually constitutive.
It is precisely within this mutually constitutive realm of religion and travel
that the process of “sacred making” happens, where developments in (and
agents of) tourism draw and redraw, over and over again, the perimeters
of paradise. Said differently, the criteria for what counts as “paradise” have
shifted together with the changing economy. And as this takes place—​as par-
adise is made and remade in a globalized world—​Pushkar’s type of Hinduism
is affected, too. Hinduism here possesses a kind of fluctuating scope, at times
focused on Pushkar and the uniqueness of its sacred space, at other times
expanding to a more panoramic perspective. This book examines the ways
in which Pushkar locals work to incorporate both of these perspectives,
claiming allegiances to their home and community while making inroads to
a vision of human belonging that attempts to embrace all.
4  Guest Is God

The Lay of the Land

It is important to remember, as Clifford Geertz has famously stated, that “the

locus of study is not the object of study. Anthropologists don’t study villages
(tribes, towns, neighborhoods . . . ); they study in villages.”3 Working from
that premise, this book does not examine a town called Pushkar but rather a
discourse about Pushkar, by which I mean a constellation of “ideas, attitudes,
courses of actions, beliefs and practices” that constructs both “subjects and
the worlds of which they speak.”4 The discourse in question is that of making
Pushkar paradise, the constitutive parts of which include but are not lim-
ited to beliefs about Hindu universalism and how its principles incorporate
people from outside of the Hindu fold, ritual repertoires that brahmans per-
form on behalf of their clients in order to propitiate the gods, mythic tales
that boast of Pushkar’s greatness printed in five-​rupee pamphlets or narrated
by priests at the lake, environmental action taken up by locals worried about
lake pollution, and guided tours designed to promote the kind of atmosphere
where people from around the world can feel as if they belong. As such, this
is less a study about the place in which these ideas and activities are situated
and more about the people who think and do them.
At the same time, the people whose lives and words feature in the following
pages do not represent all of Pushkar’s population. The project of making
Pushkar paradise is pursued especially within the axis of tourism and pil-
grimage, and so I tend to engage with the people who labor in those realms.5
These are shopkeepers, hotel owners and staff, restaurant owners, waiters,
cooks, camel safari personnel, taxi drivers, priests, and tour guides. With the
exception of the latter two categories, which are dominated by brahmans,
these other groups are made up of people from a fairly large range of castes. In
terms of gender, however, the ratio is decidedly unbalanced. Women do have
a presence in the public sphere, as store clerks and pilgrims most commonly,
but men conduct the vast majority of business related to tourism. This is not
to say that I did not speak to women. Over the years, I have been welcomed
into a number of homes, and in those instances when I was folded into the
family6 I was able to speak with women quite freely and on a vast range of
topics related to my research. In other, less familial settings, conversations
were often circumscribed or cut short by Rajasthan’s conservative gender re-
lations and expectations.
Overall, I found that the people who invested their time and effort most
explicitly in the idea of Pushkar being a heavenly place were priests and
 Introduction  5

tour guides. It’s worth noting that locals often use the English word priest,
a capacious term which includes both people whose primary job involves
providing ritual services (pujas) for pilgrims or tourists at the banks of
Pushkar lake (called pandas), as well as those who manage and oversee
temples (called pujaris). Throughout the book, I use priest both because it
is commonly used and in order to encompass the variety that Hindi offers.
Moreover, whether pilgrimage priest or temple priest, they all come from
the brahman caste—​for many of them, the only designation of real impor-
tance. Within the category of brahman, most of my collaborators were from
the Parashar subcaste; they constitute Pushkar’s most influential brahman
group, both as leaders of the town’s most prominent Hindu organization—​
the Pushkar Priest Association Trust7—​and as those who work on some
of the lake’s very best real estate.8 Parashars also make up the majority of
the town’s tour guides. And as with priests, brahman guides identify more
with their caste status than their occupation. The Parashars whom I called
“guides” would consistently remind me that they were not, in fact, guides,
but “brahmans who do guiding work.” Throughout the book, I  continue
to use the term guide, knowing well that some would refuse—​or at least
contextualize—​such a designation, but also recognizing the need to differ-
entiate clearly between various occupations.9
Brahmans, needless to say, occupy a privileged position within India’s
caste hierarchy, a convention whose effects not only determine Hindu
conceptions of ritual purity but also lead to uneven access to education,
employment, and power. In an article published in 1990, Khushwant Singh
discusses the changing and increasingly disproportionate employment
of brahmans:  “Under the British, they had 3%—​fractionally less than the
proportion of their 3.5% of the population. Today . . . the Brahmin com-
munity of India holds between 36% to 63% of all the plum jobs available in
the country.”10 This kind of incongruity has lessened alongside the relative
successes of India’s reservation policy over the past 25 years, but Singh’s state-
ment still largely holds true. Brahmans very much remain part of an elite
class across the subcontinent.
Interestingly, brahmans’ disproportional representation in positions of
government seems—​at least in part—​to echo a similar situation in Hindu
studies, a field where brahmans receive a great deal of attention despite being
such a small minority.11 There are, no doubt, specific and non-​nefarious
reasons for this scholarly orientation: textually, brahmans have long exerted
enormous authority over the Sanskrit literary canon; anthropologically,
6  Guest Is God

much of modern Hindu practice—​in which temple-​going and the worship

of images are so central—​remains inextricably tied to the priesthood. In this
sense, my work in Pushkar follows suit. But what makes Pushkar a particu-
larly interesting case study with regard to caste is that its brahman population
is not such a small minority. Throughout my fieldwork, I consistently found
the town’s priestly presence, with so many brahmans in such a tiny place,
to be at odds with India’s caste demography. Government censuses have not
tallied the number of brahmans, or any other specific caste community, since
1931. Local reports nevertheless estimate the town to be around 30%–​50%
brahman—​and to me, at least, this seems possible.12 Again, these numbers
may not represent the absolute, unequivocal, Brahma-​given truth, but they
do make a case for Pushkar being a pilgrimage town where brahmans domi-
nate not only in power and authority but in numbers as well.

Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Religion

The field of pilgrimage studies has become somewhat of a minor industry

for those interested in the religions of South Asia.13 This is particularly true
of ethnographic literature, where pilgrimage offers a wide range of analyt-
ical possibilities:  it demonstrates how religion and ritual are tied inextri-
cably to techniques of the body14; it amplifies and transforms everyday social
formation, in which journeyers’ identities—​like those of gender, religion,
and caste—​can slide in and out of place15; it provides a venue for devotees
to express their religious hopes and expectations, whether they be mun-
dane or otherworldly16; and finally, it helps to establish and reinforce sacred
geographies.17
But despite these plural interpretive angles, only recently have studies
emerged that offer a sustained analysis of how pilgrimage, pilgrimage places,
and the people who live in those places have been shaped by the tourism
industry.18 This is partly a matter of chronology; it has only been in the
last twenty or so years that tourism in India has proven to be an indelible
and enduring feature of pilgrimage. The other reason, I suspect, is equally
simple though in a different way: people generally do not like tourists. In
places across the world, tourists are often perceived as an anonymous group
of people passing through, mindlessly consuming, disturbing the peace,
and then moving on. It is easy to dislike such faceless travelers. But when
in the position of a tourist, it can be hard to convince yourself, never mind
 Introduction  7

others, that you aren’t one; all the more so if you are an anthropologist. One
can easily imagine how, for anthropologists of religion in India, people
who have spent years learning a language and studying and who want to be
recognized for their efforts, doing fieldwork in a tourist town (and therefore
being “misrepresented” as a tourist) can be extremely ungratifying. In a sim-
ilar vein, tourist towns get in the way of some of the more old-​timey and
masochistic impulses of fieldwork. I didn’t jot down my daily thoughts by
oil lamp as sweat dripped from my nose onto the pages of a decomposing
field journal; I  had electricity, air conditioning, and Internet. I  also had
warm showers, and sometimes-​fabulous falafel. Anyway, there remain cer-
tain tendencies in South Asian studies (and in graduate school, especially) to
think of ethnographic pain as pleasure, and creature comforts as somehow
not right. As long as these tendencies hold, tourism in India will continue to
be understudied.
Outside of South Asia, there is a more substantial body of scholarship
on pilgrimage and tourism. The literature can be roughly divided into two
groups. Inaugurated by Victor and Edith Turner’s Image and Pilgrimage in
Christian Culture, the first group focuses on the structural similarities be-
tween pilgrimage and tourism.19 The debate tends to gravitate toward a ty-
pology of these two central identities—​pilgrims and tourists—​and sets out to
determine whether the two exist on a continuum, are starkly different, or are
one and the same.20 The second group, however, downplays the search for a
perfect typology of agents and seeks instead to explore the broad interface of
pilgrimage and tourism “on the ground.” It is to this group and its attendant
issues that we turn.
When scholars approach the interaction of pilgrimage and tourism, it is
often in the language of negative “impact.”21 This perspective is not inher-
ently problematic but, in the case of religion, tends to imply the profaning
of a once sacred site.22 Take, for example, the work of Erik Cohen, a major
figure in tourism studies and one who sees tourism and pilgrimage as “both
closely related and diametrically opposed modalities of conduct.”23 Their op-
position, Cohen claims, is based on the idea that whereas pilgrimage entails
a sacred search toward the center of one’s religious life, tourism is a sec-
ular quest in search of the other.24 Given this distinction, tourism’s impact
on a religious site or pilgrimage center is “generally a secularizing one—​a
weakening of the local adherence to religion and of the belief in the sacred-
ness and efficacy of holy places, rituals, and customs.”25 So, according to
Cohen, religion is somehow compromised by the emergence of tourism.
8  Guest Is God

Pushkar, with its incredibly palpable atmosphere of religiosity as well as its

ever-​increasing popularity as a Hindu pilgrimage site, serves as an obvious
counterexample to this supposed secularization. More importantly, Cohen’s
argument implies a layering of dichotomies that is equally common and mis-
leading: religion becomes purity, and tourism becomes danger.26 In such a
formulation, tourism assumes the role of corrupting force; religion remains
something pure, and yet always subject to outside defilement. It is this sup-
posedly diametrical opposition that (as we will see in future chapters) makes
tourists and outsiders so wary of priests who make money while simultane-
ously promoting ideals of religious harmony.
But as Russell McCutcheon reminds us, religion cannot be, and has never
been, some “private affair” held entirely apart from the effects of histor-
ical, social, or economic change.27 And indeed, metaphors number aplenty
on how we might think about the relationship between religion and these
other spheres of influence. Are they like a rope, woven of many threads?
Tiles, imbricated? Bricks, bound with mortar? For my part, I prefer a bo-
tanical metaphor. Picture this: a thicket of trees with branches intertwined.
In places, the trees are separate and distinct—​call them “religion,” “politics,”
“economics,” etc.—​but in other places the branches grow completely to-
gether, the space between them erased. Botanists have a complicated word
for this growing together, “inosculation,” but the image is clear: trees can si-
multaneously have their own identities and become indistinguishable from
others.28 In this model, religion is neither fully reduced to something like
an economic scheme or a political tool, nor is it some pristine experience
untouched by the outside world. Thus, the interface of religion and tourism
cannot find honest representation in a model of opposition, but in one of in-
osculation and co-​production. And we must redouble our efforts in rejecting
the idea that such a growing together is a bad thing.

Sacred Making

Given the inosculation of religion and tourism, the devotional and the ec-
onomical, how does this relationship effect Pushkar’s status as a “sacred”
place? Scholars in the discipline of religious studies have long grappled
with the idea of “the sacred”—​its substance, its salience—​but no consensus
is waiting in the wings.29 Among those involved in the study of India, one
of the most vocal opponents of “the sacred” is William Sax: “People still
 Introduction  9

write about Hinduism in terms of the hackneyed dualities of sacred and

profane, mind and body, matter and spirit, and so forth, hardly stopping
to consider that these Cartesianisms are historically determined and cul-
turally specific.”30 Following the “ethnosociological” method of McKim
Marriott, Sax prefers to think about Hindu pilgrimage through Indian
categories. For my work too, Indian vocabulary and categories serve an
undeniably important purpose:  they help to reflect with greatest accu-
racy and greatest adherence to local values the context in which particular
topics are discussed.
At the same time, I also see in Sax’s approach a possible amputation of
Indian studies from the broader field of religion. We prevent ourselves from
having meaningful conversations with scholars of different traditions or re-
gions if we see the cultural worlds in which we work as totally alien to one
another. And in more ways than one, Pushkar is itself testament to the fact
that “Indian categories” are increasingly shaped by the people, languages,
and discourses that bounce across the globalized world. For example, locals
themselves call Pushkar a “holy place,” sometimes using the Hindi transla-
tion pavitra sthan, but more often than not relying on the English.31 So does
this make the English phrase “holy place” an “Indian category”? Maybe. Or
maybe it is harder and harder—​and in some cases, less useful—​to confine
certain ideas to a bounded geography or tradition.
Sax is right, though: we should be wary of the “hackneyed dualities” that
structure Western thinking. “Sacred” and “profane” represent one such du-
ality, and it can be used to essentialize the relationship between pilgrimage
and tourism. But, to me at least, the primary problem here is not the du-
ality itself but the fact that “sacred” and “profane” are sometimes taken to be
inherent qualities, existing outside of history or politics and not subject to
change. This is where Jonathan Z. Smith comes to the rescue, explaining that
“the sacred” does not simply exist in a vacuum, but is made:

We do well to remember that long before “the Sacred” appeared in dis-

course as a substantive (a usage that does not antedate Durkheim), it was
primarily employed in verbal forms, most especially with the sense of
making an individual a king or bishop (as in the obsolete English verbs to
sacrate or to sacre), or in the adjectival forms denoting the result of the pro-
cess of sacration. Ritual is not an expression of or a response to “the Sacred”;
rather, someone or something is made sacred by ritual (the primary sense
of sacrificium).32
10  Guest Is God

For Smith, ritual is not simply a series of repetitious actions but is “first and
foremost, a mode of paying attention.”33 As such, something like a temple or
a ritual object or a pilgrimage place only becomes sacred when it has “atten-
tion focused on it in a highly marked way.”34 This means, then, that instead of
trying to identify “sacred spaces” as if they simply are, we should look to the
actions and affective orientations that can make the sacred. The ritual com-
ponent behind the making of sacred space echoes my own observations from
fieldwork, and especially so when it comes to the topic of locals cleaning up
Pushkar lake, which I will explore in the second chapter.
But beyond ritual, we must also see in the creation of sacred space factors
related to power. David Chidester and Edward Linenthal are particularly in-
sightful on the issue:

Sacred space is inevitably contested space, a site of negotiated contests

over the legitimate ownership of sacred symbols . . . Power is asserted and
resisted in any production of space, and especially in the production of sa-
cred space. Since no sacred space is merely “given” in the world, its own-
ership will always be at stake. In this respect, a sacred space is not merely
discovered, or founded, or constructed; it is claimed, owned, and operated
by people advancing specific interests.35

Here, Chidester and Linenthal help to support and give texture to one of this
book’s most basic premises, namely, that Pushkar becomes paradise not be-
cause of some timeless truth, but through the actions of historically situated
people who negotiate its terms, articulate its borders, and claim ownership
over it.36 Thus if we were to attribute Pushkar’s popularity as a pilgrimage
place to what James Preston calls a “spiritual magnetism,” we would need to
understand that magnetic or attractive quality in terms of particular powers
and interests.37 So while locals may consider their town a “holy place”—​
and may pin that holiness on Brahma and his sacrifice, or the lake’s magical
powers—​I want to emphasize the extent to which the idea of a holy or sacred
Pushkar is also shaped and produced through the tourism industry, its eco-
nomic incentives, and the people whose lives depend on such an economy.
Most of this book is about those people: the priests and guides and hotel
owners and shopkeepers who together participate in the project of sacred
making. They do it with rituals, stories, sayings, recitations, and vibrations,
among many other things. We will discuss these issues later, both in the in-
troduction and throughout the coming chapters. For now, however, we will
 Introduction  11

briefly explore the broader interests behind Pushkar’s still-​growing popu-

larity, some of which are not local at all but are controlled by much larger
institutional bodies responsible for India’s economy and infrastructure.
As Ian Reader explains, the creation of pilgrimage places is often
“facilitated by powerful commercial interests instrumental in providing the
publicity” that garners attention from a wide audience.38 Said differently, be-
fore a pilgrimage place can be a pilgrimage place, people need to actually go
there. And before going there, people need to know about it and have the in-
frastructure to get there. Pushkar has attracted Rajasthani pilgrims for hun-
dreds of years, but its popularity on the national and international stage is
more recent, with a particularly substantial jump in tourism over the past
thirty years. Much of this jump is due to the effects of India’s liberalization,
which entailed a series of reform policies that the federal government put
forward in order to open their economy to the global market. These policies,
which were initiated in the mid-​1980s and further advanced in 1991, led
to reduced tariffs on foreign goods, the growth of the private sector, and
increased wealth within the Indian middle class.39
Domestically, increased GDP and spending capacity on the part of the
middle class meant Indians were now increasingly able and inclined to travel.
Internationally, foreign interest and investment spurred the Indian govern-
ment to recognize tourism as one of the major paths toward the country’s
economic development. As part of this recognition, the state government
of Rajasthan initiated a number of infrastructural road, rail, electric, and
water projects throughout the 1990s which, among other things, helped to
make the state more manageable for visitors.40 In 2002, the Indian Ministry
of Tourism launched an international branding campaign called “Incredible
!ndia,” which has tirelessly promoted the romantic appeal of Rajasthan as a
land of mustaches, turbans, camels, white dunes, and brown bodies. As for
Pushkar, geographic logistics make it a convenient destination. Because the
town is only a short bus trip from Jaipur, which along with Agra and Delhi
forms the “Golden Triangle of Tourism,” Pushkar offers an easy experience of
small-​town India for middle-​to-​upper-​class tourists on packaged tours who
don’t want to stray too far off the beaten path. Backpackers come too, and al-
though they tend to have less money than their package-​tour counterparts,
they also stay for much longer. These are travelers who tend to determine
their itineraries by the seat of their pants, relying on travel advice from books
like Lonely Planet or from word-​of-​mouth recommendations. But regardless
of tourists’ differing dispositions, we can see from the significant increase in
12  Guest Is God

the number of internationals coming to Pushkar over the years—​with 8,820

in 1985 compared to 63,312 in 2005—​that the triumph of Pushkar’s “spir-
itual magnetism” seems to emerge alongside, and entangled with, broader
economic gains brought on by liberalization.41 These are things that grew to-
gether. And recognizing that such “spiritual magnetism” is subject to change,
we can now look to Pushkar in the beginning of its experiments with tourism,
when things were quite different than they are today.

The Growing Pains of Tourism

A small international presence in Pushkar preceded India’s liberalization

by some decades, beginning in the early 1970s with an influx of young,
backpacking, and hippie types. Staying in Pushkar would have been a very
different beast back then, because the town had only caste-​based rest houses
meant for pilgrims (dharamshalas), and possessed none of the conveniences
now associated with tourism, such as banana pancakes, bottled water, and
toilet paper. But changes came quickly. As witnesses to the new and pecu-
liar trend of wandering hippies in the main bazaar, a few of the more en-
trepreneurial locals opened their homes to outsiders. These homes became
the town’s first “guesthouses,” which now, decades later, unendingly line
Pushkar’s streets and alleys.42 With ever more foreigners, their pockets
bulging from favorable exchange rates, cash flowed into the town. This
led to further investment as locals set up more hotels and restaurants and
juice stands and clothing stores and shops selling trinkets, tchotchkes, and
knickknacks.
As might be expected, problems between locals and tourists began to
surface from almost the very beginning of their relationship. In 1979,
local scholar Janardan Sharma penned an article in the Hindi magazine
Dharmyug, titled “Devanagari Pushkar men Hippie” (“Hippies in Pushkar,
a Town of the Gods”). In it, he bitterly critiques the town’s hippie pres-
ence: “You can see these whimsical tourists everywhere, in Pushkar’s alleys,
bazaars, houses, ghats, hotels, fields, and cremation grounds; they relax and
sing, swim in the lake, smoke marijuana and hash, make noises, laugh, and
are a nuisance—​all of this they do naked or half-​naked.”43 Sharma then
laments the proliferation of hotels and drug use, both of which stand to
threaten the “mental peace” that the town holds so dear. And he ends on a
particularly sour note, wondering “how much more will the change brought
 Introduction  13

on by Western culture damage the town’s spiritual nature.”44 In some ways,

Sharma’s elegy really does ring true; Pushkar has undoubtedly changed. The
town’s tourism economy is omnipresent, and joining the small contingent of
half-​naked hippies are now thousands of other visitors from a hugely diverse
background. Of course, whether such changes damage the town’s “spiritual
nature” is a matter of opinion. But I hope to show throughout the book that
the very content of Pushkar’s “spiritual nature” has itself changed along with
the town. That is, Pushkar’s being paradise is increasingly contingent upon,
rather than in spite of, tourism. Nevertheless, by bringing up drugs and
hotels in particular, Sharma highlights the two topics that can, even today,
still elicit animosity.
Drugs came to pose a material threat to Pushkar in the early 1980s.
Beyond marijuana, which was in all likelihood only culpable for inspiring
hippies to frolic in the nude, heroin was a much more serious problem. For
reasons related largely to geography and agriculture, India was brought into
the network of international drug trafficking at that time.45 The subcontinent
was never meant to be the final destination for these drugs—​just a stop on
the way to other locales—​but some never left. And heroin was one in par-
ticular that stayed beyond its welcome, making some rich and many more
addicted across the country. Pushkar was not unique in this sense, though
tourism provided an especially robust and constantly-​refreshing market for
the drug trade. Rick, a grey-​haired hippie from Canada, referred to Pushkar
in the 1980s as a place famous “for the wrong reasons.” Local police got more
serious about cracking down on dealers and putting addicts in hospitals
after 1985, though even in 1988 a report from The Times of India referred to
Pushkar as a “center for drug traffic.”46 According to the article,

Transactions worth lakhs of rupees take place at the time of fairs and
festivals. Even the “pandas” are engaged in the trade. If a senior police of-
ficer is to be believed, the number of those involved in deals, directly or
indirectly, is around 500 . . . Smack has been the most sought after, followed
by charas [hash] and ganja which are in demand by foreigners . . . The flour-
ishing trade has led many youths to drug addiction, and drugs have claimed
the lives of four youths during the past two years.47

By all recent reports, and in my own observation, heroin use and abuse has
steadily decreased since the 1980s, and is no longer a problem in Pushkar.
Nevertheless, these memories are sufficiently fresh that many of the older
14  Guest Is God

locals continue to voice concerns about how tourists’ use of drugs might un-
duly influence the town’s youth.
Now to hotels. In 1982, Pushkar found itself in the crosshairs of two
volunteers affiliated with the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu na-
tionalist organization with the stated goal of “protecting” Hindu religion.
This husband and wife team—​who were not themselves locals—​founded the
Pushkar Bachao Samiti (Save Pushkar Committee) and gathered the support
of the community against foreigners and tourism.48 One of their most pop-
ular slogans, painted on white-​washed walls throughout the town, was “hotel
hatao, pushkar bachao” (“remove hotels, save Pushkar”).49 Conducting her
fieldwork in Pushkar during the late 1980s, Christina Joseph offers this syn-
opsis of the Pushkar Bachao Samiti:

Their main agenda is to remove hotels on the ghats as they infringe upon the
lake and deprive pilgrims of a place to bathe. They have staged rallies and
processions, held town meetings in the middle of the main street and or-
ganized protests on a regular basis to build up grass roots support . . . They
also demanded the rigorous enforcement of the ban on liquor, meat and
drugs and called upon the pandas [priests] to be ready to sacrifice them-
selves for Pushkar’s sanctity if necessary.50

It seems clear, from the final statement especially, that the Pushkar Bachao
Samiti worked upon an explicit appeal to self-​sacrifice, a call to arms for
staunching the tide of tourism and change. The committee articulated an ex-
plicit dichotomy between various agents of profanation on the one side—​
whether hotel owners or tourists, meat eaters or drug users—​and Pushkar’s
priests on the other. Brahmans were the defenders of sanctity, and the Samiti
needed their support in order to effect any change. At first, locals supported
the Samiti in substantial numbers, participating in rallies and giving atten-
tion to various causes. But years passed and little was accomplished. Many
became skeptical of the Samiti’s professed goals of restoring Pushkar’s sanc-
tity, seeing instead a group trying to garner support “for political organ-
izations that were themselves ‘foreign’ to Pushkar.”51 Popularity declined
steadily from the early 1990s, and by 1999 the Pushkar Bachao Samiti was no
longer active.52
Aside from the specific issues surrounding hotels and heroin, there has
long been a general concern that tourism and its attendant actors run the
risk of giving Pushkar a “bad reputation” (badnami). Drugs and alcohol are
 Introduction  15

certainly included, though a range of other issues exist as well: many are par-
ticularly irked when tourists touch or kiss in public, an act that can still raise
eyebrows even in some of India’s larger cities; in addition, locals deem the
clothing of foreign women (often revealing legs and shoulders) to be inappro-
priate by conservative Rajasthani norms. And it is because of this whole host
of concerns that in the 1980s, the District Magistrate and the local commu-
nity together established a code of conduct. Posted in hotels and on the major
ghats, it notified foreigners that “in Pushkar, holding of hands or kissing in
public is not permitted,” and that “ladies are kindly requested to wear proper
clothes which cover themselves sufficiently, so as not to offend.” Here was
the final statement, in all caps:  “THESE RULES REFLECT ASPECTS OF
THE HINDU RELIGION AND TOURISTS MUST UNDERSTAND THAT
BREACHES OF THESE RULES CAUSE OFFENSE AND ARE AGAINST
THE LAW.”53 A somewhat less aggressive code still stands today, painted on
bright yellow signs all around the lake (Figure I.1).
And yet, more than half of the time that I asked my collaborators about
their opinion of tourists, I received a single response. They would raise one
hand with their palm out, fingers extended, and say in English: “five fingers,
not the same.” The maxim can be traced back at least as far as 1886, with

Figure I.1.  A notice board for foreigners.

16  Guest Is God

the publication of S.W. Fallon’s A Dictionary of Hindustani Proverbs. Fallon

lists a proverb that goes like this: panchon ungliyan barabar nahin hoti hain,
which he then translates as “The five fingers are not all of the same length.”
According to Fallon, the proverb means that “all men are not alike.”54 In
Pushkar today, that is exactly what “five fingers, not the same” is intended
to convey. It means that while some tourists do misbehave, we cannot judge
them all as one. Overall, I find it an enchanting formulation—​part mudra,
part mantra—​repeated over and over, and transmitting a message of non-​
essentialism across the town. Nor should it be lost on us that this Hindi
proverb from over a hundred years ago is now presented more often than
not in English. The popularity of this proverb-​in-​translation reveals the ex-
tent to which its message is now entangled with tourism, and perhaps even
suggests that it can be used to assure the “good tourists” that they are not
being grouped with other, less desirable ones.
I don’t want to paper over an important history. Pushkar’s experience of
tourism has not been without serious issues, and a certain number of these
issues remain. At the same time, the era of heroin and hotel protests is over.
The priests who were practicing what Christina Joseph called a “politics of
exclusion” back when she was doing her fieldwork, in the late 1980s, have
changed with Pushkar. Decades later, these same critics now have friends
working in hotels or running restaurants. They have sons and daughters who
have grown up knowing nothing other than a post-​hippie Pushkar, and who
chat on Facebook or WhatsApp with tourists across the world. Whereas the
past was characterized by a fairly pervasive animosity toward the tourism
industry in toto, the situation today is different; now, if there are problems, it
is because of a few bad mangoes. In other words, five fingers, not the same.55

The Phrase Factory: “Guest Is God” and Other Sayings

“Treat your mother like a god. Treat your father like a god. Treat your
teacher like a god. Treat yours guests like gods.”
—​Taittiriya Upanishad56

“So, we say ‘atithi devo bhava’ (guest is god). This is Rajasthan’s tra-
dition, from the time of kings. Atithi (guest) could be anyone—​either
Indian or foreign—​and they are our guests. From this tradition, we
welcome them, help them with darshan or puja, tell them about this
 Introduction  17

place. We want to make it so that they hear these things and become
happy, knowing that they’ve come to a place of peace, and that they feel
peaceful inside.”
—​Kamal Parashar, of Pushkar

This book’s title, Guest Is God, derives from a commonly known and
oft-​repeated Sanskrit adage, “atithi devo bhava.” This South Asian in-
stantiation of something akin to “the customer is always right” is age-​old,
tracing back more than two thousand years and appearing throughout the
Sanskrit literary canon.57 In general, modern-​day Hindus continue to hold
to this ideal, seeing hospitality as an integral part of being a dutiful, right-
eous person. In Pushkar especially, people will remind you time and again
that “guest is God.” And yet, the phrase’s prevalence today is due not solely
to authoritative texts or high ideals, but to the tourism industry. In 2005, the
Indian Ministry of Tourism launched their “Atithi Devo Bhava” campaign,
designed to bring about “an attitudinal shift among the masses towards
tourists.”58 Indeed, whereas the government’s “Incredible !ndia” campaign
had set out to promote India and its supposedly exotic wonders to the outside
world, “Atithi Devo Bhava” looked inward.
The Ministry committed itself to the training of taxi and rickshaw drivers,
guides, immigration officers, and others within the industry, all toward
creating an awareness about international tourists’ needs and expectations.
During his time as brand ambassador, Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan
was featured in a number of commercials for “Atithi Devo Bhava.” Broadcast
across the subcontinent, these commercials showed foreigners besieged by
all types of unsavory characters: rapacious hawkers, persistent guides, people
promising “very cheap hotels,” thieves, gropers, etc. And right on time, a
hero—​sometimes Aamir Khan himself—​would save the day. In a particu-
larly poignant commercial, Aamir Khan not only confronts the villainous
guides, but then shames the onlookers:  he accuses them of standing idly
while bad men give India a bad name; he explains that such behavior empties
the country of honor and the people’s pockets of money; if tourists don’t
come to India, then livelihoods are lost. In a different commercial, Khan
looks into the camera and implores the viewers back home to “take pride in
being an Indian.” Indians, the argument goes, are people who treat guests like
gods—​and this is something to fight for, something to be proud of.
“Guest is God” evokes a number of themes relevant to this book. The phrase
is deployed by the tourism industry and establishes an obvious economic
18  Guest Is God

incentive: treat guests well, and make more money. And yet, it was not created
from nothing. It calls upon ancient religious ideas, and is made meaningful
to individuals because it relies on a cultural logic familiar to Indian or Hindu
ways of being. Thus, the heroes of “Atithi Devo Bhava” commercials argue
that treating guests like gods is both about earning a living and taking pride
in one’s culture. Throughout this book I want to emphasize how the reality
of moneyed interest does not discount the genuine care and feelings of hos-
pitality with which Pushkar locals approach their relationships with people
from the outside. Yes, money indelibly impresses upon the town’s cultural
landscape, but the rhetoric behind Pushkar being paradise—​attendant with
its appeal to universalism, to diversity and sharing—​is far too pervasive to
contradict what people actually think. Guest Is God entails all of these ideas
and more.
“Guest is God” also happens to be one of an entire constellation of words,
sayings, and phrases that saturate the discourse of making Pushkar paradise.
Throughout the book I refer to this collection of sayings as “the phrase fac-
tory.” Of course, there is not an assembly line where phrases are made, or a
single location from which they are shipped. Rather, the phrase factory is
almost an urge, a disposition to deploy idiomatic or stock phrases. And in
Pushkar, there are so many of them. We have already seen two in the past few
pages: “five fingers, not the same” and “guest is God.” As we will see in the first
chapter, there is also “same same, but different” and “hindu, muslim, sikh,
isai: ham sab hain bhai bhai” (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian: we’re all
brothers!). There are at least three languages in play in the phrase factory,
with Sanskrit rhymes, Hindi couplets, and English formulas. The producers
of such phrases differ quite significantly too: on one end of the spectrum,
there is the Indian Ministry of Tourism and their team of folks who cooked up
“Incredible !ndia”—​and for whom the oddly placed exclamation point likely
took months of deliberation. On the other end, there is my friend Sandeep,
who runs a chai shop in Pushkar and keeps a notebook nearby in case a good
rhyming phrase comes to mind. Sometimes a saying can fall flat, as when an
informant told me that two things were “same same, but different,” but in
truth they were just really, truly different; he knew it too, but pushed through
nonetheless. Other times a phrase might be used quite cleverly, as when one
friend accidentally spit on my shoes and declared aloud, “Incredible !ndia”
(exclamation point most certainly included).
For ethnographers, stock answers or phrases can be quite unsatisfying.
Too often they replace active thought with pre-​formulated words in a row,
 Introduction  19

so our initial impulse is to discount such statements as somehow insincere

or, at least, not reflective of an individual’s ideas about the world. That was
certainly my first impulse. But after hearing so many phrases so many times
from so many different people, I began to take them seriously. In partic-
ular, I came to see that repetition makes reality. That is, when phrases are
repeated over and over, people not only believe in what they hear, but also
what they themselves say. So when a local guide tells tourists again and again
that people from different countries are “same same, but different,” he is con-
vincing not only them but also himself. He is expressing and reproducing
his own conviction. I especially felt this to be true with many of my younger
informants, people who largely grew up in a Pushkar already changed by
liberalization. Many of them had been hearing such sayings from birth,
and had likely internalized key components of the phrase factory long ago.
This means, then, that the phrase factory has an effect on both hosts and
guests, each deployment of a saying, idiom, or keyword working to con-
struct and maintain a particular image of Pushkar. Collectively, the images
created from individual sayings tend to cohere around certain ideals—​
ones related to similarity and tolerance—​though, as we will see in future
chapters, images of a “colorful Pushkar” or a “peaceful Pushkar” can mean
very different things depending on who you are and where you come from.
In the book that follows, I will not only introduce many sayings, idioms, and
keywords, but more importantly I will address both the images that they
construct and the discursive work that they do. No chapter deals exclusively
with the phrase factory, but it inextricably shapes the ethnographic context
in which my work is situated.
The phrase factory also highlights the extent to which many ideas in
Pushkar are not necessarily unique to Pushkar. Of course, in later chapters
we will see several instances to the contrary, situations or stories related to
Brahma or the lake or the camel fair that together lend a certain uniqueness
to Pushkar’s religious landscape. But regardless of this fact, and regardless too
of locals’ constant assertion of their town’s absolute singularity, Pushkar actu-
ally presents a pretty compelling case study of globalization. “Globalization”
has in some ways become a term too capacious to mean anything. As a fa-
vorite buzzword of contemporary scholarship, it encompasses so many inter-
pretative and analytical possibilities that one stumbles to find solid ground.
But this is likely due to its huge successes, both in the sense that its effects are
felt in basically every nook and cranny of the contemporary world and be-
cause of its theoretical ramifications throughout the academy, where scholars
20  Guest Is God

have employed the vocabulary of globalization to show how cultures are far
more fluid and far less bounded than they once were, or were once assumed
to be.59 But what does it mean? Ted Lewellen offers a helpful, albeit expan-
sive, definition of the term (emphasis in original): “Contemporary globaliza-
tion is the increasing flow of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and people brought
about by the sophisticated technology of communications and travel and by the
spread of neoliberal capitalism, and it is the local and regional adaptations to
and resistances against these flows.”60
Within the context of India, globalization is most explicitly linked to lib-
eralization, as mentioned earlier.61 The repercussions of India opening its
economy to the global market were powerfully felt. One of the most obvious,
surface-​level consequences has been the increased visibility and availability
of foreign goods: Nike shoes and Arnold Schwarzenegger films and Levi’s
jeans and Spiderman and Diet Coke. Individually, the fact that such things
can now be eaten and worn and seen in India seems not so significant. But
alongside these surface-​level consequences, consumers within a “new middle
class” have become increasingly aware of the plural ways of experiencing
a wider and wilder world.62 In Pushkar, such an awareness of plurality
generates a heightened sense of “global thinking,” by which I mean an ap-
preciation of the fact that different people exist across the world, and that a
certain degree of interconnectedness binds them all. This new appreciation
and awareness also creates fertile ground for cross-​cultural comparisons.
Locals provide an interesting alternative to the scholarly discipline of “com-
parative religion”; here it is not an academic pursuit but an integral aspect of
the formation of religious identities. In Pushkar, comparative religion serves
the goal of establishing a particular type of Hindu universalism. The extent to
which locals use “global thinking” and comparativism to nurture this univer-
salism will become especially clear in c­ hapters 1 and 3.
Moreover, in Pushkar and elsewhere, the results of globalization have
had the most impact on youth culture. Ritty Lukose refers to these young
consumerists as “liberalization’s children.” In her fascinating ethnography
based in Kerala, Lukose explores “the workings of globalization among
young people who are on the margins of its dominant articulations yet fully
formed by its structures of aspiration and opportunity.”63 In Pushkar, where
tourism functions as a manifestation of globalization—​but without the af-
fluent subculture of India’s major cities—​young priests and guides in their
late teens and twenties similarly experience the globalized world from the
periphery. My work does not focus exclusively on youth, but a majority of
 Introduction  21

my informants were, in fact, between eighteen and thirty years old. And as
people who have never known their town without tourism, they see Pushkar,
and their life within it, as inextricably shaped by global presences.

Walking Around and (Deep) Hanging Out

Research for this book spanned from 2008 to 2017, a period over which
I lived in India for some 30 months, with most of that time spent in Pushkar.
I have seen the town in every season, made and renewed contacts with people
throughout the years, and celebrated holidays often twice, sometimes three
times, with those who have steadily become friends and family. As an an-
thropologist of religion, my methods are ethnographic. But like the number
of Hindu gods, which are sometimes purported to be neither more nor less
than the total number of Hindus on the planet, field methods are manifold.
In other words, they are unique to each ethnographer and each ethnographic
context. For me, fieldwork in Pushkar involved two fairly straightforward ac-
tivities: walking around and hanging out.
In thinking about walking—​its significance and pleasures—​I am inter-
ested in the concept of the flâneur. French for “stroller” or “saunterer,” the
flâneur and its attendant gerund, flânerie, have received considerable atten-
tion from those both within and outside of the academy.64 The concept has
managed to evade any agreed-​upon definition,65 though perhaps the most
popular summary of the flâneur was offered in 1863 by Charles Baudelaire:

The crowd is his element as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His
passion and profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the per-
fect flâneur, for the passionate spectator it is an immense joy to set up house
in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the
midst of the fugitive and infinite. To be away from home and yet feel oneself
everywhere at home; to see the world, to be the centre of the world and yet
remain hidden from the world—​such are a few of the slightest pleasures of
those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but
clumsily define. The spectator is a prince and everywhere rejoices his in-
cognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family.66

I harbor no illusions about being the “perfect flâneur,” and there are no
doubt discrepancies between ethnographic fieldwork and flânerie,67 but the
22  Guest Is God

idea remains a compelling one. In particular, my experience of fieldwork

resonates well with the goal of being a “passionate spectator” who, although
away from home, tries to feel “everywhere at home”—​to be, in the words of
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “the man of the crowd.”68
Moreover, it is the strolling that really matters. “In 1839,” Walter Benjamin
writes, “it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking” in the
arcades of Paris.69 Such an image “gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie.”70
An extreme response to the bustle of modernity, the flâneur literally slows
down to a turtle’s pace. In Pushkar, I would sometimes envision myself with
a turtle leading the way, a self-​imposed regime of engaged sauntering.71 In
the beginning of my fieldwork especially, I walked slowly and without a des-
tination. Walking without a destination does not, of course, imply that my
wandering was aimless. The flâneur, as Benjamin states, is one who “goes
botanizing on the asphalt.”72 This fascinating image suggests the exploratory
and investigative aspects of flânerie. As such, a flâneur pounds the pavement
with an eye for discovery.
But the ethnographer must be more than a flâneur. To ride the wave of a
crowd is not in itself sufficient for the purposes of fieldwork; we must also
stop and talk and listen. In the case of Pushkar, this was fairly simple. First
of all, as a white man, I had unmitigated access to the public sphere. And
because Pushkar is a tourist town, my foreignness was not particularly
marked. All I had to do in order to garner attention, then, was walk at a
turtle’s pace, sport a mustache, and reply to every random namaste with an-
other in kind. Locals would call from their shops and offices, inviting me
over for chai. Initially, I was perceived as a tourist, something I now see as
only a mild annoyance when compared to ethnographers who need to per-
suade their informants that they are neither government officials nor intel-
ligence agency spies. But the fact that I spoke Hindi and was researching
religion in Pushkar was usually sufficient to be invited a second time. Some
relationships would fizzle out or never really take off, but several expanded
into massive networks, as friends and co-​workers and family members
volunteered to help me in my work. Amazingly, this simple act of sitting
and chatting with chai—​repeated over and over again until I shook from
the caffeine—​served as my initiation into the field. Renato Rosaldo, and
then later, Clifford Geertz, referred to this whole process as “deep hanging
out.”73 For Geertz especially, “deep hanging out” provides the methodolog-
ical backbone to anthropology; as he explains, “if fieldwork goes . . . the dis-
cipline goes with it.”74
 Introduction  23

There is an interesting corollary to “deep hanging out” in India, not applied

to the ivory tower but to everyday living, called “timepass.” The Hinglish verb
is timepass karna, or “to pass the time,” a term used with incredible regularity
throughout North India and which carries a number of connotations. In
his book Timepass, Craig Jeffrey explores educated and unemployed young
men in Uttar Pradesh, and what he calls the “politics of waiting.”75 In these
instances, timepass constitutes an act accompanied by a certain desperation
about job opportunities, about being good enough in a competitive market,
and about reaching the goals one once thought to be realistic but which now
seem fleeting. This is waiting as the world passes you by. In Pushkar I was
sometimes privy to this version of timepass, too, but far more often timepass
was simply the term people used to describe hanging out while having little
to do. Timepass was having chai with friends while waiting for pilgrims to
arrive on the ghats; timepass was reading the newspaper while waiting for a
phone call from a taxi driver; timepass was watching YouTube videos of Yo-​
Yo Honey Singh while waiting for a tour group; in all, timepass was not an
indication of hopelessness but a simple recognition of the fact that in a place
where boredom always threatens to creep in, waiting itself demands atten-
tion. What you do with waiting is the art of timepass.76
The structural similarities of timepass and deep hanging out generated
many an ethnographic opportunity. While people passed the time, often
waiting for the next pilgrim or tourist to turn around the corner, I would
hang out with them. We would talk about anything at all, from Justin Bieber
to gun violence, though I would often try at some point to circle back to life in
Pushkar. For the first few months of research, conversations were entirely in-
formal. I would jot down choice phrases and sentences after speaking with a
person, but the subject matter was never predetermined. After realizing what
my research was actually about—​a realization that was itself months in the
making—​I started showing up with a recorder in hand. Not a single person
objected to my using the recorder, though I found recorded interviews to
be decidedly more formal, and more stilted, than the type of free-​flowing
conversations that preceded them. I  came to understand that recorded
interviews were not necessarily the ideal, but rather a particular method with
a particular strength: good for precision in long interviews, bad for capturing
spontaneity or emotional resonance. In total, I conducted interviews with
just over seventy people, and sometimes on multiple occasions.77
Due to the fact that so many of these conversations involved a certain
degree of give and take, structured in much the same way as any “normal,”
24  Guest Is God

non-​ academic discussion, I  refer to these conversation partners with

three different but often overlapping terms:  “friends,” “collaborators,” and
“informants.” I do occasionally use the term informant, but overall consider
it a poor representation of fieldwork relationships, as if my task were simply
to suck information, vacuum-​like, out of the minds of those around me.
Indeed, several people in Pushkar became good friends of mine, in which
case “informant” seems cold, and “friend” is more obviously applicable. I use
“collaborator” the most in order to underline the idea that these were people
with whom I shared not only tea and time, but also quite personal thoughts
and feelings about the world around us. Their contributions make this book
what it is.

The Topography of the Text

In c­ hapter 1, I explore local language and rhetoric surrounding the idea of

sanatana dharma, which roughly translates as “the eternal religion.” Despite
the term’s complex pedigree, it more often than not conveys an appeal to-
ward universalism. I consider it a technique of “brothering,” a concept which
indicates that through seeing similarity and downplaying difference, an
“other” can become a brother. Tourism serves as a major catalyst in the cre-
ation of this discourse, a dynamic epitomized by the repertoire of sayings
and phrases promoting Hindu universalism. At the same time, given its
place in Pushkar’s tourism economy and its nationalist history, the promise
of brotherly love can seem at times tenuous. Here, I discuss how issues of
moneyed interest and virulent nationalism shape, and are negotiated within,
discourses of the “eternal religion,” while simultaneously giving serious con-
sideration to the prospect of brothering.
Chapter  2 leaves the world of universalism and addresses the most ex-
plicitly material aspect of making Pushkar paradise. That is, I explore the
environmental degradation that has befallen the town’s holy lake (due, in
large part, to development and tourism), and then I focus on efforts by local
Hindus to clean it. In the chapter, I contend that the broad goal of making
Pushkar paradise, and more specifically the task of cleaning the lake, in-
volve a robust process of ritualization. Here, cleaning becomes not only
cast within the vocabulary of karma and Hindu duty (dharma) but is in fact
yoked to other religious activities, too, like circumambulation and feeding
animals. Thinking alongside the work of Catherine Bell, I aim to show how
 Introduction  25

environmentalism becomes ritualized, and in turn renders a place sacred.

I conclude with the idea that cleaning the lake is both an activity born out of
the understanding that Pushkar is paradise, and also one which simultane-
ously sets paradise in the making.
In the third chapter I focus on Pushkar’s new generation of tour guides.
Departing from the caste-​based and hereditary position of brahman priest,
these young men see in guiding a “new form of the priesthood” (pujari ka
naya rup) in which the great karma exchange that makes up the “traditional”
Hindu service becomes supplemented with the exchange and flow of infor-
mation. They are the mediators of knowledge about Brahma and Pushkar,
and, when guiding foreigners, about Hinduism. In this capacity, they are cul-
tural translators and comparative religionists of the highest order. But their
jobs are not perfect. Limited opportunities and fierce competition for clients
have created friction with foreign tourists, people who rebuke priests and
guides as “selling salvation” on the banks of Pushkar lake. Part of this friction
derives from a fundamental disagreement about the price of “spirituality”
and what, ultimately, paradise is supposed to look like. At the same time,
those who do not want to do this work find it hard to get a steady job outside
of Pushkar’s industries of tourism and pilgrimage. Bounded to both Brahma
and Pushkar, brahmans believe themselves cursed, sometimes metaphori-
cally and literally, to a life on the lake.
Chapter 4 explores the annual camel fair, and especially its discourse on
color. From both the written and ethnographic record, the camel fair emerges
as an event where color, more than anything else, permeates the town. This
is the color of Rajasthani dress, the color of a crowd, the colors of cele-
brated diversity. But what is the value of color? In answering this question,
I  focus on two entangled discourses of color, one from tourist pamphlets
and English-​language newspapers emphasizing the exotic, the other from
local perspectives on international diversity and religious sharing. These
two sources invite an exploration of what an economy of color might look
like. Finally, alongside the language of color we encounter the centrality of
photography. As a type of spectacle, the fair provides a unique opportunity
for photography, in which tourists photograph locals, and locals photograph
tourists. This mutual objectification helps to underline how inhabitants of a
tourist town can make sense of, and reshape, the tourist experience.
The fifth and final chapter begins with an observation: Pushkar, people say,
is a place of peace, of “shanti.” But those who have been to Pushkar know that
it is not a quiet place. There are motorcycles and honking horns, humming
26  Guest Is God

loudspeakers and lots of electronic dance music. Peace, but no quiet. Here,
I address this ostensible paradox by exploring the creation and maintenance
of “peace” in Pushkar. Far from attempting to silence Pushkar’s rich sound-
scape, locals instead find peace by adding yet more sound to the atmosphere.
They do this with songs and sacred words set on speakers and intended to
spread shanti throughout the town. The chapter begins, then, with an explo-
ration of shanti, and how the sacred landscape of Pushkar is mapped onto
the sonic terrain of religious recitation. Importantly, the power of religious
recitation derives not principally from the spiritual messages therein, or even
from devotion to the divine, but rather from the “good vibrations” created
by sound itself. The chapter proceeds with this issue of vibrations:  What
are they? How are they used? And why do so many locals refer to them as
“vibrations” or “vibes” when Hindi and Sanskrit equivalents abound? In
the end, I will argue that Pushkar’s “vibrations” come as much from ancient
Sanskrit material as they do from 19th-​century American and European
metaphysics. Like vibrations themselves, such a discourse seems to travel
through the atmosphere, wheeling back and forth across the world.
So this book is about vibrations, color, curses, the environment, univer-
salism, and interesting phrases (among many other things). These are un-
doubtedly disparate topics, but together they animate a story that I  think
needs telling. That story is about Hinduism today, or really about Hindus
today, and the ways in which a particular group of Hindus in a small-​town set-
ting make sense of the idea that their home is at the center of an increasingly-​
globalized world. As one local told me, Pushkar has become “the true center
of Greenwich Mean Time.” And along with the acceptance of this metaphor-
ical relocation of longitude—​this re-​centering of the world axis—​comes the
recognition that Pushkar will continue to see more and more visitors from
the outside. This fact prompts broad and enduring questions—​about how to
make money, about how to flourish as a Hindu and as a human, and maybe
even about how to treat guests like gods.
 1
Others and Brothers

Of the fifty-​two stone staircases that descend into the holy lake in Pushkar,
Brahm Ghat1 enjoys an economic vibrancy without equal.2 Right there, in a
tiny concrete room labeled “Donation Office” in stenciled letters above the
window (Figure 1.1), a brahman man sorts through coconuts, money, and
receipts, all evidence of the religious ceremony that so many pilgrims and
tourists choose to undertake. The receipts are particularly interesting: on the
front, each one is a record of the donation offered for the ceremony, money
collected by—​and then divided among—​members of the Pushkar Priest
Association Trust; on the back, the Trust’s primary objectives are laid out.
Among the mundane goals of cleaning the lake and caring for cows, each
receipt also mentions the propagation of “sanatana dharma.” This term,
frequently translated into English as the “eternal religion,” has remarkable
traction throughout South Asia, but its contours are far from agreed upon.3
What is this “eternal religion” that the priests of Pushkar hope to spread?
Whom does such propagation benefit? And how should we make sense of
this image, coupling proof of purchase with religious ambition?
Since Brahma’s creation of the universe began there—​so the town’s narra-
tive goes—​Pushkar has been a tirth, that is, a “crossing” or “ford” signifying
a pilgrimage place of religious power and efficacy.4 Locals are particularly
proud of Pushkar’s status as the world’s only tirth for the entirety of the
“golden age” (satyug), which lasted some 1,728,000 years. But it was only
with tourism, in the past handful of decades, that the tirth has also become
what one informant called a mahasagar, a “great ocean” where metaphor-
ical rivers meet. Despite foreseeable growing pains associated with the
tourism industry, the town has flourished thanks to its new identity as a
place where the world’s people see each other in full color. And instead of
the more common exoticism that accompanies the production of a tourist
space—​what Keith Hollinshead calls “difference projection”5—​the predom-
inant discourse surrounding Pushkar as a gathering place is anchored in
an assertion of similarity and universal expression.6 Those in the public
sphere, and especially brahman priests who control the axis of tourism and

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
28  Guest Is God

Figure 1.1.  The donation office on Brahm Ghat.

pilgrimage, populate this discourse with an impressive collection of sayings

and phrases. One of the sayings most explicitly linked to sanatana dharma
is this: “hindu, muslim, sikh, isai: ham sab hain bhai bhai” (Hindu, Muslim,
Sikh, and Christian:  we’re all brothers!). Although the translation does
little to convey either the rhyme of the Hindi original or the very palpable
pleasure that is apt to be exuded by its speaker, it does communicate the
basic point: regardless of religious identity, and in spite of our coming from
different places, we are all kin.
In this chapter, I will argue that although sanatana dharma has never had
a single, stable meaning, in Pushkar it is most frequently deployed as a code
word for universal belonging and religious brotherhood. It is what I consider
a technique of brothering,7 a process which, unlike the more common dialec-
tical relationship of “inscribing the other” and “inscribing the self,” suggests
that through blurring distinctions and drawing large enough boundaries, the
other can become the self.8 In terms of social formation, this suggests that
while people are predisposed to defining themselves in terms of othering,
they may be equally predisposed to seeing themselves as resembling those
 Others and Brothers  29

they once thought different. As one might expect, many of the diverse
elements that constitute this broad discourse of universalism in Pushkar
have complex genealogies that extend well beyond the town. Some find
echoes throughout the subcontinent, and others in communities outside the
Hindu fold. What makes Pushkar noteworthy is not the fact that such ideas
exist, but that they have been so successfully tethered to the town’s landscape,
are so effectively curated, and so widely pervade everyday life.
A brief note on methods: as with most of this book, my collaborators in
this chapter are primarily men. This has particularly important repercussions
when it comes to the idea of brothering. Patriarchy is very much the status
quo in Pushkar—​as it is in countless other places of religious conservatism—​
so, even though collaborators affirmed the inclusion of women in their image
of universalism, such ideas are nevertheless cast in the language of brother-
hood. “Brothering” is thus undoubtedly gendered. If we in the academy were
to consider the term as having some explanatory power beyond the confines
of Pushkar or India, we would have to be just as open to ideas of “sistering,”
“all-​ing,” or somewhat more clumsily, “sibling-​ing.”

