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, 2007, 738 1970-9501 (online), 1970-951 (print) 978-88-8453-600-6 (print), 2007 Firenze University Press

HINDU NAIONALISS

AND LOCAL HISORY:

FROM IDEOLOGY O LOCAL LORE

is article analyses how the Hindutva ideological programme on

history-writing is concretely implemented at grass-root levels by an-affiliated organisation. Te organisations name is the AkhilBharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojna. Te area o fieldwork moves romits headquarters to its Chandigarh branch and to its Kullu branch.Te primary objective o the article is to shed light on the multipleorms o mediation o the organisation, which show how Hindutvainfluence in local society cannot be simply reduced to the directeffects o its militants actions. It also examines how the Hindutvadiscourse on history infiltrates the local conception o regional cul-

ture, merges with pre-existent conceptions and encounters specificorms o resistance. Finally, the article suggests the importance ounderstanding the Hindutva rereading o Indian history in the lighto other post-colonial historiographies, engaged in a similar efforto placing the locality within a wider and prestigious ramework.

O quite a virulent debate has animated the circleof Indian historians who have actively denounced and deconstructedthe rewriting of Indian history by -affiliated organisations. Most of

1. is the abbreviation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Association of NationalVolunteers , a militant organisation for the propagation/diffusion of Hindutva (Hinduness).Te aim of the organisation is to build a new (and strong) Hindu people/nation. Its memberstraining is paramilitary. Te is the real core of the other organisations that together formthe Sangh Parivar (family of the Sangh, with reference to the ), a journalistic expres-sion for the complex network of organisations formed around the . Among these, one is apolitical party, the (Bharatiya Janata Party, Party of the Indian People ), and another isa religious organisation, the (Visva Hindu Parishad, Universal Hindu Congress).

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this effort has been focused on the way the s vision of the past is ideo-logically affecting school textbooks or academic institutions. Te questionhas also been raised by historians regarding some famous places such asAyodhya the history of which has been ideologically reworked by Hindu

nationalistwriters.By contrast, little importance has been given to the impact that -

affiliated organisations are having on local history, i.e. on history which isnot on the school curriculum, and does not affect renowned and nationallycontroversial localities. Local history is indeed usually ignored by academichistorians, since it is related to a village or a remote area, it is orally memo-rised and narrated by ordinary people, and it has been recently put down inwriting by local authors. It is a kind of history which is indeed considered asbeing separate from the historical discipline, as it is intermingled with local

stories, the protagonists of which may be human beings as well as heroesor local deities.For these reasons, however, local history does reflect a vision of the past

which may in the end prove to be more permeable and more suitable to shistory-writing, which programmatically uses the repertory of Sanskrit reli-gious texts such as Veda, Pura, RmyaaandMahbhrata as thebase of its methodology. Indeed, leaders have paid particular attentionto local history as noted by Romila Tapar who once solicited the reactionsof professional historians:

Many of us who belong to the secular tradition dont really have a feelfor local history. [] I believe the is engaged in a massive project ofgoing into local history. I think in the next ten years, they plan to go into

2. For detailed criticisms of the Hindutva rewriting of school textbooks, see forexample Delhi Historians Group 2001; 2002; Saigol 2004; Sundar 2004.

3. Te relation between myth and history is an object of controversy, as it isshown by the titles of the articles published by both the sides. Tus, for example, in the

pro-hindutva article Mahabharata: A Myth or a Reality by Prasad Gokhale (1994) theauthor wants to prove the historicity ofMahbhrataby using different argumentations,including the util isation of modern sophisticated technology. For the other side, thereare articles like Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing Historyby Udayakumar (2005) orWhen mythology becomes history by the Hindustan imes Editorial (2002). Tis debatebecomes however even more complicated if we consider that the opposition betweenhistory and myth is today reformulated by some academic historians. I refer here to thework of Narayana Rao, Shulman and Subrahmanyam (2003), where the authors showhow it is possible to find out a historical consciousness even in those literary genresthat include mythical elements.

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each district, each local area, and produce their versions of local history.It is therefore necessary that secular historians and groups also take seri-ous interest in understanding local history (Tapar, Communalism andHistory).

Since the 1970s, indeed, one of the -affiliated organisations has createdbranches throughout the country with the specific aim of collecting andwriting history on a very small-scale level, i.e. a district, a town, or a vil-lage. Te name of this organisation isAkhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojna,which can be translated as Te Plan (also in the sense of Committee) forCollecting History of the Whole of India, hereaer .

Tis article sets out to examine the concrete way in which the ispursuing its project and what its impact is on peoples perception of local

history. In more general terms, my concerns lie with the gap between anideological programme and the way this programme is concretely imple-mented when it reaches people at grass-root levels. Te case describedhere indeed shows how an organisation which is completely commit-ted to the mainstream Hindutvaideology at the level of its main leaders,owes its efficacy to the participation of people who, in different ways, getinvolved in its local project for reasons which may have nothing to dowith political ideology. Some of the people I will talk about, especially atgrass-root levels, are neither concerned with politics nor with , and

they may be involved in the s local project just out of their likingfor regional culture and for beingpersonally concerned by the rewritingof local traditions.

Te effective capacity of the s people to interact with those whomay not necessarily share their political vision has already been noted byFuller (2003) and Bn (2001). However, Fuller himself observes that verylittle ethnographic data is available on the subject and that it is then dif-ficult to obtain greater knowledge of the matter. Yet, this is a very crucialissue if we want to understand not only the effective dynamics of mobi-lization of Hindu Nationalists, but also the multiple forms of mediation

and resistance to the movement occurring at the local level, which makeeven political opponents oen dependant on the Hindutvas ideologicalinfluence. In other words, by studying these forms of mediation and resis-tance, this article wants to go further in the analysis of the assumption

4. Te term itihs (lit. once upon a time) is translated in the English version ofs works ashistory.

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that Hindutva influence in society cannot be simply reduced to the directeffects of its militants actions.

Te multiplicity of mediators involved in running the project at thelocal level is also at the origin of what has been described by Hansen

(1996) as the vernacularisation of Hindutva, that is the way in whichHindutva takes different forms and meanings according to specific localand regional dynamics. Te non-homogeneity of Hindutva is now wellestablished among academic scholars. Not only, as Ludden (2005, xiv)pointed out, Hindutva has many histories, and maybe as many mean-ings as locations but, even in the same region, it may assume differentmeanings according to the different organisations which may be simulta-neously active in a region.

