Gods in the World

With the poetic sensibility of an ""itinerant ethnographer,"" Jassal traverses through Uttarakhand’s hills and valleys and elegantly shows how humans and gods “make place” for, with, and sometimes against, each other in everyday life. Gods in the World transforms our understanding of divine embodiment in fast-changing and stratified social worlds. -- Leela Prasad, author of <i>Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town</i> This critically important, sensitive ethnography illuminates the contested character of Hinduism across castes, deities, gurus, oracles, and regions. Through keen attention to rituals conducted by Dalit gurus, it demonstrates how caste is reproduced by but also challenged and subverted within Hinduism. -- Lucinda Ramberg, author of <i>Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion</i> In the ravishing landscapes of the high Himalayas in northern India, local gods and goddesses are palpably present in everyday life. Aftab Jassal's extraordinary ethnography, at once poetic, penetrating, and sober, reveals the dense textures of interaction between human beings and local deities, especially in contexts of illness and healing, divination, and profound personal insight. Anyone who still thinks of such gods and the possession rituals that enable their presence as no more than functional or instrumental fictions needs urgently to be healed by this compelling and eloquent book. -- David Shulman, author of <i>Tamil: A Biography</i>