Same Same, but Different

Ten years ago, Sandeep worked as a priest and tour guide in Pushkar. Like
many Parashar guides in their twenties, he would try to offer his services to
travelers and pilgrims at the nearby Brahma temple, Pushkar’s best known
tourist attraction. That the Brahma temple garners so much attention is a fre-
quent point of contention for many locals; they claim it is the lake that reigns
supreme. So, after some cajoling and a quick visit to the temple, Sandeep
would shepherd his flock through a twisty lane to Brahm Ghat. Right off the
street, an archway opens to wide descending stairs of checkerboard marble,
black and white, all the edges rounded and soft with wear. Tourists in tow,
Sandeep would reach the broad landing—​about forty feet clear until another
set of stairs to the water—​and talk about Brahma’s creation of the lake. This
led inevitably to an invitation for puja (ritual prayer) at the shore, performed
by either Sandeep or another Parashar brahman. The content of a puja is not
ironclad, ranging from about two to ten minutes and usually involving a ben-
ediction to the gods—​especially to Brahma and the lake9—​as well as a request
for good health and well-​being.10 The ceremony is conducted in a combina-
tion of either Sanskrit and English, or Sanskrit and Hindi (depending on the
30  Guest Is God

patron). Toward the end, the tourist-​turned-​patron promises to give a cer-

tain amount of money in the form of a “donation” to the priest and is offered a
red thread bracelet now imbued with the power of protection.
With solid English, Sandeep made more money than most but eventually
grew unsatisfied with what he called the “donation life.”11 Selling karma, as
he put it, was not for him. After a few years, he opened up a chai stand on
the outskirts of town, where he could timepass with the newspaper and his
thoughts. That is where I first met him, and where I would often go for hot
chai and good company. Many years after his stint as a tour guide, Sandeep
continued to maintain that Pushkar was a unique place made even more
unique by the fact that people of different religions and cultures were all
respected as equals. And it was on this topic that he brought up sanatana
dharma:

Sandeep: Here everyone is equal (saman). Sanatana dharma. All religions

are protected. It doesn’t mean you have to accept my culture; you just
need to be respectful. We don’t say you have to accept our culture, and it’s
not possible for you to accept it. But only respect. Because we can give you
respect, and get respect back.
Drew: So tell me a little more about sanatana dharma.
Sandeep: Sanatana dharma is the oneness of it all (sab ka ek)—​Hindu,
Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Catholic, Parsi. In it, there is neither caste, color,
culture, nor religion. We are all humans—​one. Caste, color, culture: we
make them. Why do we make them? Because we have different climates
and lifestyles, different ways. That’s why we make difference. Otherwise
we are all humans, all the same.

Although Sandeep’s gloss is unique in terms of poetic flair, it echoes a re-

markably pervasive sentiment that the Parashar brahman community evokes
when speaking on the topic. The “eternal religion” is that which brings people
together, erases difference, and ultimately allows us to see ourselves for what
we really are: the same. Integral to this rhetoric, as Sandeep implied, is the
notion that God (bhagvan) created humans, and all distinctions thereafter
are due to human perception. Any tear in the fabric of human society—​any
discrimination or subsequent act of violence—​cannot be blamed on the di-
vine. Importantly, this includes the very existence of different religions. God
would not lay claim to such a divisive concept as the possibility of plural
religions and is dumbfounded by the fact that we humans would forge these
 Others and Brothers  31

often antagonistic communities. As one friend exclaimed, “even God doesn’t

know what’s going on!”
According to many in Pushkar, the clearest evidence for the oneness of hu-
manity is the fact that our blood is red. It is an idea—​and biological reality—​
so frequently pointed out that its usage extends far beyond conversations
related to religion.12 I  talked with a tour guide named Pankaj, both of us
nursing our bottles of Thums Up soda and debating issues like marriage and
politics and money, and how cultural differences shaped the way we saw the
world. He dramatically shook his head, and said with care:  “You’re white
(angrez13) and we’re Indian. No! God made one caste: the human caste. There
are different castes and cultures, but this is wrong. Take you, or me, or him.
Look at your blood, or mine, or his; the blood is the same.”14 So the redness
of blood trumps the whiteness or brownness of what we see on the outside;
humanity—​the human caste—​is not drawn on racial lines.
Joyce Flueckiger encounters a similar assertion in her treatment of ver-
nacular Islam in South India, namely, that humanity is divided by only two
castes: men and women.15 For Flueckiger, this demonstrates the importance
of gender as a local organizing category in comparison to that of religion.
For our purposes, it is an example of how the language of a common hu-
manity is neither uniquely Hindu nor Muslim, practicing what it preaches
by making the border between the two religions increasingly porous in its
very usage.
Implicit in the redness of blood and unity of humanity is the fact that God,
too, is one. The idea that “God is one” is far from novel, though Rajesh, a
particularly energetic brahman who works on the ghats, made some inter-
esting connections. Rajesh is one of the more senior priests on Brahm Ghat,
performing pujas and directing the traffic of pilgrims and tourists as they
approach. He is seen more often than not blowing on a neon green whistle,
the color screaming out from the rest of his outfit, a white polo shirt tucked
into white slacks. Sitting on a broad marble bench by the ghat, Rajesh relaxed
his grip on the whistle and offered his thoughts on across-​the-​board oneness.
“God is one” (ishvar ek hain), he said with a warm smile. “We’ve given him dif-
ferent names. Our blood is red, your blood isn’t black. If you’re Muslim, your
blood is not black. It’s also red. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian: we’re all
brothers! (hindu, muslim, sikh, isai, ham sab hain bhai bhai).”16 Moreover,
Rajesh was quite explicit in making a connection between God’s oneness and
the notion of brothering: if God is one, and all blood is red, then we are all
part of the same human family. “We’re all brothers.”
32  Guest Is God

But the “eternal religion” did not always look like this. When it first started
to carry momentum in the latter half of the 19th century, sanatana dharma
was far from standing for, in Sandeep’s phrase, the “oneness of it all.” Instead,
it took the role of “old-​time religion,” at least insofar as it was “a self-​conscious
affirmation of religious conservatism in a perceivedly pluralistic context.”17
At the time, there was ever-​increasing pressure on the old ways—​in partic-
ular, critiques of “idol worship” and caste—​put forward not only by Christian
missionaries but from the Arya Samaj and other Hindu reformist groups
as well.18 In their effort to defend the “timeless” and “eternal,” these earliest
proponents of sanatana dharma came to represent an amorphous Hindu or-
thodoxy, lacking any agreed-​upon set of beliefs or rituals but focusing on is-
sues like the preservation of brahmanical authority within the caste system,
the centrality of image worship, adherence to the Veda, and care for cows.19
Thus, this particular version of the “eternal religion” was conservative, ex-
clusive, and largely unconcerned with a more expansive vision of belonging.
Around the turn of the century, though, the idea of sanatana dharma as
orthodoxy “began to be superseded by a more potent symbol of organized
Hinduism: the Hindu nation.”20 We can mark the expansion of the term’s
reach with, among other things, the publication of Annie Besant’s Sanatana
Dharma:  An Elementary Textbook of Hindu Religion and Ethics in 1903.21
Indeed, Besant’s advanced version of the textbook, published just a few
months after the elementary one, presents a case for sanatana dharma being
India’s great nonsectarian religious tradition22:

The name to be given to these books was carefully discussed, and that of
“Sanatana Dharma” was finally chosen, as connoting the ancient teachings
free from modern accretions. It should cover all sects, as it did in the an-
cient days. May this book also aid in the great work of building up the na-
tional Religion, and so pave the way to national happiness and prosperity.23

Aside from the call to move beyond sectarian distinction, what seems most
striking about Besant’s statement is how these dual objectives—​the shedding
of “modern accretions” and then the building up of “the national Religion”—​
can exist alongside each other without friction. This shows the extent to
which eternality and timelessness so suffused the discourse of sanatana
dharma that even for those trying explicitly to effect change in the modern
world (and while employing modern concepts, like “the nation”), an earnest
claim to “ancient days” remained.24
 Others and Brothers  33

While the “eternal religion” increasingly became a matter of religious na-

tionalism, it never completely shed its earlier objectives; commitment to
the Veda, image worship, and care for cows no longer appeared to be issues
for the orthodox alone, but gathered the force of Hindu nationalism be-
hind them. Later in the chapter I will address how even in Pushkar, where
the “eternal religion” is most commonly synonymous with the unity of hu-
mankind, Hindu nationalism nevertheless makes its mark. In Pushkar and
elsewhere, older meanings of sanatana dharma have not dissipated or fallen
away but have layered upon newer developments, leaving a term whose dis-
cursive range shifts, expands, and contracts depending on the speaker and
the reason for speaking.25
Perhaps most influential to Pushkar’s brand of sanatana dharma, however,
is Swami Vivekananda (1863–​1902). For Vivekananda, sanatana dharma
was the “grand synthesis of all the aspects of the spiritual idea,” with no room
for brahmanical orthodoxy or exclusivism.26 And although he was not the
first to see Hindu religion as a path toward universalism, Vivekananda was
certainly one of the first to call for an “eternal religion” whose borders ex-
panded well beyond those of the subcontinent.27 Even before the nationalism
of Annie Besant, Vivekananda was doing something else altogether:

There never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national

religion; there never existed many religions, there is only the one. One infi-
nite religion existed all through eternity and will ever exist, and this religion
is expressing itself in various countries in various ways. Therefore we must
respect all religions and we must try to accept them all as far as we can.28

The setting for such an exposition on the “one infinite religion” (read: sanatana
dharma) is unsurprising; Vivekananda was traveling in the United States and
England, representing Hinduism and Vedantic philosophy while trying to
garner interest among a non-​Hindu audience.29 In the context of Pushkar,
though, such a statement resonates just as well. I am thinking in particular
of Sandeep, and his assertion that the tenets of sanatana dharma—​and the
recognition of the “oneness of it all”—​direct us toward respecting other
religions even when we cannot “accept” them.30 Importantly, the recogni-
tion of unity does not bring about the complete disintegration of difference.
While Vivekananda championed a Vedanta whose very foundation depends
on the idea of “universal oneness,”31 he nevertheless acknowledged the harsh
realities of cultural, racial, and religious distinction:
34  Guest Is God

We find then that if by the idea of a universal religion it is meant that one
set of doctrines should be believed in by all mankind it is wholly impos-
sible. It can never be, there can never be a time when all faces will be the
same . . . what can we do then? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen
the friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. How? By recognizing the
natural necessity of variation. Just as we recognized unity by our very na-
ture, so we must also recognize variation. We must learn that truth may be
expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true
as far as it goes.32

In Pushkar today, this sense that humans are both unified and divided
finds expression in the well-​worn phrase “same same, but different.” Beyond
its general popularity, the phrase is literally well-​worn, inscribed on T-​shirts
hanging in the main bazaar and later sported by hippies (Figure 1.2).
Although its origins are unclear (some believe it to have come from Thailand
via the tourism industry33), the phrase reached its South Asian heyday in
2008 with the release of Bombay to Bangkok and the film’s hit song, “Same
Same but Different.” Despite an international pedigree, the simultaneous
recognition of similarity and difference—​as well as the complex ambiguity

Figure 1.2.  A clothing seller, showing a “same same, but different” t-​shirt.

 Others and Brothers  35

of weighing one against the other—​has melded well with Pushkar’s broader
discourse of sanatana dharma. To practice sanatana dharma is to take part
in the constant epistemological ping-​pong of respecting different people
and different religions while trying to erase those differences. In short, this
is brothering: to recognize otherness but simultaneously see “brother-​ness.”
Such an idea does not pose any theological problem for those in Pushkar; it
simply reinforces the fact that difference is real insofar as it is a human crea-
tion, but it is ultimately unrecognized by God. Or, as Vivekananda would say,
it is “true as far as it goes.”
In India and Europe, Wilhelm Halbfass discusses the manner in which
even as a manifestation of universalism, sanatana dharma

remained a concept of self-​assertion, for Hinduism alone was supposed

to provide the framework for the fulfillment of the universal potential in-
herent in the various religions. Accordingly, it was not considered merely as
one religion among many, but rather as a comprehensive and transcending
context for these other religions.34

In other words, by casting the “eternal religion” as the fullest realization of

universal brotherhood, proponents of sanatana dharma simultaneously laid
claim to Hinduism’s superiority over other religions. This is an important ar-
gument, and one we will address later in the chapter. But, for now at least,
Halbfass’ incisive point also raises the question as to whether we should al-
ways take sanatana dharma to be synonymous with Hinduism—​or at least its
Hindi equivalent, hindu dharma. When asked explicitly about the differences
between the two, the overwhelmingly prevailing answer was that they are,
in fact, the same thing (ek hi). Here, local evidence seems to uphold sim-
ilar pan-​Indian and even international definitions of the “eternal religion,”35
though I think an addendum is necessary.
Perhaps “same same but different” is a useful analytical category for
thinking through this relationship. Many Hindus are followers of sanatana
dharma, and most Sanatanists are Hindu, but the equation does not end
there. The difference is not one of definition but of attitude. In Pushkar,
sanatana dharma is a particular code word for the expression of univer-
salism and acceptance. It is a trigger that releases phrases and explanations
about one God, red blood, many brothers, and similarity all around. To prac-
tice sanatana dharma in Pushkar does not necessarily constitute any action
beyond the practice of everyday Hindu life, but carries with it an affective
36  Guest Is God

dimension of sympathy and acceptance toward people from outside the fold.
Priests and tour guides would often demonstrate this acceptance by talking
about their friends from other countries, telling me stories about how they
met, or showing me pictures of them together. Nirmal, a priest with a sub-
stantial foreign clientele, once brought out a large notebook from his house,
a crumpled spiral-​bound logbook with tourists’ comments about his puja
service. In it, there were little paragraphs in all sorts of languages—​English,
Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Hebrew—​that all talked about how
much they loved meeting Nirmal. He was so happy to share the notebook, an
explicit reminder of the brothers and sisters that he had made.
There are, however, interesting digressions from the norm, where people
draw fairly explicit lines between sanatana dharma and hindu dharma. This
was the case for Kamal, a close collaborator of mine and a priest at Brahm
Ghat, with whom I often sat and talked near the water’s edge. On this partic-
ular occasion, I took out from my bag a receipt offered by the Pushkar Priest
Association Trust, which I had been given when I paid for a puja the year be-
fore. I unfolded the thin yellow sheet with fading red ink and showed it to him.
After some joking about my apparently tightfisted donation, I flipped it to the
back and asked for him to walk me through the stated objectives of the Trust.
The final goal: “the spread of sanatana dharma and the uplift of Hindu cul-
ture” (sanatana dharma ka prachar-​prasar va hindu sanskriti ka utthan). After
discussing the finer points of the eternal religion, I asked Kamal whether this
sanatana dharma is the same as hindu dharma. He offered this insight:

The difference between them is that in hindu dharma there are particular
observances and rituals from way back, and sanatana dharma follows from
a religious feeling (dharmik bhavna), that is, a spiritual aspect . . . in which
all religious traditions—​ Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Parsi, Jewish—​ are
joined. This is spiritual, existing alongside everyone else. Hindu dharma is
a culture based on tradition and observances: wedding celebrations, house-
hold culture. We follow these kinds of customs. This is the difference be-
tween the two.

For Kamal, then, hindu dharma revolves around cultural observances

whereas sanatana dharma contains within it a “spiritual aspect” joining all
religions. Spiritual is the most important term here, and, interestingly, Kamal
used both the English word as well as the Hindi adhyatmik, which could also
be translated as “relating to the inner self (atma).” Men like Kamal take daily
 Others and Brothers  37

walks around Pushkar’s holy lake, and part of that route is on a path called
adhyatmik yatra marg (“Spiritual Walk”), a brisk twenty minutes in which
locals or pilgrims, either by themselves or in small groups, hope to relax.
I was often invited on these early evening strolls, and their stated significance
ranged from the accumulation of good karma to healthful exercise. Still,
the general sense was that this kind of activity—​one in which the atma was
refreshed (“fresh ho jata hai”)—​was something that absolutely anyone could
do, and with positive results. For many, this acts as a “spiritual” opportunity
that allows for sanatana dharma to flourish.
Many of these examples have analogs beyond Pushkar’s boundaries, and
yet, those within the Parashar brahman community maintain one geograph-
ical particularity: that is, they explicitly hold Pushkar to be the place where
the promises of sanatana dharma can best be realized. Sipping from plastic
cups of chai and sitting with friends on Brahm Ghat, I would often get into
conversations about Pushkar’s role in the promotion of a universal broth-
erhood. One priest, Deepak, was especially insightful about the connection
between Pushkar and the flourishing of sanatana dharma. A trustee of the
Pushkar Priest Association, and someone who had witnessed his home-
town become an international tourist destination over the past many years,
Deepak saw both the lake and the “eternal religion” as together constituting
the centripetal force that draws travelers to Pushkar. We had the following
discussion on the banks of the lake:

Deepak: In sanatana dharma, there is the promotion of all religions . . . it’s

not for any one religion. Travelers from every religion come here. It’s not
that Hindus alone acknowledge sanatana dharma. People of all religions
who come here acknowledge it. In it, there are Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, Catholics, Jews, etc. However many
religions there are, people from those religions come here; they do puja
and do rituals for their ancestors. This is especially a pilgrimage place
where all travelers come. . . .
Drew: So this is a situation specific to Pushkar?
Deepak: Yes.
Drew: Why? Why do people from every religion come here?
Deepak: Because of the lake. The lake is the guru of all pilgrimage places,
and Pushkar is the original and eternal pilgrimage place. This is where
Creation happened. When Brahma-​ji created the world, he did it from
here. At that time, there was no one saying “oh, he’s Hindu” and “he’s
38  Guest Is God

Muslim.” Afterwards, when they divided, that was when these definitions
came about. Before that, there was only one religion—​insaniyat dharma
(the religion of humanity) . . . the biggest religion is sanatana dharma and
insaniyat dharma, which are both the same, and into which comes every
other religion.

Deepak, along with Kamal, is of the minority opinion that sanatana

dharma and hindu dharma are distinct. For Deepak, this is because
Hinduism exists within the much more expansive category of the “eternal
religion.” Moreover, because Pushkar was the place from which Brahma
created the world, it is also where sanatana dharma first flourished.36 In
this sense, the fact that people from different religious traditions come
to Pushkar simply reinforces its original state as the home of humanity
without division.
As the town’s ritual and narrative focus, the lake features centrally in local
explanations of sanatana dharma. Theologically, part of the egalitarian ap-
peal is that the lake has no murti, or statue, associated with it; those against
graven images—​especially Christians and Muslims37—​can approach the
lake without that compunction. But beyond this is the great importance
given to water. In response to a question about the lake’s religious signif-
icance, my friend Yogesh once replied with another question:  “which
caste is water?” (jal ki kaunsi jati hai?). Here, the word jati corresponds
not solely to “caste” or “subcaste,” but more broadly to “type,” and in this
particular case means religious affiliation. The answer, of course, is that
water has no jati at all; its benefits extend to people of all races and reli-
gious traditions.38 In fact, many reminded me that jal hi jivan, a phrase that
roughly translates as “water is life,” but really means that “water, and water
alone, is life.” According to a widespread Hindu belief, the body is composed
of five elements, or tattvas39—​water, fire, earth, air, and ether—​and in the
Rajasthani desert, water runs the show. The notion that water is essential to
life should not be surprising, but with it, Yogesh called upon the transitive
property to pose a truly interesting equation: “Water is life, and God is life.
What gives life? Water, from drinking. So what is God? Water.” As an object
of devotion, the water of Pushkar lake holds some of the “liquid love” that
David Haberman sees in the Yamuna River of northern India40 but with the
important addition that this form of the divine is explicitly thought to wel-
come people of all religions. These factors—​the lake, its divine water, and
the fact that Creation happened here—​help to frame the logic that sanatana
 Others and Brothers  39

dharma, in its global inclusivism and universalistic outlook, has its first and
final home in Pushkar.41

Tourism and Religion

When speaking with colleagues, friends, and tourists about my work in

Pushkar, a fairly common question was whether it’s simply tourism—​a.k.a.,
the money—​that makes the town such a center of egalitarian brotherhood.
That is, do Pushkar’s brahmans and tour guides really believe in the sup-
posed tenets of the “eternal religion”? While undoubtedly innocent enough,
these questions necessarily prompt much broader questions about religion,
tourism, and their sometimes uneasy relationship. In the book’s introduction
I discussed the “inosculation” of religion and tourism—​which is to say their
growing together. This means that we cannot treat religion as some “private
affair” forever set apart from the economy. Therefore, when we ask whether
Pushkar’s locals really believe in the religious brotherhood of sanatana
dharma, or is it the money talking, we can expect an answer more compli-
cated than a simple either/​or.
Yes, the town’s tourism economy and its attendant philosophy of hospi-
tality continue to exert a massive influence on the way people articulate reli-
gious identities. In thinking about the play of similarity and difference, and
how these ideas become wrapped up in a discourse of brotherhood, I find
the work of Walter Benjamin most useful. In a short essay from 1932, “On
Astrology,” Benjamin asserts that “the resemblances we can perceive, for ex-
ample, in people’s faces, in buildings and plant forms . . . are nothing more
than tiny prospects from a cosmos of similarity.”42 From here, he argues that
the study of similarity itself is far less interesting than the study of the human
faculty that generates such similarities out of an entire cosmos of possibility;
he calls this the “mimetic faculty.” Although others have approached the idea
of mimesis through the analysis of impersonation or parody,43 I instead em-
phasize the ability to generate similarity through speech; that is, through a
repertoire of frequent and agreed-​upon phrases. In relating this to Pushkar,
we can say that what drives the mimetic faculty—​a kind of machine for
similarity—​is tourism itself. Today, as tourism increasingly becomes inte-
grated into locals’ lives and worldviews, and as the mimetic faculty pushes
on, they see their home as a place for gathering communities rather than ex-
cluding them.44
40  Guest Is God

The fact that tourism has a role here does not mean that brahmans or tour
guides are disingenuous. First of all, so much of what happens in Pushkar
happens in Hindi, and the phrase factory is no different. Even the phrase that
counts the most—​hindu, muslim, sikh, isai: ham sab hain bhai bhai—​would
reach foreign ears only in spirit. At the very least, this helps to discount the
assumption that these ideas are only presented for certain faces with cer-
tain wallets. Far more importantly, I  would argue that Pushkar’s brand of
sanatana dharma is both far too consistent and ready-​made to be propelled
by anything other than the economic apparatus of pilgrimage and tourism,
while at the same time it is also far too widespread and agreed upon to be in-
compatible with the people’s values. Because religion in Pushkar is not simply
a “black box into which everything can be put according to the interests of
principal actors in a certain socio-​political domain,” what becomes of greater
interest are those sayings and practices that manage to thrive within this mu-
tually constitutive realm of religion and economy.45

Media and Modern Universalism

Beyond the effects of tourism, larger shifts in India’s culture and economy
also play a role in the construction of this discourse of religious universalism.
Chief among them are globalization and liberalization, two deeply intercon-
nected and modern processes that have massively expanded and proliferated
the information pathways across the subcontinent. Here, I am interested in
how such processes shape particular forms of media—​largely the Internet,
but Bollywood too. Moreover, contrary to the popular assumption that mo-
dernity coincides with a rejection of traditional or religious ways of being,
I want to address how these modern mediations directly engage with, and
perhaps even recode, contemporary Indian religiosity.46
If we are to understand Indian cinema as a “site of ideological production,”
then even the most diverting and lighthearted of celluloid moments have
a role in shaping cultural institutions, religion being no exception.47 Take,
for example, the Bollywood film OMG:  Oh My God!, which was released
in September of 2012 and remained a topic of conversation in Pushkar for
several months thereafter. The movie’s storyline is based on a Gujarati play
entitled Kanji Virudh Kanji (“Kanji vs. Kanji,” or “Kanji vs. Krishna”) and was
produced by Bollywood hunk—​and incisive cultural critic—​Akshay Kumar.
The film satirizes the power and authority afforded to gurus and religious
 Others and Brothers  41

leaders—​popularly called “God-​men”—​as well as the blind devotion with

which their followers worship them. While the central plot is itself note-
worthy, I want to focus on the characterization of Krishna.
The film begins with Kanji, a swindling atheist whose religious parapher-
nalia store is destroyed in an earthquake. When Kanji’s insurance claim is
denied because of a fine-​print clause that rejects compensation for “acts of
God,” Kanji sues God in court, and much drama ensues. The plot thickens
as we are introduced to a new character, Krishna—​that is, Krishna the butter
thief, the lover boy, the god—​in the form of Akshay Kumar. When Krishna
first appears on the scene, he looks very modern indeed. He stands on top of
a high-​rise, long suit jacket flapping in the breeze, twirling his motorcycle
keys around his index finger like Vishnu’s chakra of old. What is on his bike’s
license plate? The number “786” (the numerological value of the Muslim bis-
millah), the word “Om,” and the Christian cross.
Soon, our real life Krishna comes knocking on the protagonist’s door.
Kanji is sitting lazily on his back porch, glass of whiskey in hand:

Kanji: Who is it?
Krishna: God (bhagvan)
Kanji: What?
Krishna: If you were Muslim, Mohammed. If you were Christian, then Jesus
Christ. You’re Hindu, so Krishna.

In much the same vein, when Kanji’s court case seems doomed, Krishna
suggests that he read the Gita, the Bible, and the Qur’an for inspiration; they
all, according to Krishna, represent God’s singular truth. The holy books offer
Kanji considerable insight—​both juridically and existentially—​and he moves
forward with greater resolve. I will spare the ending for those who hope to
enjoy what is truly a devotional romp. For the purpose of my argument, how-
ever, the point is fairly clear: Krishna is not a Hindu god, but simply God
called different names by different people; nor is any one religious scripture
somehow more valid or authoritative than any other, as they all participate
in the project of human betterment through the revelation of divine truths.
By now, this sort of Hindu universalism should be quite familiar. What I find
most compelling, then, is the ease and effortlessness with which Krishna’s
character takes on these universalist principles. The fact that the ideas
highlighted above do not at all make up the main point of the movie—​really,
are ancillary to the plot—​shows the extent to which universalism is already
42  Guest Is God

assumed. To me, this indicates that modern-​day Hindus are increasingly part
of a global conversation on the nature of religion, more specifically a conver-
sation about how people of different religions might fit into a vaster and more
significant human community.
While engagement with film is mostly limited to public screenings and the
occasional conversation, the Internet provides a wider range of possibilities.
It is both consumptive and productive, as people create digital selves with
digital allegiances formed in digital communities. And yet, it is important
to remember that the kind of “virtual neighborhoods” made online can
also be really real, in the sense that they are often reflective of actual peo-
ples and places; they constitute the “global production of locality.”48 As far
as Pushkar is concerned, the online production of locality seems nowhere
more pervasive than on Facebook, the social networking site that has re-
cently skyrocketed in popularity across the subcontinent, with the number
of users in India now overtaking that of the United States.49 With regard to
sanatana dharma and Hindu universalism, Facebook connects two different
discursive spaces: the first is the repository of infinite memes available across
the Internet, which is to say, ready-​made images or messages of cultural value
catapulting across cyberspace; the second is the “virtual neighborhood” of
people—​locals and tourists—​who live in, visit, and think about Pushkar. In
other words, rather than being a mere vehicle for independent expression,
Facebook works to mediate between popular religious discourses already out
there in the ether, and more localized conversations that take place around a
virtual Pushkar.
I am thinking, in particular, of a wonderful image that a friend from
Pushkar posted on Facebook in November of 2012.50 The image shows five
DJs wearing chunky headphones, standing by turntables behind a wall of
speakers. Who are these collaborative disc jockeys? None other than Jesus,
Buddha, Oshun, Kuan Yin, and Shiva. Above their heads, the phrase “TO BE
ONE” reads loud and clear. In smaller font and lining the bottom is a sim-
ilar sentiment: “MAY PEACE PREVAIL.” Although odd at first glance, the
picture nicely represents what I have come to recognize as Pushkar’s youth
culture. During religious festivals, for example, teenage boys would roam the
streets in packs while dancing to techno, house, dubstep, and trance music as
it pulsed through giant and broken speakers. The cautious ones had cotton
balls jammed in their ears, while the rest tempted Brahma and the gods over
hearing loss. Importantly, these dancing maniacs are the very same boys who
attended Sanskrit school, worked with relatives on the ghats, talked about
 Others and Brothers  43

“same same, but different,” and claimed to see the world’s religions as dif-
ferent paths toward a unified truth. In short, boys who love their electronic
dance music but who also envision a future in which a phrase like “TO BE
ONE” has substantial meaning. As such, this fascinating image floating in
cyberspace becomes fixed to a particular locality, articulating a position al-
ready held by many people, but who had likely never before voiced it in that
specific way.
Another noteworthy Facebook post from a Pushkar local consisted of an
image adorned with symbols from different religious traditions (a cross, cres-
cent moon, etc.) and this simple message: “Freedom of religion means ALL
religions, not just your own.” These words echo a fairly common sentiment—​
held by parts of the populace in both the United States and India—​that dom-
inant religious groups should not be allowed to marginalize, or exert undue
influence upon, religious minorities. Freedom of religion, the argument
follows, should apply to all religious communities at all times, and not simply
to those with greater access to institutions of power. Such an idea can corre-
spond to the political doctrine of secularism, a polyvalent term with a com-
plex genealogical history.51 Secularism has an alternative meaning specific to
the Indian context, where at its conception “it was meant to impose limits on
the political expression of cultural or religious conflicts between Hindus and
Muslims, limits that were tragically transgressed immediately before and in
the aftermath of the declaration of Independence in August 1947.”52 As op-
posed to the United States, with its ostensible “wall of separation” between
religious institutions and the state, India’s version of secularism allows for the
government’s direct engagement in the recognition of religious laws.53 Thus,
the government, to some extent, endorses all religions rather than none.
But how might such a position help to shape Indian—​and especially Indian
nationalist—​politics? One more meme will help us address the question.
There is an image that pops up on a number of different websites each year
around the time of India’s Republic Day (January 26). I did not see this image
posted on Facebook by a Pushkar local, but I include it here because of both
its popularity and the implicit connections it draws between secularism,
nationalism, and religious universalism. In green and orange lettering ar-
ranged vertically, the image reads “I AM INDIAN,” but like some kind of
sacred scrabble board, each letter in “INDIAN” offers alphabetic inspiration
for another word arranged horizontally: MuslIm, HiNdu, BuDdhist, SIkh,
ChristiAn, and JaiN. The argument is twofold: first, echoing the tenets of sec-
ularism, Indian identity is a harmonious composite built from a collection
44  Guest Is God

of different religious peoples and practices, all of which have equal value;
second, although religious difference demands respect and recognition,
ultimately all identities are secondary to that one, most important label—​
“Indian.” This makes particularly good sense on Republic Day, when a nation
with a too-​deep history of communal violence and identity politics attempts
to look beyond difference for the sake of greater unity.
But we have no doubt heard this message before. Minus the explicit ap-
peal to nationalism above, are these not the tenets of sanatana dharma? In
Pushkar’s version of Hindu universalism, the local community envisions a
world where all people, regardless of religion, are brothers; in the secular na-
tionalism framed above, the state envisions a country where all people, re-
gardless of religion, are Indians. Brothers or Indians, the goal is to capture a
sense of belonging—​not necessarily the erasure of difference, but rather the
recognition of an overarching and enduring sameness. On the other hand,
the differences between Indian secularism and Hindu universalism are im-
portant, too. Hindu universalism expresses the voice of a Hindu majority,
welcoming minorities but only to the extent that they cohere to the dom-
inant vision of universalism. Indian secularism—​almost by definition—​
emerges from a defense of minority communities, where any vision for the
future requires the equal weighing of diverse interests. Here, we see a similar
message of greater belonging but with sometimes contrasting ideas of how
to achieve it. While we should be wary of asserting that Indian secularism
and Hindu universalism are identical, it seems sufficiently clear to say that
overlaps do exist, and that those overlaps belie Western presumptions about
the oppositional nature of religion and the secular.54 In India, where secu-
larism demands the state’s recognition of all religions, universalism can actu-
ally approximate the secular. The next issue, then, and what we must explore
in the following section, is how the lived reality of sanatana dharma—​like
that of secularism—​can sometimes fail to live up to its promises.

Tolerance at Its Limits

I realize that the prospect of peace, love, and understanding—​especially

within the critical atmosphere of the academy—​is a dubious one at best. And
the hermeneutics of suspicion can be compelling: one person’s mahasagar
(great ocean) is another’s “contact zone,” which Mary Louise Pratt identifies
as a social space “where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each
 Others and Brothers  45

other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordina-

tion.”55 In Pushkar, such asymmetries certainly exist.56 And when it comes to
how the “eternal religion” plays upon, or even produces, these asymmetries,
we have to ask two pressing questions: First, is everyone invited to the uni-
versal brotherhood of sanatana dharma? Second, who makes that decision?
The deciders, it turns out, are none other than those who speak with the lan-
guage of similarity and who labor in the phrase factory. Hindus—​and more
specifically, high-​caste Hindus in the tourism and pilgrimage complex—​are
the ones who create the borders of brotherhood. And it is not clear if Muslims
are always invited.
Whenever brahmans in Pushkar want to lay claim to their role in fulfilling
the ideals of religious brotherhood, they talk about the ease with which they
can visit temples, mosques, and churches. As a collaborator put it, if “there
is Ram, Rahim, and Jesus” in their hearts, then surely they can visit and gain
inspiration from any place of worship. A few brahmans have even said that
they believe in all the gods (sab devtaon ko manna).57 And while most urged
me to read the Padma Purana, Bhagavata Purana, or Gita for my interest
in sanatana dharma—​all of these firmly ensconced in the brahmanical and
Sanskritic tradition—​one person suggested the Bible and Qur’an. Almost
paradoxically, these expressions of inclusion and acceptance sometimes also
function as a not-​so-​subtle dig at Muslims, who are conversely depicted as
seeing danger in other places of worship. In a context outside of Pushkar
but still in Rajasthan, Ann Gold writes about how her Hindu informants
explained “with a slight air of grievance that although Hindus readily pros-
trate themselves at Muslim shrines, Muslims visiting Hindu shrines do not
act in reciprocal fashion.”58
I noted similar sentiments in my fieldwork, where the commentary
is often framed in geographic terms, between the Hindu town of Pushkar
and the Muslim city of Ajmer.59 Pushkar Hindus often mention their trips
to the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, a twelve-​kilometer bus ride
up and over the hills to what is one of India’s most important Islamic pil-
grimage places.60 To these Hindus, the shrine is a place of power regardless
of religious affiliation.61 And this is in spite of the pervasive opinion that at
the shrine one risks the chance of getting robbed. On the other hand, these
same Hindus contrast themselves (in whispered tones) with Muslims from
Ajmer, who, they claim, rarely come to their town, hardly ever visit the lake
in any religious capacity, and absolutely never step inside the Brahma temple.
It is ultimately very difficult to tell how many Muslims go to Hindu sites; we
46  Guest Is God

cannot necessarily know a person’s religion without asking, though apparel

and gestural signs can supply some information. Over the course of my field-
work, I spoke with Muslims who adamantly refused to step inside the Brahma
temple, and others whom I met inside the Brahma temple.62 Yet, even in this
situation and even for Hindus who voice anti-​Muslim sentiment, Muslims
figure quite explicitly in the brotherhood of the “eternal religion.” Remember
the slogan: “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian: we’re all brothers.” So, what
is happening here?
To me, it seems most beneficial to bracket the language of universalism
and instead situate this set of circumstances in the language of tolerance,
“an attitude that is intermediate between wholehearted acceptance and un-
restrained opposition.”63 Hindus from Pushkar recognize a particular set
of rights for Muslims—​in this instance, admittance to a religious brother-
hood of humanity—​while simultaneously desiring that Muslims not be so
different, and not do the things they do. What makes this case particularly
interesting is that the stakes of this dynamic are located exactly at the point
where the discourse of tolerance meets its limit, namely, where the majority
can no longer tolerate the intolerance of the minority. This suggests not that
tolerance breaks down completely, because that is clearly not the case in
Pushkar, but rather that the complex negotiations involved in creating a reli-
gious brotherhood require a certain force of opinion on the part of Hindus,
a struggle to prove or demonstrate to others that they should act more like
brothers. Moreover, it reveals the ways in which a conceptual category so
seemingly benign as “tolerance” can function as “a mode of incorporating
and regulating the presence of the threatening Other within.”64
I found marriage, in particular, to be a topic on which the ambivalences
of brothering were laid most bare. That is, my Hindu informants were happy
enough to extol the benefits of religious harmony, but very few were willing to
entertain the idea that they, or their children, would marry a Muslim. Those
familiar with Rajasthan will know that marriage is a topic of frequent dis-
cussion in everyday life, especially among women; and as Jennifer Ortegren
argues, these conversations “about practices ranging from veiling, marriage,
and education to home décor, fashion, food, and leisure are not merely the
idle ‘gossip’ of women,” but “central to understanding what it means to be
a Hindu in the modern middle class world.”65 Because marriage creates ac-
tual kinship—​real brothers and sisters-​in-​law, among many others—​it is
also one of the few avenues through which the principles of brothering can
be materially realized. In their conversations about marriage, then, women
 Others and Brothers  47

rehearse the possibilities and limits of sanatana dharma. But when it comes
to marrying Muslims, the possibilities are few, and the limits are many. One
collaborator, Deepika, was even more direct: “It’s not possible.” Others were
more circumspect, saying that it could happen, but that a young Parashar
brahman marrying outside of her caste would inevitably come up against
so much pushback from friends and family that it would be very difficult.
Regarding Muslims in particular, the main “objection” was a matter of meat
eating: “We’re vegetarian, they eat meat.” This was an unsurmountable dif-
ference, something perceived to be an unchanging absolute for both parties.
And such a vision of difference cuts off any chance of living under one roof.
Together, these issues raise the question as to whether sanatana dharma
is wrapped up in some form of right-​wing, Hindu nationalist discourse.
Jyotirmaya Sharma, in his profile of Swami Vivekananda in India’s Outlook
magazine, certainly thinks so. In the cover story from January 2013, ti-
tled “Dharma for the State,” Sharma explores Vivekananda, his guru
Ramakrishna, and what Sharma believes to be the emergence of Hindu
supremacist ideology. Speaking about Ramakrishna, the author wonders
why the Bengali saint would use such a “politically charged neologism like
‘Sanatana Dharma.’ ”66 While I am disinclined to agree with these descriptors
of the “eternal religion”—​after all, sanatana dharma can only be a neologism
if Sharma is referring to Ramakrishna’s time, but when Ramakrishna used the
term in 1884 it was hardly the political symbol it would become—​I do think
Sharma’s sense of surprise highlights the very real concern over whether the
discourse of sanatana dharma, however deployed, serves the goals of Hindu
nationalism.
Sharma’s concern is well placed. Annie Besant comes to mind, with her
positioning sanatana dharma as India’s new “national Religion.” Even
more evocative are the ideas of the philosopher and nationalist leader Sri
Aurobindo (1872–​1950), who in 1909 delivered a speech that envisioned the
future of India inextricably tied to the successes of sanatana dharma:

I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it

is the Sanatana Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation
was born with the Sanatana Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows.
When the Sanatana Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the
Sanatana Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatana Dharma it
would perish.67
48  Guest Is God

For Aurobindo, the “eternal religion” was nothing short of the entirety of
Hinduism, but it was more than that, too. As something extending beyond
a matter of belief—​he calls it “life itself ”—​Aurobindo’s sanatana dharma
encapsulated the ambitions of India as a Hindu nation.68 And this rhet-
oric finds easy analogs in the present. Take, for example, the Vishva Hindu
Parishad (VHP), whose primary objective stated on their website is to “con-
solidate, strengthen and make invincible the global Hindu fraternity by fol-
lowing the eternal and universal life values based on Sanatan Dharma and
work for total welfare of humanity on the basis of the unique cultural ethos
of Bharatvarsha [India].”69 Theirs is a brotherhood made by and for Hindus,
and in the name of sanatana dharma.
On a more local scale, I am reminded of a sadhvi (female ascetic) from
Delhi who delivered a speech to a large crowd on the outskirts of Pushkar in
March 2013; her language was fiery and political—​certainly far right-​wing—​
and when she referred to the entirety of Hindu religion, she called it “hamara
sanatana dharma” (“our eternal religion”). These versions of sanatana
dharma often function to exclude, and galvanize fear of the Other. Moreover,
even in instances when sanatana dharma takes on universalist qualities, it
necessarily involves the flattening of difference. Such homogenization tends
to serve those with greater access to power, thereby disenfranchising mi-
nority communities who become subsumed under the majority.70 This era-
sure of difference also raises questions about Dalits and lower caste Hindus
who have unequal access to wealth, education, and power. Within the dis-
course of brothering, Dalits are simply labeled as “Hindu” and thus included.
But the important differences that so materially affect Dalit lives—​and the
inequalities maintained within caste hierarchy—​are ignored for the sake of
universalist goals. We can therefore say without too much equivocation that
the language of brothering is also a language of privilege.
At the same time, I hesitate to locate every instance of universalism or ho-
mogenization under the larger umbrella of Hindu nationalism, a term with a
vast range of associations that can cast too wide a net. We face an epistemolog-
ical crisis when we look at two divergent ideologies—​aggressive anti-​Muslim
sentiment and Hindu chauvinism on the one hand, and a universalist-​but-​
imperfect religious brotherhood on the other—​and call them the same thing.
Surely difference makes a difference. For instance, we can revisit the phrase
intoned throughout this chapter: hindu, muslim, sikh, isai: ham sab hain bhai
bhai. A  particularly suspicious academic might criticize such a sentiment
as having homogenizing tendencies, and thereby claim to smell the scent
 Others and Brothers  49

of Hindu nationalism. But actually the slogan was introduced by the Indian
National Congress during the struggle against British rule; it was chanted
by Hindus and Muslims alike as an explicit call to unite Indians of all re-
ligious communities.71 Fast forward to the present, and Congress—​itself
representing a vast Hindu constituency—​currently serves as the primary op-
ponent to the now dominant, and Hindu nationalist, Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP). Pushkar’s political climate has been largely split over the last several
years, with Congress support declining in the most recent election of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi.72 Still, throughout my research I encountered a sig-
nificant number of informants who would talk about sanatana dharma while
remaining proud and vocal Congress supporters. In the end, it is important
to remember that Hindu nationalists do not have a monopoly on thinking
about the present and future of Hindu religion.
The case of Pushkar might better reflect the interesting ways in which local
manifestations of sanatana dharma simultaneously serve and diverge from
pan-​Indian and nationalist ones. The discourse surrounding the “eternal re-
ligion” incorporates certain notions and dispositions that circulate widely—​
for example, Hinduism’s status as the very best religion, and Islam’s relative
intolerance—​though these are not the notions most central to the local def-
inition of sanatana dharma. For that, we might go back to Sandeep’s state-
ment earlier: “sanatana dharma is the oneness of it all.” Moreover, there are
also features that fit Pushkar uniquely, such as how locals regard the lake’s
water as a form of divine power without religious boundaries, or how the
town manages to gather people from all across the world. Ideas like this are
predicated upon both hyper-​locality and a self-​conscious extension beyond
the Hindu nation. As such, to write this off as Hindu nationalist sentiment—​
therefore closing off the possibility of a genuine project toward tolerance—​is
to take suspicion as the only hermeneutic. But what about sympathy?73

Conclusion: Others into Brothers

By now, it should be apparent that the discourse of sanatana dharma in

Pushkar is complex:  it is partially a remnant of 19th-​century orthodoxy-​
cum-​nationalism; a good deal sounds like Vivekananda but with contempo-
rary pop cultural flourishes; it is mostly Hindu but shares features with South
Asian Islam; it caters to tourism but is not necessarily of it; it calls upon global
discourses but makes them local. And yet, given this muddled pedigree, in
50  Guest Is God

Pushkar the “eternal religion” is indicative of an effort toward creating a uni-

versal brotherhood. It is this particular process—​what I call “brothering”—​
that I  have wanted to highlight. The larger trajectory or actual efficacy of
brothering is still hard to tell, but some of its failures will be highlighted in the
third chapter. What we do know is that turning an “other” into a “brother”
requires far more than mere recognition, but the repeated articulation and
circulation of these ideas. This is something that Pushkar locals do very well.
Issues of economic interest and political leanings necessarily have an ef-
fect, but I hope to have shown that relying on an argument that too readily
highlights the impact of tourism, or the political nature of a term, can blanket
over important nuances. Within the academy, where postcolonial critique
looks to domination and imperialism—​and often does so quite effectively—​
Pushkar’s brand of sanatana dharma stirs a certain skepticism. But here,
I would also like to take seriously the possibility of brothering. However diffi-
cult it may be, and however imperfectly we deal with the differences between
us, the people of Pushkar try to see brothers where many see others.
I want to conclude the chapter with a somewhat personal story about an
instance of being quite literally brothered. Let me set the scene: In 2010, at
the beginning of one of my stints in Pushkar, I set out to buy a SIM card
for my phone. I  made my way down the alley from my hotel and toward
Pushkar’s biggest bus stand, a field of sun and dust walled in by little shops.
I found the phone store and began signing forms, all in triplicate, while cu-
rious onlookers sat nearby. One man, in his forties with a well-​trimmed
mustache and wearing a white kurta pajama common to brahmans by the
lake, seemed to muster up the collective courage of his friends and bluntly
asked, “Who are you?” I answered with something like “Hi, I’m an American
doing research on religion in Pushkar,” and his simple reply—​which I still
remember—​was “I will help you.”
I initially figured that my relationship with this mustachioed man, whom
I later came to know as Ashok, would end after a puja by the lake. I had met
many a Pushkar priest in earlier trips to town, and often discovered bright
smiles and a bossy demeanor to coincide with little more than the lightening
of my wallet. But I chose to quash my cynicism and reinvigorate some degree
of trust in the goodness of others. The day after my phone adventure, Ashok
did take me to the lake for a puja; it was what he considered the best way to
get blessings from Brahma for success in my fieldwork. After the ritual, he
rejected my cash donation and instead invited me to his home for lunch. We
walked slowly through the back alleys of town, Ashok’s gait hindered by a
 Others and Brothers  51

leg that was weakened from having polio as a child. When we reached his
home, lunch was being prepared by his wife, Madhu, who was finishing up by
smearing ghee on freshly cooked chapatis.
That was the first of many meals I would eat at Ashok and Madhu’s house.
In time, invitations to come over were no longer needed; on the contrary,
it became expected that I would simply be there, every day, around noon.
And I agreed, knowing that both good company and delicious Rajasthani
food were waiting for me. When I returned to Pushkar two years later, in
2012, Ashok had taken to eating later in the afternoon or by the ghats, but
Madhu maintained that I  should continue to have lunch with her. While
she cooked, we would chat about where I wandered or whom I interviewed.
Afterwards, and when her two children came home from school, we would
all play Connect Four. Trying to work within the confines of Pushkar’s con-
servative norms, where men and women do not socialize without being
family members, Madhu eventually decided that she would become my big
sister—​my didi—​and I her little brother—​her chota bhai. On November 15,
2012, during the festival bhai duj or “brother’s second,” Madhu became my
sister. She fed me sweets and applied a tilak to my forehead; I gave her a deco-
rated envelope with a few hundred rupees in it, and voila: family!
Now, on the one hand, I know that this set of circumstances is not what
most locals envision when they talk about sanatana dharma or recite phrases
about being brothers with people of other religious communities. Yet, what
better example of brothering than one in which two people, separated by
so much, come to consider each other kin? Brothering has a power to cut
through social mores toward a different horizon of belonging. And in the
end, it was Madhu who made it a reality.
 2
Making Pushkar Paradise

May the water of the Puskara lake purify you—​the water which is
clean; which is clear like the moon; in which foam is produced by the
commotion of elephants’ trunks and of crocodiles; which is frequented
by the chief Brahmanas engaged in the (observance of) vows and
restraints for the realization of Brahman; which is sanctified by the
sight of Brahma.
—​Padma Purana1

Nearly every priest and tour guide will tell you that “Pushkar” is the name
of neither a town nor a temple, but of the lake itself.2 According to the story
told on the ghats every day, when the world was newly made and bright and
shining, Brahma set out to declare for himself a special abode. At the sugges-
tion of Vishnu, Brahma took a lotus into his hand and dropped it from the
heavens. The lotus fell into three pieces, and where the petals touched the earth,
water sprang up to form three lakes; the largest became the place we now call
Pushkar.3 Said to be derived from the Sanskrit words for “flower” (pushpa) and
“hand” (kara), the very word Pushkar orients the listener toward the lake and
its mythic beginning.4 And while we will hear more of Brahma’s story later,
for now it will suffice to say that Pushkar—​proudly called Pushkar-​raj (King
Pushkar) by locals—​is a body of water.5 This fact is animated in the practice of
everyday life, where a pilgrim’s reason for coming to the town hinges upon a
number of ritual activities involving the lake, such as worship (puja), bathing
(snan), alms giving (dan), and circumambulation (parikrama).6 These ac-
tivities and their relative efficacy are predicated upon the belief that the lake
possesses incredible curative, wish-​granting, and sometimes salvific powers.
At the same time, Pushkar’s popularity—​and the attendant pressures of
pilgrimage and tourism—​have greatly contributed to the environmental
degradation that it now faces. It is far from “clean” and “clear like the moon,”
as in the epigraph quoted above. In fact, the lake’s physical condition poses
one of the most significant threats to Pushkar being the heavenly place for
which so many strive. This chapter looks to Pushkar-​raj, the lake as imagined

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
 Making Pushkar Paradise  53

Figure 2.1.  “Holy Lake and Town of Poshkur,” sketched by Charles Richard

Francis (1848).

and lived, and the local effort to keep it clean. In addition to circumambu-
lation, custodians of the lake engage in a number of activities: they collect
trash, they fulfill their dharma by feeding animals, and they “farm for karma.”
Following the work of Catherine Bell, I think about these activities—​their
imbrication and interweaving—​as an instance of ritualization. Through this
lens, I will argue that caring for the lake is both an activity born out of the un-
derstanding that Pushkar is paradise, and also one which simultaneously sets
paradise in the making. As with so many experiences in Pushkar, this chapter
takes the form of a tour. Walking along the lake, I not only pick up trash but
also stories and opinions, quotations and observations. Like a dervish’s hem-
line, the conversation will at times billow out beyond the center—​beyond the
lake or the ethnographic moment—​eventually to settle back where it started.
And like any circumambulation, the goal is to finish at the beginning but
with greater insight and a little satisfaction.7

A Lakeside Pamphlet

Mukesh had invited me a week earlier to join his cleaning group, but this
day was the first I managed to weave my way through the bazaar and make
54  Guest Is God

it down to Brahm Ghat in time. I even got there with a few minutes to spare,
and chai was to be had. I found a small corner of shade at a concrete bench
next to Pradeep’s supply stall. One of several stalls set up around the lake,
Pradeep’s little shop provides the materials for religious services (Figure 2.2).
After pilgrims pay for a puja, they are given a plastic goodie bag with prasad,
red string for protective bracelets, a framed picture of Brahma on the lake, and
small pamphlet called the Pushkar Mahatmya (“The Greatness of Pushkar”).
Perhaps more than anything else, the Pushkar Mahatmya serves as the
town’s primary religious text, especially in terms of accessibility and cir-
culation.8 It is published by two local presses—​the Bhakti Gyan Mandir
and Prakash Puja Store—​and made available in Hindi, English, Gujarati,
Marathi, and Bengali. The pamphlet is a vernacular rendering of a
Sanskrit text with basically the same title—​ Pushkara-​Mahatmya—​the
latter boasting a more ancient provenance.9 Most fundamentally, the
Mahatmya narrates the tale of Brahma’s ritual sacrifice at the lake. Today’s
vernacular version narrates the same tale, though it also contains decid-
edly modern features; the pamphlet, called Pushkar Guide in the English

Figure 2.2.  A supply stall on Brahm Ghat.