By exploring the form Hindutva activity takes on through the

in a specific regional context that of Himachal Pradesh my attentionwill be focused on what Simpson (2004, 136) calls Hindutva in action,which edge[s] the discussion away from the political stage and towardsthe cultural and regional activity of Hindutva organisations. Te studyof Hindutva cultural mobilisation in a region like Himachal Pradesh,moreover, may counterbalance the tendency to study Hindutva in thoseareas where -affiliated organisations are more visibly present andmore violently active. Despite exploiting the recurrent aggressive slogansagainst the threatening Other, an organisation such as the

has identified the Aryan issue in this region as the potential element forinvolving local people in its cultural activism. Teir aim is to show howlocal culture is nothing but the cradle (if not the birthplace) of Vedic andAryan culture. Hindutva organisations assume that Aryans and Vediccivilisation originated in India and that the theory of an Aryan Invasion isbut a myth invented by Westerners in order to legitimate their own colo-nial claims (criticism in Tapar 1999). I will show how this burning issue,which has been provoking a concerted and vigorous reaction amongstmany Indian and Western academics, fits in well with the cultural andgeographical context of the Kullu region. In fact, along with the commonidea that Himachal Pradesh is situated at the periphery of mainstreamHinduism which is oen used by the local elite to explain its culturalspecificity this Himalayan state is a suitable imagined landscape (Eck1999) for supporting s rereading of the local past in the light of apan-Indian textual repertory. Te many references to the Himalayas in

5. On the cleavages between the affiliated organisations see Jaffrelot 2005.

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Sanskrit epic texts, as a favourite place for i, heroes or gods to cometo, do give a certain consistence to the idea of a reinterpretation of locallore in a pan-Indian, sanskritised framework. Te textual reference tothe Himalayas has indeed been taken as the starting point by the Kullu

s leaders for their cultural activity in the area.Tis process of interpreting the locality through an ancient prestigious

past is not specific to Hindutva. Indeed, another aim of this article is to showthe difficulty in differentiating what has been directly influenced by Hin-dutva from what is due to different and sometimes longstanding processesof reattaching local lore to a wider textual-based tradition. Furthermore,this process is not specific to India either. It may be compared, for example,to what Harneit-Sievers (2002, 15)defines as a way for postcolonial histori-ography of transcending the local placing it within a wider framework.

In a collective volume on what the author calls new local historiographiesin Africa and South Asia, he shows indeed how new local historians tryin both cases to construct an homogenous community not only by defin-ing it in opposition to groups in the immediate neighbourhoods, but alsoby searching for prestigious origins (ibid.). In a similar way, the insist-ence of Hindutva writers in denouncing the West for deforming nationalhistory and the appeal for an indigenous historiography apt to produce afeeling of national unity are found in exactly the same terms in the Africannationalistic discourse (see Falola 2004, ch. 6). Finally, and independently

of post-colonialism, the political construction and utilisation of folklorewas at the very heart of the of centurys European nationalisms (SeeTiesse 2001).

Notwithstanding the theoretical importance of considering theHindutva project on history-writing in the light of other nationalistichistoriographies, my aim here is to examine s activity by using anethnographic approach, more apt to take into account the complex andspecific dynamics of Hindutva cultural rooting. Te first part of this paperwill involve studying this organisation by paying particular attention tothe way it works from a practical point of view: by looking at the network

6. With this expression Harneit-Severs (2002, 3) refers to members of the local edu-cated elite who have a strong biographical connectionto the locality or community theydeal with; most of them are non-proessionalhistorians operating outside of academia.

7. Contrary to Hindutva writers, however, for whom the prestigious origins arefound in an ancient but autochthonous past (that of Vedic culture), local African histori-ans frequently look for prestige in distant and non autochthonous places in the MiddleEast, in Egypt or in Israel.

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of people acting at different levels, from national leaders to their grass-rootintermediates. Te area of fieldwork moves here from s headquarterssituated in the headquarters in Delhi, to the Chandigarh branch (inPanjab) and to the Shimla and Kullu branches (in Himachal Pradesh). In

the second part, the analysis will focus on the Kullu district and on the waythe s national programme has been adapted to Kullus cultural spe-cificity. I will show the peculiar way in which the s ideological visionof Indian history infiltrates local conceptions of Kullu history, how it meltsand becomes mixed up with pre-existent conceptions and how it encounterslocal forms of resistance.

1.

o introduce , it is not improper to speak of an ideological or organi-sational centre in relation to its local branches. Its central place is located inKeshav Kunj, the Delhi headquarters. Tis centre is linked to a leader,Takur Ram Singh, a 92-year-old man who has dedicated his life to instigat-ing and propagating nationalistic feelings.

Takur Ram Singh is aprachrak(lit. preacher). He lives in a room-cum-office in Keshav Kunj and regularly attends the s meetings inNagpur. In his role as leader, he also used to attend every seminarheld by the s local branches in the different regions of India. Not-withstanding his old age, Takur Ram Singh is very active. He travels allthe time by bus or train, going to near or distant places, thus representing acrucial link between the national and the local level of the organisation.

Until recently, Takur Ram Singh was s president, but the chargehas now been assigned to Takur Prasad Varma, a retired historian of theBanaras Hindu University. Tis charge is somewhat nominal, however. Tereal leader, in fact, undoubtedly remains Takur Ram Singh, who is definedas a guide (sarakak) in circles.

Te way Takur Ram Singh tells his life story bears some similaritieswith the way other prachrakdo this (Jaffrelot 2005, 61ff.). Aer having

passed an M.A. in History in Lahore in 1942, he refused his directors offerfor a lecturer position there, thus giving up his personal career to become afull-timeprachrak. Unmarried like allprachrak, he was first assigned to

8. Prachraks are full-time executives who constitute the organisational backboneof the (cf. Jaffrelot 2005).

9. Te central secretary of the organisation is Kaushal, anotherprachrakwho livesin Delhi and who also participates in the Nagpurs meetings.

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Kangra, his native place, then to Assam in 1949. He wasprachrakin Assamfor 22 years, learning Assamese. He was then transferred to the Keshav Kunjcampus in Delhi, where he became president of the .

