Uprising of the Fools by Vikash Singh

Author:Vikash Singh [Singh, Vikash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2016-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

CASTE AND THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

Subversive Aesthetics of Popular Religion

The fortunate is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he “deserves” it . . . to be allowed the belief that the less fortunate also merely experiences his due.

—Max Weber, Essays in Sociology

AFTER THE NIGHT’S delusional scare as a result of the thandai, the next morning we had covered some distance, and although still apprehensive about the reliability of my limbs, I was relieved not to have lapsed into a protracted fever. Both K and I felt that since I was unaccustomed to walking in flip-flops, I would need a pair of shoes. K had advised me to wear shoes from the beginning, but some other acquaintances had suggested that shoes would make my feet too hot. My zeal to approximate the rigor of the common pilgrim was also to be blamed. As we entered Purkaji, stretched along the highway like most towns here, under a scalding sun we wandered around looking for a place to eat lunch and a shop to buy a cheap pair of shoes. A community feast (bhanḍārā) seemed to be going on inside a temple, but it turned out to be only a resting place. However, we did find a shoe store and haggling over the price of a pair of shoes, I was struck by the salesman’s remark: “We, anyway, quote you people the lowest price possible.” As we bargained first over the shoes and then a pair of socks, he made the assertion several times, and I think quite sincerely, that the business never tried to profit from “us.”

For the first time, I had been directly addressed as a Kanwaria. Although K and I, along with the other pilgrims, were Kanwarias—especially when walking there was almost no conversation but an exchange of the calls of “Bam Bhole!”—we never really lost our individual identities. Participants interacted with ordinary familiarity when resting, although as soon as they lifted the kānwaṛ, a subjective attitude of pious sincerity and moral consideration would take over.

Thus, there was an internal complexity to the Kanwarias’ interactions and performances; here, different temporalities stimulated, merged with, and substituted for one another. The Kanwar performances may by no means be removed from the participants’ everyday struggles and responsibilities, although they may be engaged on a different, almost transcendental register. However, when the salesman identified me with a collective identity, I recognized “us” as outside the fold of everyday social interaction. It was the marked and distinct identity of a pilgrim, a bholā, a devotee of Śiva, participating in an ordeal in celebration of Śiva. The bholā belonged to the legions of Bhole Bābā. And it is indeed for the service of these bholās and to earn religious merit that Delhi businessmen—probably millionaires—may be seen on the route, lined up in their cars along with their families, distributing medicines and topical ointments and often themselves applying the ointments to the pilgrims’ feet.

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