 Making Pushkar Paradise  55

edition, not only mentions the major legends about Brahma and Pushkar
but also contains rules for tourists, information on famous temples, and
folk stories about the lake.10 It includes historical accounts, though it does
not necessarily strive for historical accuracy. Instead, the text works almost
entirely toward one discernable argument: Pushkar is the best!11 More spe-
cifically, these stories and mythological references, which are read widely,
confer authority upon the town as a center of memorable and miraculous
happenings.
Michel de Certeau speaks of stories as “spatial trajectories”: “every day,
they traverse and organize places; they select and link them together; they
make sentences and itineraries about them.”12 In this sense, visiting Pushkar
and returning home with a pamphlet in hand—​sharing these stories with
family and friends—​is an act of remembrance that constructs a kind of
mental religious geography with the lake at its center.13 Even with the under-
standing that many a Mahatmya is fated for the trash bin, these pamphlets
form an important part of the pilgrimage network that extends outside the
town. What’s more, the Mahatmyas leave a literal paper trail. They act as little
envoys from the lake, scattering a material presence across the country and
orienting an ever-​expanding area toward Pushkar.
The stories that circulate along with the pamphlet throughout Pushkar
and beyond often take on the appearance of a “who’s who” of the epic
world: “Lord Ram came here!” “So did the Pandav brothers!” Such mytho-
logical stories by and large dominate the Mahatmya, but for now I will re-
count a different type of tale found in the pamphlet. This is a story about
Narhar Rao, the king of Mandore (a town in central Rajasthan), who vis-
ited Pushkar in the 9th century ce and commissioned a number of ghats and
temples there.14 The historical record provides scant additional detail, but
the Mahatmya version adds a generous helping of masala, dramatizing Rao’s
visit as the rediscovery of Pushkar after ages of forgotten wildness.15 With
this story in particular, the Mahatmya expands its narrative reach; no longer
situated in the epic world—​where gods and heroes roam—​Rao’s tale conjures
images of a still-​magical Pushkar, but one for everyone, accessible to the likes
of pilgrims, camel herders, and even tourists.16
It begins with our king, Narhar Rao, a righteous leader suffering from lep-
rosy. Desiring an end to his affliction, the king prays to the goddess (devi
mata): “end my life or give me the cure!” The goddess answers her devotee,
appearing to him in a dream and telling him that he will find relief near the
Pushkar forest. By that time, we are told, Pushkar’s lake had slowly gone
56  Guest Is God

underground and become hidden in a forest. So the king sets off by himself.
It’s summer time in Rajasthan, and as the king finally reaches his destina-
tion, the heat brings him quite literally to his knees. Sitting in the mud and
desperate, he drinks from a pool of water no bigger than the hoof of a cow.
A peace passes over the king as he drinks from his cupped hands, and he
sees his leprous fingers heal. He realizes now that the water is magical and
curative—​as the goddess had promised—​so he bathes from the tiny puddle.
The king, now healthy, goes back home and gathers his men. He returns to
the forest and, with the full force of kingly power and authority, excavates
a lake out of the tiny puddle. Pushkar, which had been part of the ancient
world and somehow forgotten, is newly discovered. Thus, although un-
doubtedly created by the hands of Brahma, the lake of today is what it is be-
cause of Narhar Rao. Locals may speak more regularly of other, more “epic”
figures and their wanderings in Pushkar, but for me, the human element as
described in this story most fully illustrates the idea that everyone can access
the wonders of Brahma’s abode.17 Also contained in Rao’s story is an impli-
cation of something else altogether—​of a Pushkar lake that, however divine,
can be worked upon and molded by human hands.

Scum, Silt, Pollution

“Take your shoes off and follow me!” Mukesh wrested me from my bench
and my chai. Together, we descended the broad marble steps of Brahm Ghat,
where the rest of our group stood ready: eight men in total, mostly brahman
and mostly between the age of thirty and fifty; all were barefoot, some car-
rying makeshift sticks and nets fashioned like pool-​cleaners, others with
large bags made out of sturdy woven plastic. One man carried a package of
sliced white bread. Was this a late-​afternoon snack? Too embarrassed to ask,
I rolled up my pant legs and bobbled my head in readiness. We walked to the
water, which, because of insufficient rains, had receded about 50 feet from
the descending steps and exposed the concrete platform between marble
and lake. The shore was littered with trash: wet and worn clothes discarded
after a holy dip; empty packages of hair oil and pan, potato chips and cookies;
paper plates that once held seed for feeding pigeons; old puja bracelets made
of string, broken off and then replaced; and dozens of coconuts offered in de-
votion to the lake. As the team’s novice, I was given the cushy job of holding
the “coconut-​only” bag, which at the end of the day would make its way to a
 Making Pushkar Paradise  57

sadhu who uses the coconuts for his fire. Two pairs broke off from the group
to clean the water itself, one skimming the surface with a pool-​cleaner while
the other held a bag. What came out of the lake possessed a vast range of qual-
ities, from recognizable and sometimes beautiful—​for example, bunches of
brilliant pink rose petals recently offered to the lake—​to completely unrecog-
nizable and decidedly less pleasant. The latter category was much larger than
the former, and included a variety of rotten organic items mixed with paper
and plastic. The bags filled quickly.
Like many bodies of water in India, Pushkar Lake has faced a number
of environmental problems over the past several decades. Aldous Huxley
hinted at such issues when he visited Pushkar in the 1920s and mentioned
how “the holiest waters in India” were “mantled with a green and brilliant
scum.”18 Unfortunately, the lake’s condition only worsened with the town’s
increased popularity. In the 1980s the growing tourism industry, coupled
with bad plumbing and lax regulation, led to effluents being dumped in the
lake.19 By 1997, the Rajasthan Pollution Control Board declared Pushkar
to be the “worst polluted water reservoir” in the state.20 Unfortunately,
Pushkar’s fragile ecosystem is such that even without considerations of
actively dumping waste, excess silting poses a threat. Improper farming
techniques and loss of vegetation from deforestation lead to erosive soil,
which is then carried into the Pushkar basin by monsoon rains. This silt ei-
ther settles as mud on the lake floor, where it limits the capacity of the basin
to hold water—​thus diminishing the overall health of the lake—​or remains
suspended as particulate matter that impedes the flourishing of plant and
animal life. Another significant factor is the matter produced from religious
rituals: flowers, rice, and milk from pujas, and bones and ashes from funeral
ceremonies.21 On top of that, the situation is made even more dire by addi-
tional trash dropped unceremoniously at the lake’s shore.
In the summer of 2007, with the Rajasthani heat at fearsomely high
levels and the rains proving meager, the water level of Pushkar Lake
dropped too low and fish began to die by the hundreds. Angry residents
held demonstrations at the local municipal office in Jaipur, throwing dead
fish into the chairperson’s office.22 In February 2008, the Indian Ministry of
Environment and Forests incorporated Pushkar Lake into its National Lake
Conservation Plan. Still, the government’s response to the problem was too
late, too slow, and not enough. Half a year later, in September 2008, the lake’s
water had become so toxic and so deprived of oxygen that the thousands of
fish that used to nibble on toes and prasad choked to death; based on what
58  Guest Is God

I  can tell from people’s stories and the aftermath recorded in the media,
nearly all of the fish died.23 The smell pervaded the whole town. And the lake,
which had been a source of both income and devotional inspiration, had to
be dredged, desilted, and drained until it was literally all dried up.
There’s more still. The government’s subsequent effort toward desilting
resulted in damage to the lake’s natural sedimentation layer, the fragile mem-
brane that prevents water from seeping into the desert earth. This means that
the dredging and desilting undertaken with the intention of increasing the
capacity of the lake to hold fresh water instead resulted in the lake being un-
able to maintain its water level even with new rainfall. Fortunately, pilgrims
could still perform lakeside rituals at separate pool-​sized water tanks next
to a few of Pushkar’s more famous ghats. Since the 1970s, when the govern-
ment commissioned the tanks, pilgrims have been able to bathe and per-
form desired rituals even in the worst of droughts. Still, for a period of years
the lake itself was little more than what one collaborator called a “cricket
field.” And when the water finally returned, so did pollution. In the summer
of 2011, monsoon rains helped to replenish the lake but carried with them
“drain water” from overflowing sewage lines.24 While that incident was re-
solved (after priests had threatened to strike, and municipal authorities
eventually attended to the clean-​up), it remains nearly impossible to control
runoff water when sewer drains are open, as is often the case in Pushkar.
On a positive note, brahmans working by the lake have begun to insti-
tute stricter policies with regard to pujas and other religious functions. Many
now try to perform ceremonies in the tanks, which can be emptied with rela-
tive ease and without compromising the health of the lake. Previously, it was
common practice to use the lake as a repository for broken statues of gods
and goddesses, as well as for temporary ones used in certain festivals, but this
has proved especially harmful since many statues are decorated with toxic
paints. Although some people may still do this, it is generally frowned upon.
In addition, primary schools have worked to educate their students on the
value of environmentalism; at the many processions that mark Pushkar’s hol-
iday schedule, children can often be seen holding brooms and wearing signs
that call for a clean and green town. At one such procession during Pushkar’s
annual camel fair, school children marched with slogans printed on flimsy
paper taped to their backs (Figure 2.3): “Dispose Wastage Only in Dustbin”;
“Keep the Holy Pushkar Holy & Clean”; “God Gave Us Green, Now Let’s
Keep It Clean.” A personal favorite was a Hindi couplet: “ma ki mamta per
ka dan, donon karte jan kalyan” (the affection of a mother, the gift of a tree;
 Making Pushkar Paradise  59

Figure 2.3.  School children marching in Pushkar.

both promote human welfare). If children can take these messages to heart—​
rather than merely have them slapped on their backs—​we can hope for a new
generation of environmental awareness.
Unfortunately, the presence of trash has remained troublingly visible on
the ghats and in the water by the shore. Locals know well that the lake needs
care and protection, but it has proved untenable to change the habits of the
thousands of pilgrims who every day arrive at the lake, bathe, discard their
trash, and leave their old clothes. After years of seeing the machinations of
government bureaucracy fail to help the lake, a few priests and volunteers
took up the task as their own. In December 2012, they formed a group that
would meet every day around 5:30 in the evening, tasked with the duty of
cleaning the lake and its shore.

Hindu Environmentalism

Given the varying historical, geographical, and sociological contexts that

delineate a society’s response to environmental degradation, it should
come as little surprise that the term environmentalism itself carries diverse
60  Guest Is God

connotations.25 This range of meanings allows us to take a broad approach

toward developing a sense of what environmentalism means in India without
being hamstrung by debates about whether or not the term is a Western con-
struct. This is a claim, anyway, which strikes me as itself quite Orientalist, as
if people from “elsewhere” are somehow incapable of having a considered
and engaged relationship with the world around them.26 Still, Christopher
Chapple notes an important cultural particularity of the Indian con-
text: “Whereas in the American context, the early rallying cry for environ-
mental action came from scientists and social activists with theologians only
taking interest in this issue of late, in India, from the outset, there has been
an appeal to traditional religious sensibilities in support of environmental
issues.”27 From this, we might ask a number of questions: Is this “appeal to
traditional religious sensibilities” sufficient to label a certain kind of Indian
environmentalism as “Hindu”? What might it take to make a “Hindu envi-
ronmentalism”? Belief? Cosmology? Ritual? Is there, indeed, such a thing as
“Hindu environmentalism”? If so, what are its contours?
Such questions are hard to answer, in part, because isolating a single
Hindu environmentalism is as likely as identifying a monolithic Hinduism.
As with the religion itself, there are multiple Hindu environmentalisms.
Compounding the confusion even further is what I might call a “subjects
and texts” problem, which is to say, just because certain Hindu texts extol
a potentially ecological perspective does not mean that subjects within that
tradition (i.e., Hindus) behave in an ecologically sound manner. Regarding
texts, we do have evidence from early on—​as early, in fact, as the Vedas—​
of a religious culture intimately connected with the forces of nature. Vedic
hymns exalt a number of nature-​based deities, such as Agni for fire, Varuna
for water, and Prithvi for earth. Similarly, the Samkhya tradition holds five
primary elements—​earth, water, fire, air, and space—​as constitutive of the
material world. The following passage from the Mahabharata portrays these
elements as inextricably intertwined with divinity:

The Lord, the sustainer [of] all beings, revealed the sky.

From space came water and, from water, fire and the winds.
From the mixture of the essence of fire and wind arose the earth.
Mountains are his bones, earth his flesh, the ocean his blood.
The sky is his abdomen, air his breath, fire his heat, rivers his nerves.
The sun and moon, which are called Agni and Soma, are the eyes of
Brahman.
 Making Pushkar Paradise  61

The upper part of the sky is his head.

The earth is his feet and the directions are his hands28

From this, we get a sense of complex interconnectivity, not only between the
elements and God but also between these two things and the human expe-
rience of physical reality. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether
any of this necessitates environmental action. Today, few indeed call upon
the Vedas for ecological inspiration or consult the Mahabharata on the na-
ture of Nature. Beyond those texts that promote an ecological worldview—​
which, as we know, do not represent the totality of Hindu thinking on the
subject29—​we need to explore the ways in which environmentalism is actu-
ally practiced.
Looking to sacred groves will help us in our exploration, and especially in
terms of the devotional character of lived environmentalism. Sacred groves
are forest shrines or wooded areas presided over by a deity. The protection
that the deity offers to the sacred grove’s vegetation is—​or is supposed to be—​
“quite absolute.”30 Stories play their part in reinforcing the rules of protection,
stories of modern-​day wrongs committed against the forest, and retribution
paid in full. For example, Gadgil and Vartak tell a tale of worshippers in a
Maharashtrian grove who wanted to construct a temple for their deity. The
devotees foolishly decided to fell a tree from within the grove for timber, and
when the tree came down, it crushed three lumberjacks to death.31 Gold and
Gujar recount a similar story, told to them in the late 1980s, though here the
perpetrator is an agent of development:

About twenty years ago when the Kota-​Chittor road was being built, the
path ran right through the bani [forest] of a Dev Narayanji [a Rajasthani
folk deity] in Ladpura. When the PWD (Public Works Department) over-
seer gave the order to cut down trees within Dev Narayan’s bani, then all
the village people told the laborers that it was forbidden to do this. They
said: “If you cut the trees in this bani, then Dev Narayan will get angry, and
sin (dos) will result.”
But the overseer didn’t accept their advice. He and his companions chal-
lenged the strength of this god. The roller-​machine was standing on a slope,
and all of a sudden it started to go, and three men were knocked down and
they died. After that, they all asked forgiveness, and they held an offering-​
feast (savamani) right there. As many trees as they had cut, they feasted that
many Brahmans.32
62  Guest Is God

The message of the narrative seems clear: hurt a tree, and get crushed by
something massive. This is the will of the gods. The deity itself “commands
the moral force” behind preservation33; No NGO or government reg-
ulation has that power. As such, this is an environmentalism enacted
by humans—​devotees, even—​but bolstered by the authority of Hindu
divinity.34
The issue of water flows in a different direction. One of the more troubling
challenges to environmentalism in India, and more specifically the mainte-
nance of holy rivers and lakes, is the insistence on divine purity even in the
face of physical pollution. In her work on the Ganges, Kelly Alley discusses
the rhetorical moves required of pandits in Banaras when they argue that
the river is materially unclean and yet simultaneously pure in a transcendent
sense.35 David Haberman sees a similar phenomenon on the banks of the
deeply-​polluted Yamuna, where a boatman explained that “Yamuna-​ji is
never polluted” because “her water is pure [shuddha].”36 Again, these pandits
and boatmen see the trash and smell the effluents; that is a reality they recog-
nize. But at the same time they believe that the filth, almost like oil in water,
cannot corrupt what is fundamentally and spiritually pure, what will always
be pure. It is a compelling idea in terms of theology, but in practice leaves
much to be desired. Alley notes how certain Banaras residents “passively ac-
cept the conditions of gandagi [dirtiness] by pointing to Ganga’s own power
to solve the problem.”37 Elsewhere, Alley shows how religious leaders address
the Ganga’s environmental issues with a strict separation between religion
and science, claiming that “practitioners of each profession have their own
rights and duties that must be appreciated and protected.”38 In other words,
Hindu leaders maintain their right to ignore the materiality of pollution in
the Ganges because they attend to the spiritual realm of Ganga, the mother
goddess. The outcome is a fatalism framed in devotion and often resulting in
inaction.
Sensing how such a worldview compromises the possibility of a ro-
bust Indian environmentalism, Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma
Gandhi, published a Hindustan Times editorial in 2000 about the options for
moving forward:

In India, rivers and mountains are gods and goddesses to us. This sounds
wonderful, and even an improvement on the idea of living in and living
with nature. Yet our attitude contains a fatal flaw. For gods are self-​sufficient.
They have miraculous powers. They will cleanse themselves and their
 Making Pushkar Paradise  63

surroundings. We don’t have to keep them clean. It is they who will clean us
and purify us. Meanwhile, we can pour and spread our waste onto them . . .
So what is the solution? It is to make our mountains, seas, rivers, cows,
and even Mother India herself a little less divine. To see them as human,
vulnerable and in need of help, so that they arouse our pity and our care.39

In Pushkar, the idea of seeing the lake as “a little less divine” is simply not an
option; the very identity of the town, particularly for Hindus living there,
is fundamentally predicated upon the lake’s divinity. Thus, as in Banaras,
many would agree that Pushkar-​raj maintains its transcendent and purifying
powers regardless of material pollution. Yet, fortunately, the idea of ignoring
the lake’s environmental issues smacks of gross negligence. This is because,
as one collaborator put it, “we no longer live in the satyug,” when Brahma
himself would clean the lake with a flick of the wrist. Indeed, contrary to
Gandhi’s assertion above, the gods will not always provide aid—​not in this
kaliyug, this degraded age.40 Such a claim attempts to answer the paradox
placed before us: on the one hand a heartfelt conviction that Pushkar is a
place of divine creation and power, and on the other, the need to participate
in its preservation—​we might say its re-​creation. As Lutgendorf argues, the
kaliyug works as a metaphor for “the human condition, an expression of the
inevitability of vitiation and decline and of the unending battle to retain pu-
rity and potency.”41 This battle, then, is not fought in the divine realm; locals
argue that it is they themselves who need to take responsibility for both their
own well-​being and that of the lake.
Given the devotional attitude with which locals approach Pushkar-​raj,
it should come as no surprise that cleaning the lake is far more meaningful
than picking up an empty bottle from the side of the road. Not only is this
environmentalism framed in a religious vocabulary, but as we will see, it
involves a range of ritual activities that are themselves integral to fulfilling
one’s duty as a Hindu. Said differently, more than being merely inspired by
Hindu cosmologies or attitudes or “sensibilities,” caring for the lake becomes
a positively Hindu act—​and an important one at that.

Ritualization and the Sacred

We walked along the shore clockwise, keeping the lake to our right. Unlike
the government workers who are intermittently hired to clean specific ghats,
64  Guest Is God

and who tend to wander back and forth in the course of cleaning, this group
is almost always moving in one direction. Locals and visitors circumam-
bulate the lake for a number of reasons, including auspicious ritual, photo
opportunities, and exercise. As such, when Mukesh and his friends first
discussed the formation of this group, it was always with the explicit inten-
tion of coupling circumambulation with the activity of cleaning. They put
the two together and made something new. In fact, it is exactly this kind of
conjoining—​of yoking environmentalism to other activities considered “re-
ligious” or “sacred”—​that sets in motion what Catherine Bell calls rituali-
zation.42 We will need to leave the borders of Pushkar for greater clarity on
what I mean by this.
In Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Bell interrogates the idea of ritual from
a number of angles. Most plainly, her work adds to a growing body of liter-
ature that notes the difficulty of defining ritual.43 She explains that oft-​cited
characteristics such as formality, fixity, and repetition are common but not
intrinsic to ritual. In addition and far more ambitiously, Bell argues that the
discourse of ritual as circulated in anthropological scholarship is predicated
upon the surgical separation of thought and action. In such a model, ritual is
action and belief is thought; one is observable, the other is not. At the same
time, ritual comes to stand as a third category, the analytical mechanism
mediating thought and action—​a kind of key to unlocking a culture’s secrets.
Bell contends that such a situation is paradoxical; ritual cannot serve as the
“action” side of the dichotomy while simultaneously being its mediator. After
discarding the idea of “ritual” for these reasons and more, Bell offers an alter-
native approach in the notion of “ritualization.” Here is her description:

In a very preliminary sense, ritualization is a way of acting that is designed

and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in com-
parison to other, usually more quotidian, activities. As such, ritualization
is a matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting some activ-
ities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction
between the “sacred” and the “profane,” and for ascribing such distinctions
to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors.44

It is difficult to grasp exactly how “ritualization” alleviates the many problems

associated with “ritual,” but I see in Bell’s intervention at least two impor-
tant points. First, she alludes to the concept of “strategies.” Influenced by
the work of Pierre Bourdieu,45 Bell understands “strategies” to be modes
 Making Pushkar Paradise  65

of practice that are “structured” by particular discourses and yet simulta-

neously “structuring”—​that is, fashioning or creating—​certain features of
that discourse. These strategic practices “set activities off from others,” and
produce distinctions in the doing. The emphasis on process and production
is equally noteworthy in the second point, where Bell’s shift from ritual-​as-​
thing to ritualization-​as-​process emphasizes the fluidity and contingency of
calling something “sacred.”
Let me return us to a quote I  referenced in the book’s introduction, in
which Jonathan Z. Smith explains the relationship between ritual and “the
sacred”:

We do well to remember that long before “the Sacred” appeared in dis-

course as a substantive (a usage that does not antedate Durkheim), it was
primarily employed in verbal forms, most especially with the sense of
making an individual a king or bishop (as in the obsolete English verbs to
sacrate or to sacre), or in the adjectival forms denoting the result of the pro-
cess of sacration. Ritual is not an expression of or a response to “the Sacred”;
rather, someone or something is made sacred by ritual (the primary sense
of sacrificium).46

In 1939, Roger Caillois called the sacred a “category of feeling,” but perhaps in
the more practice-​oriented context of Jonathan Z. Smith and Catherine Bell
we can call it a “category of action.”47 As such, I suggest that by combining this
fluid sense of sacred-​making with the idea of ritualization—​and by looking
to Bell and Bourdieu’s understanding of practice as being both “structured”
and “structuring”—​we can see that the activities involved in the cleaning of
Pushkar Lake are both generated out of a certain reverence and purposeful-
ness toward sacred places (i.e., the lake) and simultaneously generate those
very same qualities. As mentioned earlier, this means that cleaning the lake is
an activity born out of the understanding that Pushkar is paradise, and also
an activity that simultaneously sets paradise in the making. Cleaning the lake
is not a sacred act only because the lake is itself sacred, but because it is an
activity accompanied by a complex process of ritualization that establishes
particular cues of devotion. This happens when we take off our shoes be-
fore reaching the lake, or when we walk around it clockwise in the auspicious
direction; these gestures show deference and simultaneously reproduce it.
Moreover, this goes to show that such lofty enterprises as the “construction of
sacred space” are composed not of grand gestures or massive undertakings,
66  Guest Is God

but of persistent efforts and quotidian triumphs. Similarly, this chapter tries
to illustrate how largely academic concepts—​like sacred space, Hindu envi-
ronmentalism, and ritualization—​can find expression where bare feet hit the
pavement.

The Concrete Jungle

Moving on in our circumambulation, we came across the first of four ar-

tificial trees that line the lake. Twenty feet tall, made of concrete overlaid
with clay and brown paint, the “trees” serve as a powerful referent for the
inefficiencies of the government (Figure 2.4). They were erected as part of
the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests’ effort toward restoring
the lake and its environs. Some say that the trees were meant to provide a
resting place for Pushkar’s many pigeons, but the birds seem wary of the
concrete monstrosities. And with the too-​heavy price tag of five lakh per
tree (~$7,000), the local assumption is that a government official—​maybe
a few—​somehow managed to line their pockets on this particular project.
The overall disappointment regarding the trees is especially keen because
Rajasthan’s deforestation has been so rapid and so thorough. “Why couldn’t
they plant real trees?” is a very common refrain, and one that highlights a
trust long broken between the government and its people. At the same time,
the imitation vegetation and the symbol it carries galvanizes Mukesh’s group
toward increased action; it makes them redouble their efforts in reclaiming
their agency over the future of Pushkar.
At a particularly stagnant corner of the lake, one member of the group
removed a plastic bag from the water and threw it to the shore. As the water
drained out, so did a number of tiny fish. Three men were on their knees in
an instant, faces seven inches from the ground, gathering the fish and putting
them back into the water. Integral to Pushkar’s status as a holy place is that
the people in it hold a reverence for all life. The town is strictly vegetarian—​
including no eggs—​and the slaughtering of any animal is forbidden.48
Human–​animal interactions are both common and significant, held as an
opportunity to expand the parameters of religion beyond the relationship
between humans and gods. To see ourselves bound up in animal lives pushes
us toward a new vision of the universe, not as a “collection of objects” but
as, in the famous words of Thomas Berry, a “communion of subjects.”49
Through such a lens, animals too can participate in realms of religion. And
 Making Pushkar Paradise  67

in Pushkar, the fact that animals can participate in the religious lives of the
town’s inhabitants is clearest on the shores of the lake.
Of the fauna around Pushkar, the most interesting with regard to human–​
animal interaction is the Indian mugger crocodile, Crocodylus palustris,
otherwise known as the magar (Sanskrit: makara). In the 19th century, co-
lonial writers seemed to take particular interest in Pushkar’s injunction
against hunting crocodiles. The Rajputana Gazetteer of 1879 details one such
incident:

According to ancient charters, no living thing is allowed to be put to death

within the limits of Pushkar. A short time ago an English officer fired a rifle
at an alligator50 in the lake; the whole population immediately became
much excited, petitions were poured in, and it was with difficulty that the
Brahmans could be pacified. The uproar was probably owing as much to
jealousy of their invaded privileges as to any feeling connected with the
sanctity of animal life; but the latter feeling is not confined to the Brahmans
at Pushkar, and all the mercantile classes of the district, being of the Jain
persuasion, are exceedingly tender of life.51

Figure 2.4.  A concrete tree on the ghats at Pushkar lake.

68  Guest Is God

In an article published in 1881 on “Religious Fairs in India,” William

Knighton speaks at length about Pushkar, telling another fascinating story
about the death of a crocodile and following a similar trope. The story may
actually refer to the same event as the one from the Rajputana Gazetteer
above—​the two publications are only a few years apart—​though it offers new
details:

Most of the visitors in the early morning passed to the bathing place, and yet
the lake abounds with crocodiles. Accidents are not numerous of course,
but they do sometimes occur. A few years ago a young girl was seized by one
of these crocodiles whilst immersed in the lake. A European passing at the
time with a loaded revolver saw the struggle, fired at the crocodile before
he could secure his victim, shot him in both eyes, and thus saved the poor
girl from death. The natives were very angry that a sacred muggur (croco-
dile) should have been thus treated, for all the crocodiles in Pokur lake are
sacred! They mobbed the European, and would have dealt more severely
with him but for fear; so he was dragged to the nearest magistrate, and ac-
cused of wantonly violating their religious feelings. The magistrate saw the
section in the Penal Code before his eyes under which punishment should
be inflicted for wantonly offending the religious feelings of the natives. “But
where is the dead muggur?” he asked. Nobody knew. “I cannot condemn
this man,” said he, “unless I see the dead muggur.” As the uncles, aunts, the
parents, cousins, and friends of the deceased had probably already disposed
of him, it would not have been easy to produce the dead animal, and on that
shallow pretence, by way of subterfuge, the case was dismissed. The natives
were satisfied. The magistrate knew their little peculiarities.52

Despite the condescension of the above passages, crocodiles actually do

make their way into Pushkar’s present-​day discourse. I say “discourse” be-
cause, as one might expect, there are no longer any living crocodiles in or
around the town. And I say “living” because there are in fact two taxidermied
crocodiles on display only a hundred or so meters from the first of the
fake trees in our concrete jungle. Enclosed behind steel bars and covered
by a stone archway between the lake and the main bazaar road, the dusty
crocodiles conjure an image no ethnographer could possibly imagine. They
are inexplicably stacked—​a small magar on top of a larger one—​and when-
ever I asked locals about the curious situation of two preserved crocodiles by
 Making Pushkar Paradise  69

the lake, the response was little more than a shrug followed by recognition of
the fact that, yes, there are two long-​dead crocodiles by the lake.
Still, the cultural memory of Pushkar-​raj inhabited by crocodiles is fairly
pervasive. Madhu, my Pushkar sister mentioned in the first chapter, once
remarked that the lake was less pure than it used to be. I asked why, and she
explained that long ago, a British man killed a crocodile there; its blood was
worse than a simple pollutant, carrying with it the trace of death. The lake,
she thought, could never recover from such an incident. My friend Sandeep
exhibited a similar sense of loss, albeit from a different angle, when we spoke
about a time when the lake was filled with magars:

Sandeep: Before, people used to have respect.

Drew: For crocodiles?
Sandeep: No, for the lake! And why did they respect it? Because of fear [of
crocodiles]! So no one could revel too much, or do dirty things. Now there
is nothing to scare anyone; anyone can go anytime, do anything . . . before
the lake was holy (pavitra). It was a lotus flower.
Drew: So the crocodiles used to protect the lake?
Sandeep: Yes! . . . but people’s idea changed; they pulled out the crocodiles
and put them somewhere else. Now who will protect the lake?

Rather than wholly contradict the 19th-​century passages referenced above—​

which read like some colonial dreamscape where naïve locals prefer death
by crocodile to one being killed—​Sandeep and Madhu’s ideas texture the
conversation in an interesting way. Some in Pushkar do envision a better
time when crocodiles roamed freely; the fact that they are gone is not cause
for celebration. The lake was purer then and commanded more respect—​
because of crocodiles. Perhaps this provides some explanation for our stuffed
magars: they stand watch like relics, urging others to remember a pure and
sacred lake that people once approached with caution and care.
Back on our lake adventure, I passed the mummified magars. My coconut
bag was gaining weight, and the sun struck fiercely even while setting. In
a fit of annoyance, I started to notice the thousands of tiny seeds and corn
kernels jabbing into my feet. Bird seed is a common sight on the ghats, and
small stalls are always stocked with ample supplies for locals or pilgrims who
want to feed pigeons at ten rupees a plate (Figure 2.5).53 Indeed, in addition
to supporting vegetarianism and protecting animals, feeding them is in-
credibly popular. This is especially true on amavasya—​the new moon day
70  Guest Is God

Figure 2.5.  A seller of birdseed by Gau Ghat.

of every lunar month—​when rural pilgrims come in large numbers from all
over Rajasthan. Many consider it an auspicious day to perform auspicious
deeds, ones that include a wide range of activities broadly categorized under
the designation of “dan” (alms giving). Sushila Zeitlyn’s work is very relevant
here, as she focuses on the connections between sacrifice and dan among
Pushkar’s brahman community.54 Her research shows a capacious under-
standing of dan, ranging from clothes and money given to a brahman for his
services, to the gift of a daughter during a wedding ceremony (kanya dan).
Zeitlyn’s analysis, however, stays on the human plane. By paying attention to
the ways in which animals too are part of ritual processes of dan, we come to
understand how religious ecologies relate to, but also expand beyond, human
communities.55
Why feed an animal? As a one-​time resident of New York City, where the
Health Department used to put up park signs reading “feed a pigeon, breed a
rat,” this is a particularly salient question. First of all, locals take quite a liking
to pigeons, even to the extent that several informants expressed their desire to
be reborn as a pigeon in Pushkar. The broader explanation, though, is that dan
is dharma. Fulfilling one’s duty as a Hindu involves, among many other things,
the expansive act of giving. And it is particularly laudable to give to those in
 Making Pushkar Paradise  71

need: the poor, the elderly, and yes, animals. Birds cannot speak; cows cannot
complain. When they suffer, no one knows. On top of that, what if the pigeon
that you ignored or shooed away were actually God? As I was reminded more
than once, God’s form is always changing. So why not a pigeon? And in any
case, humans are animals of a certain kind. As Sandeep explained:

We’re also animals. We’re made of the same stuff, but they [other animals]
don’t have the power to think. We have the power to think and understand.
If you look at an old graph (purana graph), we also were animals. But slowly
we matured—​learned to wear nice clothes, to wash, to eat and drink. If you
go back, we would be that way. We would kill, and act like animals. But then
we learned about what’s good, what’s bad.

While animals may not know what is right, we supposedly do. And we should
demonstrate this knowledge with good deeds. Offering the gift of sustenance
is undoubtedly one of these good deeds, and it is one that provides a moment
of ritualized connection with nonhuman life.
Back at the lake, our group passed the halfway point and came across a
gaggle of geese. The man who had held the bag of white bread, Rishi, opened
it up and distributed a few slices to each member of the group. We threw
them to the geese, who squawked in kind. In reply to each squawk, Rishi and
the others bellowed “Ram.” Chanting the name of Ram acts as a powerful
and auspicious mantra; it is also a greeting, commonly in the form of “Ram-​
Ram,” and usually repeated back by the hearer. I asked Rishi: “Why do you
say ‘Ram’ to those geese?” “Oh,” he said with a crooked smile, “it’s because
they say it to us.” So what to me sounded like “Squawk-​Ram-​Squawk-​Ram-​
Squawk-​Ram,” was something quite different for Rishi and his cohort. The
cleaners have attuned their senses to the extent that while they cannot speak
with geese about the complicated matters of morality, they can break bread
and chant the name of Ram. This, no doubt, qualifies as a communion of
subjects.

Karma Farming

Past the geese, I began to understand the pleasure that so many described
when talking about cleaning the lake. Maza—​a word that more than most
sounds like what it is—​connotes a huge range of fun, from the simple
72  Guest Is God

pleasure of eating spicy food to the existential enjoyment of singing for

God.56 Cleaning Pushkar-​raj may be serious work, but there is always room
for maza. When it struck me, I was walking along with my bag of coconuts; a
swift breeze came over the lake and dried the sweat on my forehead. Smiling
still from the geese, enjoying the air, and feeling good from helping with my
hands—​this was my maza experience. And in this moment of pleasure and
pride, a young man with spiky hair by the name of Tinku looked at me: “You
know,” he said, “we work hard for this karma, but the Gita tells us not to focus
on the fruits of our effort.” Here I was, sweaty and now a little deflated while
a teenager with spiky hair waxed poetic about the Bhagavad Gita. His point,
though, was remarkably clear: if we are to relish this experience—​to have
maza—​we mustn’t be too proud of our accomplishments. It is with a spirit of
selflessness that we should volunteer our labors to the divine.
As something done with no compulsion and requiring only the heart’s
desire, cleaning the lake was considered seva, or service to God.57 Seva
entails the “strict regulation of body and mind,” which subsequently
develops an ethos of “discipline and devotion through routinized, repeated,
and regulated activities.”58 This means that the specific content of the serv­
ice matters less than the mentality with which you approach it.59 Mukesh
even drew a distinction between seva and its translation as “service”: while
service entails a job with particular hours and responsibilities (as in “gov-
ernment service”), seva has absolutely “no limits” (seva ki koi limit nahin
hai). Every day, Mukesh and his group abandon their respective posts and
their clients at around five o’clock, and set out to clean the lake. As seva—​as
something done in devotion to God—​this would more than make up for the
money lost by leaving work early. Money, after all, cannot buy karma; that
you have to farm.
“Look in the main bazaar,” a friend once suggested, “and tell me if you
can find any karma store.” I had wandered extensively in the main bazaar
and was fairly certain that there were, in fact, no stores for buying karma.
“No,” he added before I could answer, “you won’t find one; karma needs to
be farmed.” The phrase most commonly used to express this point is jaisi
karni vaisi bharni, which very closely approximates “what you reap is what
you sow.” The Hindi film Jaisi Karni Vaisi Bharni (1989) had its titular song
begin with the line “jo boyega vahi payega,” that is, “what is sown is what you
will get.” From a mango, you get a mango. Moreover, we humans are the ones
who plant the seeds; we are the karma farmers. If a person can put in the hard
 Making Pushkar Paradise  73

work of being good, then good will come back in kind—​perhaps not now, but
eventually.
The topic of karma is particularly salient in the Mahabharata’s treatment of
Pushkar. The lake features in the Tirthayatraparvan (“The Book of the Tour
of Sacred Fords”), where the sage Pulastya describes at length the benefits of
pilgrimage.60 The sage’s description begins with Pushkar itself, considered
“the beginning of the fords,” a place so potent that “whatever evil a woman
or a man has done since birth is all destroyed by just a bath at Puskara.”61
The capacity to destroy evil karma is an incredibly important and common
feature of pilgrimage places; a tirth cannot, after all, claim to be paradise
without providing an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. At the same time,
the Mahabharata attaches a crucial proviso:

Puskara is hard to reach, austerities in Puskara are hard,

gifts in Puskara are hard, to live there is very hard.62

This couplet—​or a Hindi rendering of it—​was repeated to me by a number

of informants, including my goose-​feeding friend, Rishi. A slightly different
version with an added mention of the difficulty of bathing is printed on the
menu of a well-​known restaurant in Pushkar, as seen in Figure 2.6.
But what exactly does this somewhat imprecise passage mean? We can
place some blame on poetic license: the Sanskrit word pushkaram (Pushkar)
rhymes so nicely with dushkaram (hard/​difficult) that clarity may have been
sacrificed at the altar of beauty. As such, it is understandably challenging
to grasp what words like “hard” or “difficult” are supposed to convey. What
are our options? Well, getting to Pushkar would have been hard in centuries
past, considering limitations in resources, roads, and transportation. But
surely the modern-​day availability of buses and trains does not contradict
the message. I asked a number of people how they interpreted the passage,
but every response was simply a re-​translation of the word dushkaram: “It
means mushkil (hard)”; “It means kathin (hard)”; or, from a particularly
exasperated collaborator, “It means HARD!” After further conversation and
deliberation, I came to see it as a matter of karma protecting itself: “hard to
reach” and “difficult to obtain” imply that the trip to Pushkar and the ritual ac-
tivities surrounding it are so meritorious that it would simply be impossible
for an undeserving person to be allowed the circumstances, or the desire,
to reach the holy lake. Said differently, not everyone deserves—​karmically
74  Guest Is God

Figure 2.6.  A restaurant menu with a Sanskrit passage about Pushkar.

speaking—​to be able to receive the benefits of a trip to Pushkar, and thus

those less-​blessed people will find it literally “hard to reach.” This helps to
explain a comment several people made to me during my research, and
most frequently when I helped to clean the lake: “You are a lucky man” (ap
lucky admi hain). My purported luckiness was at first mystifying, but I came
to understand that for many, my position in Pushkar suggested real karmic
wealth—​I am from so far away, but blessed with the karmic goods to reach
India, study in Pushkar, and perhaps “hardest” of all tasks, to do God’s seva
on the lake.
 Making Pushkar Paradise  75

Brahmans, Pollution, and the Body

Toward the end of our journey, someone scooped a dead pigeon out of the
water. Rishi picked it up—​no gloves—​and dropped it in a trash bag. Holding
tight to my coconuts, I pictured the gleaming bottle of hand sanitizer waiting
in my hotel room. Far more relevant than my germophobia, however, is what
an act like this might mean in terms of caste and ritual pollution. It is unusual
for brahmans in North India—​especially in devout and conservative places
like Pushkar—​to handle items such as discarded clothes or animal remains.
For example, in the water tank of Sudhabhay, only a few kilometers from
Pushkar, Rajasthani villagers bathe in vast numbers and discard their old
clothes at the water’s edge.63 The brahmans there do not touch the clothes,
believing them to be defiling, and instead hire low-​caste workers to pick
them up. It is therefore all the more significant that the cleaners of Pushkar-​
raj negotiate ideas of pollution in such a way that they not only touch old
clothes but handle dead animals as well.
Tinku once noted with a certain degree of pride that the group picked up
absolutely everything on Pushkar’s shore. Somewhat insensitively, I  asked
him whether this was okay considering that the group was largely composed
of brahmans. This was his response:

Our hands are dirty, our mouths are dirty, our feet are dirty; this is nothing.
People’s hearts should be pure. It’s not written in any book that brahmans
can’t cut hair, or pick up trash. Why, are brahmans not people? Brahmans
are people. Brahmans too can do other people’s work. And in this case, we
don’t feel as if it is filth. This is God’s seva, his prasad that we take.64

Tinku’s comment highlights three important points: one, pollution and

purity are measures of one’s heart (man, also translated as “mind”), which is
to say, one’s integrity and character; two, brahmans can do any kind of work
they see fit; and three, they don’t consider the filth on the lake to be defiling,
because cleaning it is service to God.
The first idea is particularly common among young brahman men who
see themselves as socially progressive. Caste, they claim, should be a matter
of karma instead of blood.65 Although such an idea stops short of the dis-
solution of caste, it creates rhetorical breathing room for the possibility of
having non-​brahman friends and of seeing goodness as a matter unrelated to
ancestry. The notion that brahmans can do whatever work they want—​that
76  Guest Is God

caste-​based restrictions are irrelevant—​seems to follow the very same rea-

soning. If one’s heart and mind are pure, then what act can be defiling? The si-
lent caveat here is that such lofty declarations are made by those on the top of
the caste hierarchy. Ideas of purity and pollution are always entangled in, and
constructed through, relations of power.66 In other words, a brahman can
argue that touching a dead pigeon is okay, but a Dalit cannot.67 I do not wish
to oversell Tinku’s general thoughts on purity and pollution, which, although
fairly progressive, are nevertheless framed within Pushkar’s more conserva-
tive discourse on caste. Instead, I want to focus on his very original third
point, which seems to concede the presence of polluting substances but calls
into question whether items picked up while cleaning the lake are themselves
defiling.
Here is another priest who elaborated on the topic:

It is said that brahmans should not do all kinds of work. But in your own
house, in your own temple, this cleaning is not dirty. For example, humans
go to the bathroom and clean themselves . . . no one else will do it! That’s not
dirty, that’s maintaining your health. Same in our own temple. This lake is
ours . . . this dirtiness is ours.68

Earlier in this chapter, I referred to how locals take responsibility for the
well-​being of Pushkar Lake. The above quotation reflects a similar position,
though in many ways acts as an expansion of it. I am particularly engaged
by the simultaneously obvious and important point that able-​bodied adults
are expected to clean themselves after going to the bathroom. Another in-
formant echoed a similar idea with a less graphic image. Replying to my ques-
tion about brahmans cleaning the lake, he simply asked, “well, do you hire
people to clean your feet?” These points are metaphoric and embellished, no
doubt, but they nevertheless imply an expansion of bodily boundaries be-
yond the individual. Those things considered “one’s own” (apna)—​whether
one’s house, temple, feet, or lake—​are treated differently with regard to
conceptions of pollution. As such, pollution is mediated by proximity. This
does not suggest that for brahmans trash or filth is absent from the world
of “one’s own,” but rather that such things require maintenance instead of
avoidance. Cleaning the lake becomes care for the self. Added to this is the
nature of seva, which, at least according to Tinku, implies a connection to
God that transcends ordinary rules and restrictions. In other words, because
of the ritualized nature of the cleaning, performed as part of one’s religious
 Making Pushkar Paradise  77

duty and done so in devotion to God, the potentially polluting nature of the
deed is erased.