Te importance of having a leader is shown by the fact that, since

its origin the organisation has made reference to a founder, Baba SahebApte, one of Hedgewars first prachrakin Nagpur. In fact the organisa-tion officially came into being one year aer Baba Saheb Aptes death,when in 1973 the prachrakMoropante Pingle founded the organisationin Aptes memory. A photograph and a short biography of Apte are tobe found in all the brochures illustrating the origin and the aims of theorganisation.

Another centralising element of the is also the copyright nameused in most publications (books, reviews or booklets). Some of these

publications are dedicated to exposing the ideology which is behind, its purposes, its methodology and its main projects. In somecases the author/editor may have given his book to a local printer whomhe has personally contacted and paid without receiving any financial helpfrom the organisation. In other cases, especially when the publicationis considered to be of national relevance, the author may have receivedsome funding. Tis is the case of publications considered to have a cer-tain prestige such as Indias Western Lands. Te Saga o their Occupationby Foreign Invaders (From Vedic times to AD) published in 2000 by

Sukhdev Singh Charak.Te author himself writes in his preface:

Tis work is of national importance. I, therefore, find it proper to acceptthe offer of the Bhartiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti, Jammu and Kashmir,for its publication. Te Samiti is already doing a lot of constructive workin the field of collecting material on History in the light of a new reformedideal of a national outlook under the guidance and inspiration of Shri

10. Some of the articles written by Baba Saheb Apte have been published in the formof a book. Cf. Shri Baba Sahab Apte 1947.

11. Te titles are, for example, Te problems in Indian Historiography. Lefist Lapsesin the Writing o Indian Historyby Guha, or Distortions in Indian Historyby RaghunathPrasad Sharma. Others deal with projects considered crucial for supporting s mainideology, such as Vedic Culture and its continuity: new paradigm and dimensionby ShivajiSingh or Discovery o Source o Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayasby W.M.K. Puri.

12. Amongst s publications, those of regional interest come under the copy-right name of Bhartiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti.

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Indresh Kumar [] Above all I am thankful to Professor Ram Singh,President Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana, who has been encour-aging me to finalise this work and to recommend it to the J&K Samiti forpublication (Charak 2000).

References and acknowledgements to central members of the organisa-tion are found in all s publications, where Takur Ram Singh mayalso be asked to write the volumes preface with s name and Delhiaddress.

Te also publishes a journal, the Itihas Darpan(Te Mirror ofHistory), which is edited in Delhi. Te journal has already issued almostfieen volumes dealing with thematic topics, such as Bhakti in Our AncientLore, or with regional topics, such as Orissa culture, history and society.

Most of the articles are written in English, but at the end of each volume,there are a few articles written in Hindi. In the inside cover details are givenin English for contributors who want to submit their papers to the Journal.Te editors pay particular attention to giving the Journal a scientific char-acter. Reference to a scientific framework is repeated throughout theirdra programme the importance of making reference to sources, and toproving with documents what is put forward.

Te emphasis on what is true or scientifically proven also charac-terises Takur Ram Singhs discourse on local history the main domain

of s research activity. In his declarations, in fact, Takur Ram Singhis explicit about the fact that not every local history is worth studying anddocumenting, but only those facts which have a historical basis and whichare in accordance with s ideology. In this sense, he makes clear thatwhat is studying and collecting is not strictly speaking local history,but oral history, a history which, similarly to the Veda, was not originallywritten but revealed by the sages and learnt by heart. Later we will see theform that this specific discourse on proof and the scientific base will indeedtake in the Kullu cultural context.

I will now briefly present s view on history such as it emerges

from the exchanges I had with Takur Ram and from s official bro-chures and booklets.

13. his is the case for example of a volume entitled Uttaranchal Himalaya.Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, Botany, Economics, Geography, Geology, History andSociology, edited in 1995 by Mahehwar P. Joshi.

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2.

In the inside cover of the review Itihas Darpana few lines disclose the aimsof the organisation as follows:

Te main aim of the Yojana [] is to rewrite the history of ourcountry, Bharat, starting from the beginning of our existence up to thepresent time. Tis rewriting will be in accordance with the chronol-ogy of Bhartiya Kalaganana of Yugas, based on true and correct factsand figures, devoid of any prejudice whatsoever. Furthermore, thisrewriting will be done in the light of modern scientific research andnew archaeological findings in order to bring about a true, integratedand comprehensive history of our country, including all social, cultural,

dharmic, spiritual, economic, political and all other remaining aspectsof our national life.

Many booklets and brochures published free of charge or at a very lowprice expound s conception of History. Te methodology andtheoretical framework presented in these booklets show many similari-ties between s vision of history and the one adopted by the VidhyaBharati, with the difference, however, that is not involved in therevision of school textbooks. Here are some of the main points: (1) the

deformation by Westerns of Indian history; (2) the necessity of writing anIndian/Hindu History based on the ancient texts of India; (3) the produc-tion of a national conscience of Indias glorious past, which is an Aryanpast and (4) the denunciation of the damage caused by Muslim and Chris-tian invaders.

Moreover, in one of s manifestos entitled : Concept andWorking, the projects of interest at the national level are presented: (1) aproject on how the Indians calculate time (bhrtya kl gana), which isconsidered to be scientific as opposed to the Western calendar, based on

14. Vidhya Bharati (Indian Knowledge) is an -related organisation founded in1977 to co-ordinate the network of Shishu Mandir schools which the has been develop-ing since the 1950s (Jaffrelot 2005, 217-218). See also Sarkar 2005.

15. As it has been observed by Fischer-in (2003), s discourse on History isdeeply influenced by the thoughts of the Arya Samajs reformists. Among the authors of thisperiod such as Ramdevs Bharatvars ka itihas, for instance, we find a discourse extremelysimilar to the one pursued today by both the Vidhya Bharati and the (Fischer-in2003, 117).

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Christian religion; (2) a project on the Sarasvati river, which would showthe existence of the Vedic river using modern scientific techniques (suchas Nasa satellite photographs); (3) a project on theMahbhratawar, sup-posed to precede the kali-yugby 36 years, thus being the Sheet anchor of

Hindu history. Other projects deal with Te Date of Birth of Buddha,Is Samdrokottus Chandragupt Maurya? or History of Ancient Citiesthrough the Ages. In another brochure 25 projects of general inter-est are mentioned, most of which deal with distortions: distortion ofIndian literature and languages, distortion of Indian chronology, dis-tortion in modern education, with even one on the distortion of Indiannationalism.