Coming Full Circle

We doubled our pace as the sun set in earnest. Back on Brahm Ghat, a few
priests were preparing for the evening worship (arti), during which the lake
cannot be touched. About a hundred feet from the ghat, a few volunteers
deposited the last of our trash bags—​to be picked up by municipal workers—​
and I brought my coconuts to the sadhu’s cloth and wood hut. We washed our
hands with the water of Pushkar-​raj, said our namastes to each other and the
lake, and went our separate ways. Arti bells rang; the day was over. Reaching
Pradeep’s supply stall, I put on my shoes and looked back: perhaps still not
“clear like the moon,” the lake shone in a way absolutely unimaginable if not
for the daily efforts of this group of cleaners. I rolled down my pant legs and
headed home.
Mukesh had noted earlier in the day that the group’s objective was to look
forward to a time when people would approach the lake and say, “we’ve
arrived in heaven.” Such a moment can be possible only through doing the
hard work of cleaning the lake, but I would argue that the activity could not
be nearly the same—​or have the impact that it does—​without the process of
ritualization that accompanies it. Although undeniably important, picking
up trash does not inherently constitute a sacred act. Nor does it fully suffice
to say that cleaning the lake takes on a sacred quality simply because Pushkar
is a sacred place. Pushkar-​raj is made sacred in a number of different ways,
from stories told to pujas done. Of all the many aspects and actions that form
the process of making Pushkar paradise, cleaning the lake is only one. But it
is one made especially powerful by the words and deeds that accompany it.
In Bell’s words, ritualization refers to those “culturally specific strategies for
setting some activities off from others.”69 Here, where Bell meets Pushkar,
ritualization refers to the various activities and dispositions and discourses
that get yoked onto the seemingly simple task of cleaning the lake. Cleaning
here entails the practice of circumambulation, carries the responsibilities of
seva, involves the effort of karma farming, and expands the town’s religious
ecology by giving to geese. Sitting in the background to all of this—​and on a
lotus, no doubt—​is Brahma, who with a fire sacrifice many eons ago set the
sacred in motion. The following chapter begins with him.
 3
Savitri’s Curse

The lotus fell, and the lakes were made. Then Brahma decided to consecrate his
new abode with a sacrifice, and invited the gods to come along. Knowing that
the sacrifice would require two things beyond all else—​auspicious timing, and
the company of his wife, Savitri—​Brahma sent his son, Narad, to hurry and
fetch her. A life-​long trickster and a deity unsure of his footing in the divine
hierarchy, Narad saw in this task an opportunity to make a name for himself.
“Mother,” he said, “the Lord Brahma requires your presence at his sacrifice—​
but by all means, take your time.” She did just so, applying her makeup and
adornments with no rush at all. Meanwhile, back in Pushkar, Brahma started
to worry. The auspicious time was passing, and Savitri wasn’t there.
Needing a better half in order to initiate the ritual, Brahma demanded that
a woman be found who was both worthy of being his wife, and more impor-
tantly, who was immediately available for a shotgun wedding. So Indra went
and found a nearby milk maiden. But in order to be appropriately worthy of the
creator god, the milk maiden needed something of a makeover. Indra turned
her into grass, which he then fed to a cow. The cow digested the grass and then
excreted it. Indra transformed the excreted dung, which had now been purified
by passing through a cow, back into the form of the milk maiden. Her name was
Gayatri, and she was ready to meet her mate. Gayatri married Brahma. The
sacrifice began right on time.
In the middle of the ritual, Savitri—​now beautifully adorned, but none
the wiser about recent events—​arrived. Upon seeing Brahma with his new
wife, his old wife became enraged. And the curses began. She cursed the cow
for being part of Gayatri’s transformation, saying that cows would now and
forever have filthy mouths despite producing pure excrement. She cursed the
fire for standing witness over the sacrifice, saying that fire would now and for-
ever be stepped upon in order to be extinguished. She cursed the brahmans for
helping to conduct the ritual, saying that they and their kind would always be
begging and would never be satisfied. And finally, she cursed Brahma, who too
easily swapped his wife for another, saying that he would be worshipped only in
Pushkar, and even there, no householders1 could perform puja (ritual worship)

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
 Savitri’s Curse  79

before his image. Savatri fled the lake, leaving Brahma to his milk maiden, and
establishing herself on a hill at the outskirts of town.2

~
Within the religious landscape of modern-​ day India, the notion that
Hinduism has three main gods—​Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—​is both agreed
upon and hastily qualified. Agreed upon because the trimurti, or “triple
form,” which celebrates Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva as the respective creator,
preserver, and destroyer of the universe, not only appears in popular imagery
throughout the subcontinent but also has a solid pedigree in the Sanskrit
canon. Hastily qualified, because one of those three, Brahma, is almost no-
where to be found. Although worshipped widely across North India between
the 4th century bce and the 4th century ce—​and having a considerable fol-
lowing in western India up through at least the 13th century—​Brahma is
now a god most famous for being under-​worshipped.3 Pushkar, then, stands
as Brahma’s longest lasting and most prominent stronghold.
To all this, we might simply ask, “Why”? Why did a god as central as
Brahma fall so far out of favor with Hindus of centuries past? In seeking an
answer to such a question, we join an age-​old lineage of similarly confused
and curious bystanders. For example, in 1861, the British Orientalist H.H.
Wilson accounted for Brahma’s situation by arguing that mythological texts
like the Puranas “not only taught their followers to assert the unapproach-
able superiority of the gods they worshipped, but inspired them with feelings
of animosity towards those who presumed to dispute that supremacy.”4 It was
in this context, Wilson explained, that gods like Vishnu and Shiva took prec-
edence while “the worship of Brahma has disappeared.” He later noted that
“even Sarasvati5 enjoys some portion of homage, much more than her lord,
Brahma, whilst a vast variety of inferior beings of malevolent character and
formidable aspect receive the worship of the multitude.”6 A few decades later,
and in much the same vein, William Crooke observed “an enormous amount
of demonolatry, fetishism and kindred forms of primitive religion” as having
been “added” to more ancient forms of Hinduism.7 With regard to Brahma,
he said this:

Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have suffered
grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth of the Indian
80  Guest Is God

peninsula Brahma, the creator, has hardly more than a couple of shrines
specially dedicated to him.8

For Crooke, the decline of Brahma worship was a curiosity quickly satisfied,
as it hewed to a narrative of decline that had long been a staple of Orientalism.
And the “grievous degradation” of gods like Brahma implicitly became a
proxy for the perceived degradation of Hinduism itself. Interesting though
they may be, assessments like Crooke’s are far from value-​neutral and thus
rank low in terms of historical rigor.
Truth be told, we don’t know why Brahma worship fell by the wayside.
Such a situation is no doubt the result of a combination of factors, in-
cluding issues like patronage, the rise of competing sectarian traditions
(as H.H. Wilson suggests above), and also, perhaps most simply, the
plain old passage of time. History happens, even to the creator of the uni-
verse. Still, some scholars have tried to gesture at some of the theological
factors that might have caused Hindus to lose interest in Brahma. Wendy
Doniger argues that Brahma “is committed to a strand of Hinduism” as-
sociated with being in the world—​with granting immortality rather than
liberation—​whereas Shiva and Vishnu are associated with both worldly
involvement and withdrawal.9 As such, they can grant immortality and
liberation:

This one-​sidedness of Brahma may, finally, explain why he failed to capture

the imagination of the Hindu worshiper: the god who is to take responsi-
bility for one’s whole life must, in the Hindu view, acknowledge not only the
desire to create but the desire to renounce creation.10

According to this argument, Brahma cannot compete with his trimurti

compatriots, who, unlike him, represent the complete theological package.
Rajani Mishra offers a related explanation by suggesting that Brahma had
“no use or necessity” once creation was complete.11 That is, while Vishnu and
Shiva have power over what is and what’s to come, Brahma’s authority lies in
what already was. And so, the vast majority of Hindus would not “take in-
terest in a god who was, for all practical purposes, defunct.”12
“Defunct” is probably putting it too strongly. After all, over a million
pilgrims come to Pushkar every year for the purpose of both bathing in
Brahma’s sacred lake and visiting his temple. And mind you, this has been
 Savitri’s Curse  81

ongoing for some time now—​locals would argue since the creation of the
universe. Moreover, these pilgrims do not seem particularly worried about
the creator’s limited powers vis-​à-​vis granting salvation, as most are happy
to take an eclectic approach in which different gods are beseeched at dif-
ferent times and different places for different reasons. Maybe Brahma cannot
offer liberation, strictly and theologically speaking, but he can help you with
getting married or having a baby or passing an exam. Better yet, if you visit
Pushkar at the right time of year, he can even wipe away your sins and get you
into heaven. That is far from “defunct.”
A more accurate descriptor for the creator god might be something like
“bound.” Insofar as any deity’s power and presence in the earthly realm
is determined by the devotion of his or her followers, and insofar as that
devotion is marked, in part, by the temples dedicated to that deity, then
Brahma’s power and presence is bound almost exclusively to Pushkar. And
for people who happen to live there, Brahma’s situation is not at all a mys-
tery. To them, the reason for Brahma having only one temple—​and for no
longer being a major figure in Hindu devotionalism—​is clear enough: it’s
Savitri’s curse.13
The story recounted at the beginning of this chapter is by far the most pop-
ular tale told in Pushkar. Shopkeepers, restaurant owners, hotel staff: they
all know it, adding their own flourishes as it suits the moment, and often
showing a certain relish in the telling. But none can compete with the priests
and tour guides. These are brahman men who make a living out of narrating
Brahma and Savitri’s story to thousands of people each year, performing puja
on the ghats, and leading tours for visitors both international and domestic.
Because outsiders generally possess very little knowledge about Pushkar,
the tacit task of both priest and guide is to aid tourists in understanding—​ex
post facto—​why they came in the first place. In working toward such a goal,
these brahmans aim to cultivate a sense of the town’s absolute uniqueness or
singularity. This sense of singularity is implicitly mobilized around the fact
that people from all over the world gather in Pushkar, coming together in
a place purported to be the center of it all—​what Mircea Eliade would have
called the axis mundi, the “world axis.”14 But the explicit reason for such sin-
gularity is Brahma; Pushkar stands as Brahma’s first earthly abode, which,
because of a curse, ended up being his only abode. For locals, then, the curse
both explains the absence of Brahma worship in the rest of the world while
simultaneously being the reason for Pushkar’s singular importance. Said
82  Guest Is God

differently, Brahma’s loss was Pushkar’s gain. And following this same seem-
ingly contradictory logic, the very curse that so constrained the creator god’s
powers is also that which provides a livelihood for the many priests and
guides who tell Brahma’s story.
And yet, all is not marigolds and milk, beauty and abundance, for these
folks. Many of the priests and guides I met in Pushkar expressed enduring
frustrations and disappointments with regard to their financial well-​
being: they are not always poor, but their situations are often precarious;
their jobs can be demanding and inconsistent; and tenaciously cajoling
clients for a donation can be humiliating. Because of this, some do choose
a gentler, less persuasive approach, but might then see the rupees—​their
daily bread—​go to other, more aggressive colleagues. Idealism cannot pay
the bills. Of course, there are many people worse off in India and indeed,
even in Pushkar. Being brahman is a privilege, and the dispossession felt
by priests and guides is more often than not the dispossession of privileges
most people have never enjoyed. Still, by avoiding the broad strokes, we
can paint a more nuanced picture of how privilege and precarity can exist
alongside each other.
We might remember, then, that brahmans too were cursed by Savitri—​
cursed to be always begging and to be never satisfied. What’s more, some
brahmans even explicitly attribute to Savitri’s curse the perceived greed
or money-​mindedness of some of their compatriots. I would be remiss to
suggest that Pushkar’s brahmans exclusively blame a curse for their finan-
cial woes; most see with clear eyes the complex factors that affect their lives
and livelihoods. But the curse continues to provide explanatory power. So
what to make of Savitri’s curse? Well, in what follows, I take the curse to be
less a reality than a metaphor; in short, it is a metaphor for being bound.
Not only is Brahma bound to Pushkar, but Pushkar’s brahmans are bound to
Brahma, his lake, and his temple. They are bound to a set of responsibilities
they have fulfilled for generations, responsibilities that can awaken complex
and ambivalent feelings:  on the one hand, there is the swelling pride—​in
being a brahman, in representing Pushkar, in well-​recited mantras, well-​
given tours, and clever turns of phrase. On the other hand, there is the
crushing dissatisfaction—​in begging for money, in chasing down tourists, in
struggling to earn something, and waiting around for nothing. Altogether,
they are bound to a life that, although more secure than many, is not al-
ways the life they want. So, who are these men? What do they do? And what
do they want?
 Savitri’s Curse  83

Priests

As mentioned in the book’s introduction, I have chosen more often than not
to use the English word priest in describing the brahman men who provide
ritual services for pilgrims and tourists at the banks of Pushkar lake. In Hindi
and across much of North India, people often distinguish between, on the
one hand, pandas (also called tirth purohits), who are specifically pilgrimage
priests, and on the other hand, pujaris, who manage and oversee temples.
In Pushkar, however, I met many brahmans who both oversaw temples and
performed various rituals at the lake, meaning they were simultaneously
panda and pujari.15 Given the fact that no one seemed at all perplexed by this
situation, it is clear that such designations are quite fluid. “Priest,” as such,
encompasses all of these possibilities while accounting for the porousness of
boundaries.
The economy of the priestly profession is structured on the relationship
between priest and client (jajman). This is a reciprocal relationship, in that
priests have an obligation to serve their clients in ways both mundane and
religious, and in turn, clients have an obligation to support their priests fi-
nancially.16 For pilgrimage priests in particular, this reciprocal relationship is
also an inherited one, connected across generations and often determined by
the client’s hometown or caste. That is to say, priests are traditionally linked
to certain villages, districts, or caste groups, and have the technically uncon-
tested right to provide religious services for people of those locations and
communities when they arrive at the pilgrimage site. These links are made
manifest in account books called pothis or bahis, which contain the records
of the people who have used the services of a particular priestly lineage. They
often go back several generations, detailing the type of rituals performed as
well as the gifts given to the priest in return.17
Historically (and ideally), a client would come to a pilgrimage site and
immediately seek out his or her hereditarily-​linked priest. If they had not
met previously, the priest would be able to show the client his account book,
thereby proving that he, his father, or grandfather (or uncle, granduncle,
etc.) had rendered any number of religious services for the client’s family
members, neighbors, or caste-​brothers. The priest would then help his client,
providing housing and food, arranging visits to temples and, of course,
performing whatever ritual services were agreed upon. As Jonathan Parry
explains, the pilgrimage priest might be considered “ ‘a contractor of religion’
(dharam ka thekedar)—​a phrase which nicely captures his role as a general
84  Guest Is God

purpose ‘fixer’ for both the this-​and-​other-​worldly comforts of his clients.”18

Finally, the priest would then receive a gift for his services, often cash money
or clothing, and even—​in earlier times especially—​grain harvested from the
clients’ hometown.19
Large-​scale changes in the pilgrimage economy over the past sev-
eral decades have attenuated this relationship between priest and client.
Developments in bus and train travel have made pilgrimage centers like
Pushkar explode in popularity, which has then led to a proliferation of
middlemen who all want their piece of the pilgrimage pie. These are agents,
taxi drivers, and organizers of tour buses—​people who step in and forge
relationships with pilgrims before they even reach the destination. These
middlemen tend to run things, setting up room and board and, even more
significantly, bringing their clients to a priest of their choosing. Inevitably,
this chosen priest is a person with whom the middleman has a personal re-
lationship and from whom he can take a commission. This means that al-
though many more pilgrims come to places like Pushkar, the money they
spend is distributed in a way that makes a small number of priests fabulously
successful while the vast majority struggles.
Across sites in North India, there is also a general perception among
priests that pilgrims just don’t seem to care as much about these traditional
and hereditary bonds as their forebears once did. Knut Aukland’s informants
in Vrindavan echoed what I heard many times in Pushkar: “The tourists of
today do not have a pilgrim’s disposition (tirth ka bhav nahin hai). . . . The
new generation has less faith (manna), the older had a lot of faith.”20 Scholars
cannot, of course, weigh the faith of a person as if it were a pile of bricks,
but beyond perception it is undoubtedly the case that newer generations of
pilgrims increasingly treat trips to pilgrimage places as entailing far more
than ritual action; they are also, and sometimes even primarily, places for
shopping, picnics, photography, and sightseeing.21 This often translates into
less interest in priests and priestly matters.
When pilgrims do visit Pushkar for primarily ritual reasons, and are
willing enough to seek out their hereditary priests, finding them is not always
easy. Unlike in other places like Haridwar and Banaras, Pushkar’s brahmans
rarely have booths or umbrellas where they can be consistently located.22 Cell
phones have made this less of an issue, but problems remain. When pilgrims
arrive in Pushkar for the first time, they know little about the town and have
never met their hereditary priest. If they seem sufficiently unsuspecting—​
by either looking around too much or asking too many questions—​then an
 Savitri’s Curse  85

impenitent opportunist of a brahman might claim either that, voila!, he is

exactly the figure they are looking for, or that the priest they are tradition-
ally bound to is not currently available. For these reasons and more, pilgrims
sometimes choose to bypass the annoyance of finding their hereditary priest,
choosing instead the route of expedience. For example, in her ethnography
of Rajasthani pilgrims from the village of Ghatiyali, Ann Gold refers to an in-
formant, Ladu Ram, who arrived in Pushkar for a very brief trip to perform
a puja, take a bath in the lake, and then return home: “Hurrying from the bus
stand toward the lake shore, Ladu Ram told me that, rather than seek a family
or caste panda here, he could just as well do his business at ‘any old ghat-​vat’
[that is, anywhere on the lake], and his sole aim was to do it quickly.”23
Meanwhile, as generations have passed and fewer pilgrims rely on hered-
itary priests, their account books (pothis or bahis), which once supposedly
proffered them “exclusive rights,” now mean less and less. In his work on pil-
grimage priests in the city of Mathura, Owen Lynch recounts an informant
saying: “I don’t like this work of begging. Even now, if there is a family register
(bahi) of clients, then on the death of its owner it is divided among his sons.
Thus, over the generations almost nothing is left. Who can live from that?”24
In Pushkar, many brahmans have given up on their account books, either sel-
ling them (and their “rights”) to other priests or simply relinquishing them to
other members of the extended family.25
As the traditional ideal looks less and less ideal, Pushkar’s brahman com-
munity has diversified. Many have left the occupation of the priesthood al-
together, looking for a living in alternative spheres of the tourist economy,
such as in the hotel or restaurant businesses. Others have maintained their
occupation as pilgrimage priests, but instead of relying on hereditary clients
they now work as free agents at bus stops and on the ghats.26 Still, perhaps the
most popular occupational alternative to hereditary priestcraft, and one that
is particularly well-​represented among young brahmans, is that of “guide.” It
is to this complicated category that we turn next.

The New Form of the Priesthood

Locals recognize “guide” as a professional, rather than ancestral, term.

Anyone from any caste or background can—​technically—​be a guide. And
although the vast majority of guides are, in fact, brahmans, several of my
informants declared that they were not actually “guides,” but “brahmans who
86  Guest Is God

do guiding work.” Nevertheless, as one friend told me and many echoed in

similar sentiments, guiding has become the “new form of the priesthood”
(pujari ka naya rup). It is the younger generation’s alternative to a life of per-
forming rituals on the lake. Guides are the mediators of information about
Brahma and Pushkar, and when guiding foreigners, about the wider world of
Hinduism; to that end, and as we will see in the coming pages, these young
men not only become storytellers but also at times transform into religious
comparativists and cultural translators. And even though not every guide
is a brahman, for those who are, this modern occupation remains imbued
with priestly authority. As a guide, they both uphold their right to represent
Pushkar and maintain their prerogative to make money from the town’s re-
ligious significance. And in doing so, they put on display the extent to which
religion and the economy are bound together in the project of making
Pushkar paradise.
With a properly attuned eye, you can spot a bevy of guides from far
away:  twentysomethings with well-​oiled hair, crisp button-​downs in rich
colors—​sometimes with an extra iridescence—​tucked into trendy and
tight jeans, large belt, flashy sneakers or black leather loafers with pointed
tips and, for a lucky few, motorcycle keys jingling in hand. In a number of
locations across town, colorful gaggles of guides convene with chai and
friendly banter, often waiting for a phone call from a colleague with some
connection, or scoping out tourists who look especially lost. For those
without connections, financial opportunities arise depending on whether
the guide has the ability and desire to offer his services. This often comes
down to language. Those without skills in English or another European lan-
guage will rarely approach foreigners.27 And even when one’s language skills
are sufficient, courage is needed, too. As in any profession that approximates
the door-​to-​door sales model, successful guides must possess tenacity
coupled with grace in defeat. During the course of my research I  met a
number of guides who were fairly cheery about their occupation, especially
since constantly meeting passersby resulted in unexpected and exciting
friendships. Those either less tolerant of dismissal or less willing to talk to
strangers found themselves with abundant time in need of passing. Another
option would be to quit and get another job, but as we will discuss later,
alternatives are in short supply.
The more fortunate guides have connections with the tourism industry
outside of Pushkar. In many cases, this simply means that a taxi driver knows
a particular guide and will call him when arriving with a group of tourists.
 Savitri’s Curse  87

Such arrangements may be based on friendship but are far from magnani-
mous; if a guide fails to pay a commission, his phone will stop ringing. For
a select few, connections to the outside industry entail becoming the “local
guide” when a busload of international tourists arrives. Packaged tours
have a permanent guide, who likely meets the group in the Delhi airport
and manages all of their travel. When arriving in a place like Pushkar, the
permanent guide will sometimes dole out responsibilities to a local person
with greater knowledge and access. Although only a small node in the vast
network of India-​wide tourism, these “local guides” come to represent the
highest echelon of success within the confines of Brahma’s abode.
Tours tend to begin wherever a guide picks up his clients, but for most
of my Parashar informants, the ideal starting place was by the lake and on
Brahm Ghat. Waiting at several stalls by the ghat are small, framed pictures
of Brahma presiding over his sacrifice with his new wife Gayatri; the guides
use the picture to narrate the story of Brahma’s creation of Pushkar and, just
as importantly, that of Savitri’s curse. Depending on the person, the story
can last from two to ten minutes, with painstaking detail or in brief sum-
mary. Some light up in the presentation, while others seem distant and au-
tomated. Either way, the story has three important takeaways: first, and as
explained in ­chapter 2, Pushkar is not a temple or a town, but a lake; second,
because of Savitri’s curse, Pushkar is Brahma’s only abode; and third, because
of that same curse, images of him (i.e., the murti in the Brahma temple) are
not worshipped by householders (i.e., non-​renunciates). Thus the best puja
in Pushkar for everyday folk—​as the argument goes—​happens to be right
there at the lake.
This leads inevitably to an invitation for puja on the ghats, organized
by the guide and performed by a priest. Priests are often relatives or caste-​
brothers of the guides, and rather than shiny shirts and tight jeans, they wear
a more conservative attire: pristine and perfectly white kurta pajamas, with
little ornamentation other than some prayer beads and a marking of either
vermillion or sandalwood smeared across the forehead. While domestic
tourists know the implications of the puja, foreigners tend not to understand
the financial requirements involved. This can result in an enormous amount
of animosity, which we will discuss later in this chapter. The more elite
guides pride themselves on their ability to be sensitive to tourists’ anxieties,
explaining that such a service is entirely voluntary and warning them of the
exact amount of money they would be asked to spend (though the price, too,
varies).
88  Guest Is God

In order to combat the potentially unfamiliar nature of the puja, guides will
often take a moment either before or after the ceremony to ask “what is God?”
Visibly confused and perhaps more than a little intrigued, foreign tourists
tend to stay silent for a few heartbeats until the guide reveals his rhetorical
flourish: “G.O.D.,” he says in English, “Generator, Operator, Destroyer—​that
is God.” Through some sleight of hand, God becomes identical to Brahma,
Vishnu, and Shiva, none other than the Hindu trimurti. Simultaneously trans-
lation and comparison, the move from God to G.O.D. seems to draw worlds
together. At the same time, the acronym leaves space—​or literally spaces and
punctuation—​for difference. Here, I think Walter Benjamin helps. In an essay
called “The Task of the Translator,” Benjamin explains how translations re-
late to their originals: “A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the
original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though re-
inforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully.”28
As if the periods were not punctuation but backlit bullet holes, the acronym
G.O.D. radiates a particular light, a suggestion of something beneath or be-
tween realities, neither entirely Christian God nor entirely Hindu triad.29 The
acronym continuously bridges two worlds—​imperfectly intelligible to both
rather than perfectly intelligible to one—​meaning the task of the cultural trans-
lator does not necessitate that a translation actually reaches its destination.30
The G.O.D. concept represents yet another production of the phrase fac-
tory, and like many of the axioms and sayings circulating around Pushkar, this
one has a life extending across the subcontinent and even beyond that. I first
heard it years before my fieldwork, during a Hindi lesson from a teacher at
the American Institute of Indian Studies in Jaipur. But he was from Delhi, so
where did he hear it? At the time, I possessed neither the ethnographic chops
nor Hindi skills to ask. And it was not until I started fieldwork in Pushkar
that I encountered the concept on a near-​daily basis. When a collaborator
or friend mentioned it, I would ask where he got the idea (G.O.D. ka vichar
kahan se aya hai?). A few times, a guide would point to another, usually more
senior guide as being the source of the concept; far more often, though, my
question faced an impasse. “It’s not an idea,” many said to me, “it’s just true”
(vichar nahin hai, vo to hai). The reasoning here was that truths do not have
homes or diving boards or starting lines, but simply exist.
During one such discussion about the G.O.D. concept, a tour guide and
friend by the name of Deepak reached into a pocket of his slightly shiny jeans
and pulled out a weathered pamphlet titled shiv sandesh (“Shiva’s Message”).
It was given to him by one of the sadhus at the Brahma temple, and, judging
 Savitri’s Curse  89

by its condition, that sadhu had gotten it many years before. The pamphlet
was not one common to the stalls of Pushkar; rather, it was published by
the Brahma Kumaris, an international and relatively new Hindu movement
based out of Mount Abu in the south of Rajasthan.31 Deepak opened it to an
early page, and this is what it said: “In English they call the Supreme Spirit
(paramatma) GOD. G is for ‘Generator,’ which means the establishment of
creation by Lord Brahma; O is for ‘Operator,’ which means the preservation
of creation by Vishnu; D is for ‘Destructor,’ which means the demolition of
creation by Shiva” (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1.  Pamphlet of shiv sandesh.

90  Guest Is God

Erik, a representative of the New York branch of the Brahma Kumaris,

informed me that the G.O.D. concept had been popular within the group
for at least the past thirty years—​probably more—​though he doubted
that it was their invention: “Many sites, traditions, and pundits use it.”
His suggestion was for me to “search India and the various many an-
cient holy sites to see if you can find the source of this divine and eternal
wisdom.” This seemed sensible enough advice, though of course it was
being in Pushkar (i.e., one of those “ancient holy sites”) and searching for
the source of G.O.D. that brought me to the Brahma Kumaris in the first
place. Perhaps more importantly, although it may be easy to forget, the
“eternal wisdom” of “Generator, Operator, Destroyer” is only as ancient
as the introduction of English to subcontinental thinking. So I needed to
look somewhere else.
A more satisfying origin story for G.O.D.  involves the life and work of
Prem Rawat, an Indian-​born spiritual leader lovingly named “Guru Maharaj
Ji” by his followers. Rawat inherited the leadership of a religious organization
called the Divine Light Mission when his father—​the Mission’s founder—​
died in 1966. He moved to the United States in 1971, hoping to share his
teachings among a counterculture disgusted by the politics, religion, and
war of mainstream American society. He was thirteen years old at the time.
And from the early 1970s on, this boy-​guru again and again deployed the
G.O.D.  concept, one which would have been particularly compelling and
relatable to the thousands of hippies interested in the “East.” For example,
when giving a lecture at Hunter College, in New York City, on October 8,
1971, this is what he had to say about G.O.D.:

And it is very easy to realize God. See, “God” has been composed of three
words: G-​O-​D, God. G for Generator, O for Operator, and D for Destructor.
Generator, Operator, and Destructor is God. The One Who generates us,
Who operates us and Who destroys us is God. And He can be only realized
by one path, by one way. And what is it? That way is Truth. Truth is one, not
two or three or four or five or six. Truth is one. And only Truth is the way
through which you can realize your Father, your God.32

Given Rawat’s position as a globally oriented guru who taught a primarily

English-​speaking audience, it is (at the very least) conceivable that he first
thought of this interesting acronym.
 Savitri’s Curse  91

I personally love this possibility: a thirteen-​year-​old from India comes

up with this really novel idea for explaining the nature of God to his hippie
audience; along the way, the idea gets picked up by the Brahma Kumaris—​
a group with an international reach and an American presence—​who
then print this novel idea in a Hindi-​language pamphlet by the name of
shiv sandesh; one of these pamphlets gets into the hands of a sadhu at the
Brahma temple, who then gives it to my friend Deepak, who then presents
it to me—​magic like—​out of a front pocket of his jeans. This narrative is,
of course, only one small thread of a much more tangled historical web,
as the idea of G.O.D. has become common knowledge not only for tour
guides in Pushkar but for huge swathes of Hindus today. At the moment,
G.O.D. even thrives on Facebook. In fact, there are at least six profiles on
Facebook—​whether as a group, community, or nonprofit—​with a name
akin to “GOD: Generator, Operator, Destroyer.” As far as I can tell, these
G.O.D. pages are either operated in South Asia or by people of South Asian
descent. Moreover, considering the fact that around 40% of India’s pop-
ulation is on the Internet—​and adding millions of users every year—​we
can expect many more G.O.D.s on Facebook.33 Regardless of origins or im-
pact, it is fitting that this clever acronym has a home in Pushkar, churned
out daily from the phrase factory. After all, as an informant once told me,
Pushkar is the only earthly abode of Brahma and therefore the sole place
where all three gods—​ Generator, Operator, Destroyer—​ can really be
found together.
Back to the tour. After a puja and the above comparative flourish, the
guide continues on. It is a few minutes’ walk from the Brahm Ghat area
to the Brahma temple, along a slightly inclined road lined on both sides
with stalls selling clothes, religious paraphernalia, shoes, and indescrib-
able tchotchkes. Beggar boys follow crowds of foreigners, playing single-​
stringed instruments for a few rupees. A somewhat permanent installment
in the area is a man with his cow; he wears the orange robes of a sadhu,
and proudly displays his cow’s mutated limb, a fifth “leg” that emerges from
its shoulder hump. Pilgrims often touch the cow and give the man a small
donation. To passing foreigners, he often yells “money!”—​no translation
necessary. As might be expected, the guide’s role through this gauntlet is
far from informational. He leads and tries to protect his group from dis-
turbance. As tourists approach the marble steps of the Brahma temple, the
guide brings them into one of several shops that contain lockers for storage
92  Guest Is God

of shoes, backpacks, and cameras. After dropping off their things, they make
the ascent, first through a metal detector with a casual pat down and then
through the temple’s doors.
The temple is not especially magnificent, though the enveloping calm—​
especially compared to the clamor of what is behind and below—​truly marks
it as a place set apart. Believed to have been founded by Adi Shankaracharya
in 657 ce, the temple was then destroyed many centuries later during
Aurangzeb’s reign (1658–​1707). A wealthy donor from Jaipur funded repairs
in 1719, followed by further patronage for construction by Maharaja Sawai
Jai Singh II of Jaipur in 1727, and then again by Gopal Chand Pareek—​a min-
ister of the Scindias—​in 1809.34 The temple’s main attraction is the central
altar housing murtis of both Brahma and Gayatri, but there are also niches
for Indra, Kubera, Ambika Mata, several Shiva lingas, and a large mural of
Brahma, Gayatri, and Savatri at the storied sacrifice. The flooring is made
of black and white checkered marble panels, many of them inscribed in var-
ious languages with the names of loved ones who have passed; guides are
especially excited to show panels inscribed in English and with seemingly
non-​Hindu names. At this part of the tour, a guide by the name of Rajesh
once explained that when we die, “God doesn’t ask for your jati or religion;
he asks about your karma.” Thus, because God cares about karma alone, and
not about religious affiliation, anyone can have his or her name etched into
the temple floor. With such a sentiment, God’s tolerance and inclusivism
have been imputed to the Brahma temple and its administrative apparatus
as well as to tour guides, to Hindus in Pushkar, and, most broadly, to Hindu
traditions.
Pilgrims and tourists alike gather at the temple’s sanctum sanctorum, and
on especially busy days some small amount of shoving is usually required to
vie for visual real estate of the creator and his wife. For the devout, the goal
here is to soak in the deities’ divine sight (darshan), to see and be seen. On our
tour, Rajesh explained that despite the differences in rituals across religious
traditions and regardless of what different people call their temples—​whether
“mandir,” “mosque,” or “church,” etc.—​all function like a courthouse: God is
the judge, and priests are the lawyers interceding on behalf of their client,
who is none other than the devotee. The Brahma temple, then, is just like any
other religious establishment: it’s a place where you stand before God and
plead your case. As with the G.O.D. concept, and the comments on karma
above, this idea shows the extent to which tour guides in Pushkar appeal
to those conceptual areas where similarity outweighs difference. Indeed, as
 Savitri’s Curse  93

I heard countless times during my fieldwork, all religions are the same, made
different only by our “way of looking” (dekhne ka tarika). Getting back to the
temple, “looking” seems particularly salient as pilgrims finish their darshan,
circumambulate the central altar, explore for a bit, and then leave. Foreigners
too have a look, and exit shortly thereafter.
Tours vary in length and content, though it is consistently the case that
the Brahma temple plays second fiddle (second sitar?) to the ghats. Mohit,
a young man who started guiding at the age of fifteen, explained it like
this: “Brahma’s main thing is the lake. There’s nothing going on in the Brahma
temple—​no donation, prayer, or ceremony inside. For worship, all you need
is [the lake’s] water.” For Mohit and other guides, this secondary status is due
to the fact that the primary ritual component of any tour transpires at the
lake. And the ritual restrictions associated with the Brahma temple are be-
cause of Savitri, as the curse made clear that householders could not perform
puja before Brahma’s image. Interestingly, this does not quite obliterate the
temple worship of the creator god altogether, as Mohit suggested; instead, the
figure of the non-​householder—​in other words, the renunciate—​emerges as
a viable substitute. Thus, the pujaris of the Brahma temple are not brahman
householders but ascetics in orange robes.35 So, when a devotee wants to
make an offering to Brahma in the temple, they do so through a sadhu who
stands inside the central altar.36 And because of the fact that this day-​to-​day
management is composed of sadhus, the brahman community—​and there-
fore the majority of guides—​have little interest in it.37
This is not to say that guides have a bad relationship with the sadhus at
the temple. On the contrary, whenever I  asked a representative of either
party they went to considerable lengths to note that the two groups worked
well together. One sadhu declared it to be a “relationship of love” (prem ka
rishta). Still, sometimes guides would charge certain sadhus with distinctly
un-​sadhu-​like behavior, such as hoarding money or soliciting prostitutes.
Others would more generally criticize sadhus for being too enticed by the
world of taste and smell: “there are very few real sadhus,” a friend said on
several occasions, “only svadhus” (a person who savors material things).38
Such accusations were either extremely specific (that particular individual
does xyz) or extremely broad (all sadhus do xyz), and rarely focused on the
collective of sadhus living in the Brahma temple. Moreover, what might
seem like the most potentially contentious issue between the two parties—​
namely, the guides’ claim that the temple is unimportant when compared
to the lake—​turns out to be largely accepted fact for the sadhus. One of the
94  Guest Is God

more prominent sadhus unblinkingly stated that the temple “had no history.”
When I asked for elaboration, he explained that, yes, the temple was hun-
dreds of years old, and had a rightful position as the world’s only Brahma
temple, but it was not in itself more significant than the lake. He certainly
thought that the temple was a special one, as far as temples go, but he un-
derstood the lake to be the very stuff of creation.39 Even in their service to
Brahma and his temple, the sadhus recognize that the creator god’s power lies
elsewhere.
With the tour ended, the guide says his goodbyes while inviting clients—​
in varying levels of directness—​to offer some sort of payment for his efforts.
Instead of stating a set price, the majority of priests simply say “as you like.”
More often than not, this gesture produces a very small donation, though
they knowingly weigh that reality against the hope that at some point
someone might come along, and their understanding of “as you like” will
yield an awesome sum. It has supposedly happened enough times that many
guides continue with this optimistic method while making a fairly meager
wage on most days. Guides specifically from the Parashar community are
slightly better set up, in that their Trust collects the money from the pujas
performed on Brahm Ghat, which can later be redistributed among priests
and tour guides.
As we can see, this is very much a job, and attendant with that category are
all the annoyances of jobs everywhere: striving for a decent salary, clocking
in those hours, worrying about job security, etc. In their touring, these men
pay homage to Pushkar’s shifting markets, where the great karma exchange
that makes up the “traditional” Hindu service is now supplemented with
the exchange and flow of information. And yet, for the guides that I talked
to—​whom I met, and whose tours I followed, and with whom I waited and
waited, and drank chai, and waited—​guiding was also a part of their religious
life as brahmans. A tour becomes, in some small way, an extension of what
happens at the lake; it is not merely a secular romp through the town, but a
mini-​pilgrimage in itself with the explicit intent of communicating to visitors
which religious features make Pushkar so special (and thus re-​inscribing the
specialness of those very features). Even their culturally translated references
to G.O.D. are designed to demonstrate to foreigners that devotion can be
universal, and that a divine presence might be felt and found in Pushkar re-
gardless of the name you give it. It is therefore important to remember—​and
doubly so for the next section—​that in Pushkar, commitments to practicing
religion and making money are almost always entangled.
 Savitri’s Curse  95

Priests, Money, and Trust

“He is a merchant of the sacred, a guide, and he demands his price”40

Money matters. This is true basically everywhere, but in Pushkar and many
tourist destinations around the world, the nature of money’s flow makes for a
particularly strained dynamic. By this, I refer to the ways in which Pushkar’s
economy relies almost entirely on outsiders for material gain.41 And there
is no money matter more contentious than the “Pushkar passport.” Let me
explain with a true story:  Nick and Dan came from the United Kingdom
around the time of the camel fair, arriving in nearby Ajmer after having spent
the night on a 17-​hour train from Mumbai. They managed to get on the bus
to Pushkar, but their arrival quickly became an experiment in disorientation.
The Lonely Planet noted that their hotel was just around the corner from the
bus stand, but the local government had shifted the bus stand just two weeks
before. While they were asking for some help, a person approached and put
a few flowers in their hand; Nick and Dan were unaware, but this pretty mix
of marigolds and roses meant that their morning had just taken a turn for the
worse. A rickshaw driver agreed to go to the hotel, but brought them instead
to the ghats. Magically, the man who first offered them flowers at the bus
stand was already there, and he told them that every pilgrim or tourist must
offer flowers to the lake and do a puja as soon as they arrive in town. They
were split up, and two priests brought them separately to the shore. Paralyzed
by the fear of unknowing—​a position of which many tourists are too keenly
aware—​they went along with the proceedings. In the middle of their rituals,
both were asked how much they would donate. After much arguing and
anger, Nick gave 10 rupees (~15¢). The priest scolded, “this red thread is a
sign of respect for the town and our religion, it’s your Pushkar passport; you
need to give me more money.” Feeling the hot irony of this “respect,” Nick
refused. Dan was easier to sway, and he gave 700 rupees (~$10) in deflated
defeat. An hour later and finally sitting at breakfast in their hotel, they told
me all about their morning.
This type of tale was far from the only one I heard, though as a relatively
extreme case it highlights the problem. Not every tourist gets scammed im-
mediately, but it is common for a foreign traveler to be given flowers by a
seemingly random person in the main bazaar, and soon thereafter to en-
counter another person—​usually a priest—​who, upon seeing the flowers,
volunteers his services to do a puja at the lake. This is all for the “Pushkar
96  Guest Is God

passport,” a red thread similar in every way to the mauli tied around one’s
wrist during a Hindu ceremony or festival, except that this one is part of
a deeply coercive act driven with the intention of extracting money from
people who are too intimidated to protest. Tourists walking with a “pass-
port” can move freely throughout the town, their red thread telegraphing
the fact that they have already paid. Those without it risk the possibility of
being stopped or followed by men aggressively “offering” flowers.42 For their
part, Dan and Nick had every intention of performing a puja at the lake, and
had even planned to take a holy bath there. What truly frustrated them was
not the ritual itself but the mid-​ritual haggling. “It really wrecked it, I think,”
remarked Dan, “because right in the middle I had to bargain the price down
from 40 British pounds (~Rs. 3,500) to 700 rupees.” Nick of course took a
different route, and his offer of 10 rupees meant that he never got the red
thread; the pujari simply refused. The way Nick tells it, he saw the issue of
money from the very beginning: “it’s just horrible, when you can see it in
their eyes.”
According to several tourists with whom I spoke, money dependency—​
and subsequently, the urgency of making it—​is an already troubling issue
made even more dissonant because of the town’s purported sanctity.
Alessandro from Italy said of his puja experience that it was a “holy thing
that shouldn’t have involved money.” Zara from Canada voiced a similar
opinion; she noted feeling like a “walking ATM” during her puja by the lake.
Her presiding priest even failed to clarify why she was doing a Hindu ritual
at all: “he said something about Brahma, Vishnu, whatever.” As a seasoned
backpacker, Will had witnessed hawking cultures across South and Southeast
Asia, and thus considered Pushkar’s aggressive economy to be not inherently
different from previous experiences. But he did see the “Pushkar passport” as
an unusual example of “being hawked for religious purposes.” He derisively
called it “paying for salvation.”
There are two complaints here that need not be conflated. On the one
hand you have the kind of duplicitous behavior that can turn a handful of
flowers into too many tears: the pressure and the ritual held hostage, the
cruel appeal to one’s sense of respect when that is the one thing most lacking
from the encounter. This relates more generally to the aggression and ra-
pacity often displayed by some people within the priesthood, which can
seem extreme even to Hindu pilgrims—​seasoned, as they are, to priests’
advances.43 Ann Gold has a particularly colorful passage that helps to illu-
minate the issue:
 Savitri’s Curse  97

Sometimes the pandas [pilgrimage priests] went too far in their aggres-
sive behavior; they might then be roundly abused, as when Kalyan Singhji
summed up his opinion of the priests in Calcutta:  “Don’t ask about the
pandas. Seeing the condition of the pandas, there is no desire to do a
yatra [pilgrimage]. Those sister-​fuckers, they would tear my clothes! . . . If
everyone knew that pandas were like this, then no one would come on
pilgrimage. . . .”44

Academic integrity requires that such behavior be condemned, and many

Pushkar locals agree. One brahman by the name of Pavan actually echoed
Aamir Khan and the Atithi Devo Bhava campaign (not to mention Kalyan
Singhji, above) by saying that if priests continued to be so pushy, then their
children would be jobless in the future. As for the “Pushkar passport,” an-
other brahman implored me not even to mention it—​not to let those two
words pass through my lips—​because it was a “dirty thing” (gandi bat). After
I pressed him for clarification, he simply stated that puja should never be
done aggressively, and if money is offered it should always be “with love.”
This brings us to the second and, I think, less tenable complaint, namely
that religion should not require financial transaction. Earlier in the book,
I addressed the relationship between religion and economy, a pair hopelessly
entangled like those beautiful depictions of Radha and Krishna in a lovers’
dance—​no beginning or end between two bodies, no sign of release. This re-
lationship is not at all foreign to the Hindu tradition. In fact, the earliest texts
that explore and extol the benefits of pilgrimage—​namely the Mahabharata
and the Puranas—​spend considerable time on two things in particular: one,
the “salvific rewards” that one might gain from visiting pilgrimage places,
and two, the fact that “these rewards are accessed by gifts to brahmans” at
those very places.45 Payment to brahmans, or more technically “donation” in
the form of food, clothing, cows, land, gold, etc., has an early and recorded
precedence. Indeed, in one 2nd-​century cave inscription located just outside
of the city of Nashik, Pushkar itself is described as a place where one should
donate 1,000 cows.46 Of course, the very people making these suggestions
were themselves brahmans, and we can therefore take this broader histor-
ical frame as evidence of the fact that brahmans have long worked to make
themselves—​their temples, their tirths, their jobs, and their ritual services—​
relevant. As Knut Aukland has argued, the whole endeavor of brahmans
trying to get money from pilgrims is “very much in tune with the history of
Hindu pilgrimage as a whole.”47
98  Guest Is God

While there are always thresholds of aggression and greed that certain
priests stand to transgress, it is widely accepted that pilgrimage costs money.
Not only that, but as Ann Gold discusses below, there is some actual merit in
emptying one’s wallet:

Pilgrimage helps because the cumulative effect of being removed from daily
routines and attachments at home, of taking many powerful darshans of the
gods, of voluntarily enduring hardships on the road, and above all of put-
ting out money both for the sake of these experiences (the initial fare) and
during them (the constant drain of rupees and paisa into the outstretched
hands of pandas and beggars) is decidedly good for the soul. The effect is
one of lightening: the returning pilgrim should be thinner and poorer.48

Jonathan Parry goes even further, with regard to his own work in Banaras:

I claim that there is a sense in which it is because—​and not in spite—​of the

predatory panda that the pilgrims continue to come . . . Priestly rapacity is
(implicitly) part of his [the pilgrim’s] bed of nails; and the more painful the
renunciation, the greater the spiritual fruit.49

Theoretically and theologically, Parry’s argument seems compelling.

Practically, though, and in my own experience, most people do not fully em-
brace this “bed of nails.” Pilgrims coming to Pushkar simultaneously rec-
ognize the spiritual benefits of this material lightening without necessarily
seeking out “predatory pandas.” Nevertheless, Parry and Gold’s examples
demonstrate both the extent to which religion and economy are coupled
within the context of Hindu ritual, and the fact that pilgrims expect some
type of economic exchange in their religious dealings.
For non-​Hindus who visit Pushkar, the interface of money and religion
is difficult to accept, and doubly so when a priest demands money from you
and not a person in the abstract. But we also need to recognize that such
an idea poses a difficulty for tourists in part because of the assumptions
they carry about Pushkar. Scholars have referred to this as the construc-
tion of “tourism imaginaries,” or “socially transmitted representational
assemblages that interact with people’s personal imaginings and are used as
meaning-​making and world-​shaping devices.”50 In short, these imaginaries
are assumptions about what a tourist destination should be. The factors
influencing such “complex systems of presumption” vary widely, from the
 Savitri’s Curse  99

tourism industry to broader ideologies of nationalism and Orientalism.51

In contrast to Edward Said’s rendering of Orientalism,52 in which primarily
negative assessments of “Eastern” cultures align with the colonial project, the
tourist imaginary of India today relies upon what Richard Fox labels “affirm-
ative Orientalism.”53 Although still essentially essentializing, this more posi-
tive type of Orientalism represents Indians and Indian culture as “religious,”
“spiritual,” and “anti-​materialistic.”54
Importantly, the authors or agents of such a discourse are both Indian
and Western, part of a dialectic rather than emerging from a single place. In
Pushkar, tourists and locals are playing much the same game in their desire
to see the town as one where spirituality runs pure like some stream high
in the Himalayas. Such ideas about a mystical India are programmed into
the minds of tourists even before entering the country. Think of yoga cul-
ture in the United States, with its deadly serious namastes, its talk of chakras
and Indian sages living in caves.55 With regard to tourism, look no further
than the Lonely Planet, which has this to say about Pushkar: “Despite the
commercialism and banana pancakes, the town remains enchantingly small
and authentically mystic.”56 This is a fabulously interesting term—​“authenti-
cally mystic”—​and one that no doubt helps to produce a tourism imaginary
of spirituality unfettered to worldly demands. Looking back to Will and his
unease with “paying for salvation,” we can see how this imaginary conflicts
with reality and leads to a kind of cross-​cultural cognitive dissonance. What
strikes me as most salient here is that Pushkar locals too have a massive in-
terest in spirituality, aiming to cultivate and maintain this ideal in diverse
ways. And this book addresses many of them. But for locals, the pursuit of
some spiritual ideal need not be separated from the worldly goal of making
money. Thus, tourists’ understanding of paradise often fails to map onto
locals’ expectations of the same.
Maybe the best example of this transnational confusion is found in the
topic of the Hindu priesthood or, said differently, the question as to who
really is or is not a priest. This comes to light most explicitly in the star-
tlingly common statement among tourists that they were duped to do a puja
by a “fake priest.” I encountered a number of travelers who were sure that
young Indian men in Pushkar—​and especially those wearing tight jeans
and button-​up shirts—​pretended to be priests in order to make money
swindling foreigners. And it’s even possible that tourists arrive in town with
such assumptions already in place. Take, for example, the popular website
Wikitravel and its section on the Pushkar page entitled “scams”:
100  Guest Is God

Scams are widespread in Pushkar, particularly around the lake. Most fre-
quently, a ‘holy man’ will sit with you and go through a blessing. They will
then ask how much you would like to donate to their ‘charity’ . . . Remember
most of these so called Holy Men are nothing of the sort, be firm but polite
and decline their invitation to pray for your family.57

Interesting though it is, this warning fails to explain a much more com-
plicated situation. In truth, Pushkar brahmans have a nearly uncontested
monopoly at the lake, and if there were to be a challenge on their territory
it would come from the direction of other brahmans from places just out-
side of town. They are brahmans nonetheless. The lake is small enough, the
community is tight-​knit enough, and the earnings are stretched enough
that a “fake priest” would be recognized and likely chased away in haste.
Moreover, the training of brahmans for the priesthood is actually quite
substantial, especially among the younger generations, many of whom
have been trained in the basics of Vedic recitation and everyday rituals.
One simply cannot judge a brahman by his appearance. Take my collab-
orator Tinku: he is under twenty, with inches of spiky black hair, a peach
fuzz mustache, and a very in-​vogue mullet. He wears jeans and shiny shirts.
In short, he does not look “authentically mystic.” But, he is also a com-
mitted Sanskrit student who can recite passages from the Yajur Veda and
Bhagavad Gita with a flourish. A patron of any kind—​tourist or pilgrim—​
would be lucky to have Tinku as the presiding brahman of the ritual pro-
cess, and yet he would undoubtedly receive the designation of “fake priest”
from a person who knew no better.
At the same time, this reality is hardly a comfort to foreigners. Instead of
the relatively simple situation in which there is an individual who might be
labeled and isolated and cast aside as a money-​hungry fake, the actual case
is more—​and probably more depressingly—​complex. All of the priests are
“real,” and definitively so if we are simply talking about them being from
the brahman caste; if we are asking who is actually trained to do the work
well, the situation is more varied. But it is also the case that the younger
brahmans with the shinier shirts are actually more likely to have received a
substantial Sanskrit education than many others.58 Those other, usually older
men dressed in white kurta pajamas and adorned with sandalwood paste
smeared across their foreheads may look “authentically mystic,” but their
qualifications are hardly a guarantee. There are no “fake priests” to be exiled,
 Savitri’s Curse  101

no self-​satisfied dusting of one’s hands; all the priests are real, and so are the
sometimes extortionary pujas they perform.
Priests, for their part, are not ignorant of how tourists perceive them.
I  have previously mentioned the Pushkar Priest Association Trust, a col-
lective of local brahmans whose primary operations are located on Brahm
Ghat. Several priests of the Parashar subcaste formed the Trust in 1997 as
a means to organize their community and to gain formal recognition from
the Rajasthani government. As several collaborators told me, the impetus
for the Trust emerged from a concern that they were perceived by outsiders
as somehow lacking credentials. Unlike pilgrims, many of whom have long-​
standing connections with specific priests, tourists were unfamiliar with eve-
ryday Hindu practice. With no way of knowing who was who, or whether a
particular person was qualified to perform a ritual, visitors from afar were
skeptical of lakeside business. So these enterprising brahmans registered with
the Rajasthani government’s Department of Temples (devasthan vibhag),
printed identification cards, and started presenting donors with those yellow
receipts that I refer to in c­ hapter 1.
A receipt seems a simple thing, but here it reflects far broader concerns
about authenticity and professionalization. In order to dissociate from in-
dividual interests—​and to cohere around a more professional cause—​
members claim that the Trust is a charity organization. Alleged in the receipt
is that members of the Trust clean the lake, distribute food for festivals, pro-
vide help for cows, the poor, and the elderly. A person’s donation, as such,
is meant to go to these causes rather than line the pockets of a priest. In
defense of the Trust, I should add that they do, in fact, distribute free food
during certain festivals. And as we have seen, brahmans do indeed clean
the lake. I discussed these charitable duties with a senior priest on Brahm
Ghat, a person who more than most was disillusioned with his job and com-
munity. Removing the receipt from my field notebook, I prepared to pose a
question about the Trust:

Drew: On the back of the receipt it says that . . .

Priest: No one does anything.
Drew: No one does anything?
Priest: On the back of the receipt, whatever is written there, no one does
it. Cleaning the lake, there are ten to twelve brahmans, they’ve started
to do it. The rest are workers for the Municipality. But it’s not them [the
102  Guest Is God

Trust]. It’s written that they clean the lake, but there’s no maintenance.
Everything goes in their pockets.

This priest, who for obvious reasons will remain nameless, spoke not about
some amorphous outsider—​a tourist or taxi driver or hotel owner—​but
about an association of which he is a member. I was unable even to ask my
question, stopped short by his simple and immediate assertion that “no one
does anything.” He mentions Mukesh’s group of cleaners, but just as readily
points to the fact that they pick up trash around the lake independently of the
Trust. Thus, his most damning condemnation of the Trust at large: “no one
does anything.” This is a particularly biting analysis, suggesting that the very
inspiration for the establishment of the Trust—​that is, to build trust—​is con-
stantly undercut by its own actions.59
In the past many pages, I  have highlighted certain features that some
in Pushkar would rather not discuss. My point, though, is not that the dy-
namic between locals and tourists is irreparably damaged or that institutions
like the Trust are corrupt beyond saving. Rather, I  discuss these features
and fractures of the tourist landscape in order to bring up a broader point,
namely, that so much of what causes this dissonance lies specifically at the
horizon where different ideas about religion meet. For priests, Pushkar is
heavenly not only because of its inherent sacredness but also because of the
priestly community and what they do on behalf of their patrons to propitiate
the gods. The Trust, as such, serves as an entity of organization and authority,
something that allows them to continue on their religious duties. Tourists
tend to see things differently. For younger backpackers especially—​those
twenty-​and thirty-​somethings from Europe and North America who arrive
at the bus station ready for hash, banana pancakes, and sunrise yoga—​the
brahmanical vision of religion and spirituality is far from compelling. Pujas
are ruined by “fake” and rapacious priests who demand too much money for
not enough. This is not their idea of heaven. Indeed, the very definition of
heaven depends on culture and context, factors which—​as Milton’s Lucifer
puts it in Paradise Lost—​“can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”60

Cursed to Beg

In her work on Pushkar in the 1980s, Sushila Zeitlyn details a scene both
poignant and appropriate to the topic at hand: “Confronted by an unwilling
 Savitri’s Curse  103

bus load from Delhi, one panda was finally asked by one of the pilgrims why
he didn’t go and do an honest day’s work. The panda’s response was spon-
taneous and telling; he said bitterly, ‘We abuse god every morning because
he made us Brahmans and therefore beggars.’ ”61 Without being specifically
tied to Brahma or his story, such an account echoes the very same sentiment
of Savitri’s curse. It is a sentiment of helplessness, of being bound to a fate,
and an agency extracted. Whenever I asked informants why they chose to
work as priests and tour guides, they overwhelmingly explained that it was
simply a matter of what their forefathers did. Of course, their fathers and
grandfathers were not “tour guides” in today’s sense, but pandas, pujaris, and
tirth purohits; still, because guiding work is considered an extension of the
priesthood, then it too counts as pushtaini kam, or “patrimonial work.” This
means, then, that becoming a priest or a guide is not really a choice at all but
an ancestral calling. Such a calling can, at times, engender a certain pride. For
some, it’s even enjoyable. But for others, it is their only option, something
that feels fated—​if not by God, or Savitri, then because there are so few other,
equally viable options.
There are several reasons for this lack of opportunity. First of all, very
few brahmans are willing to leave Pushkar for an extended period of time,
whether for employment or otherwise. As explained since this book’s very
first pages, Pushkar locals—​and brahmans especially—​overwhelmingly con-
sider Pushkar a paradise too precious to leave. It is Brahma’s home, a center
that attracts people rather than sends them away. It is also a place that many
families have called home for generations. Several of my informants live
among extended family in household complexes many hundreds of years
old. Historical ties to Pushkar are taken so seriously that people are often
only considered “from Pushkar” if their family goes back several genera-
tions. One man told me that he wasn’t from Pushkar because although he
was born there and lived there his whole life, his parents were born some-
where else. I even heard of a Parashar brahman who was labeled as “not from
Pushkar” because his grandparents came from a different town in Rajasthan;
he and his parents were all born in Pushkar—​but to some detractors, that
was not enough. Beyond all this, there are basic economic implications for
staying put, in that these sometimes-​vast households have been long paid
down, thus limiting expenses to things like electricity, water, and upkeep.
Extra rooms and added stories demand further resources, though families
will often pool money for such projects rather than rely on a single earner.
Leaving for another city would require considerable investment and disturb
104  Guest Is God

close-​knit families. So, given these two factors—​the extremely sentimental

and conserv­ative view of geographic belonging, and the economic benefits of
staying put—​it is hard for locals to leave.
With so few willing to leave, most of the employment opportunities are
restricted to Pushkar or nearby Ajmer. As a city of some 500,000 people,
Ajmer offers many more possibilities than Pushkar, especially for middle-​
class professionals. But Ajmer’s higher earning, white-​collar jobs also require
higher levels of education, and most people in Pushkar are not sufficiently
educated to occupy those positions. Throughout my research, I met many
young brahman men who dropped out of high school precisely because
they knew that a job on the ghats was waiting for them. In some cases, it was
simply a lack of patience that led them to leave school and seek some extra
spending money; in others, it was financial precarity that forced them to try
and help their families. In either case, dropping out of school closes off a huge
range of future opportunities.
For those who do end up graduating high school, and for the far fewer
who end up graduating college, a steady job is still not guaranteed. As Craig
Jeffrey has detailed, professional unemployment remains an issue for lower-​
middle-​class young men who have obtained an education but who “lack the
funds, social networking resources and cultural capital to succeed within
fiercely competitive markets for government jobs and positions in the new
economy.”62 This quite accurately describes many of my more educated
informants in Pushkar. But according to them, lack of either expendable in-
come or social connections were not the biggest problem. Instead, there was
one factor in particular that seemed too large an obstacle for employment,
even despite higher levels of education: their caste. More specifically, locals
routinely complained about the system of caste-​based reservations in India,
which, as a type of affirmative action program, provides support for histori-
cally and systemically disadvantaged castes and tribes. Through quotas, this
system reserves access to certain seats—​in government, in public employ-
ment, and in higher education, among others—​for those groups categorized
as “Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes” (SCs and STs), or “Other
Backwards Classes” (OBCs).63 Nor is this some small-​scale program; in
Rajasthan, fully half of the spaces held for employment in government jobs
and enrollment in academic institutions are reserved for SCs, STs, and OBCs.
As historically advantaged brahmans, my informants are desig-
nated as “General Class” or “Forward Caste” and thus ineligible for such
reservations. When I asked my friend Manoj why he never managed to get
 Savitri’s Curse  105

a job with an M.A. in hand, he simply said, “because I’m a brahman.” Of

course, it is not as simple as that. Another informant, Lakshman, put it like
this: “I’m not so rich, I don’t have money. But if somebody’s from a sched-
uled caste or scheduled tribe, and he’s rich and has lots of money, then he’s
getting the reservation.” Here, Lakshman is calling attention to one of the
most common critiques of India’s reservation system, namely, that it often
fails to recognize the extent to which caste and wealth are not synonymous.
We see a similar critique of affirmative action policies in the United States
but with regard to the relationship between race and class. And like the
poor white American from Appalachia, Lakshman feels put upon by the
fact that people can have access to reservation-​based privileges while also
being wealthier than he.
These wealthier people of lower castes—​who, it should be noted, often re-
main in the abstract to many of my informants—​can pay for private schools
and tutoring and, even more generally, are afforded the time and support to
study. This matters so much because employment in the most desirable gov-
ernment positions is often determined by exam scores. And perhaps even
more importantly, what counts as a “good” or “passing” grade is different
based on the competitiveness of one’s caste category. That’s to say, if the av-
erage score of an exam for General Classes is a 90%, and the average score for
Scheduled Castes on the very same exam is 80%, then technically, a student
of a Scheduled Caste might get an above-​average score of 88%—​and be well
set up for a position somewhere—​while a co–​test taker in the General Classes
might get a better score of 89%, but still be below average for his caste category
and therefore less likely to get a job. Lakshman gave a similar example: “This
happened to my friend. He got an 85% on his examination. His friend [from a
Schedule Caste] got an 82%, and he got the job. My friend, who got 85%, who
was general [from a General Class], he didn’t get the job.” For an outsider, the
purpose of such a policy is clear enough; reservations are designed to provide
opportunities for historically marginalized and oppressed peoples, creating
social uplift and (ideally) ending discrimination based on caste. But for those
on the inside, and especially for those who believe their potential has been
cut short, like Manoj or Lakshman, these reservations are the very definition
of discrimination based on caste. Thus, when I asked Manoj something like,
“but then if India doesn’t have reservations, what can be done about jativad
(casteism)?” his answer was this: “Reservations are jativad!” The bitterness
of such a response derives, in part, from a sense of entitlement that comes
from a long history of exercising power and authority but which is dissonant
106  Guest Is God

with precarious employment. Brahman-​ness is not what it used to be, here a

burden rather than birthright.
Without access to higher paying and more stable jobs that require either
leaving Pushkar, having a substantial education, or doing well on ultra-​
competitive exams based on caste category, local brahmans often seek out
more informal occupations closer to home. The most common option, by
far, is to become a priest or tour guide. Outside of those positions, brahmans
also run or work in hotels, restaurants, chai shops, perfumeries, antique
stores, tchotchke shops, hippie clothing stores, pharmacies, etc. And many
switch around, too, relying largely on a steady job in a shop or hotel and then
attending to guiding duties in certain circumstances, like during a swell in
the season or when money is tight. We might remember when, in the second
chapter, Tinku claimed that brahmans could do whatever work they wanted.
But this was an exaggeration. I knew of a brahman who ran his own hotel,
and people talked behind his back about the fact that he himself cleaned the
hotel’s bathrooms. Such work was considered defiling, and certainly not ap-
propriate for a brahman. I met another brahman who wanted to own a shoe
store. It was his dream to have a flashy store with neon Nikes on display. But
he was worried, really existentially worried, that people would talk trash
about his family for such supposedly polluting work. He was even explicit
about how he didn’t care if people talked trash about him behind his back;
but to bring his family into it, that was too much. Fear of social rejection
from his very own caste group forced him to drop his plans, a dream deferred
indefinitely. Instead, he’s a guide—​one with great shoes, but also one whose
life is bound by certain expectations and responsibilities to make money in
the way his religious community deems acceptable, regardless of what he
really wants.

Conclusion: Savitri’s Curse

This chapter is framed by a story. It’s a story about a god and his wife—​and his
other wife—​from a long time ago. With curses and divine transformations,
it deals with circumstances that are alien to most people’s experiences of the
world, Indian or otherwise. And yet, it is also extremely relevant. As John
Beattie argues in his classic work on the Nyoro people of Uganda, myths are
told when they “express attitudes and beliefs current at the present time.”64
Otherwise, no one would tell them. So with regard to the story of Savitri’s
 Savitri’s Curse  107

curse, we might ask two questions:  who is telling the story, and why are
they telling this one in particular? The “who” is actually pretty simple, in-
sofar as over the course of my research almost everyone I met decided, at
some point or another, to take a deep breath, ready themselves, and tell the
story of Savitri’s curse. But the people who tell it as part of their living are
the priests and guides. This partially answers the second question; the “why”
is because telling the story is part of their job. But, it is part of their job be-
cause the story does something. It has a certain power, not unlike the curse
itself: it details the uniqueness of Pushkar and Brahma’s relationship to the
town; it justifies worship at the lake over and above worship at the temple; it
provides an opportunity for priests to demonstrate their authority; and lastly,
it gives context to why priests in the town are so often perceived as begging.
What I find most interesting, then, is that the story makes not only theo-
logical but also social and economic claims. Again, this in no way implies
that guides and priests fail to see the complex factors shaping their financial
circumstances; they surely see them well enough. But the story complements
what they already know, texturing their worldview in a way that incorporates
both money matters and divine agency at the same time.
 4
Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic

In the years following Brahma’s consecration of the lake, people began vis-
iting Pushkar. Devoted to Brahma and eager to win his blessings, they bathed
in the lake’s sacred waters. Along with the dust and sweat from the journey,
their sins were washed away. And after death, they reached heaven. But there
was a problem. Heaven was getting filled too fast, and its new inhabitants were
not particularly deserving. Someone could spend a life in utter mediocrity—​
offering no oblations, performing no sacrifices, and accruing no good karma—​
but with a simple bath in Pushkar-​raj, they would go to heaven. Knowing the
easy way and seeing no benefit to the hard way, people stopped fulfilling their
ritual duties. Understandably, the gods became worried and went to Brahma
for aid: “Oh Brahma-​ji, because of the holy dip in Pushkar, there’s no room
in heaven. The people here are no good. They have lived sinfully and yet now
think themselves equal to us. Just as bad, those still living have begun to ig-
nore us. They perform no sacrifices, offer no recognition. You need to do some-
thing.” Stroking his four beards on his four faces, Brahma answered: “Yes, this
is problem. Here’s what I’ll do: from now on, the lake in Pushkar will have its
celestial power limited. It will only have its absolute power for five days in the
month of kartik, when the waxing moon becomes full. For those five days, all
of the gods will gather in Pushkar and give the people their blessings. The full
moon day marks the anniversary of my consecration there, so it will be that
day in particular when my devotees can access the heavenly abode. For the rest
of the year the celestial power of Pushkar-​raj will remain above, in the firma-
ment.” The gods were pleased, and left Brahma to his contemplation.

~
Mythic eons later, people still come to Pushkar. And due to Brahma’s de-
cree, the vast majority of pilgrims come during those five days of kartik
(October–​November), from the eleventh day of the bright fortnight until
the full moon. For these days, the town is said to become, quite literally,
heaven on earth—​a time marked for washing away one’s sins and for getting

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  109

Figure 4.1.  “Schoolboy (dressed as Brahma) in the mela’s “Spiritual Walk.”

closer to the divine.1 This is the mela (fair), the undisputed main event in
Pushkar’s religious calendar. But a week before the rituals and the moonlit
baths, there are the camels. These even-​toed ungulates are bought and
sold by the thousands, ridden in contests, raced for tourists, and adorned
with bells and pompoms of every known variety. This is when the town
most feels like a tourist destination: normally empty hotels fill up, visitors
view and participate in dozens of events at a massive and sandy stadium
called the “mela ground,” hawkers possess a special glint in their eyes, and
photographers pop out and kneel at every corner to get their angle just right.
This spectacle counts as the mela too, though it is targeted at a more interna-
tional audience, and visitors tend to distinguish it from the latter part of the
festival by labeling it the “camel fair.”2
Thus, from salvation to selling camels, the mela has something for eve-
ryone. And yet, even with this crazy quilt of occasions, there is an overarching
language or rhetoric—​a connecting thread—​that weaves its way through the
town during these days in kartik: the language of color. One is told repeat-
edly and in different ways that the camel fair is a festival—​a veritable feast—​
of color. But what does this mean? And why say it so often? In answering
these questions, this chapter focuses on two interweaving discourses of color,
110  Guest Is God

one from tourist pamphlets and English-​language newspapers emphasizing

a kind of magical, sacred exoticism, the other from local perspectives on
cultural diversity and religious harmony. In both cases, to make note of a
“colorful Pushkar” is much more than a matter of photoreceptors in our
eyeballs picking up certain frequencies of light, more than just a casual ob-
servation of a person’s surroundings. Color actually does something. Indeed,
I suggest that color has become a commodity in itself, a substance for sale
that attracts tourists and shapes the economy. But what does an economy of
color look like? And who gets to participate in it? Finally, I close the chapter
by exploring the central role photography plays in the life of the camel fair.
Cameras provide the lens through which tourists experience Pushkar, and
photographs provide the means for color to be captured, contained, and
brought back home.

The World of Color

Every year, a week or so before Pushkar’s camel fair, shops seem to emerge
from the dust, turning the empty road around the mela ground into a short
and feverish desert bazaar. Merchants come from all over to set up shop and
sell their wares: toys, jewelry, devotional materials like small statues and brass
arti lamps, Rajasthani handicrafts of lacquered elephants and camels, leather
shoes, blankets, farming tools, gorgeous and indecipherable ornaments for
camels such as neon pompoms and ornate saddles, tapestries, puppets, bed
sheets, wooden canes, and ceremonial swords. You can find service stands
of every variety, some selling chai or sugarcane juice, others offering fried
foods and sweets. There are teenage hawkers, disheveled in crumpled clothes
and holding strings of cheaply made and overpriced necklaces. There are
kalbeliya dancers—​popularly called “gypsies”—​who try to shake your hand
so as to take hold of it and apply henna for ransom prices. In the midst of
this dusty dance, there is the spotless counter labeled “Tourist Information,”
draped in blue fabric and protected from the sun.
On one particular occasion, the counter was staffed by two young men
in crisp attire and carefully oiled hair. They had little to say by way of guid-
ance, but invited me to consult the many informational pamphlets arranged
on the desk in neat little piles, all English-​language texts, all published by
either India’s Ministry of Tourism or Rajasthan’s Department of Tourism.
They had titles like “Pushkar,” “Celebrating an Experience:  Rajasthan,”
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  111

“Join the Revelry:  Pushkar Fair,” or “Discover Rajasthan, Get Carried

Away” (Figure 4.2). It did not really require an anthropologist’s eye to
see that their cover images shared an obvious family resemblance. Most
featured a stereotypical Rajasthani man: white clothes with a red or pink
turban and an impressive mustache framing an angular jaw. Camels made
a consistent appearance, too. And a still significant minority showed the
sun, usually setting, its light receding behind sandy dunes. Taken together,
these images constitute a broad and intentional image of Rajasthan, exoti-
cism packaged and mobilized by the government in order to advertise for

Figure 4.2.  “Discover Rajasthan” tourist pamphlet.

112  Guest Is God

tourists.3 And yet, even more interesting than these images—​something

I  did not discover before scrutinizing the pamphlets’ pages more
seriously—​is that these little bounded advertisements all speak with re-
markable consistency about one thing in particular: the camel fair, they
say, is an event filled with color.
Take, for example, the small pamphlet called “Ajmer/​Pushkar” from the
Ministry of Tourism’s “Incredible !ndia” campaign: “Pushkar Fair: A bustling
fair full of life and zest, it is one of the largest cattle fair (sic) in the country held
every year at Pushkar on Kartik Poornima (full-​moon, October-​November).
The 12 day affair is considered to be the most colourful animal fair in the
world.” In the same vein, this is an excerpt from the state government’s guide
for Ajmer and Pushkar:

The Pushkar Fair is overwhelming in its magnitude and is celebrated with

great enthusiasm. It is easily one of the most spectacular and colorful fairs
of India and famous the world over for its collection of colorful people,
camels and cattle. Very few fairs in the world can match the vibrancy and
magic of this fair.

From a leaflet simply called “Pushkar” (Figure 4.3), we find this description:

Once a year, at the time of the full moon of November, this sleepy town
explodes with colourful crowd of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and
hoards (sic) of camels, cows, buffaloes and horses. The great Pushkar Fair is
one of the world’s most dazzling traditional gatherings. Come and capture
the vibrancy of the entire state of Rajasthan in one place.

And then there’s the opening page of a booklet entitled “Join the
Revelry: Pushkar Fair,” shown in Figure 4.4, which declares the mela to be
“the most colourful of them all.” The record is filled with these statements,
from newspapers and tourist pamphlets to everyday observations on the
ground. Such accounts note the fair’s magic, its vibrancy, its spirituality, its
life, and these qualities are often tied up—​bundled, like a gift—​with a ribbon
of color. Importantly, a good deal of this rings true: the Pushkar fair is indeed
a colorful event. My intention here is not to reject the discourse of color but
to investigate both what it achieves in terms of shaping perceptions of the
camel fair, and how such a discourse aligns itself with the economic goals
of the tourism industry.4 To that end, I do not focus on individual colors
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  113

Figure 4.3.  “Pushkar” tourist pamphlet.

and their symbolic value, like how white corresponds to purity, or red to
blood (though, as I will later address, such symbolism is important to many
Hindus). Rather, using Michael Taussig’s What Color is the Sacred? as inspi-
ration, and working from his titular question—​which he sculpts from Michel
Leiris’ query, “what color does the notion of the sacred have for me?”—​I con-
tend that it is not any single color but rather color itself, when it saturates and
brims, that creates an image of a sacred and exotic Pushkar Fair.5
Although the mela has existed since at least the early 19th century (and
probably much earlier), it was not until the late 1960s that the international
community began to take a sustained interest in the event.6 At this time,
American newspapers started sending their staff to report on Pushkar’s fair.
James Markham, in the January 8, 1969, edition of the Baltimore Sun, refers
114  Guest Is God

Figure 4.4.  Opening Page of “Join the Revelry: Pushkar Fair” tourist pamphlet.

to the Pushkar mela as “India’s most colorful county fair,” and he ruminates
on the idea that because “the desert countryside is so colorless, Rajasthanis,
it is often said, make up for it by dressing themselves in fantastically bold
colors.”7 Writing for the Washington Post in 1973, Lewis Simons adds that
while “the camels blend in perfectly with the utter drabness of brown sand
and scrub grass, the people of Rajasthan dazzle the eye and the mind.”8
A decade later, Louis Berney articulates a remarkably similar sentiment, also
in the Washington Post:

The sand was brown—​soft and pale—​and the thousands of camels sitting
and straggling about were browner still. But from across the sun-​splashed
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  115

desert came dazzling flashes of color:  red, orange and yellow turbans
shimmering like sequins; green, purple and scarlet saris sparkling like
fireworks . . . I had been lured to the Pushkar Fair—​in the western Indian
state of Rajasthan—​by its reputation for hosting the most exotic camel
trading extravaganza in the country. But it was the typically colorful dress
of the Rajasthani nomads and villagers, coming together for a week of rev-
elry, commerce and worship, that left the greatest impression on me.9

For these writers, the fair’s color is a matter of contrasts; the browns of the
landscape and livestock make even more dazzling the clothes of Rajasthanis,
men and women who, out of the countryside and over the dunes, form little
rivulets of color toward Pushkar. Here, it is the people as much as the camels
that demand attention.
Berney further argues that one cannot understand the camel fair from
somewhere over an ocean, or from words on a page. Here he is again, very
much in the tradition of the newspaper’s travel section:

India—​or any of its parts—​is a land that cannot be viewed from afar. To
look at India from a distance, whether it be across two continents, from
atop a small mountain or through a self-​imposed mental barrier, is to de-
ceive oneself. India must be touched, it must be breathed. Never did this
prove to be more true for me, after having lived in the country for almost
two years, than at the Pushkar Fair.10

From this, Berney makes the following conclusion:  to see Pushkar up-​
close is to “experience the full, unsanitized vibrancy of India—​its dazzling
color, its deep piety . . . and, most of all, its enchanting incomprehensibility.”11
Here, Pushkar enters into a synecdochic relationship with the entirety of the
country; said differently, the part becomes the whole, and so this small town in
Rajasthan stands in for the “full, unsanitized vibrancy of India.” Nor is Berney’s
gesture totally unique; an article from the Times of India also invokes this part-​
to-​whole metaphor in the following passage: “If not faith, curiosity brought
the foreigners as well in large numbers to the mela . . . which as one of them
exclaimed, sums up all that is India—​the colour, the rugged surroundings, the
vibrant costumes, the cattle trading . . . ” (emphasis mine).12 Thus, through the
experience that it offers, the mela comes to represent “all that is India.”
We should return to Berney’s idea about India’s “enchanting incom-
prehensibility,” a phrase that should raise particularly high and bright
116  Guest Is God

“Orientalism at work!” red flags. The American readers of the Washington

Post would surely not consider it a good thing—​never mind enchanting—​
if their own hometown were described as being rife with incomprehensi-
bility. Only somewhere else can be enchanting in how little it makes sense.
Still, the fact that Orientalism functions as a part of the apparatus of tourism
and travel literature strikes me as less revelatory than the issue of how the
language of color in particular bolsters and undergirds these Orientalist
fantasies. Here, it is helpful to look to Michael Taussig’s What Color is the
Sacred?
According to Taussig, color is a “polymorphous magical substance,” which
is to say that it has depth and character far more than “a spot of red or blue on
a page.”13 It is fluid, eliciting affective response and helping to structure the
way we think. Within the history of “the West” in particular, Taussig believes
that color possesses a “combustible mix of attraction and repulsion.”14 This
sounds more dramatic than it necessarily is, as in everyday life such “repul-
sion” might be better characterized as a kind of hesitance or lack of daring in
adorning oneself or one’s things in color. So, for example, New Yorkers might
love the idea of brilliant colors, but tend to wear sweaters the color of coal,
dirt, and the deep blue sea. As for those brilliant colors, you can find them as
an “accent,” on ties, bags, scarves, and that little revealing bit of colorful sock.
Taussig himself puts it best with this challenge to his audience: “Who of you
reading this text would ever dream of painting the living-​room wall bright
red or green, or any color other than off-​white? Then, safe in your white-
ness,15 you can hang a wildly colored picture on the wall, secure in its framed
being.”16 As such, there are people who love color, but only if contained.
While Taussig’s overall argument is multifaceted, he seems particularly
interested in how this mix of attraction and repulsion functions within the
colonial context, where Westerners see “the colorful Other” with both fas-
cination and discomfort. I  am hesitant to equate too easily the workings
of colonialism with those of tourism, but there are certain resemblances
that, in the case of India especially, remain shared:  most central of these
resemblances are the many dichotomies that layer upon the division of East
and West, and which shape the way outsiders understand their experiences
of the Other. These are fixed, evaluative, and essentializing dichotomies, like
religious and secular, exotic and familiar, materially poor and materially rich,
spiritually rich and spiritually poor. The list goes on. And in the context of
the camel fair, such a layering of dichotomies cannot be complete without
a touch of color, and more specifically the clash of colorful versus colorless.
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  117

Together, these qualities and characteristics are what brings foreign tourists
to Pushkar’s mela. Indeed, while the tourism industry most transparently
relies on commodities either in the form of services, like travel and accom-
modation, or in the form of objects, like souvenirs and guide books, the most
significant “product sold by the tourism industry, in its most general form,
is a commodified relation to the Other.”17 These pamphlets and newspapers
together depict the camel fair as offering an exciting world of Other-​ness, a
world that Westerners cannot access back home: one of spirituality, animals,
exotic outfits, and yes, color. Keeping Taussig in mind, we should take note
that most tourists are more than content to return home from this world of
Other-​ness—​return to their off-​white walls—​and then put up a picture of
some bedecked camel or veiled Rajasthani lady, thus keeping their colorful
experience “secure in its framed being.”
But exoticism forms only one small part of this discursive kaleidoscope.
Hindu devotionalism has, for a long time, been awash with the language
of color. For example, a work attributed to the 14th-​century singer-​saint
Namdev urges devotees to “relish that vibrant color” of Krishna.18 A bhajan
for the folk deity Ramdev similarly encourages his followers to “go and mix
in the color of Ram of Ranuja.”19 Then there’s a beautiful song of Mirabai’s,
in which she repeats over and over that she’s “colored with the color of my
Lord.”20 Color works as a metaphor on multiple levels in these poems, but
often suggests a connection between devotee and divine so close that it is
quite literally dyed in the wool. Adjacent to this devotional context is the fes-
tival of Holi, where adults and children alike throw colorful powders at each
other. In Hindi, the only name for these powders is rang—​simply “color.”
Far more generally, though, Hindus think a lot about colors and their sym-
bolism: white is the color of purity, of widowhood; saffron is the color of sac-
rifice, of asceticism.21 Brides almost always wear red on their wedding day,
and once married, they apply sindoor—​a red cosmetic powder—​to their
foreheads and to where their hair parts; a woman will do this every day for
the rest of her life, or until her husband dies (at which point, traditionally, she
will don the white of widowhood and abandon such symbols of marriage).
Even in the everyday, color conveys meaning.
There is yet another, more local, discourse of color popular in Pushkar,
one undoubtedly entangled with the discourses mentioned above, but dif-
ferent in certain important ways. This is a discourse that emphasizes diver-
sity and sharing—​of people being separate but together, like the colors of a
rainbow. The first time I encountered this idea was while chatting with an
118  Guest Is God

officer of the Tourist Assistance Force (TAF), a quasi-​police group run by the
state government and assigned with the task of protecting and aiding tourists
on their journeys through Rajasthan. This TAF officer was always a sight to
behold, cutting an impressive figure in beige fatigues, an upwardly-​mobile
mustache, mirrored aviator sunglasses, and a beret on top. Weeks before, he
and I had shared a juice and a laugh over the fact that he looked like a villain
from a soap opera. Now we were at the mela ground, and he was scanning
the crowds with admiration. “Colorful Pushkar,” he declared in English. He
added with a wide smile: “you can see the whole world!”
In this TAF officer’s estimation, the fair was colorful, definitely, but not
solely because of the Rajasthani peasants in their dazzling getups. What
set Pushkar apart was that different people, with different cultures and dif-
ferent clothes, came from all over: “Everyone likes Pushkar. It’s not like
that everywhere. There’s Haridwar and the Kumbha Mela, where sadhus
go. Many different sadhus go there. But ‘whole world-​level’ people don’t
go there.” This color, therefore, was that of the world—​a refrain I heard
a number of times. Such an idea could be construed as related to race,
but in most cases seemed more a matter of different cultures rubbing
elbows in celebration. Local Hindi newspapers corroborated this idea too.
The Dainik Navajyoti of November 29, 2012, gives a whole page to the
Pushkar Fair with this headline: “Satrangi Sanskriti ki Jhalak” (A Glimpse
of Multicolored Culture). Unlike in the English-​language pamphlets and
newspapers, here the fair commands attention not because of red saris or
pink turbans, but because it brings different people together: “In the fair,
tourists and devotees from all over the world and the country come with
their own culture and cultural attire, and they collaborate in the mixing
of cultures.”22 A year later, the Dainik Navajyoti called the fair a “meeting
of foreign and Indian culture,”23 and the Rajasthan Patrika labeled it a
“meeting of cultures.”24
Far more than the English-​language material, Hindi newspapers em-
phasize the fair’s activities and competitions. The Dainik Navajyoti from
November 10, 2013, published an article entitled “The Scene at the Mela
Will Be Colorful” (Rangin Hoga Mele ka Nazara), but again, instead of solely
covering Rajasthanis’ sartorial inclinations, it addresses more than anything
the “multicolored cultural events and competitions” on display (rangarang
sanskritik karyakramon va pratiyogitaon).25 These events have proliferated in
recent years and have gradually incorporated foreigners. For example, a tug
of war competition has been around since at least the late 1960s, though by
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  119

1990 it had changed from a match between “rival villages” to one between
foreigners and locals.26 Nowadays the events are endless. In addition to those
where tourists are only observers—​like the camel race, the camel dance, the
horse dance, the camel decoration, the cattle competition, the temple dance,
and the “rural sports” competition, to name a few—​there are also events
where international tourists play a significant role:  the Indian bride com-
petition, in which foreign women dress up in Rajasthani bridal wear; the
local versus foreigner soccer match; the mustache competition, in which a
Rajasthani man with a 3-​foot-​long crumb catcher inevitably wins, but also in
which at least one tourist with an amateur mustache competes and is let down
gently; the turban tying competition, in which foreign women tie turbans on
their male compatriots; as well as a number of Indian and Rajasthani games
where foreigners are invited to play.
Of the fair’s many events, one in particular highlights the potentially reli-
gious color of cultural mixing: it is called the adhyatmik yatra, billed in the
tourist guides as the Spiritual Walk. To a casual tourist the Spiritual Walk
is an exciting parade—​and a photographer’s dream—​right in the middle of
the fair’s busy schedule of events, but for the Hindu devout it serves as the
official beginning of the mela. It falls every year on the morning of gyaras,
the eleventh day of the lunar month and the first of five days in which a dip
in Pushkar-​raj opens up the heavenly realm. But the event is not for Hindus
alone. As mentioned in the first chapter, adhyatmik roughly corresponds to
the word spiritual, a necessarily imperfect translation between two multiva-
lent and context-​sensitive words. Whatever its specific contours, adhyatmik
consistently implies a religious devotion unattached to the particularities of
creed, sect, or denomination. Thus, everyone can have it, and no one can take
it away. And this is very much the theme of Pushkar’s Spiritual Walk.27
When I got to the parade’s starting place,28 crowds had already started to
collect around the various floats. Some were pickup trucks with decorated
beds in which school children dressed up as gods sat on cardboard thrones
and polyester lotuses (Figure 4.1). There were also jeeps, vans, and pushcarts,
all adorned with canvas signs, garlands, or other decorations.29 A number
of cars represented Hindu groups and organizations: the Pushkar Parashar
Ramayan Mandal Trust, who patronize and perform the yearly ramlila
(Ramayana play); representatives from the Gayatri Shaktipith temple in
Udaipur; Brahma Kumaris from Mount Abu; members of the Gayatri Pariwar
from Haridwar; and followers of the guru Achalanand Giri. Devotees of the
latter held huge placards with a picture of their guru’s face accompanied by
120  Guest Is God

Figure 4.5.  Muslim man walking with his parade float in the Spiritual Walk.

various inspirational aphorisms. One in particular struck me as relevant to

the moment: translated from Hindi, it read, “The religion of humanity is the
most important. Human beings are first, then religion and sects. From service
to humanity comes well-​being in life.”30 True to the theme, there were also
two vehicles from the Muslim community, one representing local Muslims
in Pushkar, the other from the Garib Nawaz Sufi Mission Society in nearby
Ajmer (Figure 4.5). I approached a Muslim man waiting next to one of the
vehicles—​a heavily garlanded van with pictures of the Kaaba on the roof. He
was from Pushkar, a regular of the local Shahi Mosque and the owner of a
laundry service in the main bazaar. He attended the Spiritual Walk every year
and saw its continued popularity as an indication of not only a strong rela-
tionship between Muslims and Hindus in Pushkar, but also a sign of how
people from all different religions can come together. From our conversa-
tion, my sense was that this coming “together” was as simple as it sounds; the
Spiritual Walk provided an opportunity to experience firsthand the diversity
that Pushkar, and especially mela-​time Pushkar, has to offer.
We walked through the streets. Music blared from every direction, with
sounds of electric xylophones pushed from ancient speakers competing with
the off-​rhythm drumbeats of tourists who had picked up percussion a few
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  121

days before (Figure 4.6). Sikh men and women passed out sweets and threw
flowers when the parade passed the Gurdwara. Foreigners of various stripes
walked with and through the parade. Photographers moved in groups like
schools of fish, bending and darting with every new opportunity for a snap-
shot. For much of the walk I held hands with “Guruji”—​the head instructor
in Pushkar’s biggest Vedic school—​which, through something like sym-
pathetic magic, conferred upon me a VIP status I had never before experi-
enced. Hands were shaken and waved, namastes were given. In the end, it was
a diesel-​fueled party with hundreds of people on the move.
We can think of the Spiritual Walk as a spectacle, “a complex public dis-
play . . . intended to attract attention and arouse curiosity by virtue of its large
scale and other dramatic features.”31 And as Zain Abdullah notes, such spec-
tacles act as prime locations for the construction and articulation of iden-
tity.32 But what identities might be articulated in the Spiritual Walk? While
chatting with Guruji, he remarked that the celebration was designed above
all else to “bring spiritual awareness to everyone’s heart.” Most noteworthy
here is Guruji’s hope that such spiritual awareness reach everyone; it is not
for Hindus or Muslims, or even just Indians. I later spoke with a longtime

Figure 4.6.  Tourists drumming for the Spiritual Walk.

122  Guest Is God

informant about why people so often referred to the fair in terms of color,
and he conveyed a similar message of inclusivity:

Colorful fair! Colorful Rajasthan!  .  .  .  The fair begins with the Spiritual
Walk. Because, in the Spiritual Walk, people come from all over India, and
outside of India too, and they see that there is unity (ekta), meaning equality
for everyone. In it [the Spiritual Walk], there are people of every religion, of
all colors, with colorful clothes.

This same friend added a short rhyme to describe the event—​“sampraday

ekta, adhyatmik yatra”—​ which roughly translates as “a community of
unity, the Spiritual Walk.” So, the identity being articulated here is not
one circumscribed by the boundaries of others, but that of a unified
human community—​a rainbow coalition in celebration of religious di-
versity. A newspaper headline for the Spiritual Walk summed up this sen-
timent nicely: “Adhyatma ke Rang, Sanskritiyon ka Milan,” “The Colors of
Spirituality, the Mixing of Cultures.”33 Of course, such “mixing” of cultures
and colors does not suggest that Pushkar is a place of perfect equality, or that
the Spiritual Walk is the catalyst for such efforts. Just like any place, Pushkar
has real problems, and they cannot be solved in a single morning. After the
Walk, when the floats have all been transformed, Cinderella-​like, back into
everyday vehicles, the year continues on, and not always gracefully. But such
gestures, however brief, do show that many in Pushkar see both spiritual and
economic value in the prospect of bringing people together. And where there
is value in the mere idea of inclusivity, there’s some small sliver of hope for its
actual creation.
Over the past several pages I have shown how color possesses an im-
pressive interpretive range, or as Taussig would more abstractly put it, how
“color walks.”34 On a very small scale, the idea that color functions as a
sort of floating signifier—​or a walking, hopping, skipping, and jumping
signifier—​refers to the fact that individual colors can mean different things
to different people. So, for example, brides in the United States tend to
wear white, a proposition of almost comical madness in the Hindu con-
text, where white clothing on a woman is indicative of widowhood. But
on a broader scale, we see color walking through the multiple discourses
that relay across Pushkar’s camel fair. I have highlighted two in particular.
The first is a discourse of colorful exoticism, constructed and maintained
through travel writing and the tourism industry. Such a discourse involves
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  123

the commodification of culture, certainly, though more specifically it

reveals the commodification of color. Agents of the tourist economy trans-
form color into an object for sale, a thing that carries with it notions of
magic, vibrancy, otherness, and experiences that are more real than
your own reality. Again, central here is the idea that tourists, even when
experiencing Pushkar to the fullest, will remain fundamentally apart from
what they see; color resides solely in the Other.
The second discourse involves another color economy, one in which the
fair’s attractions are less tethered to the image of Rajasthanis in their dazzling
clothes and instead framed with the language of cultural mixing: as one in-
formant put it, “different-​different colors, different-​different cultures.” This
represents the local way of thinking about color. Unlike the case of colorful
exoticism, here foreigners cannot merely make objects of the people and sur-
roundings of the mela but instead are drawn into it. They become part of
the fair, adding to the diverse world of color. In truth, no one can exist out-
side of the multicultural rainbow, and so all are objects of its articulation.
Such a discursive move approximates what Mary Louise Pratt has called
“transculturation,” which, in her research on imperial travel writing, refers
to the ways in which subjugated peoples absorb, make sense of, and reinvent
materials and discourses introduced by the dominant party.35 Regarding the
postcolonial context of Pushkar, I see transculturation in how the discourse
of the multicultural rainbow provides some small resistance to the idea of ex-
oticism, or at the very least turns it on its head. Even if such transculturative
thinking merely reverses the exotic gaze and redirects it toward foreigners
with their colorful clothes and cultures, that too illustrates how locals can
engage with and reshape otherwise dominant narratives. The Spiritual Walk
serves as a prime example of this discursive reshaping. On the one hand, the
Walk is organized by the government authorities who oversee the mela, and
its expression of shared spirituality is only made possible by tourism; and yet,
the multicultural rainbow links together religion and tourism in a way totally
outside of the possibilities provided by tourist pamphlets or travel writers.
As one informant explained, the Spiritual Walk’s color derived from people
coming together “under one umbrella.” We might say, then, that the main
commodity of the Spiritual Walk and its multicultural rainbow is not really
Other-​ness but We-​ness. My response to this: Oh, how color walks! And in
the end, I think it is exactly this kind of discursive creativity—​a kind of al-
chemy with Taussig’s “polymorphous magical substance”—​that continues to
color the life of Pushkar.
124  Guest Is God

Photographing the Fair

“A kaleidoscope of images awaits a visitor to the Pushkar mela.”36

“Welcome, Pushkar Fair 2012.” Its letters spelled out on the marble floor in
colored powder, this message greeted me as I reached Brahm Ghat for the
fair’s first maha arti (sunset ritual). As the sun fell below the horizon, sari-​
clad women carried silver plates of diyas, miniature clay lamps with cotton
wicks dipped in mustard oil. They placed the lamps all over the ghat. Still
bigger lamps were readied for the ritual itself. Arti serves a number of reli-
gious purposes, but most viscerally it pushes back the gathering darkness;
it is illumination. Facing the lake, two brahman men each held a lamp—​
candelabra-​like contraptions of shined brass and fire—​and moved them in
a clockwise fashion. Madhu was standing next to me, holding a tiny lamp
of her own and passing it around to nearby tourists. Men and women sang
the arti hymn. And every few seconds, the entire scene was punctuated with
the dizzying contrast of a synthetic pulse. Click, Flash. Click, Flash. Cameras
flared everywhere and nowhere, lighting the way in a manner totally unlike
that of the arti lamps. Madhu noticed too: “for every Indian here,” she said,
“there is a foreigner taking pictures.”
Cameras are everywhere at the mela (Figure 4.7). Some are phone cameras,
others are compact digital cameras for the casual user, and a good few are
professional grade cameras with zoom lenses the size of small children. After
the arti ceremony, I told Madhu that it’s true, “foreigners are crazy for their
cameras.” “No,” she replied. “It’s not crazy. If I were to go to America, every-
thing would seem different, and I would do the same.” The idea of capturing
a sense of difference is a compelling one, and in part explains the fact that
photography has long been a constitutive feature of tourism.37 After all, if
an experience of the Other is part of the promise of tourism—​its main com-
modity, even—​then what better way to encapsulate, contain, and remember
those experiences than through photographs? One British tourist alluded to
this very experience of the Other by saying that Pushkar was made up of “one
National Geographic moment after another.” Another tourist, this one a pro-
fessional photographer from Delhi, was even more explicit, explaining that
foreign photographers are attracted to the fair because it offers “an amazing,
exotic, Oriental experience . . . What more could you ask for? Sand dunes,
camels, horses, dancing girls, sadhus” (Figure 4.8).
Figure 4.7.  Tourists photographing Rajasthani women at the mela ground.

Figure 4.8.  A tourist trying to get the right angle on a distant camel.

126  Guest Is God

The fair’s perceived photographability helps to explain why the majority

of books on Pushkar are actually of the coffee-​table variety. These are slim
but oversized books—​often, but not always, hardcovers—​with huge glossy
photos of turbaned Rajasthani men who warm their hands by a fire while
camels in the background are carefully silhouetted by a setting sun. Such
works tend not to be overly concerned with scholarly questions or inter-
rogation, opting instead for an approach that is ceaselessly laudatory of
Pushkar’s wonders.38 In that sense, then, while not academically engaging,
coffee-​table books do offer a good sense of what photographers see in both
Pushkar and the camel fair. One example is Shankar Barua’s Pushkar, which
spends considerable time on the “magic light” that ornaments the town’s de-
sert scenery:

Any photographer who has worked in Rajasthan will vouch that there’s
something about the place that almost guarantees good pictures. Barren
earth tones dominate and the people have an instinctive taste for colours
in clothing that stand in perfect counterpoint to the shades of their sur-
roundings; but the real magic is all in the light . . . There are peculiar mists
and mirages popping up unexpectedly to lend special touches to special
pictures, silhouettes inevitably etch out timeless images and in the end, no
one can capture the true magic of it all . . ., but yes, the pictures are terrific.39

Another favorite of mine within the coffee-​table category is Tripti Pandey’s

Pushkar: Colours of the Indian Mystique. The book’s style is high drama and,
as with Barua’s Pushkar, truly delights in the light:

What is really captivating in the Pushkar Fair is the light. It almost plays to
capture the inner soul. The way it appears at dawn and then disappears at
dusk is a sheer magic. One cannot help but be mesmerized by the sunrise
and the sunset. Perhaps it is the aura of the place, which makes it so divine.
Right at the crack of dawn the echoing temple bells fill the atmosphere and
the rising smoke gradually draws a mystic curtain.
The first rays of sun lift up that curtain to unveil the hustle-​bustle of the
place. Life out there is dramatic and unfolds itself on two different stages—​
one around the lake where the devotees gather and the other on the sand
dunes where the cattle traders camp. The devotees take a holy dip to per-
form the rituals and visit the temples. It is a brilliant spectacle of light in
which the colours and faces glitter.40
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  127

It is as if these books all draw from the same well of vocabulary. Here, words
like mystic, magic, mirages, aura, and divine go unnoticed and taken for
granted, all the while helping to maintain a pervasive set of assumptions
and expectations as to what kind of world one encounters when coming
to Pushkar. In this world, the camel fair is less an event than a collection of
visual and verbal tropes that signify the possibility of a colorful, amazing, ex-
otic, and Oriental experience.
And yet, unlike the experience articulated by Louis Berney in his
Washington Post article—​where merely going to Pushkar allows a person
to participate in “the full, unsanitized vibrancy of India”—​the type of expe-
rience connected to the art and act of photography is quite different. Here,
an experience is valued not solely by the quality of enjoyment and pleasure
had, but also by the quality of pictures taken and by the possibility of those
pictures being seen by others. Take, for example, a group of Californians I met
while they were preparing for a camel safari. As each person mounted his or
her respective camel, others took dozens of pictures of the whole process—​
highlights here appeared to be shots of the awkward saddling, and then the
surprised face as the camel lurches violently forward. One woman rose in
her camel throne, looked out at the horizon, and declared: “I can’t wait to get
back home and see the pictures!” I felt the urge to say, “you’re on a camel right
now!” but decided to save the snark for my fieldnotes.
The next day, I observed a similar scene: a tourist was riding a camel to-
ward the dunes, taking pictures and then typing on his iPhone for a minute
or two. In a particularly curmudgeonly mood, I apprised my friend Will of
the situation:

Drew: Hey, look at that guy.

Will: He’s probably on Facebook writing “I’m on a camel!!!”
Drew: Shouldn’t he be looking up or something?
Will: Yeah, but riding a camel is really boring.

Charitable and understanding, Will was entirely undisturbed by the tourist’s

actions. But more abstractly, he also saw what I  failed to, namely, that
experiences need not be constrained to the present, nor limited to the in-
dividual. To focus more on one’s camera (or iPhone) than on a camel ride—​
that is, than on the present—​does not necessarily impoverish experience
but rather implies its deferral. It includes the experience of seeing friends’
reactions when showing your pictures and recalling your time away, or that
128  Guest Is God

of refreshing your Facebook feed every few minutes in order to see how many
“likes” you have acquired. The camel ride—​however boring in the doing—​
gains meaning as its image spins out into the ether, gradually becoming less
your experience and more everyone’s.
John Urry coined the term tourist gaze as a Foucauldian approach to un-
derstanding the appropriative, objectifying, and power-​invested nature of
the tourism industry.41 The gaze, which “is constructed in relationship to its
opposite, to non-​tourist forms of social experience and consciousness,” can
work to influence or control local behavior, and is derived from Western and
capitalist spheres of power.42 And if vision itself constitutes a mode of dis-
cipline, then photography too involves the construction of desired bodies,
dispositions, and aesthetic choices.43 For example, I am thinking of a par-
ticular sadhu I saw at the camel fair: he was sitting in the middle of the street
by the mela ground, contorted in a difficult yogic posture—​begging bowl in
front—​as hordes of tourists came by and took pictures. He sat there for at least
half an hour, and over that period was constantly swarmed by photographers.
Sadhus are a common enough site in Pushkar, with many living in or visiting
town throughout the year, though most are found drinking chai, or smoking
hash, or drinking chai and smoking hash, often while relaxing on plastic
chairs outside of restaurants. That’s not to say that sadhus never do yoga;
many do, but sadhus in Pushkar tend not to sit in the streets and do yoga. Of
course, we cannot know for sure whether this particular individual was more
of an out-​of-​town “yoga sadhu” or an off-​season “plastic chair sadhu,” but it
is undoubtedly the case that he went to that particular road amid bustling
crowds for the purpose of being seen. It was under this photographic gaze
that he comported and contorted himself in a particular way, and performed
for the viewing public.44
At the same time, I want to distance myself from any analysis that renders
the gaze unidirectional. As such, Darya Maoz’s notion of the “mutual gaze”
seems a more robust representation of what happens in tourism climates.45
Complicating Urry’s theory, Maoz sees a “complex, two-​sided picture, where
both the tourist and local gazes exist, affecting and feeding each other.”46 As
we saw in the earlier discussion of color, foreigners too are an integral part
of Pushkar’s camel fair; they become the spectacle as much as anything else.
And yet, as with Maoz’s research on Israeli backpackers in India, foreigners
in Pushkar rarely recognize the possibility of a “mutual gaze.”47 Nowhere is
this clearer than in instances of Indians photographing tourists. I constantly
encountered foreigners, and especially young women, chiding Indian men
 Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic  129

for taking pictures of them without their permission. These women simply
could not stomach the idea of other people—​often poor and male people—​
taking their picture. Moreover, these were tourists who, in almost every case,
had cameras of their own and photographed others indiscriminately. Now,
there is an important sexual component here, as the Rajasthani public sphere
often fails to protect foreign women. In the context of unwarranted sexual
advances, photography is of course unacceptable. But this was clearly not the
case in every instance, when Indian pilgrims or locals simply wanted to re-
turn home with pictures of tourists. Indeed, if we were to follow Maoz’s line
of thought, it would seem that these recently photographed tourists fail to see
themselves as part of the spectacle, fail to see that the gaze works both ways.
Such a failure of perspective, I argue, stems from a common expectation—​
one undergirded by ideas concerning Western power and privilege—​about
what constitutes the tourist experience:  in an idealized, picture-​perfect
world, tourists photograph locals and not the other way around.48
Pushkar, of course, is not a picture-​perfect world. By that, I simply mean
that the town is not a museum diorama in life-​size scale. Of course, no tourist
destination really is, but my point is that in Pushkar, tourists are more than
mere observers; they are part of the fair. Without tourists—​with their own
cultural garb and foreign color and photographability—​the mela would not
be what it is. Said differently, the very fabric of the fair is woven with the warp
and woof of Indians and foreigners. Both participate, and both act within
the confines of particular—​sometimes contradictory—​discourses. Both are
enchanted by the colorful fair, but the very significance of color might vary.
Both agree that the fair is eminently photographable, but not necessarily on
what or whom to photograph. This is life in the kaleidoscope, where perspec-
tive shifts with every twist of the wrist.
 5
Peace But No Quiet

If you stay in Pushkar for a day or two, ears open, ethnographic cap on, you
are bound to hear a person describing the town as a place of “peace.” The word
here is “shanti,”1 which ceaselessly flows mantra-​like from mouths across the
bazaar, in restaurants, hotels, and temples. For locals, a whole sequence of
gestures will often accompany this declaration: head tilted up, warm smile,
eyes closed, sometimes with index fingers pressed to temples:  shanti! As
yet another product of the phrase factory, shanti is a word deployed and
circulated around town, lying in wait at the tips of tongues. And it seems to
possess a kind of contagion. Indeed, if you stay in Pushkar for a few more
days, you will find yourself saying it too.2 “How’s that hotel over there?”
Shanti! “What about that café?” Shanti! “The lake?” Shanti! And even though
the phrase factory is undoubtedly tied to Pushkar’s tourism industry—​with
each utterance helping to form and reaffirm the town’s “brand”—​shanti is a
concept with considerable ties to the broader Hindu world. The term can be
found in a wide range of Sanskrit texts, and often affixed to the end of various
hymns with the phrase, “om, shanti, shanti, shanti.”
But what does it mean? Here is a quick gloss of “shanti” from Arthur
MacDonell’s A Sanskrit-​English Dictionary:  “mental tranquility, peace of
mind; extinction (of fire); abatement, alleviation, cessation, removal; pro-
pitiatory rite for averting evil (rare); peace, good fortune, prosperity; de-
struction (rare); eternal rest, decease, death (rare).”3 In Pushkar too, shanti
corresponds to this notion of “mental tranquility” or “peace of mind”; it is a
psychological state unburdened by the anxieties that come along with money
problems, family conflict, or any number of issues related to “tension” (that
all-​popular Hinglish word). A few locals described to me their almost-​daily
search for shanti, often achieved by escaping the bustle of the main bazaar
and relaxing by some shady spot on the outskirts of town. In many cases,
theirs was a search for peace and quiet.
But this is far from the only way to conceptualize shanti. I learned this
fact most memorably when visiting a friend, Ajay, at his shop by the town’s
main bus stand. Ajay runs a not-​so-​successful travel agency, so we sat alone,

Guest Is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India. Drew Thomases, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883553.001.0001
 Peace But No Quiet  131

chatting, and drinking chai out of small plastic cups as buses and motorcycles
and scooters and cows passed us by. I asked why he loved living in Pushkar,
and like so many informants before him, he took a deep satisfied breath
and simply said: “There’s a lot of peace here” (yahan bahut shanti milti hai).
I thought there was real comedy in his statement. Here we were—​just out-
side of a bus station, with vehicles of all sorts and sizes passing by, horns of
all sorts and sizes blaring, ambient dust from the traffic descending into my
chai—​and this person is telling me that it is really peaceful here. I actually did
laugh, maybe even guffawed, though he did not. And that got me thinking;
perhaps peace does not require quiet.
While many would claim Pushkar is a peaceful place, few would argue
that it is a quiet one; there are, among other things, honking horns, crack-
ling megaphones, sugarcane presses with their diesel engines, hawkers with
their wares, sadhus demanding alms, trance music, and tractors. So sound
does not preclude peace. In fact, contrary to my initial expectations, some
locals believe sound to be one of the sources of shanti, though they mean by
this a different type of sound: sound in the form of songs and recitations,
sacred words set on speakers and intended to spread peace by sending good
vibrations out into the world. For example, the Sundar kand is one of the
most popularly recited texts in Pushkar, and when performed in public, it
is done so in large gatherings and with loudspeakers turned up to eleven.
We will discuss the text in greater detail later on, but for now we need only
know that there is vibratory power in its recitation. Here is how one singer
of the Sundar kand, Prem, explains it:  “Actually, we do it all together; a
person can’t do it alone. Ten, twenty, fifty people do it. So when many people
come together for one particular thing and create sound, then there are
vibrations . . . and the most important thing is that it brings shanti to our
minds.”
This chapter begins, then, with an exploration of shanti, and how the sa-
cred geography of Pushkar is mapped upon the sonic terrain of religious rec-
itation. Importantly, and as alluded to above, the power of religious recitation
derives not principally from the spiritual messages therein, or even from de-
votion to the divine, but rather from the vibrations created by sound itself.
In such a setting of competing soundscapes, vibrations bring peace where
there is no quiet. The chapter proceeds with this issue of vibrations: What are
they? How are they used? And why do so many locals refer to them with the
English words “vibrations” or “vibes” when Hindi and Sanskrit equivalents
abound? In offering an historical account of the discourse surrounding
132  Guest Is God

vibrations, I will argue that we need to look beyond Pushkar—​indeed, even

beyond India—​and attune ourselves to the hybridity of global flows. Like
vibrations themselves, such a discourse seems to travel through the ether,
bouncing back and forth across the world.