Apart from these national-level projects, which has in commonwith other -affiliated organisations involved in history-writing (like, for

example, Vidhya Bharati), the specific aim of is to elaborate small-scale projects concerning regional, district, block and town levels whatare called s different units. Tey provide with guidelines thosewho wish to collaborate on this project, giving practical suggestions on howto collect data in an exhaustive and systematic way. In one of these manuals,for example, they insist on the fact that the data collection should involveordinary local people rather than outside people:

Local people have more information about the customs and the traditions

of their own area and they can get material more easily than outside peo-ple. Tey can understand and choose the material according to the milieu.Tis type of collection will be much more reliable than work done by peo-ple from outside (Shri Baba Saheb Apte Smarak Samiti c. 1990, 6).

Takur Ram Singh constantly repeats that this data collection is a long-term programme, and that it has taken 35 years just to show that distor-tions have been made. Tey consider to have just prepared the organisa-tional structure, the background for (re)writing a true History.

Before looking at the way in which this local data collection and his-tory writing may tie in with the national project, I will now show how theorganisation works in practice by creating a network of intermediates oper-ating in the different units.

3.

Each year sends its members a memo notebook. In the first pagesof the booklet a list containing some important addresses illustrates on

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a first level how conceives its presence throughout the national ter-ritory. o start with, the list presents all the addresses, telephone numbersand responsibilities of almost twenty Central committee members, divid-ing them into sarakak, mrgadarak, All India president, All India

vice president, General Secretary, and so on. Te list continues by giving13 ketra (provinces), such as dki,pacim, madhya, uttar pacim, etc.Each ketra includes two or more states. Let us take, for example, the ut-tar ketra, where I worked during my fieldwork. Te uttar ketraincludesJammu-Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.

Te President (sagahan mantr) of the uttar ketrais a certain SherSingh, a well-educated man of about 60 years old who lives in Panchakula,near Chandigarh. Sher Singh is not directly concerned with history-writ-ing, he is not a writer and his role is more that of coordinator, someone who

has to ensure that everyone is active, who has to follow up the activities andfacilitate contacts within the ketra. Although he shares the vision ofIndian history, he is neither implicated in the meeting nor involved inhistory-writing. In his role as ketras president, Sher Singh has to know andto maintain contacts with the different presidents of the states, districts ortowns, but he is not perceived as someone who is particularly linked to alocality. And his being an outsider is presented by Takur Ram Singh as away of guaranteeing that he will not select people in accordance with somepersonal network but for the advancement of the national cause. As he told

me, they have to think of the nation and not entangle themselves in fam-ily matters.When a unit has to be formed inside the uttar ketra, Takur Ram

Singh contacts Sher Singh or other local coordinators in order to find outwho would be the appropriate person to preside it. When a person hasbeen chosen, a seminar is organised in order to celebrate and publiclyannounce the nomination of the new units president and the other offi-cial positions.

Inside each state within the different ketra, the list gives the names andthe addresses of each president and secretary of the unit. Although absentfrom the list, the institutional network goes much further, as far as thedistrict, block, town units. In order to create a unit, a president must be cho-

16. Cf. the s website, http://itihasabharati.com/index.html17. A common occasion for these nominations is the Itihs Divas, the Day of

History, an special seminar organised every year in all local branches. Tedate and topic of the Itihs Divasare the same for all branches and are decided at nationallevel.

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sen and with him a vice-president, a secretary, a vice-secretary, a treasurer,etc. so that the official creation of a unit indeed involves the formation ofa micro circle of local intermediates, from where the branchs activ-ity can start. Takur Ram Singh used to talk of all these units presenting

them, somehow, in terms of conquests: We got 350 out of 832 districts []we got 6 out of 11 provinces [] weve got about 900 historians, and wevegot 6 full-time historians, devoted to this.

It should be noted, however, that some of these units are branches onlyon paper, empty offices. One of these empty units is for example, that ofMandi, a district near Kullu. When I visited the place, I was effectively ableto meet the Mandi president, a retired doctor very busy with hisprivate clinic and quite reticent to talk to me. Te secretary, a lawyer and member, explained that both he and the president had recently been

appointed to their respective positions during a seminar that Takur RamSingh (the Delhi leader) had organised in Mandi. He told me that, contraryto what he knew about the Kullu unity, no activity was operating in theirunit. According to him the reason for this was that most of the people inMandi have a government job and that, since the Party in power was cur-rently the Congress, they want to be with the government. According tohim Mandi people are scared that those who join will be deprived ofgovernment privileges.

Takur Ram Singh is aware that some of these units are a mere formal-

ity, they do not function properly, are not active in their work. Tis kind ofaffirmation, however, is not intended to lessen the efficacy of his organisa-tion in involving people at local level. What he wants to emphasise, rather,is the priority for to create for itself a background. Whether all theseunits are working or not he told me that is another question. What isimportant is that a structure has been formed.

4.

Once a local unit is created, a project has to be formulated, by choosing atopic of research that will be likely to involve the greatest number of people.Tese people, who will thus be involved in completing the project, have verydifferent profiles. Teir ideological commitment to and to the Hindutvaideology may indeed be very variable and even non-existent. I will drawthe portraits of some of these intermediates, focusing attention now onHimachal Pradesh, and particularly on the region of Kullu, which I knowbetter. Some reference will also be made to Punjab, especially to the Chan-digarh Unit, where I did some brief fieldwork in October 2005.

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Vidhya Chand Takur and the state unit

Te president of the Himachal Pradesh unit is Vidhya Chand Takur, theprevious secretary to theAcademy o Art, Culture and Languagein Shimla

(the States capital) during the government, which has been moved tothe Department o Language and Culture in 2004.

From the point of view of Himachali people, Vidhya Chand is someonelinked to the locality. Contrary to Takur Ram Singh, who represents thecentre a superior but outside authority Vidhya Chand is completelyinvolved in Himachali culture. Although he shares some of the pointsof view, Vidhya Chand is not involved in the lifestyle. He has neverattended the kh(the s training camps) and he came to know the quite recently, in 1990. At the time, when he was a language officer in

Mandi, he was invited to an meeting on an occasion when TakurRam Singh (the Delhi leader) gave a seminar at the Kullu Arya Samaj school,the topic of which was Indian historiography. Finding the speech very con-

vincing, he approached Takur Ram Singh, who immediately made himdistrict president. Aer some years, he was transferred to the Shimla acad-emy, and made s secretary for the whole of Himachal Pradesh. UnlikeSher Singh (uttar ketras president), Vidhya Chand is not just an organizer,only concerned with the practical achievement of s network. He isalso the author of several articles on regional culture. In 2003 he coordi-

nated, for example, a volume on the Rmyaa,where he showed how anumber of stories commonly found in the region are nothing but versionsof the Valmikis epic. Tis was part of a larger project that the hadalso carried on in Assam, as shown by the volume Ramayana in the NorthEast, published in 2002 aer an national seminar in Silchar and inwhich Vidhya Chand says that he found inspiration.

18. In the introduction to this volume, Dr Sujit Kumar Ghosh (2002), Genera lSecretary of the Assamese s branch, aer noticing how people of the north-east,

who have embraced Christianity, are divested of their rich Ramayana heritage explainsthe objective of the seminar: the people of north-east India at different stages of their socio-cultural and historical development had come into contact with the Rmyaaand adoptedit. [] although among different ethnic groups of north-east India this text survived mostlyin the oral form, the objective of the seminar was to bring people together and help themdiscover their roots and feel at home with others in the country (http://www.hvk.org/articles/1098/0048.html). Another speaker who took part in the seminar, Shri KabindraPurkayastha, Minister of State or Communications, said that the classic work of Valmiki

cannot but influence even those vanvasis who might have been cut off from their roots. TeRamayana is a l ink in the chain of diverse cultures and faiths (ibid.)

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the project was the identity of these local deities and the place they occupyin the regional past. Tis was indeed how villagers felt associated with theirown past, and it would therefore be the topic which would make everybodyin Kullu concerned about and keen to become involved. What was under-

lined in the dra programme was not only to collect and record first-handmaterial on local deities, but also to show their forgotten Vedic, Puranicor epic origin.

However, the attitude of finding a pan-Indian equivalence to local deitiesis not new in Kullu. Brahmanic influences and different religious movementshave affected these local cults for a long time, especially in more accessible

villages or in the royal capital, where Brahmans were mostly concentrated.During a more recent period, British administrators first, and the local elitelater, oen established the same kind of equivalence. Tus, even before

became actively present in the Kullu district, the local repertory of dei-ties stories was oen overlapped by a pan-Indian repertory, the one narratedin the RmyaaandMahbhrataepics. In an article written by the Con-gress leader Lal Chand Prarthi, Health and Revenue Minister of HimachalPradesh in 1970, for example, it is written that the Kullu landscape and localgods are to be considered in relation to ancient texts.

20. Another point that may be noted is the choice made by the Kullu branch

to focus on village deities rather than on a figure like the royal god Raghunth (a name forViu), a god on behalf of whom the Kullu kings ruled. Tis comes into contrast indeedwith what Kanungo (2003, 3294) observed on the Hindutva cultural activity in Orissa. Herewhat has been perceived by the as a crucial unifying element through which pan-Indian nationalistic culture could be transmitted is the god Jagannth, a Viu incarnationwho has been made the king of Orissa since the 12th century. Similarly to what happensin the case of Raghunth, the god Jagannth remained throughout different historical peri-ods a potent rallying symbol, reinforcing the collective regional and ethnic identity of theterritorially fragmented Orissa. According to Kanungo, the s project in Orissa is thusto channel the devotional and spiritual energy of the Oriya towards the Hindu Rashtra(2003, 3297). Tere may be reasons why in Kullu Raghunth has not been perceived as hav-

ing the same Hindutva pertinence than Jagannth. It is above all the fact that Raghunthhas always been identified as the personal god of the king. Te relations that villagershave with him are quite distant and formal, and have nothing to do with the emotionaland devotional feelings they have with village deities. We may imagine, moreover, that adifferent choice would have been made if leaders had come from outside as withtheprachrakin Orissa and were not, as is the case, people rooted in local culture likeVidhya Chand Takur or Davendar Singh.

21. As in other regions of India, there are in Kullu other factors of brahmanisationor standardisation of Hinduism: there are television serials of epics (Lutgendorf 1995); car-toons, chromos or calendars on Hindu mythology (Stratton Hawley 1995);

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Te name of the ancient land of Kullu can be traced back to the hoary pastand there are several references to it in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata,Vishnu Purana etc. [...] Tere are quite a few significant legends connectedwith the Ramayana Kal. It was the privilege of a Rishi from the valley,

called Shringa rishi, who had his ashrama near Banjar [a local area] toact as the purohit at the Putreshti yajna of Raja Dashratha as a resultof which the great Rama was born [...] Te valley come into being by anumber of events and incidents believed to be associated with it duringthe Mahabharata kal. Te Pandavas, it is said, visited this valley as manyas three times (Prarthi 1970).

As far as the intention of the leaders is concerned, what seems to benew, however, is the intermingling of three factors: (1) establishing the local-

pan-Indian equivalence in a systematic way and within what is presentedas a scientific research project; (2) putting this project at the service of theideology of Hindu nationalism; (3) involving in this research project notonly the largest number of local intellectuals, but also people from differentcircles of society.

Te way wishes to proceed was presented at the first seminar heldin Kullu in 1998 and consists in calling upon people in the field, i.e. thosewho are linked to village temples, to collect and to create a written reper-tory of stories on village deities. In the directives given to village people

on how the material should be compiled, particular emphasis is given tothe collection and record of a particular repertory of gods stories calledbharth(news). Tese involve stories which are supposed to be revealedby the deities themselves who, when speaking in the first person throughthe voice of their institutional mediums, recount the episodes in their life:where they come from, how they came to settle in their temple, which rela-tionships they established with the local kings, and so on. Te particularityof these bharthis that they are presented by local people as being secretin two different and sometime alternative ways. Firstly, most of them are

recited by the medium with only the priest present and using gods lan-guage, which makes them difficult to understand. Secondly, even in therare cases where the recitation is done publicly, they are recited in a verylow voice that nobody can hear.

requests temple people (priests and mediums) who have accessto these secret performances, to help collect their respective gods bharthand to write them down on paper, even if they do not understand theirexact meaning. Te work of leaders will be indeed to decipher thesebharth (oen just some snippets of them), and to reveal their similarity

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with Sanskrit texts, by focalising on specific words or expressions. Tiswould reveal the Sanskrit identity of the village gods. For example, thebharthof Katrusi Nrya of the arapur region is said to correspond toa passage from the Skanda Pura, which allows them to identify this god

with Skanda. Te fact that the bharthis recited not by an erudite Brahmanwho knows Sanskrit, but by an illiterate and low-caste medium is presentedas proof that it is directly enounced by the god.