Sound, Recitation, and Vibration

Let me begin by way of invocation. Here is a translated passage from the

Yajur Veda (36. 17), something I heard recited over and over in Pushkar:

May sky be peaceful.

May atmosphere be peaceful.
May Earth be peaceful.
May waters be peaceful.
May medicinal herbs be peaceful.
May plants be peaceful.
May all the learned persons be peaceful.
May God and the vedas be peaceful.
May all the objects be peaceful;
May peace itself be peaceful.
May that peace come unto me.4

The above is a “shanti mantra,” one of several Sanskrit verses employed to mark
the conclusion of any number of Vedic rituals by wishing shanti into the world.
A notoriously untranslatable and difficult-​to-​define term, “mantra” roughly
corresponds to “a general name for the formulas, verses or sequences of words
in prose which  .  .  .  are believed to have magical, religious or spiritual effi-
ciency.”5 That latter part is particularly important, as mantras like the one above
need not possess weighty significance in terms of philosophy or literary char-
acter. Although the above mantra is indeed about shanti, the power of mantras
is channeled not primarily through their meaning “as through their ‘sound
vibrations.’ ”6 It is these vibrations, then, that actually send shanti throughout
the atmosphere,7 and the efficacy of the mantra depends almost exclusively
on the quality of vocalization and enunciation, and very little—​if at all—​on
whether the speaker knows or understands what is actually being said. A pas-
sage like this shanti mantra is not meant to be read in quiet contemplation; it
 Peace But No Quiet  133

is meant to be recited, often in large groups and almost always aloud.8 What
matters most are orality and aurality, being spoken and heard.9
In Pushkar, such a commitment to the power of the spoken word, and in
particular to that of the spoken Vedic word, is evident in the presence of two
Vedic schools. These were the two places, not so incidentally, that I most reg-
ularly heard the recitation of Vedic shanti mantras. Of the two schools, the
smaller one is really just a mid-​sized room on the second floor of an unas-
suming building by the banks of the lake. As a purely part-​time affair, this
school provides a daily opportunity for local brahman males ranging in age
anywhere from eight to forty to come for an hour or two in the evening in
order to read, recite, and study the Veda (Figure 5.1). The specific text that
students try to master is the Yajur Veda (in particular, the Shukla Yajur Veda),
which consists of religious offerings and the sacrificial formulas used in a
vast range of rituals.10 As such, the goal here is very simple: to learn the Yajur
Veda so as to become more effective at priestcraft, and to garner some of the
authority that comes from knowledge of the Veda. In Pushkar’s competitive

Figure 5.1.  Vedic school students and author, during a recitation of the

Yajur Veda.
134  Guest Is God

economic climate, where the supply of priests far outweighs the demand,
these mostly young brahmans can get an edge and a few extra rupees by
knowing this material. Of course, such practical concerns do not negate
other, simultaneous benefits; for many, recitation of the Veda is itself a fulfill-
ment of dharma, an action whose merit extends well beyond the mundane.11
As one student said: “there is no lack of benefit” in recitation, because “if God
is pleased, everyone is pleased.”
The second Vedic school takes this idea to the next level. It is fully full
time, where students eat, breathe, and sleep Sanskrit, 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, for a minimum of six years. Situated on the outskirts of town,
the school’s substantial grounds include residence halls for teachers and
students, areas for eating, education, and recreation, as well as a large temple
(Figure 5.2). The students are all brahman boys in their teens, but unlike with
the smaller school, they are not all locals. Being largely (but not exclusively)
from other areas of Rajasthan, their futures are tied neither to Pushkar nor
to a life of performing rituals at the lake, and when combined with their rig-
orous training, this more often than not means that they harbor aspirations
far loftier than their part-​time peers. In fact, their goals are about as lofty

Figure 5.2.  Students at the larger Vedic school.

 Peace But No Quiet  135

as they come; simply put, they are studying the Veda to save the world. The
world needs saving, of course, because we live in this degraded age of the
kaliyug. As seen in ­chapter 2, this is a widely deployed idiom across India, and
expresses the idea that society is not quite right, and that things were likely
better at some point in the imagined past. For those in the Vedic school, de-
cline is marked by the status of brahmans in India, which they believe to be
pretty dismal. According to many of my collaborators, brahmans today eat
meat, drink alcohol, and fail to keep their topknots; in other words, they have
forgotten some of the basic features of brahman-​ness. And if brahmans are
“the guru of all castes,” as one of the school’s teachers remarked, then society’s
lot improves when brahmans improve their own.
Essential to this regime of self-​improvement, then, is the study and dissem-
ination of the Veda. “We will spread the Veda” (ved ka prachar karenge): this
was the constant overture I heard from students. One of them evoked the
image of a tree, with each graduate-​to-​be going out to establish their own
schools—​their own branches—​teaching students in Sanskrit and the Veda
who will themselves do the same. On and on, nurturing a protective canopy
over the land. Another student had the same thought, but with different im-
agery: each one of them, he said, was like a flaming lamp that could set alight
other lamps across the country, and together they could, with time and
teaching, illuminate India. So however you see it, tree or flame, growth or
illumination, the students take this task as constitutive of saving India and
Indian culture in the kaliyug.
But what is it that allows for the Veda to make a brahman a better
brahman or a place a better place? There are at least two answers. First, and as
mentioned earlier, it is widely believed that recitation of the Veda generates
dharmik merit; brahmans preserve tradition through the use of sacred
speech, thus upholding their perceived duties to themselves, the gods, and
even the nation. Second, the Veda possesses a real, material power. As with
mantras, the sound of Vedic recitation actually affects the world, riding on
vibratory waves that purify the atmosphere and create shanti.12
Among students of this school, making shanti—​spreading peace—​was the
single most common reason why a person should recite the Veda.13 Several
explained that one need only recite the Veda, or even simply hear its sound,
and immediately get a sense of “mental peace” (mansik shanti). One student
went so far as to make a distinction between “mental peace” and “outer peace”
(bahar ki shanti): “You can get peace, outer peace, from doing other things,
but not mental peace. From doing dharmik things, you get mental peace.”14
136  Guest Is God

This somehow rarer and more pressing “mental peace” has the power to
change people, suggesting that the kind of shanti yielded from Vedic recita-
tion is both enduring and essential to any campaign against the degradation
of the modern world.
In his book, Sonic Theology, Guy Beck considers Hinduism a “fundamen-
tally sonic” religious tradition, and observes that while scholars of religion
have “routinely conducted research into sacred space and sacred time, they
have curiously overlooked or ‘overheard’ the dimension of sacred sound.”15
Taking this observation as an invitation, I have joined a growing group of
scholars who are now paying attention to the acoustics of sacred sound in
India.16 While, until recently, much of this work has primarily dealt with
philosophical and theological theories of sound, I seek an ethnographic alter-
native that attends to the production of Hindu soundscapes.17 Not only that,
but adding another layer to Beck’s statement above, I argue that the categories
of sacred sound and sacred space need not be thought of as wholly distinct.
Within the Hindu context especially, it seems important that we begin to un-
derstand how these things are linked, meaning, how landscapes are made
sacred, in part, by their soundscapes. So if Pushkar is a place pervaded by
shanti, and if shanti is one of several reasons why Pushkar is paradise, then
sound itself is partially responsible for this fact.
My thinking on sound is especially animated by Charles Hirschkind’s The
Ethical Soundscape, a fabulous work on Muslim cassette sermons in Egypt.
Among other things, Hirschkind claims that the contribution sermons make
in shaping the moral and political landscape of Egypt emerges not solely in
their ability “to disseminate ideas or instill religious ideologies,” but in their
“effect on the human sensorium, on the affects, sensibilities, and perceptual
habits” of the audience.18 In other words—​and no doubt simplifying his in-
credibly rich and complex work—​Hirschkind is less concerned with what
cassette sermons make listeners think and more concerned with how they
make listeners feel.
In Pushkar, Hindu soundscapes work in much the same way; recitation
creates an affective experience over and beyond an intellectual one. This is
certainly the case with regard to Vedic mantras, and Thomas Coburn has
argued the more general point that “the sanctity of Hindu scripture—​most of
which has been composed in Sanskrit—​does not necessarily depend upon its
intelligibility to one who hears or recites it.”19 This theoretical and theolog-
ical principle possesses a certain practicality to it, namely that most folks do
not understand Sanskrit, and in order to gain anything at all from religious
 Peace But No Quiet  137

recitation, intelligibility cannot be the sole criterion. Among my informants,

recitation entails something else, a sound or vibration, which can directly
resonate in a person’s body and create a certain feeling—​a feeling of, in many
cases, shanti. What makes this sonic principle especially interesting, though,
is that affective responses to recitation remain centrally significant even in
those instances where texts are not in Sanskrit, but instead in an intelligible
vernacular.
This resounds most clearly in the case of the Sundar kand. Translated into
English as the “beautiful book,” the Sundar kand is the fifth part of Tulsidas’
Ramcharitmanas20 (a 16th-​century telling of the Ramayana), and it details
the adventures of Hanuman as he flies over an ocean, converses with Sita,
and burns Lanka to the ground. It is an iconic part of the Ramayana, and
written in a medieval Hindi that, although not simple, is far more accessible
than Sanskrit. Throughout town, groups of men get together—​particularly
on Tuesdays and Saturdays, which are auspicious to Hanuman—​and they re-
cite this “beautiful book.” Prem, as mentioned in the chapter’s introduction,
is a frequent singer in one of those groups, which often meets at a Hanuman
temple by the shore of Pushkar lake. Prem’s day job involves selling incense
in a small kiosk off the main bazaar, but he really loves to sing, and so his
interest in orality outweighs that of the olfactory. He told me that sound
can have a profound effect on one’s disposition. If a horn blasts when you’re
walking in the road, then that affects you negatively; reciting the Sundar kand
has a similarly powerful effect, though a positive one. Prem explained that its
sound touches the soul first through the ears, and then cleanses all the senses
from within. When in large and loud groups especially, the sound of recita-
tion makes vibrations, and those vibrations “bring shanti” to their minds.
While singing is likely the most effective means for peace, listening matters
too. Another informant and Sundar kand enthusiast told me that if a man
were in the midst of some nefarious deed, but then heard the recitation of
the Sundar kand—​even involuntarily, and from some distance—​its vibratory
power would stop him in his tracks. It is important to clarify this informant’s
argument:  he was not suggesting that Tulsidas’ wise words or Hanuman’s
discourses would convince some evildoer to change his ways. Of course,
those things are not without significance, but here it is the very vibrations
of the Sundar kand that function as the agent of transformation, delivering
such profound peace of mind that a person would steer clear of any crime.
So, here we have a text in a fairly accessible language, telling a story so per-
vasive that it is said to be transmitted through mother’s milk; even still, its
138  Guest Is God

significance lies less in the poetry or the narrative or the lessons learned than
in the feeling of peace acquired when reciting the text with others. It’s the
shanti. This is part of the reason why Sundar kand recitations in Pushkar are
almost always performed with microphones and speakers cranked to near-​
dangerous levels, and why the speakers are sometimes directed out toward
the lake, where the sound is amplified and thus propelled across the town.21
So, if you ever sit with a singing group in Pushkar and feel your ears ache
from the volume, know that this is, in part, because the singers there are
trying to ensure that their words have maximum effect by bringing “peace” to
as many people as possible.
As is likely clear by now, any gesture toward understanding Pushkar’s
sonic terrain requires an examination of vibrations. If shanti is the end re-
sult, then vibrations are the means. But the principles and rules of how this
all works are far from hard and fast—​or, as they say in Hinglish, hard and
fast nahin hain—​and so the diversity of thought on vibrations is both quite
substantial and at times contradictory. Some of this diversity can be simply
attributed to the ethnographic method, insofar as the type of research that
I do opens itself up to plural and often conflicting perspectives. But the more
specific reason for this particular discourse’s diversity stems from the fact
that conversations about vibrations operate on multiple frequencies. What
I mean here is that people’s use of the term “vibrations” calls upon diverse
worldviews: one person will talk about vibrations in a way that claims a con-
nection to ancient Vedic thinking; another will use the Veda or the language
of mantras, but then combine those issues with modern conceptions of “sci-
ence”; yet another will reference vibrations—​“vibes” even—​in a way not at all
tied to shanti and the Hindu soundscape, but instead tied to what looks a lot
like New Age thinking.22 Sometimes these frequencies stand alone, clear and
bright, though more often than not they are fuzzy and in interference. Later
on, I will hope to offer an historical account for some of this discursive diver-
sity, but for now let me offer some general principles on what Pushkar locals
say about vibrations.
According to a close friend, Hemant, we all have a vibratory aura. When
you meet a person and decide you like them, that’s because your auras are in
tune with one another. The opposite happens too; when you realize you dis-
like a person, it’s because your auras are literally not on the same wavelength.
The same is true again of places. Hemant told me about his ideal of finding
some perfect place outside the bustle of town and temple, where he could
find some peace:
 Peace But No Quiet  139

you go there, and you think, “ah, that’s paradise for me.” That’s the vibration,
or some energy [that] makes you feel, “oh, this is what I’m looking for,” and
it makes you happy . . . When both vibrations match, then the attachment
between that place and you, that shows that you like that place, and that
place shows you some sign.

Important here is Hemant’s exclamation, “ah, that’s paradise for me.”

These special locations—​where vibratory auras of person and place are in
sympathy—​vary with the individual. Hemant desires a quiet place on the out-
skirts of town, but in the same vein we can again recall my friend who finds
shanti sitting on a bench by the bus stand. Different strokes for different folks.
Some places, especially pilgrimage places, are defined not by their ca-
pacity to match vibrations but rather by their already possessing posi-
tive ones. Pushkar’s positive vibrations come from at least three sources,
according to one of my informants:  there are the “God vibes” that come
from Brahma having laid claim to Pushkar as his abode; there are the “nat-
ural vibes” that come from Pushkar being a generally beautiful place, with
a lake and mountains and desert scenery; and then there are the “positive
vibes from the rishis,” which is to say the vibrations created from great sages
who over the past centuries have recited powerful mantras while in Pushkar.
Another informant, Ravi, waxed poetic about Pushkar’s vibrations in a fairly
similar way:

Vibrations: it means, the natural reality of Pushkar. It has some special posi-
tive energy, positive power. That’s why the vibrations come here. And as you
see every day—​not only in Pushkar, but I would say all of the holy places
in India—​it brings people with positive energy. Lots of sadhus, hermits,
people with positive power. They come here, they do their rituals . . . so
those mantras are making sound here . . . that’s the thing of Pushkar, that it
vibrates, that the energy is always here. I mean, as you come out of Ajmer,
just down by the valley, you can feel it: ‘I am in some different place.’ So this
is Pushkar.

Ravi’s words highlight a remarkably common feature of how Pushkar locals

describe their town. On the one hand, the paradisiacal, the peaceful, the vi-
brational, the energetic, these are simply qualities of sacred space inherent.
They are “the natural reality of Pushkar.” On the other hand, all of these qual-
ities need to be nurtured, cultivated, and created in real time. So yes, this is
140  Guest Is God

the “natural reality of Pushkar,” and yes, “the energy is always” there, but the
energy attracts people with energy, who then create more energy, who then
attract more people with energy. On and on it goes. Scientists call that a pos-
itive feedback loop.
And according to many, this actually is all very scientific. I am espe-
cially reminded of a lakeside conversation with a priest, in which we spoke
at length about words and their vibratory consequences. More specifically,
he was advocating that fellow priests in Pushkar take care to be kinder
and more honest, lest the atmosphere be filled with the negative vibrations
of cruel and false words. He then looked at me with assured eyes and
said: “We believe in science!” (ham science ko mante hain). Our conver-
sation was genial, though the priest was clearly speaking from a defen-
sive position, the silent assumption being that I did not think—​or some
abstract person out there in the world did not think—​that he believed in
science. I cannot help but see the postcolonial resonances of such a po-
sition, where a descendent of a once-​controlled and infantilized people
lays claim to scientific reasoning in the face of a Westerner. And there is
a question, still, of whom the priest was referring to when he said “we”
believe in science. He was specifically talking about Pushkar priests, but
was the “we” meant to be broader? Did it signal all Pushkar people? All
Indians? All Hindus?23 It is hard to tell.
Nevertheless, the priest’s comments are illustrative of an India-​wide effort
over the past many decades to more closely align Hinduism with science. This
scientification has been deployed in various ways, but more often than not it
has been used for the sake of explaining, universalizing, or glorifying dif-
ferent aspects of Hindu thought and practice.24 And here is where vibrations
come in. Indeed, this broad interest in creating a kind of “Hindu science” has
coupled almost seamlessly with India’s rich and ancient tradition of thinking
about sound, thus giving vibrations a role of increased prominence. Take,
for example, a newspaper article from The Hindu, which details the work of
VPN Nampoori, a professor of Photonics at Cochin University of Science
and Technology, who in 2011 led a team of scientists to study the effects of
a Vedic fire ritual on seed germination. They reported that during the ritual,
certain seeds grew “about 2,000 times faster than in other places.”25 And
here is the supposed reason: “According to Nampoori, sound is a vibration
and continuous positive vibrations through chanting, [sic] accelerates the
process of germination.”26 In whatever way you might gauge such a claim,
whether incredible or literally not credible, this experiment and others like it
 Peace But No Quiet  141

Figure 5.3.  A billboard for a café offering “Good Food,” “Music,” and “Vibes.”

nevertheless have a powerful effect on the way Hindus today think about the
relationship between religion and science.
Daniel Cheifer has attended to this very issue while conducting ethno-
graphic work on the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a global Hindu reform
movement based out of Haridwar and whose spiritual authority derives,
in part, from an enduring appeal to science. For many within the Gayatri
Pariwar, science “provides a universal, culturally neutral means to justify
their practices for those who do not come from a Hindu background.”27
And Cheifer provides a particularly relevant quote from a Gayatri Pariwar
text called Thought Revolution: “To the western ear, the practice of infusing
higher vibrations into the subtle atmosphere may sound superstitious or
at least unscientific, however, laboratory studies have recently begun to
verify its claims of healing and environmental purification.”28 As with the
Pushkar priest, the Gayatri Pariwar position begins from a defensive stance;
to the “western ear,” this stuff might sound superstitious, but in truth, it’s
142  Guest Is God

not. In short: We believe in science! And here is where the defense turns
to offense:  not only does the Gayatri Pariwar acknowledge science, but
they also claim that modern laboratory studies are now proving Hindus to
have known the truth all along—​known since some Vedic brahman of an-
cient days first uttered a mantra and shaped the world with the power of his
vibrations. The Hindu appeal to “science” does important discursive work: it
conveys rationality, especially in a postcolonial setting where outsiders
had justified their control through arrogating to themselves the sole pos-
session of rational thought; it lays claim to a universal truth that exists be-
yond particularities of creed or culture; and it suggests that the most ancient
and enlightened manifestation of that universal truth resides in Indian, and
more specifically Hindu, thinking.
One problem with universalism, however, is that it tends to be predicated
upon an empty sense of history. With such a model, the vibratory power of
recitation is not historically determined but simply true; recitation has al-
ways made vibrations and these vibrations have always made peace. And
about half of this declaration of truth is actually true. Everywhere on the sur-
face of our planet, a vocalized recitation will create sound, and sound is a
vibration that creates an audible wave of pressure. In that sense, vibrations
may be universal. But that is not the case for the discourse surrounding them.
What we are dealing with here is a collection of ideas—​ideas that vibrations
make us feel peaceful, or that Hindu recitation is largely constituted by the
creation of vibrations, or that Pushkar is a place filled with them, or that we
all have a vibratory aura matching sympathetically to those of other people
and places—​and these ideas all have historical and cultural contexts. A ques-
tion that needs to be addressed, then, is this: Where exactly does this dis-
course of vibrations come from?
Part of the reason I ask this question is because when people in Pushkar
mention the efficacy of recitation alongside the discourse of sound or
vibrations, they almost always use the English word “vibration.” In one case,
an informant interchanged “vibration” with the Hindi word “dhvani”—​
meaning sound, echo, tone, tune, etc.—​and in another case a friend told me
that there was “a very good word” for vibration, but he couldn’t recall it. This
linguistic quirk seemed especially noticeable within the context of my field-
work, where conversations almost exclusively happened in Hindi. Informants
never used the Hindi word spandan (meaning “vibrating” or “quivering”), or
its Sanskrit equivalent, spanda, which has a pedigree linked to the non-​dual
 Peace But No Quiet  143

Shaiva traditions of Kashmir, sometimes called Kashmiri Shaivism. Spanda

corresponds to the “subtle vibration of the pure contemplation of one’s own
true nature (svabhava), and the supreme power of consciousness, which is
God’s most intimate and authentic attribute (dharma).”29 Here, it is Shiva in
particular who is the creative pulse or vibration of consciousness. But as far
as I can tell, this notion of a pulsating consciousness hardly approximates
what we see in Pushkar. Nor did informants ever use the Hindi word nad
(meaning “sound”), or call upon its Sanskrit philosophical progenitor nada
brahman, which Guy Beck calls the “ ‘sonic’ energy of the divine.”30 Pushkar’s
“sonic theology”31 relies almost solely on the English word “vibrations,” and
never in my experience references any specific philosophical tradition. So
again, where does this discourse come from?
One answer is that it doesn’t come from anywhere else but India, that it
is Hindu and homegrown, and that “vibrations” is simply an English word
in a country where English is fairly commonplace. That is fair enough. And
for what it might be worth, I  fully agree that much of this discourse has
Hindu roots. For example, the sonic power of mantras is well attested in
ancient texts, as is the centrality of Vak, or “speech,” in the Veda.32 And of
course, I have not even mentioned Om, the sacred syllable whose connec-
tion with recitation and music is a crucial part of its history.33 But a big part
of me also sees globalization in action. In fact, I suspect that all of this lan-
guage of vibration functions in a way somewhat akin to the phenomenon
we call “the pizza effect.” Originally coined in 1970 by Agehananda Bharati,
who was both a converted Hindu ascetic and professor of Anthropology at
Syracuse University, “the pizza effect” was Bharati’s way of explaining how
certain things—​like, say yoga or certain guru movements—​increased in
popularity in India only after going to the United States.34 He saw a parallel in
how pizza, which in Italy was originally considered an uninteresting food for
poorer people, got transformed by Italian immigrants in the United States,
who added cheese and exciting toppings, and then within a few years, amaz-
ingly, this new and refurbished pizza found its place on the menus of fancy
and exclusive restaurants in, of all places, Italy. Thus, the “pizza effect.” Now,
I am certainly not suggesting that vibratory language ever really “left” India,
or that it is only popular because of some increased prominence elsewhere,
but rather that what we see in Pushkar is a completely cross-​fertilized idea,
something that looks like it does, in part, because of globalization. The rest of
the chapter attends to this issue.
144  Guest Is God

Science, Theosophy, and a Western History of Vibrations

We need only close our eyes, throw on the Beach Boys, and listen to Carl
Wilson’s breathy vocals on “Good Vibrations” to know for sure that the lan-
guage of vibrations has been embraced in the United States. Nowadays, and
especially in my current home of California, a person is well-​nigh guaranteed
to hear about vibes and vibrations in yoga studios, festivals, and other hippie
hangouts. For example, I recently went to Bhakti Fest, a yoga and kirtan fes-
tival in Joshua Tree, California, where I met an amazing woman who went by
the nickname “Dub Goddess.” Dub Goddess told me that she loved trance
music, in particular, because its vibrations cracked open her root chakra.
And while her appeal to trance may be a relatively new feature of the New
Age, her vibration-​talk comes with quite a history.
People no doubt started thinking about vibrations deep in the past, and
long before categories like “the East” or “the West” would have meant any-
thing at all; we can look at least as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia, when
some unknown individual first plucked a lyre and—​we might guess—​
thought, “whoa.” Since then, plenty of famous folk of the purported West
have written about vibrations, sound, harmony, humming, and resonance;
this illustrative group includes, among many others, Pythagoras, Plato,
Aristotle, Boethius, Isaac Newton, and Anton Mesmer. But it was not until
the 19th century that the study of vibrations became a really robust topic
of inquiry. The conversation was made possible, in part, by the increas-
ingly popular belief among people both in and outside of the sciences that
an invisible “ether”—​a not-​quite-​fluid-​like fluid—​filled the void of space
and acted as a medium through which phenomena like sound and light
traveled in the form of vibrations.35 Vibrations were everywhere. String
instruments, wind harps, human nerves, light waves, X-​rays, radio waves,
phonographs, and photographs; these were all topics of the time, and all
relied on an enduring and diverse theorization of vibrations. Moreover,
these theorizations emerged from multiple spheres of interest, challenging
physicists and psychics, physiologists and artists, musicians, telepaths,
philosophers, and photographers alike to try and understand the world be-
yond human perception.
I am less interested in physics than in metaphysics, though it is im-
portant to recognize that the various metaphysical traditions of Europe
and the United States would often “rely on and directly co-​opt” scientific
theories of the time.36 In this regard, an early figure of particular note is
 Peace But No Quiet  145

Gustav Fechner (1801–​1887), a German physicist and philosopher. In 1836,

Fechner published On Life After Death, a book that represented the “first
comprehensive account of his spiritual system,” though it was scaffolded
by his research as a scientist and written during his time as a professor of
physics at Leipzig University.37 As the title might suggest, Fechner was in-
terested in what happens to human consciousness after death; in particular,
he believed that the death of the body does not necessitate the end of con-
sciousness because the vibratory energy of our thoughts allows the soul to
become “part of universal consciousness.”38 Here he is on the vibrations of
our “mental acts”:

However minute and gentle a vibration connected with some conscious

movement within our mind may be—​and all our mental acts are connected
with, and accompanied by, such vibrations in our brain—​it cannot vanish
without producing continued processes of a similar nature, within our-
selves, and, finally, around ourselves, though we are not able to trace them
into the outer world. A lyre cannot keep its music for itself; as little can our
brain; the music of sounds or of thoughts originates in the lyre or in the
brain, but does not stay there—​it spreads beyond them.39

So, if our brains produce vibrations in the same way that lyres produce
vibrations, then our thoughts echo on—​both beyond and after us.
There are at least two takeaways here. First, Fechner’s ideas are illustrative
of a broader metaphysical worldview of the 19th century, and one especially
salient to the topic at hand, namely, that the body was “without borders” and
that phenomena beyond our perception, such as energies and vibrations,
were freely flowing between, inside, and around us, suffusing the atmosphere
and always spreading.40 Almost any metaphysical theory of vibrations relies
on this idea. Second, it is important to note that Fechner’s vibratory theory of
the afterlife was not strictly provable, but rather analogical and commonsen-
sical. That is, if we were to accept an analogy that draws together brains and
lyres—​which, I should add, is not at all obvious—​then it simply follows, ac-
cording to Fechner, that our thoughts produce vibrations enduring even after
our deaths. This is a “commonsense” that, to most of us, probably makes little
sense. But Fechner was using what he could to explore a world beyond per-
ception, and many of the people following him could do no better. Because
metaphysicals were pursuing truths well into the unknown—​what others
might call the unknowable—​and because no naked eye could see the ether
146  Guest Is God

that pervaded nowhere and everywhere, the topic of vibrations continued

well after Fechner to invite musings of ever more impressive speculation.
The Theosophists were probably the group of metaphysical thinkers who
most significantly contributed to, and wildly speculated upon, the modern
study of vibrations. Founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–​
1891), Henry Steel Olcott (1832–​1907), and William Quan Judge (1851–​
1896), the Theosophical Society “took on the intellectual project of creating
a bridge between ancient mysteries and modern science.”41 Theosophists
gleaned their ancient mysteries without discrimination, displaying an almost
aggressive eclecticism by borrowing ideas from Mesmerism, Spiritualism,
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Kabbala (to name only a very few). This nonsec-
tarian approach was fundamental to what the Society would come to con-
sider, by the early 1880s, their primary aim: “(1) to form the nucleus of the
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste, or colour; (2) to encourage the study of comparative religion, philos-
ophy, and science; (3) to investigate the unexplained laws of Nature and the
powers latent in man.”42 And it turned out that one of these “unexplained
laws of Nature”—​one assumed, and constantly talked about, and in much
need of investigating—​was that vibrations were all around us.
But the fact that vibrations were important for Theosophy does not re-
flect the remarkably varying ways in which different authors discussed the
topic. Here are some things that vibrations were said to do: they help to in-
duce hypnosis; when in sympathy with another person’s aura, they can heal
a person’s illnesses; they are so fundamental to our very being that “the
differences among all persons are greatly due to vibrations of all kinds”43;
highly advanced “adepts” are able to produce vibrations that could alter an
object’s color; and finally, the vibrations of atoms represent or constitute
“that MOTION which keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going.”44 There
is much, much more, but the point is quite clear: vibrations did a lot of work
for the Theosophical Society—​physical, metaphysical, and discursive. There
are a number of fairly basic factors that contributed to such a diversity of
vibratory thinking: first, Theosophists were, as mentioned above, avowedly
eclectic; second, Theosophy itself represented a loosely connected group of
authors, who all understandably had different dispositions and interests;
third, the Society’s members were as much a product of their time as an-
yone else, when everyone from physicists to Swedenborgians, Mesmerists,
and Rosicrucians all talked about vibrations, and in sometimes dizzyingly
different ways; fourth, and perhaps most simply, vibrations were often just
 Peace But No Quiet  147

assumed. Vibrations existed. They were everywhere. That’s to say, they merely
provided the backdrop for other conversations—​about healing, the soul, te-
lepathy, clairvoyance, color, light, and so on—​and therefore never really mer-
ited the kind of thorough treatment that those other topics often received.
Still, we can make at least two generalizations about the Theosophical
conversation on vibrations, which, although not systematically stated,
are nevertheless noteworthy. The first generalization is that the rhetoric of
vibrations—​as either symbol, analog, or reality—​provided Theosophists
with a crucial link between science and spirituality. More specifically, the ex-
istence of largely unseen but scientifically calculable vibrations opened up a
discussion about the unknown universe, in which the Society and its authors
could make claims to knowing a Truth truer than anything scientists them-
selves could discover. For example, the quotation below is from a book titled
Some Glimpses of Occultism, by Charles Leadbeater (1854–​1934), who, as a
well-​known member of the Theosophical Society and an avowed clairvoyant,
sought to elucidate for his readership what he called the “unseen world”:

All students are aware that a great part of even this physical world is not
appreciable by our senses; that the whole of the etheric part of the world is
to us as though it were not, except for the fact that it carries vibrations for
us. We never see the ether which carries the vibrations of light to our eyes,
though we may demonstrate its necessity as a hypothesis to explain what we
find . . . How does man become cognizant of this? As I said, by the develop-
ment of the senses corresponding to them. That implies—​and it is true—​
that man has within himself matter of all these finer degrees; that man has
not only a physical body, but that he has also within him that higher etheric
type of physical matter, and astral matter, and mental matter, the vibration
of which is his thought. That is not an unreasonable thing . . . The whole
thing is precisely analogous.45

Leadbeater tells us that “even this physical world” is not fully accessible via
our senses. Later in the book, he further explains this by offering the example
of ultraviolet light, which we cannot actually see but which becomes visible
with ultraviolet photography: “our eyes are absolutely blind to this extension
of the [light] spectrum, but nevertheless it is there, and it is utilized in var-
ious branches of scientific research.”46 To Leadbeater, then, it is “precisely
analogous” that if there are things we simultaneously cannot sense yet know
to be true—​like the vibrations of ultraviolet light—​then there must also be
148  Guest Is God

other bodies, other realities, and other planes of existence to which we can
better attune ourselves. Such a hypothesis might not be scientifically verifi-
able (much like Fechner’s theories), but as Leadbeater states with cool non-
chalance, these are not “unreasonable” things.
The vibratory connection with science and scientists is made even more
powerfully by Madame Blavatsky herself. In the following two passages,
she echoes Fechner’s arguments in On Life After Death. As with Fechner,
vibrations here are peripheral to Blavatsky’s more central interest in the soul’s
purported immortality. But like with Leadbeater, vibrations also provide the
necessary bridge between the known and the unknown, the visible and the
invisible:

Let a note be struck on an instrument, and the faintest sound produces an

eternal echo. A disturbance is created on the invisible waves of the shoreless
ocean of space, and the vibration is never wholly lost. Its energy being once
carried from the world of matter into the immaterial world will live for ever.
And man, we are led to believe, man, the living, thinking, reasoning entity,
the indwelling deity of our nature’s crowning masterpiece, will evacuate his
casket and be no more!47

She continues:

Really, the very idea is preposterous. The more we think and the more we
learn, the more difficult it becomes for us to account for the atheism of the
scientist. We may readily understand that a man ignorant of the laws of na-
ture, unlearned in either chemistry or physics, may be fatally drawn into
materialism through his very ignorance; his incapacity of understanding
the philosophy of exact sciences, or drawing any inference by analogy from
the visible to the invisible . . . But for a man of science acquainted with the
characteristics of universal energy, to maintain that life is merely a phenom-
enon of matter, a species of energy, amounts simply to a confession of his
own incapability of analyzing and properly understanding the alpha and
omega even of that—​matter.
Sincere skepticism as to the immortality of a man’s soul is a malady, a
malformation of the physical brain, and has existed in every age. As there
are infants born with a caul over their heads, so there are men who are inca-
pable to their last hour of ridding themselves of that kind of caul evidently
enveloping their organs of spirituality. But it is quite another feeling that
 Peace But No Quiet  149

makes them reject the possibility of spiritual and magical phenomena. The
true name for that feeling is—​vanity.48

This is Madame Blavatsky, metaphysical guns blazing. Its starts with the
now-​familiar argument that the vibrations of a string instrument, once
struck, will be “never wholly lost.” By way of this analogy, Blavatsky goes
on to label “preposterous” any suggestion that the soul too does not persist
after death. In refusing the possibility of the soul’s immortality, scientists are
the makers of this, their own “malady.” They are supposed to understand the
laws of nature—​supposed to be able to draw “inference by analogy from the
visible to the invisible”—​and thus theirs is a failing of particular note. But
why do they fail to understand the possibility of a spiritual and magical
world? It is all fairly simple: vanity. So while scientists claim for themselves
the ability to know the limits of the knowable, Blavatsky looks elsewhere
for exploring what goes beyond the “atheism of the scientist”; such an
exploration does not reject science, but rather is predicated upon an un-
derstanding of science that also draws knowledge from inference, clair-
voyance, esoteric mysteries, ancient philosophies, and many of the world’s
religious traditions.
The second generalization about the Theosophical conversation on
vibrations, and one true too of Theosophy more broadly, is that it was often
couched in Indian and Hindu thought. This was due almost entirely to the
efforts of Madame Blavatsky, who “was singlehandedly responsible for
opening the floodgates of Indian metaphysical categories that over the next
century would thoroughly suffuse Western metaphysical spirituality.”49 As
early as 1877, with the publication of her two-​volume tome, Isis Unveiled: A
Master-​Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology,
Blavatsky regaled her readership with sections dedicated to topics such as
“Reincarnation,” the “Priceless Value of the Vedas,” and “The Grandest
Mysteries of Religion in the Bhagavad-​Gita.” Isis Unveiled was extremely
popular, selling a thousand copies in the first ten days of its release. Since
then, and now fully established as a cult classic—​or, perhaps an “occult
classic”—​the book has sold more than 500,000 copies.50 It is hard, then, to
underestimate the extent to which Blavatsky and her work made these Indian
ideas popular. But the Society’s move Eastward was only made complete with
the physical relocation of its headquarters in 1886 from New York to Adyar,
India. In fact, we can say without too much hesitation that the Western dis-
course of vibrations did not really manifest its global potential—​as ultimately
150  Guest Is God

seen, heard, and felt in Pushkar—​until the Theosophical Society actually es-
tablished itself in India.
It was also with the move to India that the topic of “mantras” rose to
some prominence as a Theosophical point of inquiry. Blavatsky does men-
tion mantras a few times in Isis Unveiled, before the Society’s relocation, but
they appear with far greater frequency after the subcontinental shift. Such
a new-​found interest is far from surprising. As demonstrated in the be-
ginning of this chapter, mantras are a major part of Hindu religiosity. The
Indian soundscape would have made that abundantly clear to Blavatsky and
her peers. What strikes me as far more interesting, then, is the way in which
“mantras” and “vibrations” met in the discursive ether of Theosophical
thinking. Mantras managed to fit nicely into an already robust and wide-​
ranging theory of vibrations, as demonstrated by the following two passages.
First is an early gloss on “mantrams,” written in the form of a dialogue be-
tween “sage” and “student” and appearing in the August 1888 edition of the
Theosophical Society’s monthly magazine, The Path:

Student. —​You spoke of mantrams by which we could control elements on

guard over hidden treasure. What is a mantram?
Sage. —​A mantram is a collection of words which, when sounded in speech,
induce certain vibrations not only in the air, but also in the finer ether,
thereby producing certain effects.51

Second, we have Charles Leadbeater, who not only speaks of mantras as

having vibratory consequences, but calls upon the popular idea of “sympa-
thetic vibration” to make his point:

It is well known that if one of the wires of a harp be made to vibrate vig-
orously, its movement will call forth sympathetic vibrations in the corre-
sponding strings of any number of harps placed round it, if they are tuned
to the same pitch . . . The class of mantras or spells which produce their
result not by controlling some elemental, but merely, by the repetition of
certain sounds, also depend for their efficacy upon this action of sympa-
thetic vibration.52

In one sense, the above descriptions are undoubtedly rooted in Indic

thought; the idea of mantras being a collection of words that produce
sometimes-​miraculous effects is not at all foreign to the ancient Sanskrit
 Peace But No Quiet  151

material. But in another sense these descriptions are here infused

with a new Western and metaphysical language. That was, after all, the
Theosophical modus operandi. Even from their earliest correspondences
with Asian religious reformers, Blavatsky and Olcott often tried to narrow
the cultural divide between East and West by “seeking to impose on the
manifold Buddhisms and Hinduisms of Asia their theosophical frame-
work.”53 Thus, a mantra becomes a sounded utterance traveling through
the ether, which produces particular effects through sympathetic vibration.
This is not to suggest that Theosophists actively tried to create their own
definition of mantras independent of Indic thought, but rather that their
intellectual efforts were based on a desire to understand pretty much any
instance of any cultural phenomenon as guided by universal principles. In
such a universalizing worldview, it simply made sense that the power of
mantras was a vibratory one.
Theosophists had soaked up Indian ideas so eagerly that in 1915 the
American philosopher James Bissett Pratt declared the Society to be an or-
ganization that “out-​Hindu[ed] the Hindus” despite its being “inaugurated
and carried on by Europeans.”54 But their impact on India was just as great
as its impact on them; in truth, part of the logic behind the Society’s relo-
cation was for the further propagation of their own ideas and ideals. And
how else might one hope to form that nucleus of a “Universal Brotherhood
of Humanity” if not through an enlightened global membership well
versed in all things Theosophical? With regard to these efforts, Pratt
describes the Society’s impact on India, and with a helpful reference to
vibrations no less:

If one is to understand conditions in India to-​day it is important to realize

to what extent the influential Theosophical Society has adopted the Hindu
view of things . . . and what kind of teachings it is spreading throughout
the land. Take, for example, the topic on which the T.S. lays such repeated
stress—​”vibrations” and “mantras.” The Hindu student is assured by Mrs.
Besant in her books of instruction that “modern science” (together with the
eternal Veda) teaches that the soul or jiva is surrounded by various sheaths
of gross and subtle matter; that both it and they are in constant motion and
are ever sending out vibrations and being influenced by other vibrations;
and that the recitation of certain mantras produces vibrations that have
most marvelous effects on all sorts of gross and subtle matter and upon the
welfare of souls living and dead.55
152  Guest Is God

The “Mrs. Besant” referenced here is none other than Annie Besant (1847–​
1933)—​as mentioned briefly in ­chapter  1—​who, in addition to being a
British socialist and women’s rights activist, also became the president
of the Theosophical Society following Henry Steel Olcott’s death in 1907
(Madame Blavatsky had already died in 1891). And the “books of instruc-
tion” that Pratt references were the Sanatana Dharma series: the Sanatana
Dharma Catechism, Sanatana Dharma:  An Elementary Textbook of Hindu
Religion and Ethics, and Sanatana Dharma: An Advanced Textbook of Hindu
Religion and Ethics. These were three textbooks written by Annie Besant with
the help of fellow Theosophist Bhagavan Das, and published in 1903 by the
Board of Trustees of the Central Hindu College in Banaras. The books were
written explicitly for an Indian audience, with the Catechism and Elementary
Textbook intended for use in primary and secondary schools, and the ad-
vanced volume for colleges.56 The series did remarkably well, selling around
130,000 copies in the first four years of its publication.57 This means, there-
fore, that Pratt was not far off when he described the Theosophical Society’s
teachings as “spreading throughout the land.”
As for vibrations—​a topic on which, according to Pratt, the Theosophical
Society places “such repeated stress”—​here is a passage from Besant:

A mantra is a sequence of sounds, and these sounds are vibrations, so

that the chanting, loud or low, or the silent repetition, of a mantra sets up
a certain series of vibrations. Now a sound gives rise to a definite form,
and a series of pictures is made by successive musical notes; these may be
rendered visible, if suitable scientific means are taken to preserve a record
of the vibrations set up by the sounds. Thus the forms created by a mantra
depend on the notes on which the mantra is chanted; the mantra, as it is
chanted, gives rise to a series of forms in subtle matter. The nature of the
vibrations—​that is, their general character, whether constructive or de-
structive, whether stimulating love, energy, or other emotions—​depends
on the words of the mantra. The force with which the mantra can affect
outside objects in the visible or invisible worlds depends on the purity, de-
votion, knowledge and will-​power of the utterer.58

Besant is unclear as to what “suitable scientific means” might be required to

render visible the pictures created by the vibratory power of mantras, but
given what we have seen from the likes of Blavatsky and Leadbeater, it likely
comes as little surprise that the appeal to science features in her description.
 Peace But No Quiet  153

What sets Besant’s series apart from the work of her other Theosophical
colleagues is the “definitely and distinctively Hindu” orientation of her vibra-
tory rhetoric.59 Rather than being broadly eclectic, these textbooks set out to
teach specifically Hindu customs and ethics to “Hindu youth,” and in explic-
itly Hindu language.60 Besant makes ample use of Sanskrit terminology, and
she peppers the books with passages from a number of texts, including the
Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata, Rig Veda and multiple Puranas. With all this,
the end product is a decidedly hybrid body of work, one in which the lines
between Theosophical and Hindu traditions become sufficiently blurred so
as to become almost indistinguishable.
Take, for example, Besant’s fascinating passage on the pranamayakosha,
which can be roughly translated as “the sheath constituted by breath (prana).”
For some background: the pranamayakosha serves as one of the five sheaths
or layers (koshas) that are said to envelop a person—​almost onion-​like—​with
the Self (atman) at the very center. The sheaths, in order from gross to subtle,
are “the food sheath,” “the breath sheath,” “the mind sheath,” “the intelli-
gence sheath,” and “the bliss sheath.”61 So, if “the food sheath” represents the
grossest level of self-​identification, where “I am the body . . . the net result of
the food that I eat,” then the slightly subtler pranamayakosha—​that is, the
“breath sheath”—​leads us to associate ourselves with our breath, with “the
principle that animates” us.62
The philosophical complexities regarding the pranamayakosha are not
at the moment particularly pertinent, but we might note first and foremost
that this concept is plenty ancient and well pedigreed within Sanskrit philos-
ophy.63 Here is Besant’s most-​fascinating take:

The Pranamayakosha, composed of the physical ethers and animated by the

life-​energies, affects all around it, and is affected by all around it, not by
emitting or receiving particles, but by sending out, and being played upon,
by vibrations, which cause waves, currents, in etheric matter. The life-​
waves, magnetism-​waves, go out from each man . . . and similar waves from
others play upon him . . . Thus every man is being affected by others, and is
affecting them.64

Besant’s leanings are fairly conspicuous in the passage above, with her
references to “particles,” “vibrations,” “etheric matter,” and “magnetism
waves”—​ all concepts that excited the imaginations of physicists and
metaphysicals of the 19th century. Nevertheless, her gloss does not invent
154  Guest Is God

the Indian-​ness of this material ex nihilo. She surely knew some of the
Upanishadic discourse on prana, and no doubt read texts to inform her ideas
on the pranamayakosha, but it’s all so steeped in a Theosophical commitment
to both “science” and what she considered “deeper occult meanings” that it
only barely resembles a traditional Hindu worldview.65
Adding even more complexity here is the likelihood that Besant’s thoughts
on prana were also shaped by those of Swami Vivekananda. When the Swami
famously presented his version of Hinduism to the World’s Parliament
of Religions in 1883, Annie Besant was there too. And she was sufficiently
impressed by his personality to describe him like this: “A striking figure, clad
in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy
atmosphere of Chicago . . . Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man
among men, able to hold his own.”66 Vivekananda, on the other hand, did
not see the Theosophical Society with a similar sense of awe. He lacked love
for Theosophy, both on ideological grounds and because of a particular in-
cident with Henry Steel Olcott. Leading up to his arrival in Chicago and still
vying for a speaking opportunity at the World’s Parliament (to which he was
not yet invited), the Swami sought support from various individuals capable
of making American inroads; with letters of introduction or through direct
influence, these were people who could both help to build networks for the
Swami’s mission to the West and, just as importantly, who could get him into
the World’s Parliament. Olcott was one such individual, but he declined to
help when Vivekananda made clear that he had no intention of joining the
Theosophical Society.67 Snubbed, Vivekananda became an outspoken critic
of the Society, deriding it as an “Indian grafting of American Spiritualism—​
with only a few Sanskrit words taking the place of spiritualistic jargon.”68
This bitter relationship notwithstanding, it is impossible to overlook the
extent to which Vivekananda’s own thinking was shaped by American meta-
physical categories, many of which were themselves championed, and often
elaborated upon, by the Theosophical Society. As Anya Foxen points out, this
is not to say that Vivekananda immersed himself in explicitly Theosophical
texts like Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, but rather that “Theosophy had by this time
become so diffuse in Indian intellectual circles” that the Swami picked up
Theosophical ideas through something like osmosis.69 Indeed, part of what
made Vivekananda such an effective and affecting speaker while traveling
around the United States was his ability to present a version of Hinduism he
thought “authentic” while simultaneously absorbing and deploying a met-
aphysical worldview that better suited, in his own words, “the taste of the
 Peace But No Quiet  155

people.”70 It should therefore come as little surprise that he also absorbed

an inclination for vibrations. In a series of lectures given in New  York—​
which were subsequently published in 1896 in a book titled Raja-​Yoga—​
Vivekananda often called upon the metaphysical discourse of vibrations, and
especially so in his extended discussion on prana. Here is a particularly illu-
minative passage from Raja-​Yoga:

There is a mistake constantly made by faith-​healers; they think that faith di-
rectly heals a man. But faith alone does not do all the healing . . . It is prana
that really does the curing. The pure-​souled man who has controlled his
prana has the power to bring it into a certain state of vibration which can
be conveyed to others, arousing in them a similar vibration. You see that in
our everyday actions. I am talking to you. What am I trying to do? I am, in
reality, bringing my mind to a certain state of vibration, and the more I suc-
ceed in bringing it to that state, the more you will be affected by what I say.71

This is not ancient yogic philosophy here. Actually, minus the prana
part, Vivekananda’s comments would have been familiar territory in any
Mesmeric or Theosophical conversation about “mental healing.” Henry Steel
Olcott himself was a healer, and he too believed that the relative successes of
his efforts were “in proportion to the completeness” of his and his patient’s
“sympathetic vibration.”72 Such vibratory rhetoric preceded Vivekananda by
decades. The Swami’s explicit intervention, then, was in conveying to these
“mind-​healers, faith-​healers, spiritualists, Christian scientists, hypnotists,
and so on” that “at the back of their methods” is “the control of prana,
whether they know it or not.”73 But what Vivekananda failed to mention—​
perhaps even failed to recognize—​was that while he was busy prana-​fying
the discourse of mental healing, his own discourse of prana was being quietly
vibratized.
This is where we return to Annie Besant. Vivekananda’s emphasis on prana’s
vibratory powers clearly echoes Besant’s claim that the pranamayakosha
“affects all around it, and is affected by all around it . . . by sending out, and
being played upon, by vibrations.”74 The probability that Annie Besant read
Raja-​Yoga at some point before the publication of her Sanatana Dharma se-
ries is near-​definite. Raja-​Yoga was so popular that, even before the end of its
first year in print, the book had already been sold out and was going through
another edition.75 William James read it. Leo Tolstoy read it.76 Besant almost
surely read it too. She was, of course, already acquainted with, and impressed
156  Guest Is God

by Vivekananda since his address at the World’s Parliament of Religions. And

though their relationship was not always on the strongest of terms, she did in-
vite him to speak on the topic of “Bhakti Yoga” at the Theosophical Society of
London on July 9, 1896—​the very month of Raja-​Yoga’s release. The Swami
accepted the invitation in order, he said, to show his “sympathy for all sects.”77
This all suggests that Besant was aware of Raja-​Yoga. And if somehow or
for some reason she didn’t read it—​a proposition I find doubtful—​she may
still have learned Vivekananda’s teachings straight from the source. This
all matters because Vivekananda’s teachings on prana were already deeply
metaphysical, if not specifically Theosophical; and thus, coming something
like full circle, Besant’s discussion of a vibratory pranamayakosha is likely
a Theosophical re-​imagining of an Indian thinker’s Hindu re-​imagining of
Euro-​American metaphysics.
Stepping back, this is all so cool: Here is Vivekananda, this Hindu holy
man who came to the United States to introduce yoga and Vedanta to the
West, and whose teachings were indelibly shaped by American metaphysics,
of which Theosophy was no small part. And then we have Annie Besant
going in the opposite direction, this British woman who, having moved to
India and having committed her life to Theosophy, became so inspired by
Hindu traditions that she (with plenty of help) wrote a series of textbooks
on Hindu religion and ethics. A  lot of her work had some grounding in
Sanskrit texts, and she was almost certainly inspired by Vivekananda, but
her lens was largely Theosophical. This means, then, that less than a decade
after Vivekananda was lecturing Americans on how mental healing was a
matter of vibrations and prana, Annie Besant’s textbooks were introducing
Hindu youths across India to the idea that prana and mantra were a matter
of vibrations and ether. What these youths understood to be Hinduism was
not only given new vocabulary, but in some sense was reshaped by the “scien-
tific” teachings of Theosophy. Not so coincidentally, American metaphysical
traditions underwent a similar transformation under the auspices of Swami
Vivekananda, in which an already-​pervasive vibratory rhetoric was given
Hindu flavor. Fast-​forward a century or so, and we can feel this history’s
effects, in both India and the United States. There is a part of Vivekananda
alive and well in California when Dub Goddess declares her root chakra
opened up by the vibrations of trance music. And there is similarly a part
of Besant alive in Pushkar when Hemant talks about his vibrations being
in tune—​that is, in sympathy—​with other people and places. And so, if
Besant’s vibratory rhetoric is coherent to someone living in Pushkar today,
 Peace But No Quiet  157

I suggest that this attests less to her writing in accordance with ancient Hindu
traditions than to the lasting impact that she and the Theosophical Society
had on Hindu thinking over the past many decades.
Of course, the history of vibrations does not end here. There were
many other thinkers who further nurtured and developed the language of
vibrations, people who I can only briefly mention here. There was William
Walker Atkinson, of the New Thought movement, who was influenced by
both Theosophy and Swami Vivekananda. In 1906, Atkinson published
a book called Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought
World, in which he argues that with every one of our thoughts, “we send out
vibrations of a fine ethereal substance, which are as real as the vibrations
manifesting in light, heat, electricity, [and] magnetism.”78 Equally interesting
is the fact that Atkinson wrote several books under the pseudonyms Yogi
Ramacharaka and Swami Bhakta Vishita. With the latter’s name, Atkinson
published a pamphlet by the title of Mental Vibrations and Transmission.
Of actual Indians—​as opposed to pretend ones—​we can look to popular
thinkers like Krishnamurti and Yogananda. Krishnamurti was himself raised
by Annie Besant, so it should come as little surprise that he often referred
to his spiritual experiences as having vibratory valences. Writing from his
cottage in Ojai, California, Krishnamurti described one such experience
during the summer of 1922, saying that he “could feel the vibrations of the
Lord Buddha.”79 He then added: “I was so happy, calm, and at peace.”80 Here
we have peace and vibrations going hand in hand, and in California of all
places. Less than two decades later and only a few hours south of Ojai, on
the California coast in Encinitas, Paramahansa Yogananda lectured his
followers on the prevalence of vibrations: “All actions, both positive and neg-
ative, create vibrations in the ether. These vibrations are everywhere present.
When you are in the environment of these vibrations, they pass through your
body, just like radio waves.”81 Using this same metaphor, Yogananda urged
his students to “tune in” to the positive vibrations that he would broadcast
daily, “between the hours of seven and eleven in the morning.”82 How’s that
for a meeting of physics and metaphysics!
I feel like I am staring at the tip of an iceberg that is more like an underwater
Mount Everest. There is just so much here, more still that connects this ma-
terial with the Beach Boys, connects the Beach Boys with both Dub Goddess
and the yogis of California, and connects all of this with Hemant and a café
promising “vibes” in Pushkar (Figure 5.3). The history of vibrations awaits a
scholar more patient than I am, and one willing to plunge those chilly depths
158  Guest Is God

to the bottom of this maritime mountain. Nevertheless, when I look at the

way people in Pushkar think about vibrations, it seems likely that locals are
both more aware and culturally closer to discourses of Vivekananda, Annie
Besant, and globalized yoga than they are to those of Kashmiri Shaivism.
Thus, I  suggest this:  in the 19th century, a Western and already robust
conversation about vibrations made contact with people interested in India
and Hindu traditions. Initially, these people were either Theosophists,
Theosophically predisposed or, at the very least, metaphysical in orienta-
tion, and their perspective on vibrations, albeit extremely diverse, tended
to emphasize universalism and science. With Annie Besant, mantras were
vibratized; with Swami Vivekananda, vibrations were prana-​fied. While
Vivekananda was presenting his understanding of vibrations to seekers in
the United States, Besant was presenting hers to the Hindu youth of India.
Many decades later, vibratory language in locales both East and West has
grown sufficiently pervasive and diffuse that it no longer carries with it
Theosophical or even metaphysical connotations. It has been picked up by all
sorts of folks, from hippies and yoga types in California to hotel owners and
brahmans in Pushkar. Like vibrations themselves, this discourse has spread
across the ether. And as Madame Blavatsky said, once the string is plucked,
vibrations are “never wholly lost.”
So, is it possible that Pushkar’s language of vibrations is all entirely indig-
enous, and simply a word translated rather than a complex historical flow
careening across the world and back again? Possibly. But a good deal of evi-
dence suggests something else: when it comes to vibration talk today there is
no such thing as indigenous—​just “always-​already hybrid.”83 Perhaps most
importantly, in trying to attend to my own excitements and annoyances and
confusions and exasperations while disentangling this complex history of
vibrations, I see only one really satisfying response:

shanti, shanti, shanti

 Epilogue

July 10

I follow Ashok out of the narrow alleys of Pushkar’s bazaar, and into
the outskirts of town. At a crossroads lies a tea stand, where turbaned
farmers with leathery faces drink opium-​water and smoke cigarettes.
Just past them, red sandstone rises out of the yellow desert. At first a
wall, and then a small door—​just an opening, really—​from which
a square pool of water becomes visible. From all four sides, an elabo-
rate set of sandstone steps descends gradually into the water. Red meets
green, and the beautiful contrast is barely diminished by a floating bag
of chips and paper scraps. The whole place is empty, not a soul. But on
the northeastern wall are hundreds of stone statues, looking out on the
water like lifeguards at the beach. They are broken and bruised murtis,
paint gone or fading, all haphazardly placed in a row; it is a graveyard
of gods. Durga stands missing her hand, Vishnu has lost his crown, and
a mystery god has been deprived of his arms and head, now sitting in
oblivion without name or recognition. I approach the gods with hesi-
tance, though I am especially drawn to a murti of Shiva, a bust that has
been cleaved from the rest. Shiva’s face is adorned with a majestic mus-
tache, curled up at both ends, whiskers locked in stone. I look at Ashok,
saying: “He has a nice mustache, no?” Ashok’s reply: “Yes, he does.”