For leaders, the bharthbecomes the original source as well asthe proof (pram) of the deity, for the very reason that it is revealed bythe deity itself. In this sense, they consider bharthsimilar to the Vedawhich, being revealed knowledge, is supposed to be a discourse of truthpar excellence. Similarly to the Veda, bharthseem to have all the qualitiesto fit in well with the Hindu nationalistic programme (Berti 2006). On the

one hand, being secret and self-revealed, they are supposed to preservedeities stories in their most authentic and pure form, and to constitutea direct path for reaching ancient (and Aryan) Indian history. On theother hand, the fact that bharth are pronounced in a secret or meta-phorical language, which can be deciphered only by specialists, bestowson these specialists a special authority in proposing different kinds ofparallelism between, not only the bharthand the Vedas, but also andconsequently between bharthand scientific discoveries. s dis-course is indeed similar to the general claim among Hindu nationalists

that Hinduism is simply another name for scientific thinking and thatVedas converges with the contents and methods of modern science (crit-icism in Nanda 2003, 65).

he kings son and the i project

In order to carry through the Kullu project on village gods, a unit wasformed: a president, a secretary, a vice-secretary, etc. was named. Aerconsulting Vidhya Chand Takur, Takur Ram Singh (the Delhi leader)

decided to nominate Davendar Singh, the eldest son of the current Kulluraja, as president of the s Kullu unit. Davendar Singhs nominationwas formally announced by both Takur Ram Singh and Vidhya ChandTakur during the seminar held on a History day (see note 14) organisedin Kullu in 1998. Te seminar the main topic of which was CountingIndian time (one of the most important national level projects) wasorganised in a very formal way; political personalities gave their speechand received honours, and local writers presented their papers. Te pres-ence of national-level representatives, the constant association they made

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between Kullu and the Sanskrit literature, along with the official charactergiven to the seminar, was effective in producing a context which gener-ated authority putting the power of myth and other cultural registers toeffective use (Hansen 2004, 21). Te acts of the seminar were published in

a booklet, with photos and messages of congratulations from many of thethen deputies or ministers Advani to the fore on the first pages.

Te appointed president, Davendar Singh, although not an , has anideal profile. On the one hand, his father and paternal uncle are politi-cians and quite influential at the local level. What is even more important,Davendar Singh comes from the royal family and his father, who is the cur-rent Kullu king, is the mukhya krdr(chief administrator) of all localdeities. Te Kullu king is the chabardar(staff bearer) of the royal godRaghunath, to whom all village gods owe respect and obedience. Being the

kings son, Davendar Singh has a privileged relation with the village gods,which gives him the legitimacy to know deities stories, and to ask villagersthe gods bharth.

Contrary to Vidhya Chand Takur, who belongs to the Shimla academiccircles and who uses his linguistic knowledge to speculate on the possiblelinks between local gods and textual Hinduism, Davendar Singh doesnot have the same intellectual background. He is rather an emblematic andlocally renowned figure around whom a network of people who are ready tohelp him in collecting material on local deities may be built. He is himself

a man of the field, who takes the time to go from village to village, talk-ing with people, and collecting first-hand information. He is also a ferventdevotee of local deities and totally involved in their village cult. From hispoint of view, being the kings son, he feels directly concerned by the ideaof including these deities in a nationwide project.

Te first project finalised by the Kullu unit indeed focused on i i.e.those local deities who are included in the same general category of villagedeities (dev-devt) but who are in fact identified as Vedic i. As soon asthe topic for the project was chosen, Davendar Singh, in his quality as

president, sent a letter to many villages in order to invite people to poolresources for collecting data (my translation from Hindi):

Respected Sir,as you know this holy place of Kullu is a place for imuni[] Tis

part of Kullu culture is an invaluable heritage of humanity and nationalculture. oday the passing of time has also affected our gods traditions forfuture generations. For this reason the Indian History Collection Com-mittee has decided to collect information related to devdevt[]. Along

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with this programme a letter has been forwarded to you, since this impor-tant work cannot be completed without the cooperation of those peopleinvolved in gods beliefs. So with regards to the work related to gods (god-work), I require your co-operation. Not only do I hope, but I am totally

confident that you will join in this god-work with total conviction andwill give your full cooperation and blessing to make this project success-ful. You may be sure that whatever material you send, the committee willmention your co-operation.

Te project on iis presented as the first part of a bigger research projectwhich covers other village deities such as dev(goddesses) and ngdevt(serpent gods). Te result of the iproject was published in a volume withthe title Kull k i parampar, under the copyright in 2005. Te

volume is edited by Surat Takur, Professor of Dhrupad Music in a KulluCollege and secretary of Kullus unit. Davendar Singh and VidhyaChand Takur have also played an important role in its publication. In thethree successive prefaces they wrote for the volume, the focus is put on threepoints: 1) on the fact that it is proven with evidence that Vedic ihavebeen wandering in the Himalayas, and that the knowledge of their historyin relation to the region will contribute to the knowledge of national history;2) on the need to collect traditions which are going to die out a concernoen expressed by members; 3) on the method of collecting first-hand

material by going out into the field: the importance of having good inform-ants, of checking different points of view among the informants, of discuss-ing these data during regular seminars, and so on.

Te volume is in fact a collection of 34 articles written by different peo-ple. During my fieldwork, I met most of these contributors and I becameaware that the majority of them were neither concerned with ideologynor with the national project. Many of them were temple specialists oradministrators, who simply put into writing what they knew about villagedeities and temple traditions without bothering whatsoever aboutsideological affiliation. Others had a more ambiguous position. Tis was the

case of Hira Lal Takur, a convinced Gandhian, and the Kullu director ofthe Khadi centre. In his office, full of Gandhi portraits, he made some par-allelisms between ideology and the Gandhi svarjya. Although he

22. Te idea of an appropriation or incorporation of Gandhian idioms into Hindunationalism, especially in the idea of Deendayal Upadhyayas Integral Humanism, hasbeen developed by Hansen (1999, 84-86). See also Zavos 2000.

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declared that he was not concerned with programmes and its purpose,he was firmly convinced that was doing constructive and true workwhose aim is to deepen our knowledge of Kullu deities history.