~
The above passage is, with some edits, taken from a fieldnote penned in the
summer of 2010. It is about a place just outside of Pushkar where locals go to
deposit their murtis when they are too broken or worn. Of all the thoughts
conjured by such a place (like “why did Ashok bring me there?” and “how do
160 Epilogue

people decide when a murti can be thrown away?”), the first thing I wondered
about was that mustachioed bust. It caught my eye as something really worth
noting. And for no reason in particular, I simply felt a pull toward Shiva’s
image, almost like the attracting forces that bring together two atoms in a co-
valent bond. In retrospect, such notes provide concrete evidence of the fact
that in ethnography, we make our own archive. Yes, our work is inevitably
limited by what lies before us in the world of color and smell, and by what
our friends and collaborators say about their world, but each ethnographic
moment is rendered noteworthy by our decision to take a note. In short, we
write about what draws us in. This is all to say that the past many pages do not
pretend to offer the final or definitive statement on Pushkar; rather, this book
about Pushkar is really my book about Pushkar. It is steeped in particular
conversations with certain books and certain people, and focused on that
alchemical combination of what I, as an anthropologist of religion, believe
to be both exciting and important. Moreover, the kind of Hindu religiosity
produced here is worthy of many more studies, and I hope future scholars of
pilgrimage will see in their fieldsites connections with, and departures from,
what I have experienced in Pushkar.
Overall, my work is guided by a hermeneutic of sympathy. My aim has
been to take seriously the claims made by people in Pushkar—​claims about
themselves and their town, how they view others, and how their religious
lives fit into a new scope of belonging. It is easy, I know, to write off people
wrapped up in the tourism industry, with their stock phrases ready and
waiting, and the material benefit they obviously gain from speaking about
heavenly harmony. But I have tried to argue what I truly believe, namely, that
the people with whom I spoke actually meant the things they said. To think
otherwise, and to label them somehow inauthentic or unreal, is to bring upon
the academy an impoverished vision of human striving.
By way of conclusion, and in looking forward to a Pushkar of the future,
I wonder now about the younger generation of priests and tour guides. My
book speaks quite a bit about Pushkar’s youth, but not exclusively. In truth,
I did not realize how many of my collaborators were twenty-​somethings until
I began sorting through my research in preparation for writing this work. But
the youth culture of Pushkar does, in and of itself, deserve some academic
attention. The tight jeans and iridescent shirts, the spiky mullets and Justin
Bieber songs, the Sanskrit learning and puja services, the global thinking
in a tiny town, the Diet Coke and Maggi noodles, the motorcycles and ar-
ranged marriages: how do these things all fit together? But for me, the biggest
 Epilogue  161

question is this:  what happens when they all grow up? More specifically,
when these twenty-​somethings have kids that themselves turn into twenty-​
somethings, do the parents turn in their shiny shirts for the crisp kurta pa-
jamas of today’s pandas and pujaris, or do they forgo the priestly life and
remain tour guides? How would such a transformation reshape Pushkar’s
religious landscape? For now, anyway, these questions are unanswerable.
But this is something to take pleasure in, I think—​a kind of great leveler for
trying to understand the future of this town. Indeed, in the same way that
my collaborators’ grandparents could never have envisioned the Pushkar of
today, I am not in the position to envision the Pushkar of many tomorrows.
Brahma only knows.
 Notes

Introduction

1. Names in this book are largely pseudonymous, except in places where collaborators
requested that I use their name. I do not make explicit where those particular places
are, thus setting anonymity as the precedent but without depriving certain people of
their wishes.
2. Pushkar’s narrative of itself relies quite centrally on the town being Brahma’s one and
only abode. There are, however, other Brahma temples in India. I have visited one in
Asotra, which is part of the Barmer district of Rajasthan. That temple was completed
in 1984, many centuries after that of Pushkar. Pushkar locals acknowledge the exist-
ence of the Asotra temple (when pressed), though they claim that its murti, or central
image, is not of a four-​headed Brahma and thus not correct. There are apparently
Brahma temples outside of Rajasthan too, in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Goa,
though I have not seen them.
3. Geertz 1973: 22.
4. Lessa 2006: 285.
5. By focusing on producers and not consumers of this discourse, my work pays rel-
atively little attention to pilgrims. For Rajasthani pilgrims in particular, Pushkar is
considered the tirthon ka guru (the Guru of Pilgrimage Places), the final place vis-
ited before returning home from other pilgrimages. It is often said—​by pilgrims
and locals alike—​that a pilgrimage does not bear fruit unless it ends at Pushkar.
Pilgrims are indeed an important group; for this book, though, pilgrims remain
largely in the background, as I focus on the people who live in Pushkar. Moreover,
there are two works that have already quite successfully explored pilgrims and pil-
grimage in Pushkar. The first is a Hindi work called Tirthraj Pushkar (“Pushkar, the
King of Pilgrimage Places”) (Pinjani 2007). While conducting fieldwork, Pinjani
surveyed 300 pilgrims who had come from across South Asia. His fourth chapter
deals with the results of the survey, offering valuable information on a huge range of
demographics, including their reason for coming, caste, home region, income, em-
ployment, age, and gender (88–​125). The second work is David Gladstone’s From
Pilgrimage to Package Tour (2005). Gladstone covers the massive topic of “Third
World Tourism,” and as such, Pushkar features in one chapter of a work that spans
five continents. His interest is focused largely on the similarities between pilgrims
and tourists. My research, then, takes a different approach. In fact, along with the
work of Zeitlyn 1986 and 1988, Joseph 1994, 2007, and 2013, and Joseph and Kavoori
2001, this book engages primarily—​though not exclusively—​with the people who
call Pushkar “home.”
164 Notes

6. In chapter one, I will speak more about how I was brought—​and “brothered”—​into
one family in particular.
7. The organization’s full name is Shri Tirth Guru Pushkar Purohit Sangh Trust.
8. I did conduct interviews with priests and tour guides from outside of the Parashar
community, but it was with this particular group of individuals—​all extremely tight-​
knit—​that I managed to find a conceptual and affective home.
9. Although most guides are indeed brahman, not all of them are. Thus, to call all guides
“brahmans-​who-​do-​guiding-​work” would be as incorrect as it is clunky.
10. Singh 1990: 19.
11. See Fuller 2003; Case 2000; Olivelle 2011.
12. A few collaborators thought it even higher, anywhere from 70%–​90%, though this
is clearly too high. Some may disagree with these estimations—​even the more con-
servative ones, at 30%–​50%—​and see yet another example of brahmanical discur-
sive dominance, with members of the brahman community hyperbolizing their own
presence. It may also be indicative of certain brahmans’ inability to see others, where
members of the lower castes are rendered invisible. These are distinct possibilities,
but, given my experiences in the town, I nevertheless find it unlikely that the number
is near the national average of ~3.5%–​5%.
13. See Bhardwaj 1973; van der Veer 1988; Currie 1989; Sax 1991; Jacobsen 2013; Eck
2013; Reddy 2014; Singh 2017.
14. See Haberman 1994.
15. See Karve 1962.
16. See Gold 1988 and Morinis 1984.
17. See Feldhaus 2003.
18. See Doron 2005; Joseph 2007; Shinde 2007 and 2008; Lochtefeld 2010; Aukland
2016a, 2016b, and 2017.
19. Turner and Turner 1978. In addition, see the special issue of Annals of Tourism
Research (Vol. 19, Issue 1, 1992) on “the relationships between two types of travel—​
pilgrimage and tourism.” For a more contemporary analog, see Badone and
Roseman 2004.
20. See Cohen 2004 and Olsen 2010. In Pushkar, locals maintain a fairly strict di-
chotomy: tourists are foreign, pilgrims are not. David Gladstone (2005) explores how
pilgrimage and domestic tourism are, in fact, blurred categories. This is because of
the fact that “pilgrims,” which is to say Hindu travelers, come from a huge range of
class positions and visit Pushkar for a number of different reasons—​some religious,
some not. There are also native Indians who come to Pushkar but are not Hindu; for
them especially, the designation of “pilgrim” fits poorly. Moreover, there are interna-
tional visitors—​say, non-​resident Indians (NRI) or non-​Indian Hindus—​who come
to Pushkar for religious reasons. Here, no organizational paradigm is perfect, and
thus I hesitate to make specific definitions for these terms. Throughout the book,
I try to be as specific as possible—​using terms like “international tourists” or “do-
mestic tourists”—​but when I use the nonspecific “tourist,” I am using the local defini-
tion and thus referring to foreign visitors.
 notes  165

21. It is important to note that this particular field of inquiry (on the interactions of pilgrimage
and tourism) has been dominated by scholars outside of the field of religious studies.
There are notable exceptions, and these studies have tended to see this entanglement with
a more complex interpretive lens. See Vukonić 1996; Bremer 2004; Stausberg 2011.
22. See Pfaffenberger 1983 and Gupta 1999.
23. Cohen 2004: 147.
24. The notion that pilgrimage constitutes a sacred search toward the center is not
Cohen’s originally. See, for example, Eliade 1969 and Turner 1973. Admittedly,
Turner’s center is actually the “center out there,” but only insofar as pilgrimage often
requires that people leave their home to find their religious center.
25. Cohen 2004: 156.
26. The juxtaposition of “purity” and “danger” comes from Mary Douglas’ suitably titled
book, Purity and Danger (1966).
27. McCutcheon 2001: 5.
28. Foxen (2017) has also recently deployed this same botanical metaphor, describing
modern yoga as a matter of inosculation between Indian and Western influences
(xii). We both arrived at this metaphor independently, but I should note that I am not
the first to use this term within religious studies.
29. See Durkheim 1912; Eliade 1957; Eade and Sallnow 1991; McCutcheon 2001.
30. Sax 1991: 7.
31. Pavitra can also be translated as “pure,” or indeed, “sacred.”
32. Smith 1987: 105.
33. Smith 1987: 103.
34. Smith 1987: 104.
35. Chidester and Linenthal 1995: 15.
36. Joseph’s research, although not expressed in exactly this way, aims to investigate these
contestations as they appear in “political discourse” (1994: 2).
37. Preston 1992.
38. Reader 2014: 33.
39. For more information on India’s liberalization, see Lukose (2009) and Ganguly-​
Scrase and Scrase (2009).
40. See Henderson and Weisgrau 2007: xxxii.
41. These statistics come from Joseph 1994 (242) and Sharma et al. 2011 (185).
42. The proliferation of hotels and guesthouses did not, however, lead to the disap-
pearance of caste-​based dharamshalas. Rather, these rest houses continue to exist
today, and are used by pilgrims of various communities: there is a Kumawat Bhavan
for members of the Kumawat caste, a Jangir Dharamshala for the Jangir caste, a
guesthouse for Jats, one for Ghanchis, etc. But wealthier pilgrims, as well as those
whose castes do not have a corresponding dharamshala, stay in other, caste-​neutral
hotels or guesthouses.
43. Sharma 1979: 28.
44. Sharma 1979: 28.
45. See Chande 1997: 387.
166 Notes

46. Kumar 1988: 17. See also Joseph 1994: 274.

47. Kumar 1988: 17.
48. Gladstone 2005: 192.
49. Joseph 2001: 1005.
50. Joseph 1994: 227–​228.
51. Gladstone 2005: 192.
52. Joseph 2007: 213.
53. Joseph 1994: 278. As far as I can tell, these transgressions are not themselves actions
declared illegal under criminal law, but one could potentially be charged, under
Section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code, for example, for insulting or attempting to
insult any religion or religious belief with the intention of hurting someone’s “reli-
gious feelings.”
54. Fallon 1886: 177.
55. On the other hand, this rhetoric of non-​essentialism can prevent locals from
identifying structural problems in Pushkar, finding specific individuals culpable
instead of the institutions or systems in which their work is situated. Because this
book makes no policy recommendations with regard to tourism management—​and
I think that such a move would alienate my collaborators—​I will simply note that
there are, in fact, larger and more pressing considerations to take into consideration
besides individual actors.
56. Olivelle 1996: 183.
57. See Jamison 1996.
58. Shah 2005.
59. See Hannerz 1990; Appadurai 2001; Croucher 2004.
60. Lewellen 2002: 8.
61. Pushkar, for its part, was early in its encounter with globalization, as international
tourism there preceded liberalization by about a decade. Still, liberalization increased
the pace of change many times over.
62. Lange and Meier 2009.
63. Lukose 2009: 3.
64. See Benjamin 1999a; Buck-​Morss 1989; Solnit 2000.
65. Solnit 2000: 198.
66. Baudelaire 2010: 9.
67. For example, the ethnographer does not seek to “remain hidden from the world”
but rather wants to engage directly with it. The participant-​observer is not a fly on
the wall.
68. Poe 2000.
69. Benjamin 1999a: 422.
70. Benjamin 1999a: 422.
71. By referring to the flâneur, I  am not trying to make any connection—​implicit or
explicit—​between Pushkar and 19th-​century Paris. Rather, the concept of flânerie
simply supplies a theoretical language through which I can explain my affective ori-
entation to walking around town.
72. Benjamin 1997: 36.
 notes  167

73. Clifford 1997: 56.

74. Geertz 2000: 110.
75. Jeffrey 2010.
76. There is a correlate to timepass in the Hindi verb aram karna, which simply means “to
relax.” Both often involve activities like sitting, drinking chai, reading the newspaper,
and chatting with friends, though aram karna usually implies that there is nothing to
do, or no waiting necessary.
77. The vast majority of my interviews were conducted in Hindi. When someone spoke
English fluently—​for example, a tourist or a hotel owner—​I conducted the inter-
view in English. Occasionally, a collaborator with particularly good English skills
chose to switch back and forth between Hindi and English, but even then I asked
my questions in Hindi; when these cases of linguistic hybridity appear in the book,
I make that explicit.

Chapter 1

1. Brahm Ghat is sometimes spelled in English as “Brahma Ghat,” but its local pronun-
ciation is always brahm ghat. I will keep with the local pronunciation throughout
the book.
2. This chapter was developed from an article published previously in the Journal of the
American Academy of Religion. See Thomases 2016.
3. Hindi speakers in North India will usually pronounce dharma as dharm or dharam.
But because it is a fairly well-​known word outside of North India, and outside of the
Hindi-​speaking world, I use its more common spelling. It should be noted too that
dharma often eludes successful translation. Perhaps the most common definition is
“duty,” but “established order” and “religion” are common as well, and largely based
on context. In Pushkar—​and I would argue much of contemporary North India—​
dharma and religion are interchangeable, especially among those with English
knowledge. For a more expansive analysis, see Weightman and Pandey 1978.
4. Eck 2012: 7.
5. Hollinshead 1998: 121.
6. Seen from another angle, we might say that Pushkar is thought of as “different” in-
sofar as it is a particularly special place where people can come together. The larger
point, though, is that in most circumstances the success of tourism in Pushkar is
not based on the projection of absolute difference between local and foreigner. We
will, however, address the topic of exoticism when dealing with the camel fair in
chapter four.
7. Sheldon Pollock has spoken about the Ramayana and Mahabharata as texts that in-
volve discursive mythemes of “othering” and “brothering,” respectively. His treat-
ment of “brothering” is different from mine, especially insofar as the Mahabharata
involves a family with actual brothers. Moreover, Pollock takes note of the process
by which kin becomes the enemy—​that is, the other—​rather than what I  am fo-
cusing on, an assertion of universalism in which others become brothers. You can
168 Notes

watch Pollock describe his understanding of “brothering” in this interview: http://​

www.youtube.com/​watch?v=VXhInNUVZ6U. For another and very different anal-
ysis of Indian brotherhood, and how it pertains to the Bollywood classic Amar Akbar
Anthony, see Elison et al. 2016.
8. On this dialectical relationship of “inscribing the other” and “inscribing the self ” in
the context of Hindu studies, see Cynthia Talbot 1995. Here, Talbot situates her work
in Andhra Pradesh, 1323–​1650, spanning from early Muslim military presence to
their dominance. She looks to Hindu temple inscriptions in Sanskrit and Telugu, and
explores the changing ways in which Hindus viewed both themselves and Muslims.
She sees these two intertwined processes—​of creating an Other, and subsequently
developing internal criteria for solidarity—​as forming the basis of identity formation.
9. In most instances, Brahma and the lake are thought of as separate entities—​between
the creator and his creation—​but I have also heard the lake referred to as brahma ka
rup, “a form of Brahma.”
10. Sushila Zeitlyn 1986 notes in greater detail a puja that she witnessed and recorded in
Pushkar (110–​112).
11. The “donation life” refers to the job of the priest/​tour guide, in which a person relies
on an unsteady income of donations from pilgrims and tourists. Chapter 3 offers an
in-​depth discussion of this kind of lifestyle.
12. For an in-​depth treatment of the meanings of blood in India—​and more specifi-
cally, blood donation as an instance of religious devotion—​see Copeman 2009. On
a more recent conversation on blood and religion, see Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of
Christianity (2014), as well as David van Dusen’s critical review of Anidjar (2014).
13. The Hindi word angrez comes from angrezi, which simply refers to the English lan-
guage, and therefore means “English.” However, it is used for basically any foreigner,
and more often than not has an explicit connotation of whiteness.
14. Although this discussion was in Hindi, Pankaj used the English word caste. This
relates not only to bilingualism among tour guides but also to the fact that discussions
on caste—​at least within Pushkar—​rarely make use of the term varna. Instead, the
English term collapses the differences between varna and jati, rendering it both more
amorphous and more broadly applicable. Moreover, this broad applicability means
that terms like caste or jati are sometimes used less as a reflection on the caste system
than on other divisions in society, such as religion or race. Jati especially can mean
simply “type.”
15. Flueckiger 2006: 168.
16. Rajesh’s sentiment is also echoed in realms outside of the Hindu fold. For ex-
ample, take this popular slogan in the poster art of Shirdi Sai Baba: sab ka malik ek
(“everyone’s Lord is one”). Neither solely Hindu nor Muslim, Sai Baba is believed to
guide his followers towards a vision of “spiritual unity” beyond perceived borders
(McLain 2011: 43). Such appeals are owned by no community, and thus might be
more broadly considered “South Asian.” One could, of course, make the argument
that such appeals to “spiritual unity” are not specifically South Asian but more ge-
nerically human. This is a possibility, but here I am trying to make a point about
the exceptional porousness of religious ideas within the context of South Asia. On
 notes  169

ambiguity between Hindu and Muslim borders, as well as the idea of “South Asian”
as a useful descriptor, see Bellamy 2011.
17. Lutgendorf 1991: 363.
18. See Jones 1976; Mitter 1977; Pennington 2005; Adcock 2014.
19. It is important to emphasize the productive and creative aspects of what could be
identified as a reactionary appeal to tradition. Vasudha Dalmia 1997 compellingly
argues that although reformulations among traditionalists were less noticeable than
those presented by various reform groups, they nevertheless reflected important
political and social issues of the time. It was here, at the negotiation and construc-
tion of tradition, that “the face of modern Hinduism—​within which temple and
varna [caste] continue to play a prominent role—​was finally to be coined” (Dalmia
1997: 4). For us, this means that although Christian critique led to Hindu reform, and
Hindu reform led to a resurgence of tradition and orthodoxy, this does not reduce
sanatana dharma to some third order knee-​jerk retreat to the past. Part and parcel
of the sanatana dharma movement was its association with “modern organizational
formations,” namely the expansion and proliferation of Sanatana Dharma Sabhas
(associations) during the latter decades of the 19th century, as well as the promotion
of an increasingly codified Hindu education (Zavos 2001: 112).
20. Zavos 2001: 119.
21. Sanatana Dharma: An Elementary Textbook was issued by the Central Hindu College
and represented a collaborative effort between Besant and her colleague Bhagavan
Das. In the preface to a subsequent edition, however, Das credits Besant for having
first drafted the text. See Hawley 2009 (315). We will discuss Besant in greater depth
in ­chapter 5.
22. Hawley 2009 also notes a particularly early instantiation of this nationalist-​
influenced sanatana dharma: it is a Hindi text, Sanatanadharmamarttanda (“The
Sun of the Eternal Religion”), written by Pandit Gurusahay in 1878.
23. Besant 1904: iii.
24. Annie Besant met Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society in 1890, and within
a few years Besant became a well-​known theosophist herself. Interestingly, for a short
time before Besant joined—​between 1878 and 1882—​the Arya Samaj united with the
Theosophical Society. The relationship eventually turned sour, but it is important to
note that the theosophical views shaping Annie Besant’s work on sanatana dharma
were likely also shaped by the universalism of the Arya Samaj. As such, the Arya
Samaj might be said to have a multilayered impact on the historical development of
sanatana dharma, originally its foil with regard to issues of image worship and or-
thodoxy, later its inspiration—​or at least part of its inspiration—​for adopting a more
expansive approach.
25. For a contemporary treatment of sanatana dharma as image worship, and specifi-
cally in contrast to the Arya Samaj of today, see Saunders 2011.
26. Vivekananda 1970–​1973: v. 6: 183.
27. For other examples of 19th-​century universalisms, see Halbfass 1988: 217–​246. On
universalisms limited to the Indian nation, see Hawley 2009: 328–​331.
28. Vivekananda 1970–​1973: v. 4: 180.
170 Notes

29. Some scholars—​most notably, Paul Hacker—​have referred to Vivekananda’s philos-

ophy as “Neo-​Vedanta,” a term which I prefer not to use because of the assumption
that there exists an older, purer, and more authentic Vedanta. On the term, and how
it might or might not apply to Vivekananda, see Halbfass 1995, Hatcher 1999, and De
Michelis 2004.
30. I do not want to give the impression that Vivekananda was, himself, always accepting
of other religions. In fact, he was extremely critical of Christianity—​particularly
missionaries in India—​and Islam. His tolerance was predicated on the idea that
others should also be tolerant. For him, Islam and Christianity held the potential
to be tolerant toward others, but more often than not failed to realize that potential
(Jones 1998: 238–​241).
31. Vivekananda 1970–​1973: v. 8: 129.
32. Vivekananda 1970–​1973: v. 2: 382–​383.
33. Backpackers have told me that the phrase can be seen everywhere in Thailand—​on
t-​shirts and store signs—​and that it is considered a classic example of “Tinglish,” a
macaronic language of English and Thai.
34. Halbfass 1988: 345–​346.
35. See, as an example of the kind of popular writing by non-​Indian Hindus in America,
the work of Frawley 2010 and Morales 2008.
36. It is fascinating too that Deepak is speaking about sanatana dharma as a religion
existing before Hinduism, though he anchors his history in a decidedly Hindu
framework, where Brahma creates the world—​beginning with Pushkar. In a some-
what similar vein, when Deepak refers to “people from those [other] religions”
coming to Pushkar, he notes their interest in doing puja-​path, a decidedly Hindu
ritual. Indeed, priests often considered puja to be a ritual efficacious for all people,
even when framed in explicitly Hindu terms and calling upon explicitly Hindu
deities.
37. The missing demographic here are Jews, more specifically Israeli Jews, who have
been coming to Pushkar in significant numbers since at least the 1990s. These are
young men and women who, after a few years of military service with the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF), backpack across various parts of the world—​mostly Latin
America, Southeast Asia, and India—​in order to unwind. Their presence in Pushkar
is often met with distrust from locals, due to the common perception that Israelis are
cliquish, rude, frugal, and always on drugs. Their presence was once large enough
that it warranted the establishment of a Chabad House on the outskirts of town. My
understanding is that the numbers of Israeli tourists have decreased somewhat over
the years, though locals are only able to surmise why. For more on the topic of Israeli
backpackers, see Noy and Cohen 2005, Maoz 2006. Interestingly, and for no reason
that I can determine, Pushkar locals often do not mention Judaism as one of the
major religions. There are exceptions to this—​like, say, Deepak above—​but a large
number of my collaborators were fairly unfamiliar with Judaism. Instead, they as-
sume most foreigners to be Christian.
38. Interestingly, water is not universally or inherently casteless in Indian society. Within
the village setting in particular, water is a contested substance:  water from a well
 notes  171

might be denied to Dalits for fear of pollution, and higher caste villagers might not
accept food cooked in water from a lower caste person, where they would accept food
cooked in oil. In Pushkar, anyone—​regardless of caste—​can bathe in the lake, though
this in no way implies that locals in Pushkar promote a casteless society. Rather, as
explained above, the idea that “water has no jati” makes the most sense when we
think of jati much more broadly, as indicating religious differences.
39. People in Pushkar seem to prefer the Sanskrit term tattva, but bhuta is also common.
40. See Haberman 2006.
41. For more on the issue of “inclusivism” and its occurrence within the Hindu tradition,
see Hacker’s foundational text (1983), Halbfass’ critique of Hacker (1988: 403–​418),
and Nicholson’s helpful summation (2010).
42. Benjamin 1999b: 684.
43. See Taussig 1993 and Bhabha 1994.
44. This trend has exceptions, of course. For example, Pushkar’s Old Rangji temple is
off-​limits to foreigners.
45. Van der Veer and Vertovec 1991: 152.
46. See Chakrabarty 2000.
47. Prasad 1998: 9.
48. Appadurai 1996: 188–​189.
49. See Arora 2017.
50. This image was initially posted as profile picture. Whereas American Facebook
practices (at least in my circles) tend to dictate that people use a picture of
themselves—​or their children—​in their profile picture, this is not the status quo in
India. Users in India switch their profile pictures with greater regularity, and they
welcome a far larger range of images as possible options. In fact, in 2016—​and much
to my surprise—​an 18-​year-​old collaborator in Pushkar changed his profile picture
on Facebook to a photo of my daughter!
51. See Asad 2003.
52. Bhargava 1998: 1.
53. Admittedly, how secularism becomes enacted in Indian law is a fraught and com-
plicated subject, as explained by Donald Eugene Smith in his India as a Secular
State: “[a]‌major problem is the position of religious personal law in the legal struc-
ture of present-​day India. That a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian, all citizens of the
same country, should be governed by different inheritance laws is an anachronism
indeed in modern India and diametrically opposed to the fundamental principles
of secularism. The Constitution declares that the state must strive for a uniform civil
code . . . The conception of the secular state both presupposes a uniform civil law,
and requires that the religious beliefs of a minority be respected. Probably 90% of the
Indian Muslims feel that their law is of the very essence of Islam. This is the dilemma
which must one day be faced” (1963: 497–​498).
54. I am not the first to make this claim. Both Talal Asad 2003 and Gil Anidjar 2006 as-
sert that ideas of “religion” and “the secular” are always bound together, and that sec-
ularism is actually produced by Christianity.
55. Pratt 1992: 4.
172 Notes

56. At one point, it was au courant in disciplinary circles to speak of tourism as a form of
imperialism; see Nash 1977, and Henderson and Weisgrau 2007: xxix. Regardless of
one’s position on that particular issue, it is certainly true that economic asymmetries
are extraordinarily visible in Pushkar. There is a massive wealth gap between ex-
tremely well-​off travelers from Europe and North America, and brahmans working
on the ghats who make Rs. 1,500 (~$20) on a good week. For more information
on the tourism economy in Rajasthan as a whole, see Henderson and Weisgrau
2007: xxxi–​xxxiii.
57. Manna is a somewhat difficult word to translate, as it means “believe” but also simply
“acknowledge.” Another way of parsing the above phrase is “to acknowledge the ex-
istence of all the gods.” Either way, it presents an interesting tension in which locals
simultaneously acknowledge the multiplicity of gods while recognizing that God is
one. The idea, as I understand it, is that they believe in all of the gods because of the
fact that they are all manifestations of a single divine entity.
58. Gold 2013: 308.
59. Pushkar, of course, is not 100% Hindu, nor is Ajmer 100% Muslim. In fact, data from
the 2011 census tells us that Ajmer is only 11% Muslim (https://​www.census2011.co.in/​
census/​city/​82-​ajmer.html).
60. See Currie 1989.
61. It is important to note that the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer may repre-
sent an exceptional case for many Hindus in Pushkar, which is to say, Hindus are
far more likely to visit that particular shrine than any other small or local mosque in
the area. In the beginning of my research, I was surprised to find that several local
shopkeepers in Pushkar were not aware of a mosque literally twenty feet from their
stores.
62. The imam at Pushkar’s biggest mosque, the Shahi Mosque, told me that the relation-
ship between Muslims and Hindus in the town was good—​without tension and with
love. Another member of the mosque largely agreed, saying that the relationship was
not necessarily one in which the communities mixed, but one that relied on mutual
respect.
63. Scanlon 1998: 54. One might even go so far as to apply the term antagonistic toler-
ance, as described by Robert M. Hayden (2002). Hayden notes that when thinking
of shared religious sites in particular, one must be aware of how power relations shift
throughout history. Thus a site where “sharing” currently exists may simply be one
moment of peace in an otherwise competitive, and possibly violent, history. Pushkar
may not be a shared religious site, but Hayden’s work offers an important reminder
that brotherly harmony is not without historical change.
64. Brown 2006: 27. Another important term here is pluralism, which entails both the
recognition of diversity and the fact that one should do something about accom-
modating it (Marty 2007: 16). For Shail Mayaram 2005, pluralism expresses the idea
of “living together.” It ideally serves to maintain, recognize, and respect difference,
whereas the kind of universalism put forward in sanatana dharma involves a more
consistent blurring of religious boundaries.
65. Ortegren 2018: 3.
 notes  173

66. Sharma 2013: 50.

67. Paranjape 1999: 27.
68. Paranjape 1999: 21.
69. http://​vhp.org/​organization/​org-​objective.
70. For a large-​ scale work aiming to fight against the homogenization of Hindu
traditions, see Doniger 2009.
71. Engineer 2010: 171. The exact slogan was actually “hindu, muslim, sikh, isai: hain sab
bhai bhai.” For another example of this slogan—​and ones like it—​in contemporary
India, see Snodgrass 2006 (145–​146).
72. For the major part of my fieldwork, Pushkar—​and Rajasthan more broadly—​were
Congress-​run. In December of 2013, however, Ashok Gehlot (Congress) gave up
his position as Chief Minister of Rajasthan to Vasundhara Raje (BJP), and the in-
cumbent MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) for Pushkar, Naseem Akhtar Insaf
(Congress), lost to Suresh Singh Rawat (BJP). In 2014, Sachin Pilot (Congress), the
Lok Sabha representative for Ajmer Constituency, lost his seat to Sanwar Lal Jat
(BJP). Thus over a relatively short period of time, Rajasthan went from a Congress-​
dominated government to one controlled by the BJP. I found informants to be very
nearly split 50/​50 with regard to party affiliation, though some would not volun-
teer such information. Even more commonly, people would tell me that they voted
for “man, not party,” meaning that they would make their decision based on an
individual’s merits rather than political affiliation.
73. I am especially indebted to Liane Carlson for this idea.

Chapter 2

1. Translated by N.A. Deshpande 1988 (1), Shrishtikhanda (I.1.1).

2. This chapter was developed from an article published previously in the International
Journal of Hindu Studies. See Thomases 2017.
3. The other two lakes are also called Pushkar—​madhya or “medium Pushkar” and
kanishth or “junior Pushkar”—​ but they receive very little attention. Medium
Pushkar is a small tank off the beaten path and is often without water. Junior Pushkar
is also confusingly called Budha Pushkar or “old Pushkar,” which refers to a story in
which Aurangzeb, while traveling to Pushkar with intentions of destroying temples
there, stopped by junior Pushkar to cool off. Washing in the magical waters, his beard
turned white and his face became aged and wrinkled. Becoming temporarily old, and
seeing Pushkar’s power, he ordered his army back home. While more popular than
medium Pushkar, Budha Pushkar hardly gathers crowds. Both are about five to six
miles northeast of the main Pushkar lake.
4. This is very likely a folk etymology. According to MacDonell 1893, the primary def-
inition of pushkara is “blue lotus flower” (166). Other possible etymologies exist
too—​like pushpakara, referring to Brahma as “one who produces the blue lotus
flower”—​though the local Hindi guide, called the Pushkar Mahatmya, uses the deri-
vation mentioned in the body of the text.
174 Notes

5. One might also translate this as “king of Pushkar.” On a related note, both Pushkar
and Allahabad are referred to as tirthraj by their respective inhabitants, translated as
“king of pilgrimage places.”
6. The Brahma temple, which features more prominently in the third chapter, is an-
other significant reason for making the pilgrimage to Pushkar, but it is generally
considered less important than the lake.
7. The structure of the chapter should not suggest that I walked around the lake with the
cleaning group only once, or that all of the observations and conversations took place
solely within the confines of a single circumambulation. This account is a composite
of several trips around the lake, taken at different intervals throughout the year.
Moreover, many conversations about these environmental efforts—​ranging from ca-
sual chats to structured and recorded interviews—​took place not only leading up to,
during, or after cleaning, but also at other times during my research.
8. On the other hand, the source most cited by locals as containing the greatest amount
of information is the Padma Purana, a Sanskrit work that is notoriously difficult to
date because of its multiple authors; the Purana is estimated to have been composed
anywhere between the 4th and 12th centuries (Malik 1993: 405; Wilson 1840: xxi).
At 55,000 verses, the text covers a massive range of topics, from stories of the gods
to the importance of fasting and pilgrimage. Rocher 1986 notes that the Purana is a
loose collection of varied works, as “evidenced by the numerous mahatmyas, stotras,
etc., which claim to belong to it” (207–​208). The Purana’s first chapter is known
both as the Shrishtikhanda (“The Book of Creation”) and the Pushkarakhanda (“The
Book of Pushkar”), as it addresses in detail the lake’s greatness (Rocher 1986: 208).
The Purana has been rendered into Hindi and made widely available by Gita Press
(first published in 1944); I know of at least one copy of this 1,000-​page tome that lies
waiting in a storage container on Brahm Ghat as easy reference for curiosities or un-
answered questions among the brahmans there.
9. Malik 1993 argues that in order to date more confidently the text’s antiquity, further
collation of manuscripts is necessary. Thus, based on intertextual analysis of other
manuscripts of the period—​ones that mention or share parts with the Mahatmya—​
he suggests a tentative and admittedly unsatisfactory range of composition be-
tween the 10th and 17th centuries ce (405–​406). Malik has conducted significant
research on the text, offering introductory analysis, a critical edition culled from four
manuscripts, and a German translation. Central here—​and in Malik 1990—​is that
“the ‘character’ of the pilgrimage centre can best be determined by paying attention
to the interaction of different elements rather than laying emphasis on only one as-
pect” (1990: 203). More specifically, Malik 1993 argues that the Mahatmya builds
a homologous relationship between the concept of sacrifice (yajna) and pilgrimage
(tirtha), a connection which helps to highlight the importance of Brahma’s role as
both protagonist of the text and agent of the sacrifice that renders Pushkar a holy
place (3).
10. Within the same genre of “guidebook,” but making a more explicit gesture toward
scholarship, is Vipin Behari Goyal’s Tirthraj Pushkar: Insight into the Rural Life of
Rajasthan (1997). The book most definitely possesses a devotional flavor—​and has a
 notes  175

section on “Tourist Information”—​but also tries to address various topics on Hindu

religion and philosophy, as well as Rajasthani folk art.
11. This is true, too, of the broader genre of mahatmya literature; every pilgrimage
place’s mahatmya works to show why that particular place is the best in the world.
For further scholarship on this genre, see Bakker 1990; Granoff 1998; Hawley 2009;
Lochtefeld 2010.
12. Certeau 1984: 115.
13. Granoff 1998 notes that mahatmya literature, as a genre, tends to ignore the impor-
tance of temples or the rituals performed in temples. Instead, they “define the sanctity
of the site primarily in terms of the physical site itself, often a mountain, and its nat-
ural features, lakes, rivers, and from time to time man-​made or divinely made tanks
and ponds” (1–​2). According to her, this trend suggests the ambivalences of brah-
manical traditions toward temple cults. The modern Pushkar Mahatmya underlines
this ambivalence, too, as it mentions a number of famous temples but nevertheless
maintains the centrality of the lake.
14. Joseph 1994: 32.
15. Tod (1997) also refers to a “sovereign of Mundore” who was cured of “some disorder”
by the water in Pushkar, and then excavated the lake there (607). We therefore know
that some version of this story has been around since Tod’s publication of Annals and
Antiquities of Rajasthan, in 1829.
16. While I am working with the pamphlet entitled Pushkar Mahatmya, it should be
noted that the text itself has multiple versions. The outline, structure, and detail de-
pend on the publisher, and even within the same publishing house there are longer
and shorter versions. In most instances throughout the book, I combine the varied
versions and streamline them for the sake of readability. In those few cases when
informants have made their preferences known, I will stick to a particular publisher’s
story or narrate in greater detail.
17. Narhar Rao was a king, but the above story is not primarily about power and au-
thority. It also speaks of suffering, devotion, and the search for salvation, all of which
constitute more basic features of human, rather than kingly, experience. On a slightly
different note, it should also be said that although I am particularly interested in this
story because of how it bridges between realms of mythic and mundane, locals nar-
rate the tale as yet another example of Pushkar’s curative powers—​which is to say, its
ability to relieve suffering.
18. Huxley 1948: 86.
19. Sawhney 1985: 17; Joseph 1994: 167–​168.
20. “Pushkar Lake is Most Polluted” 1997: 6.
21. Mathur et al. 2008: 1528.
22. “Large Number of Fish” 2007.
23. For a horrifying video showing the fish in Pushkar Lake as they wash up on the
shore, see this YouTube clip from September 8, 2008:  http://​www.youtube.com/​
watch?v=LpPkscnUvGI.
24. “Sewer Water” 2011.
25. See Cunningham et al. 1998 and Pepper 1996.
176 Notes

26. Notably, Tomalin (2004) argues that there is a difference between ideas of “bio-​
divinity,” which are undoubtedly prevalent in India, and “religious environ-
mentalism,” which requires active engagement and, she argues, has its roots in
18th-​century Europe. I agree with Tomalin that not every instance of bio-​divinity
leads to environmentalism, but surely there are environmental efforts in India—​the
case of Pushkar being only one of them—​in which people act according to some of
the basic precepts of environmentalism. Jain (2011) deconstructs Tomalin’s argu-
ment in greater detail (12–​15).
27. Chapple 1998: 20.
28. Mahabharata (12.182.14–​19), quoted in Chapple 2001: 61–​62.
29. Not all philosophical schools posit a view of the world in line with a robust environ-
mentalist attitude. Nelson (1998) offers the example of Advaita Vedanta, a school
of thought often assumed to have a “unitive” or “cosmic” view that conveys a “rev-
erence for life” (63). Nelson finds these assumptions misleading, arguing instead
that in Advaita Vedanta “value is located in the Self alone. Far from being worthy of
reverence, all that is other than the Atman, including nature, is without value” (66).
He goes even further, saying that Shankara’s teachings serve as nothing less than an
“extreme version of the world-​negating, transcendental dualism that supports en-
vironmental neglect” (79). While I find Nelson’s work to be largely compelling, it
is nevertheless hard to make any definitive statement on how a philosopher would
address environmental concerns, when such concerns were no doubt far from the
thinker’s mind. Still, Nelson’s conclusion problematizes any claim that the Hindu tra-
dition possesses some inherent environmental ethic. Rather, there are philosophical
concepts that both affirm and reject an ecological worldview, meaning that Hindu
environmentalisms exist alongside other stances that are equally Hindu but far less
concerned with the condition of the material world.
30. Gadgil and Vartak 1976: 159. Also, see Gold and Gujar 1989; Chandran and Hughes
2000; Jain 2011; Kent 2013.
31. Gadgil and Vartak 1976: 159.
32. Gold and Gujar 1989: 219–​220.
33. Gold and Gujar 1989: 225.
34. Of course, it is important to recognize that this environmentalism does not neces-
sarily expand outside the boundaries of sacred space. On the contrary, it is likely that
areas closest to sacred groves are more deforested because of the grove’s preservation.
Similarly, the fact that people in Pushkar care about pollution at their lake does not
imply that they pick up trash anywhere else.
35. Alley 1998: 313. Of course, there are exceptions to this tendency, perhaps most no-
table of which is Veer Bhadra Mishra. As chief priest of the Sankat Mochan temple
of Banaras, and Professor of Civil Engineering at Banaras Hindu University, Mishra
established the Sankat Mochan Foundation in 1982 with the dual objectives of
educating people about the Ganga’s river pollution and of monitoring water quality
with reliable data that the government was consistently unable to collect (Ahmed
1990: 44). Here he is, speaking on the impetus to establish the Foundation: “One
day [in 1975] I had to choose a spot where I could take a dip in Gangaji. It was a
 notes  177

very painful realization, but not a difficult one to make for I saw raw sewage floating
on the surface of the river and dead bodies etc. I started talking and writing articles
in newspapers describing the increasing levels of pollution of the Ganga and their
effects on Banaras and Banarasis. At first people thought I was crazy—​didn’t I have
enough work to do at the temple and at BHU they asked, besides, how could Gangaji
be polluted” (King 2005: 151). Even after Mishra’s death in 2013, the Sankat Mochan
Foundation persists, Facebook page and all. With grassroots support and financial
assistance from within and outside of the subcontinent, the people at Sankat Mochan
continue on their mission.
36. Haberman 2006: 134. Haberman also notes, however, that there are several differing
opinions on the pollution of the Yamuna, ranging from wholesale denial to more se-
rious engagement (134–​140).
37. Alley 1998: 312–​313.
38. Alley 2000: 374.
39. Gandhi 2000.
40. In a similar vein, Joseph 2013 cites a community activist who referred to the lake
as nabalik, meaning a legal minor: “Originating in the Rajasthan Tenancy Act 1955
(Section 46(3)), the concept of nabalik referred to the legal position of a temple deity
as a perpetual minor who functioned as a juristic person through a guardian, like a
temple priest. In other words, the lake was a minor for whom local Brahmins, as the
ritual specialists, were self-​appointed guardians” (118). While I never heard this ar-
gument over the course of my fieldwork, it has been used with success in court cases
across the country (Venkatesan 2010). For Joseph 2013, this “spirit of guardianship”
was evident in people’s concern for the physical purity of Pushkar-​raj (118).
41. Lutgendorf 1991: 371.
42. “Ritualization” is not Bell’s invention, though I am indebted to her work in partic-
ular; for a treatment of her predecessors, see Bell 1992: 88–​89. And indeed, the con-
versation about ritual is far from over. For more recent treatments of the topic, see
Mahmood 2005 and Seligman et al. 2008. I should be clear, too, that I am not arguing
whether or not Mukesh’s group would consider what they do ritualization, though
they do make the claim that their routine combines different activities into one. As
such, they recognize the newness of their efforts. My theoretical language, then, is
intended to invite cross-​cultural comparisons in which environmentalism and ritu-
alization might be coupled.
43. See Goody 1961; Rappaport 1979; Tambiah 1979; Grimes 1982; Smith 1987.
44. Bell 1992: 74.
45. See Bourdieu 1990.
46. Smith 1987: 105.
47. Caillois 1959: 20.
48. On Bakr Eid, when Muslims are supposed to partake of a goat sacrifice and meal, they
leave Pushkar and head to surrounding villages or Ajmer. An exception to Pushkar’s
strict vegetarianism is the availability of eggs in a few hotels and restaurants. Such
items are rarely—​if ever—​written on the menu. I did speak with low-​caste Hindus
who worked in Pushkar and who ate meat, but they lived outside of town. I assume
178 Notes

that there are people who live within the borders of Pushkar and eat meat at their
homes, but I am certain that very few would advertise that fact.
49. Berry 1999: 16.
50. Apparently, the mugger crocodile is a particularly broad-​snouted crocodile, giving it
the appearance of an alligator.
51. Rajputana Gazetteer, Vol. 2. 1879: 70.
52. Knighton 1881: 843.
53. Occasionally, there are circumstances where reverence for animals can—​however
peripherally—​contribute to environmental degradation. We see this, for example,
when pilgrims distribute too much bird seed around the lake. The seeds are some-
times swept into the lake itself or, more often than not, are left there and help to at-
tract monkeys and cows. Indeed, cows are often seen licking seeds off of the ground,
and their wanderings on the ghats subsequently result in significant quantities of
cow dung being deposited by the lake’s shore. Some of the dung is washed into the
lake, which creates an explosive growth of algae and further depletes the water of
oxygen. Cows, of course, are considered sacred, and it is thus very difficult to re-
strict their wanderings. My informants would scrape cow dung up from the ghats
and throw it away. They never expressed any concerns about cows, and thus this pos-
sible disconnect—​between reverence for animals and lake pollution—​never became
a topic of conversation.
54. See Zeitlyn 1986.
55. For scholarship that offers an expansive approach to the topic of giving, see Bornstein
2012 and Copeman 2009.
56. Maza sometimes overlaps with another favorite word of the easygoing and care-
free: mast. Mast indicates yet another collection of adjectives, from “intoxicated” and
“overjoyed,” to “passionate” and “lustful.” For an in-​depth analysis of this affective
orientation, see Lynch 1990.
57. Haberman (2006) deals with the topic of seva, and specifically its connection with
environmental efforts, throughout his book.
58. Lucia 2014: 193.
59. This type of religion-​inspired social service is, of course, not at all limited to the
Hindu world. Seva is an absolutely constitutive aspect of Sikh religiosity. Beyond the
boundaries of South Asia, too, we have other instances of seva-​like practices. Take,
for example, the Social Gospel movement of early 20th-​century North America,
which sought to create the “Kingdom of God” on Earth and thought to do so through
addressing issues of social justice: among others, crime, poverty, and alcoholism. See
White and Hopkins 1976.
60. The Tirthayatraparvan is a section of the Mahabharata’s third book, the Vanaparvan
(“The Forest Book”).
61. Mahabharata, Vol. 1 & 2. (translated by van Buitenen) 1975: 374. According to Eck
2012, it is “appropriate” that the pilgrimage route described in the Mahabharata
“begins at the beginning, with the Lotus Pond of the creator” (71). Bhardwaj 1973
finds Pushkar’s leading position more than just appropriate. He suggests that the
town “was perhaps the most prominent place of pilgrimage in the entire list of places
 notes  179

supplied by the epic” and thus a textual indication of Brahma and Pushkar’s increased
importance in the past (41). As far as I have seen, however, there is no concrete ev-
idence of Pushkar’s preeminence centuries ago; there are no doubt different criteria
by which the designation of “most prominent place of pilgrimage” might be attached,
but one important criterion—​namely, information regarding the number of pilgrims
who visited Pushkar in the past—​is unknowable.
62. Mahabharata, Vol. 1 & 2. (translated by van Buitenen) 1975: 374. This is the original
Sanskrit:

dushkaram pushkaram gantum dushkaram pushkare tapah

dushkaram pushkare danam vastum chaiva sudushkaram (III.80.58)

63. Sudhabhay (also called Gaya) is well known across Rajasthan as a place to worship
one’s ancestors. A few times a year, when a Tuesday coincides with the fourth day
of a lunar month in its waxing fortnight—​called chauth mangalvar—​thousands of
pilgrims come to the pond. With the help of brahmans there, pilgrims perform a
number of rituals, from commemorative food offerings for deceased ancestors
(pindadan) to healing those possessed by the ghosts of unhappy family members.
Brahmans at Sudhabhay are explicit about the fact that while mental illness and in-
sanity require medical treatment, possessions must be met instead with a certain de-
gree of faith. This faith involves among other things a reliance on the miraculous
properties of the water there. A priest splashes water—​sometimes quite violently—​
into the possessed person’s face while she sits mute and shaking. The priest yells “bol!
bol!” (Speak! Speak!) to the ghost inside, hoping he might ascertain its name and na-
ture. After some coaxing, the ghost agrees to leave the host, whom the brahman then
leads into the pond. The possessed is purified, and the possessing ancestor is freed.
For a more detailed analysis of the complex rituals associated with possession and
ghosts, see Gold 1988.
64. Prasad means “gift” or “gracious gift,” though in practice it corresponds to the food
that is offered to a deity and subsequently given to devotees. It is, in utter seriousness,
divine leftovers. With regard to Tinku’s statement, the idea of leftovers should not be
excluded from the range of possible meanings. See Pinkney 2013.
65. Although popular among young brahman men, the idea is not at all a new one. In
the Mahabharata’s third book, there is a well-​known dialogue between a Yaksha and
Yudhishthira, in which Yudhishthira explains that a person becomes a brahman not
because of birth but due to strength of character.
66. See Wadley 1994.
67. In ­chapter 3, we will encounter a different situation—​outside the realm of ritualized
environmentalism—​in which brahmans face criticism from their own caste commu-
nity because of certain acts believed to be defiling. If anything, this further highlights
the unique circumstances behind cleaning Pushkar lake.
68. In this quotation, our priest is specifically referring to brahmans and their duties.
When he says, “this lake is ours,” he is making an implicit claim about brahman-
ical ownership of the lake. Here, cleaning the lake becomes a duty fulfilled especially
by brahmans. This raises another interesting question about the caste makeup of
180 Notes

our cleaning group. Over the course of my fieldwork, I did not meet a single non-​
brahman in the group, though cleaners claimed that they often had non-​brahman
members with them, and boasted on several occasion that a Muslim man cleaned,
too. I  never actually met these purported people, but continue to believe many
members of the group to be trustworthy. Thus, earlier I  referred to the group as
“mostly brahmans,” though in my experience it was entirely composed of brahmans.
69. Bell 1992: 74.