Te 34 authors of the book are the more visible part of collabora-

tors. A wide network of village data collectors has been set up by DavendarSingh, and their individual work is acknowledged in the preface to the book.One of the more invisible intermediates is Rajan Seluria, a man who hasa business near the Kullu royal palace. His office is constantly frequentedby village people who come to him to have their wool cleaned or to get oilpressed from mustard seeds. He also recently set up an annex where peoplecome to be cured by snake bites. He explained to me what he knew about and what his role was:

is based on gods and goddesses. Tey want to collect deities tra-ditions and customs []. We help Davendar gather all this informationand give it to him. He puts it into form and takes out some good mate-rial.When a villager comes to my office to have his wool cleaned orother work done, he has to wait; so we start chatting. I just listen to whathe says without taking notes to keep him speaking to me. Aerwards,I write down what he said to me and keep the paper in my drawer.Ten, when I have gathered enough material I give it to Davendar []Davendar told me to collect material. He and I are very close. He told

me that I have to write this book and I need material. I said why not? Iwil l help you []. He also told me to verify that what people say to me istrue or not by asking different people and by crosschecking their replies.Moreover, I talk with those people I know will not lie, who will speaktheir minds.

Te book contains 34 articles each article corresponding to a different iwho has a temple in a village in the area. Most of these i, however, have aname which does not correspond to the ordinary one used by local people.

Te hypothesis is that the local name represents a linguistic deformation ofa Sanskrit name. In some cases this local name may somehow resemble thename of a ibelonging to the textual repertory. For example, a god whompeople call Koshu de (god Koshu) is said to be Kayapa i.

By leafing through the volume, what immediately stands out is thedifference between those authors who are clearly involved in Hindutvaideology, like Vidhya Chand Takur, and those who are not. In the arti-cles written by s leaders, reference to the textual equivalence of thegod is systematically evoked along with his local identity. In some cases

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the textual reference is directly introduced by quoting some passages of aSanskrit text. By contrast, in the rest of the articles the only reference toa textual identity of the god is in the title, but no reference is made to thetextual traditions. What is reported here is just the local story of the god

as well as the practices followed in its temple in a way similar to a detailedethnographical report.

Te inclusion in the volume of articles which do not have any pan-Indian reference at all may appear incongruent with the central idea of theproject being to discover a pan-Indian basis for local culture. But in fact leaders do not seem to bother about this. On the one hand, peoplelike Vidhya Chand Takur or Davendar Singh are manifestly convincedthat local traditions should be maintained since everybody includingthemselves is emotionally attached to them. On the other hand, when

a village god is included in a book whose aim is explicitly announced inthe preface to find out Vedic i any god whose story is included inthe volume is supposed de actoto be a Vedic i. Moreover, the simple factof including all these village gods in a volume published under the name, makes the programme progress and increases the visibility of theorganisation. As Dayanand Sharma, a Kullu Brahman quite critical aboutHindutva, explains: During seminars they gather people to discuss a topicthey feel concerned with, the main leaders give their speeches [...] somehowthey introduce a feeling of national unity.

Te nationalistic effects of s activity are at least true for peoplelike Vidhya Chand Takur or other s local members. By contrast,from the point of view of grass-root intermediates, other aspects seem tobe relevant in the project they participate in: for them is simply con-cerned with gods and goddesses culture which merits all their sympathyand support.

5. :

In the first pages of the volume Kull k i parampar, aer the names ofthose who have participated in the project, there is a list of people consid-ered to be mrgadarak(guides). Among the latter there is the name ofMolu Ram Takur, a local erudite who, notwithstanding his name in an publication, may be taken as an example of a local form of resistanceto the Hindutvaideology.

Molu Ram Takur is the author of many publications in Hindi andEnglish on different aspects of Kullu culture. He is not, strictly speaking,an academic, although he is oen associated with Shimla academic cir-

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cles. From a political point of view, Molu Ram Takur does not have thesame ideological orientation as Vidhya Chand Takur. Everybody in Kulluknows him as being rather from the Congress Party. However, as far as hispublications are concerned, he has no explicit position to defend. What is

important for him is as he says the study of local traditions in a nonideological way.

o take Molu Ram Takur as an example of Hindutva resistance may besurprising if we consider the book he wrote in 2000, entitled VaidikAryaand Himachal, Historical and Research Account, where he defends the thesisaccording to which Aryans did not come from outside but were the originalhabitants of India. More precisely, for Molu Ram they originate from theWestern Himalayas and he proves this by taking Himachal Pradesh as anexample.

Although defending one of the s crucial ideas, he denies anyinvolvement in Hindutva ideology and everybody in Kullu agrees onthis point. He has also always refused to be a member of , in relationto which he defines himself as just an adviser. What he wants, he says, isto be sure that what he calls Hindutva type authors will not corrupt thetradition, or saffronise deities local stories. Notwithstanding his criti-cism of Hindutva, Molu Ram Takur approves Kullus project as faras data collection is concerned:

people are not going about it in the right way except for the firstphase [of their project], that is, the collection of different deities stories. Iagree with their method of work but not with the results they obtain. []Te no doubt has its idea and its version [of history]; but ancient mate-rial has been collected by them and as an adviser I dont want this materialto be spoilt in any way. Tis is my idea, they need to analyse it in a correctway, without interpreting it in their own way. [] Te first thing we do isto collect and edit the historical background of each deity. Te deities cul-ture should not be corrupted. I could not tolerate that! If ever they writeanything according to their own point of view, I will be up in arms.

Now, what does it mean for someone like Molu Ram Takur to saffroniselocal gods? In fact, what he criticises is not the idea of looking for a Vedicand pan-Indian substratum of local tradition, since he has also made refer-

23. He has for example contributed to a volume published by Laxman Takur (2002)of the Shimlas Institute of Advanced Study which circulates in all international libraries.

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ence many times to Vedas in his books or articles on Himachali culture. Itis rather the fact that this is done in a systematic way for all local deities.Tis is a very important nuance, which it is crucial to understand if one isto find out the sometimes very subtle difference between those who accept

Hindutva and those who criticise it.In order to give a better idea of this nuanced but relevant difference

I will take a short example. A point much debated amongst local writers,which is the topic of many lectures and seminars held in Kullu, involvesJaml, a god whose temple may be found in different villages of the district.Villagers give different versions about of this gods identity. Not only vil-lagers but local authors have advanced different hypotheses: Shabab (1996,70), has identified him as a Buddhist god coming from the ibetan districtof Spiti. Already in 1916 Young reports that some Jaml devotees identified

him with Jamad-Agni, the name of the iof the Viu Purawho soughtrest and seclusion in the Himalayas (Young 1916). As for the author, heemphasised Jamls association with Islam (ibid.). Reference to these dif-ferent hypotheses about the origin of this god is quite widespread among

villagers who happen to evoke them indifferently, with no ideological (orcommunalist) implications.