Chapter 3

1. “Householders” are commonly contrasted with renouncers, the latter being people
who have left behind family and possessions in order to pursue their spiritual goals
with singular focus. Householders pursue religious goals as well, but do so within
the context of marriage, family life, and the home. As Gavin Flood adds, “the dis-
tinction between practical religion and religion as soteriology, between appeasement
and mysticism, is expressed at the social level in the figures of the householder, who
maintains his family and performs his ritual obligations, and the renouncer who
abandons social life, performs his own funeral and seeks final release” (1996: 13).
2. This story is a composite of the one published in the Pushkar Mahatmya, and told
by different people throughout town. This rendering is a fairly brief version, but
includes the details most essential to the storyline.
3. See Bailey 1983. Malik (1993) disagrees with Bailey, placing the decline of Brahma
worship at the 16th century (398–​399). For other work on Brahma worship, see
Bhattacharya 1969 and Mishra 1999.
4. Wilson 1861: 3–​4.
5. In modern Hinduism’s pan-​Indian manifestations, Sarasvati is considered Brahma’s
consort. In contemporary Pushkar, however, as well as in many colonial writings
surrounding Brahma, Sarasvati is his daughter and Savitri his wife. There is a pop-
ular story about Sarasvati told in Pushkar, and it explains why Brahma has four
heads:  once, after Brahma created Sarasvati, he quickly became obsessed by her
beauty. Sarasvati attempted to escape the glances of her potentially incestuous father,
but he grew new heads—​four in the cardinal directions and one on top—​for the sole
purpose of keeping an eye on her. Seeing this all happen, Shiva became angered by
the creator’s immodest behavior and chopped off Brahma’s fifth head, which rested
above the others.
6. Wilson 1861: 241.
7. Crooke 1968: 1. At the same time, Crooke is quick to point out that Hinduism is not
alone in this regard, as Tuscan Catholics, too, dabble in “heathenism” (1968: 2). In
fact, he sees the development of religion as following a particular pattern, with nei-
ther Christianity nor Hinduism escaping its effects.
8. Crooke 1968: 2. Crooke does mention Pushkar in greater detail when discussing sa-
cred lakes, though it is difficult to know whether he actually traveled there.
9. Doniger 2005: 1024.
 notes  181

10. Doniger 2005: 1024.

11. Mishra 1999: 47.
12. Mishra 1999: 47.
13. Interestingly, Aukland (2016a) also frames an exploration of tourism with a story
of a deity’s curse. This is a story in which Krishna cursed “the current age of decay
(kaliyug), declaring that children will die young while their parents and grandparents
will live on” (1933). The solution to the curse, Aukland explains, “necessarily in-
volved financial contributions” from pilgrims (1933).
14. Eliade 1957.
15. Let me add, to make things more confusing, that while this chapter focuses on
pandas, as well as pandas who are also pujaris, it does not attend to pujaris who are
not pandas. The central focus, then, is on pilgrimage priests.
16. Van der Veer 1988: 206.
17. Lochtefeld 2010: 124–​125.
18. Parry 1994: 98.
19. See van der Veer 1988. Van der Veer spends considerable time on the relation-
ship between pilgrimage priest and client, and goes into much greater detail on
the payment of gifts. The following passage explains how payments of grain were
given with regard to the pilgrimage center of Ayodhya:  “Moreover, often a gift
was and is given in the pilgrimage centre in the form of a promise, namely that a
panda may come at harvest time to take a part of the grain heap, the traditional
form of jajmani payment. In this way, the panda may come every year to collect
his share” (242).
20. Aukland 2016a: 1964–​1965.
21. This is not to say that pilgrimage was at one point exclusively a religious event and
entailed no secular pleasures. Rather, my argument is that notions of “vacation”
and “pilgrimage” are now more entwined than ever. Moreover, with developments
in modern India—​and especially those resulting from liberalization—​pilgrimage
places have become sites of the global marketplace. See Aukland 2016b.
22. Zeitlyn 1986: 56.
23. Gold 1988: 212.
24. Lynch 1990: 108.
25. Joseph 2007: 210.
26. These options are demonstrably worse than having a group of committed clients.
Freelancing demands a certain scrappiness that can demoralize and sometimes
much worse. We will address these issues later in the chapter.
27. South Indian tourists can provide obstacles too, as knowledge of Dravidian languages
among guides is far weaker than that of English. Still, this particular lack is rarely
considered as having the same impact as not knowing English. In fact, the southern
states are far enough away that the type of people who come from, say, Tamil Nadu
tend to be fairly well-​off and fairly educated, often to the extent that they can speak
either Hindi or English or both; in the event that there are poorer pilgrims without
knowledge of a non-​Dravidian language, tour guides are less concerned about losing
business, because of the fact that such clients lack the kind of capital that foreigners
182 Notes

have. Missing out on this type of financial opportunity is simply not worth the effort
of learning another language.
28. Benjamin 1968: 79.
29. It is not the case, of course, that “God” is an exclusively Christian term, though priests
in Pushkar tend to assume that foreign tourists are Christian, as I have mentioned
already.
30. I once asked a guide if he talked to Hindu tourists and pilgrims about the G.O.D. con-
cept. He explained that he did not, because of the fact that they already understood
what the trimurti was. Still, on a few occasions I did hear a tour guide talking to
Hindu tourists about G.O.D.
31. The Brahma Kumari movement has no explicit affiliation with Pushkar or Brahma
the Creator, but rather was founded by a man named “Brahma Baba.” For a very brief
introduction to this under-​studied community, see Chryssides and Wilkins 2006,
and for richer analysis, see Babb 1986.
32. Tom Gubler has compiled an exhaustive collection of Prem Rawat’s teachings on
his website, which also has a section on G.O.D.:  http://​www.prem-​rawat-​bio.org/​
teachings/​g-​o-​d.html. The link to Rawat’s Hunter College lecture is here:  http://​
www.prem-​rawat-​bio.org/​dlm_​pubs/​elanvital/​1977_​0102/​gmj_​ponceofpeace.html.
33. “Internet Users in India to Reach 627 million in 2019: Report” 2019.
34. Malik 1990: 193.
35. More specifically, they are a small group of sadhus of the Dashnami Puri lineage.
Malik (1990) relates this to the defeat of the Gurjara rulers of Pushkar in 1157 ce
at the hands of the Dashnami’s warrior subgroup, the Naga Sannyasis, resulting in
their installment at the Brahma temple (193). This means, oddly, that here we have
a temple dedicated to Brahma, but the founder of which is associated with Shaivism
and the priests of which are devotees to Shiva. I asked two of the permanent sadhus
about this peculiarity—​perhaps even a conflict of interest—​but neither seemed to be
concerned. In general, of the five or so sadhus who regularly lived in the temple, most
were extremely private people, even to the extent that many of my questions were left
unanswered. The two who were most responsive to my presence in the temple were
extremely happy to chat about the weather or any number of mundane topics, but
less so when it came to philosophical matters.
36. Sometimes, the sadhus do have householder assistants who help with the ritual pro-
cess. These assistants are always men and always brahman. Still, the ideal is that
sadhus alone have ritual authority over the Brahma temple.
37. The sadhus, for their part, take very little interest in Pushkar—​or its happenings—​
outside of the Brahma temple. Even though they reside in one of Pushkar’s biggest
attractions, they have little to do with the larger tourism industry. These sadhus spoke
very little English and had no real interest in the comparative rhetoric of the priests
and guides. They did not speak against tourists, but seemed to engage in a world
where tourism was largely irrelevant.
38. Svadhu is a play on the noun svad, which means “taste,” “relish,” or “flavor.” DeNapoli
2014 also notes that she would often hear “householders and sadhus refer to greedy
sadhus in a derogatory manner as ‘svadhus’ ” (334, note 9).
 notes  183

39. Financially, it no doubt benefits brahmans to maintain the importance of the lake—​
and a puja at the lake—​over and above the Brahma temple. But there seems to be
little at stake for sadhus who agree with this idea. Their financial gain is in the steady
accumulation of coins and small bills from the droves of pilgrims and tourists who
enter and receive darshan, and these people come and donate regardless of their
ritual duties at the lake. Said differently, while nearly every pilgrim will go to the lake,
and nearly that same number will go to the temple, not everyone will actually pay for
a puja by the ghats. So fewer pilgrims pay more money for puja, whereas a greater
number of pilgrims offer much smaller donations at the temple. Thus, brahmans
have to try harder to prove their importance, while the sadhus essentially sit and
watch the donations come in.
40. Hawley 1981: 30.
41. The dependency that locals feel toward pilgrims and tourists is even further amplified
by the fact that both domestic and international tourism are seasonal. Depending on
whom you ask, Pushkar’s season lasts anywhere from seven to nine months (with
May, June, and July decidedly in the off-​season). Most visitors come around the time
of the camel fair, in October and November, which serves as the true inauguration of
the season. We will talk more about the fair in the next chapter, but for now let me
simply say that the fair excites locals about their potential profits and thus creates an
atmosphere that is sometimes very charged—​as in, before a storm.
42. On one occasion early in my fieldwork, a brahman man stopped me because my
mauli was tattered and faded. I told him that I had done a puja in Pushkar a few
weeks before—​which was true—​but he called me a liar, saying that I  had surely
gotten it somewhere else.
43. See Joseph 1994: 114 and Gladstone 2005: 189.
44. Gold 1988: 275.
45. Jacobsen 2013: 79.
46. Jacobsen 2013: 79.
47. Aukland 2016a:  1949. I  should note, too, that even outside of the context of pil-
grimage the accumulation of wealth and prosperity (artha) is generally considered
a legitimate goal in life, and—​along with dharma (righteousness, duty), kama (love,
sensual pleasure), and moksha (spiritual liberation)—​is one of the four principal
objects of human striving (purushartha). My informants did not refer to artha, but
I describe it here because of its importance in subcontinental philosophy.
48. Gold 1988: 263.
49. Parry 1994: 121.
50. Salazar 2012: 864.
51. Vogler 2002: 625.
52. See Said 1978.
53. See Fox 1989.
54. A few tourists did, in fact, see beyond these Orientalist stereotypes and try to contex-
tualize the relationship between money and religion. Roger, a retiree from Canada,
thought that the massive wealth gap between tourists and locals was sufficient to
make an unhealthy economic climate with really no one to blame. He added that
184 Notes

sometimes a job is just that: “in my town, people have to chop wood; here, they have
to do puja on the lake.” Similarly, a traveler by the name of Daniel saw at least some
connection between tithing in his native churches in Germany and the brahmanical
practice of collecting dan; as he put it, “religion isn’t free in Germany either.” Daniel
nevertheless expressed some discomfort in directly paying a priest for his services,
even with the recognition that the German model—​in which the priest’s salary
comes from church donations—​amounted to the same thing.
55. For an interesting treatment of Yoga and consumerism in the United States, see
Jain 2015.
56. http://​www.lonelyplanet.com/​india/​rajasthan/​pushkar.
57. http://​wikitravel.org/​en/​Pushkar.
58. There are two Vedic schools in Pushkar, one part-​time, the other full-​time, both of-
fering rigorous education in recitation and the ritual process. Chapter 5 will discuss
these schools in greater detail.
59. There is question as to how many people outside of the Trust really expect it to do
the things that they claim. Pushkar’s other main Trust is that of the Brahma Temple,
which one informant portrayed with this clever rhyme: “the Trust is bhrasht” (the
Trust is corrupt). Given locals’ general feelings about how power corrupts, it seems
doubtful that most ever expected the Pushkar Priest Association Trust to do any sub-
stantial charity work.
60. Milton 2007: 19.
61. Zeitlyn 1986: 166–​167.
62. Jeffrey 2010: 9.
63. A major exception here are those people designated as from “the creamy layer,” which
refers to OBCs of a particularly high income. Wealthy OBCs thus are excluded from
the reservation system.
64. Beattie 2008: 63.

Chapter 4

1. This is slightly confusing, I know, because many locals consider Pushkar to be heaven
for the rest of the year, too. But at this time, the heavenly realm is thought to de-
scend physically onto the earthly plane; Pushkar becomes a doorway to the divine—​
literally, rather than rhetorically—​and pilgrims have access to a power otherwise
closed off from human experience.
2. The formal, government-​authorized title of the mela is the “Pushkar Fair,” almost
always in capitals. In Hindi, locals will often refer to it simply as the mela, or when
talking about it with more specificity will distinguish between the dharmik mela, or
“religious fair,” and the pashu mela, or “animal/​livestock fair.”
3. For further consideration of Rajasthan and the construction of images and identities
therein, see Schomer et al. 1994.
4. It is important to note that Joseph (1994) also discusses the marketing of the camel
fair, and sees color as an important feature of that marketing (261–​264). I  more
 notes  185

explicitly focus on color, where she sees it as part of an assemblage alongside keys
words like “festive” and “traditional.”
5. See Taussig 2009.
6. Prabhakar (1972) notes that “even in the records of Emperor Jahangir’s time [r. 1605–​
1627], we come across references to a cattle fair at Pushkar being one of the biggest
cattle fair in the [sic] north western India” (48). This suggests that the camel fair has
been around for several centuries. Unfortunately, Prabhakar does not offer any fur-
ther detail than what I have quoted here. We do have several references to the fair in
the colonial record. These are mostly small newspaper notices—​usually no longer
than a paragraph—​in which the dates and conditions of the mela were listed. In the
event of a cholera outbreak, readers were urged not to visit. Of long-​form journalism
preceding 1960, I have found two articles covering the fair: an article entitled “Fair at
Pokhur,” in the Asiatic Journal of July 1824 (Bull), and William Knighton’s “Religious
Fairs in India,” published by The Nineteenth Century:  A Monthly Review, in May
of 1881.
7. Markham 1969: B2.
8. Simons 1973: E1.
9. Berney 1986: E1.
10. Berney 1986: E1.
11. Berney 1986: E1+E8.
12. “A Fair to Remember” 1987: A1.
13. Taussig 2009: 40–​41.
14. Taussig 2009: 9.
15. I take “safe in your whiteness” to refer to the color of walls, though there is question
here as to whether Taussig’s imagined reader is of mostly white—​read “Western” or
European—​ancestry.
16. Taussig 2009: 18.
17. Frow 1991: 150.
18. Novetzke 2008: 160.
19. Binford 1976: 131.
20. Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 134.
21. White and saffron symbolize other things, too, and in fact, depending on where you
are or whom you ask, you are likely to hear a huge range of color associations. Color
symbolism in India is, in my experience, nearly exhaustive.
22. “Satrangi Sanskriti ki Jhalak” 2012: 6.
23. “Desi-​Videshi” 2013: 2.
24. “Retile Dhoron men” 2013: 14.
25. “Rangin Hoga Mele ka Nazara” 2013: 2.
26. See Markham 1969: B2 and Suraiya 1990: 25.
27. Raj (2006) claims to have pioneered the Spiritual Walk in 2005. That year, he planned
and organized the fair as the Mela Magistrate.
28. This particular Spiritual Walk was in 2013.
29. I am reminded of Richard Davis’ work on the Hindu right’s procession to Ayodhya
in 1990, called the Rath Yatra. Davis (2005) notes that certain well-​off informants
186 Notes

from Delhi dismissed the procession as “Toyota Hinduism” (29). In Pushkar, though,
friends and informants seemed excited by their Spiritual Walk, even with low-​
budget decorations and minus Bollywood special effects. For an excellent volume on
processions in South Asian religion, see Jacobsen 2008.
30. This is the Hindi original:  manav dharma sabse bara hai. manushya pahale hai,
dharma, sampraday bad men. manav seva se jivan ka kalyan hota hai.
31. Lubin 2001: 379.
32. See Abdullah 2009.
33. “Adhyatma ke Rang, Sanskritiyon ka Milan” 2012: 10.
34. See Taussig 2009: 26.
35. See Pratt 1992: 6.
36. Barua 1994: 28.
37. See Larsen 2005; Thompson 2006; Hoelscher 2008; Robinson and Picard 2009.
38. There is one truly notable exception to the rule, and that is Brahma’s Pushkar (2005),
a really wonderful coffee-​table book with photos by Rajan Kapoor and text by Aman
Nath. Nath’s analysis may perhaps be more devotional in orientation, but the book is
thoroughly researched and well written. In the beginning of my research especially, it
was a valuable resource.
39. Barua 1994: 58.
40. Pandey 2004: 72.
41. See Urry 1990.
42. Urry 1990: 1.
43. See Crawshaw and Urry 1997.
44. This is not so say that this particular sadhu was upset or felt constrained by the pho-
tographic gaze. Obviously, it was a way he could be seen, impress people with his
skill set, and make some money. I simply want to point out that a part of this man’s
day—​and probably a substantial part of his experience at the mela—​was shaped by
the presence of photography.
45. See Maoz 2006.
46. Maoz 2006: 222.
47. Maoz 2006: 229.
48. Certainly not every tourist was scandalized by the idea of having his or her picture
taken, and in those cases the issue would likely not have come up in conversation.
Still, the sheer number of people who expressed this concern to me—​and often
without my asking—​makes it noteworthy.

Chapter 5

1. Shanti is a word in both Sanskrit and Hindi (as well as in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,
Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Telugu). Although it is a noun, Hindi speakers
seem nevertheless happy to use it as an adjective. A question like “how was your
morning” could receive the one-​word reply, “shanti.” Still, many will also say that
shanti milti hai, or “peace can be found [here],” which utilizes shanti as a noun.
 notes  187

2. Shanti has become somewhat of a buzzword for international tourists, too. This is
especially true for the backpacking types who escape from that other India over the
hills—​the India of urban jungles like Ajmer, Jaipur, and Delhi—​and who find them-
selves lounging about in Pushkar’s many cafés, reading books and drinking chai and
smoking spliffs. These folks often relax in Pushkar for a number of days, and the word
that comes to describe their stay, almost inevitably, is “shanti.” A British backpacker
once relayed to me this contagious nature of shanti as he self-​deprecatingly confessed
his reliance on the word after only a week in town. He had probably heard the word
before, popping up, as it does, in places ranging from Madonna lyrics to T.S. Eliot’s
“The Wasteland.” But before coming to Pushkar, he had never actually used it in a
sentence and now had trouble talking about his recent experiences without simply
saying: “shanti.”
3. MacDonell 1893: 311.
4. Chand 1959:  333–​334. Chand’s translation departs, at times, from the original
Sanskrit. The following is a more precise translation, from Caley Smith (personal
communication): “Heaven: pacification, the atmosphere: pacification, the Earth: pa-
cification, the waters: pacification, the herbs: pacification, the forest lords [trees]: pa-
cification, the all-​gods: pacification, the sacred composition: pacification, the whole
(world): pacification. Pacification (is) only pacification. That one, pacification, come
to me!” The difference in the two translations is, in part, due to the fact that, ac-
cording to Smith, scholars do not really know what shanti may have meant in early
Vedic ritual. His gloss is “pacification” or “submission,” rather than “peace.” Still, I use
Chand’s translation because it more closely aligns with what people in Pushkar think
when reciting this passage.
5. Gonda 1963: 247. For an analysis of the scholarly repercussions of aligning mantra
with “magic,” see Burchett 2008.
6. Gonda 1963: 272.There has been considerable scholarly discussion on the meaning—​
and according to some, meaninglessness—​of mantras. The primary proponent of the
notion that mantras are primarily related to sound and only secondarily related to
meaning is Staal 1988. For a helpful synopsis of this debate, see Patton 2005: 60–​65.
7. The philosophically accurate terminology here is akasha, which can be translated as
“space,” “sky,” “ether,” or “atmosphere.”
8. With a helpful analogy, Doniger (2009) notes that it “makes no more sense to ‘read’
the Veda” than it does “to read the score of a Brahms symphony and never hear
it” (106). Staal 2008 makes a similar point here: “The Vedas are often regarded as
abstract and mysterious sacred books. If there is one thing the Vedas are not, it is
books: they are oral compositions in a language that was used for ordinary commu-
nication; and were handed down by word of mouth like that language itself ” (xv).
Nevertheless, on the question of recitation, and specifically audible recitation, there
are contexts in which a mantra spoken aloud is considered less desirable than the
whispered or silent utterance. Here is Padoux (1989) on the subject: “One should add
that, since the Vedic period, in spite of the superiority of the spoken word, the highest
and most efficacious form of that word was not the loudest or most intense but, on
the contrary, the most silent and subtle—​the inner utterance, the purely mental one”
188 Notes

(297). While Padoux speaks from expertise in the textual record, I  argue that in
Pushkar, and specifically in the practical application of generating shanti, public and
audible recitation is absolutely essential.
9. See Coward and Goa 2004: 13.
10. At a minimum, students will seek to memorize the Rudrashtadhyayi, which is tech-
nically a section of the Shukla Yajur Veda (dedicated to the god Rudra) but which is
published and sold on its own as a small pamphlet.
11. Larios 2017: 25.
12. Sarma Sastrigal, whom The Hindu labeled a “crusader for the Vedas,” visited Pushkar
in September of 2016 as part of a two-​day program to perform a recitation of the
Yajur Veda. Sastrigal sees the Veda as providing the solution to a world “shaken
by violence”: “No place on earth seems to be safe. One feels helpless hearing about
heart rending reports of lives lost in mass carnage and due to personal conflicts. This
includes mental violation too, where harsh words make hearts bleed. Dilution in dis-
cipline and values is one of the major reasons for this state of affairs for which all of us
are responsible . . . The only way to counter the waves of negative energy is to create
positive vibrations, and what better method than chant the Vedas” (“Better Way to
Chant the Vedas” 2016).
13. In a fascinating article about the use of amplified sound in Vedic rituals performed
by Nambudiri brahmans, Gerety (2017) notes a similar consistency in terms of the
perceived effects of a particular sacrifice. He notes that among the people with whom
he spoke, replies were “remarkably consistent from person to person:  ‘the yagam
saves the environment. It purifies the atmosphere with sacred fires and mantras. It
promotes world peace and harmony.’ ” (11–​12).
14. In this regard, I once met a teetotaling brahman who told me that if a person were to
gain relief by drinking alcohol, then that too could count as a form of shanti.
15. Beck 1993: 3.
16. See Beck 1993, 2012; Wilke and Moebus 2011; Larios 2017; Gerety 2015, 2017.
17. Gerety (2017) and Larios (2017) have both recently attended to the ethnographic
side of Hindu soundscapes, and their work deals with several of the same concepts
that I attend to here.
18. Hirschkind 2006: 2
19. Coburn 1984:  446–​447. Wilke and Moebus 2011 have helpfully argued that this
debate—​sound versus meaning—​is not a zero-​sum game: “Our point is not to say
that there is no interest in meaning, but rather that focus on sound is culturally ac-
cepted as a legitimate and even preferred mode of reception” (60).
20. For the definitive work on recitation of the Ramcharitmanas, see Lutgendorf 1991.
21. Gerety (2017) too explores these issues, showing how amplification of Vedic rituals
can transform “the fenced-​in, private practices of an elite group of Brahmins into a
performance for public consumption” (5). In Pushkar, the Sundar kand is not at all a
“fenced-​in, private practice” with onlookers free to come and go as they will, but it is
true that amplification expands the recitation’s reach.
22. For a work on the historical resonances of the New Age, and especially the ways
in which “energy” came to play an important role in metaphysical worldviews, see
 notes  189

Albanese 1999. For an ethnographic account of metaphysical spirituality today, and

one which also touches on ideas related to “energy” and “vibrations,” see Bender 2010.
23. The Hindi word this priest used was ham, which technically means “we,” but can, in
certain cases or for certain people, be deployed as a kind of royal we, simply meaning
“I.” Nor is this use of ham as “I” limited to majestic or lofty registers; it is used by eve-
ryday folk, and often depends on local and regional leanings. Still, in this particular
conversation, the priest also used the word main, which more commonly means “I,”
and for this reason I believe his “ham” to refer to a collective.
24. This interest in science can, at times, align quite explicitly with Hindu nationalism.
Nanda 2003 addresses this very alignment:  “It might come as a surprise  .  .  .  that
science has always been at the center of Hindu nationalist revivalism. Hindu
nationalists are obsessed with science, in the same way and for the same reasons as
‘creation scientists’ are obsessed with science. They display a desperate urge to ‘prove’
that modern science verifies the metaphysical assumptions of the classical, Vedic
Hinduism, and conversely, the sacred books of the Vedas and the Upanishads are
simply ‘science by another name’ ” (xiv). Although Nanda’s approach is undoubtedly
impassioned, it does not account for the different ways in which Hindu thinking and
science entangle beyond those associated with nationalism. For a more thorough
treatment of her work, see Cheifer 2015: 220–​222.
25. “Ancient Fire Ritual” 2011.
26. “Ancient Fire Ritual” 2011.
27. Cheifer 2015: 211.
28. Brahmavarchas 2011:  148, quoted in Cheifer 2015:  211. In another work of the
Gayatri Pariwar, called The Science of Mantra, the connection between mantra,
vibrations, and sacred space are made explicit, and in a way almost identical to that
of my informants in Pushkar: “The place at which the recitation of the mantra is
carried out, certain definite types of vibrations of sounds are constantly in motion.
The people living there are able to experience them. There are innumerable holy
places even now in India where at one time ancient sages had practiced dedicated
worship with mantras . . . At some time, the sages had chanted the mantras for long
periods—​their vibrations are still strongly pervading the atmosphere there. Not
only can these be heard and experienced but the seeker can also benefit through
them” (n.d.: 7).
29. Dyczkowski 1992: 19.
30. Beck 1993: 8.
31. See Beck 1993.
32. See Beck 1993: 23–​49; Wilke 2013.
33. See Gerety 2015.
34. See Bharati 1970. For a particularly excellent piece making use of Bharati’s idea of the
pizza effect, and doing so in the service of exploring the commodification of Tibetan
singing bowls, see Joffe 2015.
35. See Milutis 2006: 7 and Enns and Trower 2013: 1. Foxen (2017) offers a wonderful
analysis of “ether” and its connections with the Sanskrit concept of “akasha” in her
chapter, “Yogis Without Borders.” Much of what Foxen notes about the emergence of
190 Notes

ether/​akasha within metaphysical thinking can be mapped well onto the discourse of
vibrations—​with some historical figures and ideas overlapping entirely.
36. Foxen 2017: 59.
37. Trower 2012: 48.
38. Link et al. 2009: 406.
39. Fechner 1882: 52–​53. Fechner was surely not the first to relate metaphorically the
workings of the human mind with the vibrations of a string instrument. Here is
David Hume (1711–​1776), the Scottish philosopher, in his A Dissertation on the
Passions: “Now, if we consider the human mind, we shall observe, that with regard
to the passions, it is not like a wind instrument of music, which, in running over all
the notes, immediately loses the sound when the breath ceases; but rather resembles
a string-​instrument, where, after each stroke, the vibrations still retain some sound,
which gradually and insensibly decays” (1854: 191).
40. Trower 2012: 48. Fast-​forward many decades, and this borderless body will become
the body of the New Age.
41. Milutis 2006: 45.
42. Prothero 1996: 62. Prothero importantly notes that the Theosophical Society was
originally founded to “promote the reform of American spiritualism, not the study
of Asian religions” (62). Only after the Society “failed to fulfill this original objective
did Olcott and Blavatsky begin to cast a collective glance to the East,” and only with
that transition did the goal of a Universal Human Brotherhood first emerge (62).
Nevertheless, as is evidenced by Blavatsky’s extremely eclectic and Asia-​inspired Isis
Unveiled, which was published in 1877, this transition started within a year or two of
the Society’s founding.
43. Blavatsky and Judge 1893: 79.
44. Blavatsky 1893: 694.
45. Leadbeater 1909: 130–​132.
46. Leadbeater 1909: 133.
47. Blavatsky 1877: 114.
48. Blavatsky 1877: 114–​115.
49. Foxen 2017: 70.
50. Fuller 2001: 53.
51. “Conversations on Occultism” 1888: 160.
52. Leadbeater 1905: 114–​115.
53. Prothero 1996: 63.
54. Pratt 1915: 224.
55. Pratt 1915: 232.
56. Renold 2005: 52.
57. Besant and Das 2002: ix.
58. Besant 1904: 166–​167.
59. Besant 1904: i.
60. Besant 1904: ii.
61. Brown 1998: 76.
62. Javadekar 1977–​1978: 660–​661.
 notes  191

63. For more specifics on the five sheaths, see Deussen 1973: 137–​140. The following
passage provides some textual context: “Brahman is the inmost essence of man. This
thought is exhibited in the second part of the Taittiriya Upanishad by the theory
(which plays a large part in the later Vedantasara, but not yet in Badarayana and
Shankara) of the different coverings (kosa), by which our Self is surrounded, and
through which we must break, in order to reach the inmost essence of our nature,
and thereby the Brahman” (137). In general, the five sheaths are relevant to Vedanta—​
and modern yoga—​but not widely found in other philosophical traditions. Thanks,
to Borayin Larios, for contextualizing these concepts for me.
64. Besant 1904: 192.
65. Besant 1904: 37. Thanks, in particular, to Sthaneshwar Timalsina, for speaking with
me about how Sanskrit texts map onto—​or, more often, don’t map onto—​Besant’s
theories.
66. Paranjape 2013: 155.
67. De Michelis 2004: 112. De Michelis notes that it was the Brahmo Samaj’s representa-
tive, Protapchandra Mozoomdar, who, in his capacity as member of the Parliament’s
selection committee, was able to accept Vivekananda’s application and invite him
into the proceedings (112).
68. Foxen 2017: 74.
69. Foxen 2017: 77.
70. De Michelis 2004: 120.
71. Vivekananda 1956: 43–​44.
72. Olcott 1900: 407–​408.
73. Vivekananda 1956: 37.
74. Besant 1904: 192.
75. De Michelis 2004: 125.
76. Tolstoy explicitly compared Vivekananda and Besant, with the latter receiving a far
more negative assessment: “She [Besant] rests on what is weak, what is erroneous,
and Vivekananda on what is true.” See Gnatyuk-​Danil’chuck 1987: 171.
77. Stavig 2010: 293.
78. Atkinson 1906: 2
79. Lutyens 2005: 165.
80. Lutyens 2005: 165.
81. Yogananda 2000: 132.
82. Yogananda 2000: 134; Foxen 2017: 85.
83. See Kraidy 2005: 118.
 Glossary

arti: the circling of oil lamps before a sacred image; also, a hymn that praises a
particular deity.
atma (also, “atman”):  soul, self, spirit.
Bhagavad Gita (also referred to as the Gita):  the “Song of the Lord,” an extremely pop-
ular Hindu text that is part of the Mahabharata.
Brahma:  the creator god; the deity most closely associated with Pushkar.
brahman:  the priestly class; people responsible for performing Hindu rituals.
chakra:  a weapon of Vishnu’s, depicted as a spinning disc; in Tantric traditions, one of
several energy centers embedded within the body.
Dalit:  a person who is part of the caste group formerly labeled as “untouchable.”
dan:  a ritual donation, or the virtue of charity.
darshan:  auspicious sight; in particular, the exchange of glances between deity and dev-
otee, resulting in a blessing.
dharma:  duty, religion, righteousness.
ghat:  a series of steps and landing places that lead to a body of water.
guru:  a teacher, especially one who offers spiritual guidance.
Hanuman:  the devoted monkey ally of Rama in the Ramayana; now, a deity widely
worshipped.
kaliyug:  the last of the four ages in the Hindu time cycle, understood as a period of de-
generation and immorality.
karma:  an act, either good or bad, which will eventually bear fruit; also, the general prin-
ciple that actions have consequences.
Krishna:  the cowherd god, famed as the advisor of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, as the
lover of milkmaidens, and in his childhood, as the butter thief.
kurta pajama:  men’s traditional wear, consisting of a long collarless shirt (kurta) and
lightweight trousers with a drawstring waistband (pajama).
Mahabharata:  one of the two great Sanskrit epics, along with the Ramayana; attributed
to the sage Vyasa, it narrates the struggle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
mahatmya:  a genre of literature meant to extol the greatness of something, often a pil-
grimage place or deity.
mantra:  a sacred utterance or prayer, which has powerful effects.
194 glossary

mela:  a fair or festival.

mudra:  a symbolic hand gesture.
murti:  an image or statue of a deity or person.
panda:  a pilgrimage priest.
Parashar:  Pushkar’s largest and most influential brahman subcaste.
prana:  breath or life force, which pervades the cosmos.
prasad:  a “gracious gift,” often in the form of food offered to a deity and then returned to
the worshipper.
puja:  worship done to a divine object, image, or person, involving offerings like flowers,
fruits, and incense.
pujari:  a priest who oversees a Hindu temple; also, one who performs pujas, often on the
behalf of clientele.
Puranas:  a body of Sanskrit texts that compile myths, legends, and ritual instruction.
Rama (“Ram,” in Hindi):  the protagonist and hero of the Ramayana, and an incarnation
of Vishnu; also, when uttered as “Ram-​Ram,” a greeting and mantra.
Ramayana:  one of the two great Sanskrit epics, along with the Mahabharata; attributed
to the poet Valmiki, it recounts the deeds of Rama.
Rig Veda:  the first and oldest Veda.
sadhu:  a holy man or ascetic.
satyug:  the first of the four ages in the Hindu time cycle, understood as a “golden age” of
righteousness.
seva:  “service,” often in the form of volunteer work and as part of one’s religious practice.
Sita:  Rama’s wife in the Ramayana.
tirth:  a pilgrimage place.
Vedas (also, as a body of work, “the Veda”):  four of the most ancient Sanskrit texts,
considered authoritative by many.
Yajur Veda:  the third Veda, consisting of prose chants that are meant to accompany ritual
action.
yug:  an age or era; there are four such ages or eras, over which society continuously
degenerates.
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 Index

Note: For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may,
on occasion, appear on only one of those pages.

Ajmer, 45–​46, 95, 104, 112, 119–​20, 139 brahmans, 1, 2, 4–​5, 14, 25, 27–​28, 29–​31,
Alley, Kelly, 62 37, 39, 40, 45, 46–​47, 50, 52, 56–​57,
Arti, 77, 124 58–​59, 61, 67, 69–​70, 78–​79, 81–​86,
Atithi Devo Bhava, 16 93–​94, 97, 101–​2, 141–​42, 158
Atkinson, William Walker, 157 authority of, 32, 100–​1, 124
Aukland, Knut, 84, 97 economy of pilgrimage and, 97
  employment and, 102
Banaras, 62, 63, 84–​85, 98, 152 Hindu studies and, 5–​6
Baudelaire, Charles, 21–​22 orthodoxy of, 33
Beattie, John, 106–​7 political representation and, 5
Beck, Guy, 136, 142–​43 pollution and, 75
Bell, Catherine, 24–​25, 52–​53, 63, 77 Pushkar’s caste makeup and, 5–​6
belonging, 3–​4, 28–​29, 32, 44, 51, 103–​4, Vedas and, 133–​36
160. See also brotherhood/​brothering brotherhood/​brothering, 18, 24, 27–​51,
Benjamin, Walter, 22, 39, 88 119–​22, 146, 151. See also Hindu
Berry, Thomas, 66–​67 universalism; Sanatana dharma
Besant, Annie, 32–​33, 47, 151–​58  
Bhagavad Gita, 41–​42, 45, 48, 100, Caillois, Roger, 65–​66
149–​50,  152–​53 camel fair, 2–​3, 19–​20, 25, 58–​59,
Bhagavata Purana, 45 95,  108–​29
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 48–​49 caste, 4, 5–​6, 12, 25, 30, 31, 32, 38–​39, 44–​
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 146, 148–​51, 45, 46–​47, 48, 83–​86, 87, 100–​1, 104–​
152–​53, 154–​55, 158 6, 134–​35, 146. See also brahmans;
body/​bodies, see caste Dalits; Jati
Bourdieu, Pierre, 64–​66 ritual pollution and, 75–​76
brahma, 2–​3, 5–​6, 10, 19–​20, 25, 27, 37–​ Certeau, Michel de, 55
38, 42–​43, 50–​51, 52, 53–​56, 63, 77, Chapple, Christopher, 59–​60
81–​82, 85–​87, 91–​94, 96, 102–​4, 106–​ Cheifer, Daniel, 141–​42
7, 108–​9, 139, 161 (see also Brahma Chidester, David, 10
temple) circumambulation, 24–​25, 52–​53,
history of worship, 79–​81 63–​64, 66, 77
as part of the trimurti, 79, 88–​91 Coburn, Thomas, 136–​37
Savitri and, 78–​79 Cohen, Erik, 7–​8
Brahma Kumaris, 88–​90, 91, 119–​20 color, 19–​20, 25, 26, 30, 109–​29, 146–​47
Brahma temple, 2–​3, 29–​30, 45–​46, 87, inclusivism in the Spiritual Walk
88–​89,  91–​94 and,  119–​22
Brahm Ghat, 27, 29–​30, 31, 36, 37, 53–​54, comparative religion, 20, 25, 146.
56–​57, 77, 87, 91–​92, 94, 101, 124 See also G.O.D.
210 Index

Dalits, 48, 75–​76 (BJP); Nationalism; Vishva Hindu

Dan, 52, 58–​59, 69–​71, 77 Parishad (VHP)
devotion, 38–​39, 40–​42, 61–​63, 65–​66, 72, Hindu universalism, 4, 17–​18, 20, 24–​25,
76, 81, 94, 117, 119 26, 28–​29, 33–​36, 40, 46, 48–​49, 142.
Dharma, 24–​25, 27–​51, 52–​53, 70–​71, See also Brotherhood/​Brothering;
133–​34, 142–​43, 152,  155–​56 Sanatana dharma
drugs, 3, 12–​15 Hirschkind, Charles, 136
Hollinshead, Keith, 27–​28
economy, 3, 10–​11, 12–​13, 20, 24, 25, 39–​
40, 85–​86, 104. See also globalization; Incredible !ndia, 11–​12, 17, 18, 112
inosculation; liberalization; tourism Indian Ministry of Tourism, 11–​12, 17,
color and, 109–​10, 122–​23 18,  110–​12
pilgrimage and, 97–​98 inosculation, 8–​9, 39
priests and, 83, 95 internet, 6–​7, 40, 42, 91
Eliade, Mircea, 81–​82 Islam, 31, 49–​50. See also Muslim/​
environmentalism, 4, 24–​25, 26, 52–​77 Muslims
exoticism, 17, 25, 27–​28, 109–​13, 114–​15,  
116–​17, 122–​24, 127. See also Jati, 38–​39, 92, 105–​6, 168n14
orientalism Jeffrey, Craig, 23, 104
  Joseph, Christina, 14, 16
Facebook, 2, 16, 42–​44, 91, 127–​28  
Fallon, S.W., 15–​16 Kaliyug, 63, 134–​35
Fechner, Gustav, 144–​46, 147–​48 karma, 24–​25, 30, 36–​37, 52–​53, 71, 75–​
flaneur,  21–​22 76, 77, 92–​93, 94, 108
Flueckiger, Joyce, 31 Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 157
Foxen, Anya, 154–​55  
  Leadbeater, Charles, 147–​48, 150, 152–​53
Gadgil, Madhav, 61 Lewellen, Ted, 19–​20
Gandhi, Rajmohan, 62 liberalization, 11–​12, 18–​21, 40. See also
Ganges River, 62 globalization
Geertz, Clifford, 4, 22 Linenthal, Edward, 10
Ghose, Aurobindo, 47–​48 Lukose, Ritty, 20–​21
giving, see Dan Lynch, Owen, 85
globalization, 3, 9, 19–​21, 26, 38–​39, 40,  
48, 49–​50, 90–​91, 131–​32, 143, 160–​ Mahabharata, 60–​61, 73, 97, 152–​53
61. See also liberalization; tourism Mahatmya, see Pushkar Mahatmya
the history of vibrations and, 144 mantra, 15–​16, 71, 82, 130, 132–​43, 150,
the “pizza effect” and, 143 151, 156–​57,  158
G.O.D., 88–​91, 92–​93, 94 Maoz, Darya, 128–​29
Gold, Ann, 45, 61, 84–​85, 96, 98 McCutcheon, Russell, 8
Guides, see tour guides mela, see camel fair
Gujar, Bhoju Ram, 61 metaphysical religion, 144
  murti, 38–​39, 87, 92, 159–​60
Haberman, David, 38–​39, 62 Muslim/​Muslims, 31, 37–​39, 41, 43–​47,
Halbfass, Wilhelm, 35 48–​49, 119–​20, 121–​22,  136
Haridwar, 84–​85, 118, 119–​20, 141–​42  
Hindu nationalism, 32–​33, 47–​49. nationalism, 24, 33, 43–​44, 47, 49–​50, 98–​
See also Bharatiya Janata Party 99. See also Hindu Nationalism
 
 Index  211

Olcott, Henry Steel, 146, 150–​51, 152, pujari, 83. See also priests
154, 155 Puranas, 79, 97, 152–​53. See also
orientalism, 80, 98–​99, 115–​16. See also Bhagavata Purana; Padma Purana
exoticism; others and othering Pushkar lake, 1–​3, 4–​5, 10, 12–​13, 14–​15,
Ortegren, Jennifer, 46–​47 19–​20, 24–​25, 27, 29–​30, 36–​37,
others/​othering, 7–​8, 24, 28–​29, 34–​ 45–​46, 49, 50–​51, 80–​81, 82–​83,
35, 49, 116–​17, 122–​23. See also 84–​85, 95–​96, 100, 101–​2, 108, 124,
orientalism 133–​35, 137–​38,  139
environmentalism and, 52–​77
Padma Purana, 45, 52 uniqueness of, 37–​39, 87, 93–​94, 106–​7
panda, 83. See also priests Pushkar Mahatmya, 53
Parashars, 4–​5, 29–​31, 37, 46–​47, 87, 94, Pushkar Priest Association Trust, 4–​5, 27,
101,  103–​4 36, 94, 101–​2
parikrama, see circumambulation
Parry, Jonathan, 83–​84, 98 Rajasthan, 2–​3, 4, 11–​12, 14–​15, 16–​17,
photography, 25, 84, 109–​10, 119, 120–​21, 46–​47, 57–​58, 66, 101, 104, 110–​15,
124 122, 126, 128–​29
phrases/​sayings, 16, 27–​28, 34–​35, 40, Ramayana, 119–​20, 137
88, 130 Rawat, Prem, 90–​91
pilgrims/​pilgrimage, 4–​8, 52–​53, 55, 73 Reader, Ian, 11
account books related to, 83, 85 recitation, 100, 131–​42, 151
camel fair and, 108–​9 ritual, 9–​10. See also ritualization
pilgrimage priests, 83–​102 ritualization, 63, 77
relationship of tourism and, 6 Rosaldo, Renato, 22
sacred space and, 8  
vibrations of pilgrimage places, 139–​40 sacred space, 8, 65–​66, 136, 139–​40. See
pollution also ritualization
in bodies of water, 56, 62–​63 sadhus, 88–​89, 118, 124, 128, 131, 139
caste and conceptions of, 75 at the Brahma temple, 93–​94
in Pushkar lake, 56 Said, Edward, 98–​99. See also orientalism
power, 5–​6, 43, 48, 75–​76, 105–​6, 128–​29 Sanatana dharma, 24, 27–​51, 152, 155–​56
Sacred space and, 10–​11 Satya yug, 27, 63
prana,  153–​58 Savitri, 78–​79, 81–​82, 87, 93, 102–​3, 106–​7
pranamayakosha, see prana Sax, William, 8–​9
Pratt, James Bissett, 151–​52 seva, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77
Pratt, Mary Louise, 44–​45, 123 shanti, 25–​26,  130–​38
Preston, James, 10 shanti mantra, 132–​34
priests, 4–​6, 10–​11, 14–​16, 20–​21, 25, Sharma, Janardan, 12–​13
27–​51, 81–​107, 160–​61. See also Sharma, Jyotirmaya, 47
Brahmans; tour guides Singh Khushwant, 5
economic precarity and, 95 Smith, Jonathan Z., 9–​10, 65–​66
employment and, 102 Sundar kand, 131, 137–​38
pollution and, 75  
Vedic training and, 133–​36 Taussig, Michael, 112–​13,
puja, 4–​5, 16–​17, 29–​30, 31, 35–​36, 37, 115–​17,  122–​23
50–​51, 52, 53–​54, 56–​57, 58–​59, 77, tour guides, 4–​5, 10–​11, 17, 18–​19, 20–​21,
78–​79, 81–​82, 84–​85, 87–​88, 91–​92, 25, 29–​30, 31, 35–​36, 39, 52, 81–​95,
93, 94, 95–​97, 99, 100–​1, 102, 160–​61 102–​3, 106–​7,  160–​61
212 Index

tourism, 3, 6, 12–​16, 39, 52–​53, vibrations

81–​107,  108–​29 in Pushkar, 131–​32
trimurti, 79–​80, 88 the Western history of, 144
trust, see Pushkar Priest Association Trust Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), 14, 48
Turner, Victor and Edith, 7 Vivekananda, 33–​35, 47, 49–​50, 154–​58
  Vrindavan, 84
universalism, 158. See also Hindu  
universalism Yajur Veda, 100, 132, 133–​34
Urry, John, 128–​29 Shukla Yajur Veda,  133–​34
  Yamuna River, 38–​39, 62
Vartak, V.D., 61 yoga, 99, 102, 128, 143–​44, 156–​58
Veda/​Vedas, 32, 33, 60–​61, 132, Yogananda, Paramahansa, 157
149–​50,  151  
VHP, see Vishva Hindu Parishad Zeitlyn, Sushila, 69–​70, 102–​3