By contrast, it is when the god Jaml becomes the object of a semi-nar and especially of an seminar that the question arises: thepro-Hindutva argue that all Jaml are Jamadagni i and others, such as

Molu Ram, say No! Some of them are Jamadagni i whereas others arenot. Tere is indeed real disagreement on this point between Molu RamTakur and Vidhya Chand Takur. While Vidhya Chand constantly repeatsin his articles that all Jaml gods are Jamadagni i, Molu Ram seeks toshow the contrary, considering that Vidhya Chand defended this idea inorder to favour his ideological vision of the past. ry to ask him [VidhyaChand] how he can argue, from a linguistic point of view, that Jaml comesfrom Jamadagni ! he once told me.

Te subtle nuance which sets apart these two positions is indeed even

further complicated by looking deeper into their debate. In fact, if MoluRam Takur sometimes accuses members of making all local godsequivalent to Vedic gods which is not the case for him in other cases hisdisagreement is based on another logic. Let us continue with the example ofJaml. For Molu Ram Takur, those Jaml gods who are not Jamadagni iare not local gods either; for him, they are not simply Jaml gods. Teyare indeed the representatives of the god Yama (the god of death), who isalso a pan-Indian god of the textual repertory. He gives the reason for thishypothesis in his articles (see Takur 2002).

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Now, this hypothesis is contested by Jamls devotees who honour thesesupposed Jaml-Yama because, although Yama is a Vedic and pan-Indiangod, they do not want their god to be associated with the god of death!Molu Ram told me that some Jaml devotees have addressed some com-

plaints by sending him a solicitors letter, threatening to sue him in court ifhe publishes such a thing again in his articles. By contrast, these very vil-lagers were very pleased and proud to see their god Jaml associated withJamadagni i.

Here again a distinction has to be made in order to avoid the risk ofconfounding attitudes which are in fact extremely different. Te acceptanceby Jaml devotees of the Jamadagni i equivalence of their god is notdue to the same nationalistic reasons which are behind Vidhya Chandsstatements that all Jaml are Jamadagni. It happens that both are saying the

same thing, but not for the same reasons. Jamlu devotees are not botheredabout nationalism it is not their problem. Te issue concerning them isto have their local god recognised, and to somehow obtain greater prestigefor him. Or, in more accurate terms, what they are oen looking for is tosimply defend their gods prestige, so that it is not outdone by their neigh-bours god. Tus, for example, in one of these Jaml cases, the problem wasto defend Jamls position in relation to a neighbouring village god whosename was until recently Sankrini Deo and who has recently been identifiedas the Vedic g i. Tere is indeed a sort of chain reaction where, if a

god changes his name, it will have repercussions on all the neighbouringdeities or at least on those who are in competition with him for rank andhonours.

Te example shows how the project of the Kullu to find a pan-Indian equivalence to local gods is carried through in a context wherethe idea of this equivalence already exists independently of the Hindutva.Tis equivalence may even be produced and intellectually demonstrated bythose who denounce those they call Hindutva people for systematicallytransforming these deities for some nationalistic aims.

6.

Te material presented here shows the difficulty in establishing the partplayed by the in relation to other coexisting attitudes of transcend-ing the local by attaching the Kullu landscape and mythology to thetextual repertory. Te point has already been noted by Eck (1999 27), in herwork on what she calls the geographical sanskritisation of an imaginedlandscape. Eck points out how the attitude of many regional traditions

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to attach local places and gods to wider Hindu mythic and epic themeshas also been used in the construction of an indigenous Hindu sense ofnationhood (and nowadays of Hindu nationalism), and how it becomesdifficult to distinguish the two trends. Tis may be particularly true in a

region like Kullu where, similarly to what Linkenback (2002) observes forGarhwal, it is an area with an extraordinary mountainous environmentof pan-Indian religious significance.

However, as the case of Molu Ram Takur illustrates, what can befound in informal discussions is the presence of a local discourse, mostlyfrom the local elite, which allows the difference between what is per-ceived as a Hindutva attitude and what is not, show through. Peoplesawareness of this difference should not be neglected. Indeed, contrary towhat happens for more official and well-known history, Hindutva theo-

ries on local history in a region like Kullu are not likely to become theobject of a public controversial debate. Even someone like Molu RamTakur, who explicitly speaks about the danger of a saffronisation ofKullu gods, will hardly express such a concern in his books or articlesin these terms.

Another point to be noted is the specific form and meaning that Hin-dutvaresistance takes on in Kullu. Here again the case of Molu RamTakur is significant, and shows a different way of reacting to Hindutvahistory-writing than mobilising academic, secular historians. Molu Rams

concern with the local past is focalised on gods and myths, and thus isnot part of a secular approach to the local past. Nevertheless, he claims aform of resistance against communalist efforts to impose an ideologicalframe on history-making.

Finally, the data analysed here show the gap which exists betweenthe ideological proposals of the central leaders, which goes withthe general Hindutva effort to restructure indigenous religions into amonolithic, uniform religion (Tapar 1985), and the activity carried outlocally by intermediates who, at very different levels, collect detailed

ethnographic reports about ritual practices and gods stories. People likeRaja Seluria or Hira Lal Takur provide a rich compilation of informationconcerning a region, which is not in their case ideologically oriented. Ofcourse, in the mind of the central leaders this is just rough material,which will be used later by specialists to reveal or decode from the vil-lage specificities a more homogenous Hinduism. Te paradox, however, isthat in order to find out the Aryan uniformity of the Kullu culture, becomes the promoter of a project the result of which is to put culturaldiversity into writing, purely at a village level.

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1. Baba Saheb Apte, cover of the Journal,Itihasan Darpan, 10 (1-2), 2003-2004.

2. Delhi, 2002. Te s leader, Takur Ram Singh, in the room-cum-office inKeshav Kunj

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4. Kullu, 2002. Te Kullu president,Davedhar Singh, paying homage to the ora-cle of a village deity.

5. Kullu, 2002. Molu Ram Takur.

3. Kullu, 2002. Te Himachal Pradesh secretary, Vidhya Chand Takur.