ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyse the factors concerning the reconstruction of locality in the traditional city of Rajasthan through examination of the formation process of the Rajput spirit cults. These cults have developed on the fault line where local sites, loaded with the unique memories and traditional meanings of the old capital city, have been incorporated into the space of the modern nation state. The cults are tracing the practice of the traditional spirit possession cult of the Rajput lords and warriors, but they show certain features that deviate from the traditional pattern. This deviation reflects the social situation of contemporary Indian cities; the cults based on the habitus of the traditional relationship between lords and subjects become the basis for forming a local agency in contemporary Indian urban society where neighbourhood communities are rapidly disappearing. In his study of the production of locality in the modern world, Appadurai grasps the locality ‘as primarily relational and contextual rather than as scalar or spatial’ (Appadurai 1996: 178). He also sees it ‘as a complex phenomenological quality, constituted by a series of links between the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity, and the relativity of contexts’ (Appadurai 1996: 178). According to him, local subjects are actors who properly belong to a situated community of kin, neighbours, friends and enemies, and they are constructed by the inscription of locality onto bodies through ritual actions (Appadurai 1996: 179). On the other hand, neighbourhoods are defined as ‘the actually existing social forms in which locality, as a dimension or value, is variably realized’, and as ‘situated communities characterised by their actuality, whether spatial or virtual, and their potential for social reproduction’ (Appadurai 1996: 178-179). Appadurai also points out that traditionally locality has been produced in the spatially limited neighbourhood, and that locality and neighbourhood stood in a dialectic relationship as the local subject which was first produced in the neighbourhood then actively produced the neighbourhood (Appadurai 1996: 184-185). But in the modern globalising world, nation state projects, diasporic flows and electronic and virtual communities mean that the neighbourhood cannot be produced as a spatially limited place loaded with locally specific meaning, so local subjects or the production of localities themselves are now facing an ‘immense new set of challenges’ (Appadurai 1996: 188-198). Appadurai’s discussion is still stimulating for its consideration of the contemporary Indian urban situation. This chapter therefore basically follows his definition of locality and neighbourhood. However, even when the effects of globalisation penetrate into every corner of the world, global flows of people, commodities and information do not necessarily appear or bring about the same effect in every sphere of society or the life-world of every person. Appadurai pays much attention to those who move (or are forced to move) globally or dexterously handle electronic media to transcend the traditional neighbourhood and interact with each other. But local Indian cities do not consist only of this kind of subject. This chapter pays attention instead to those who do not or cannot move or handle electronic devices and considers how they try to make their local lives
212 M. Mio
meaningful in the context of the contemporary situation, which has been more or less influenced by nation state projects and/or globalisation. In this sense, this chapter shares the perspective of Donner and De Neve (2006). In the introduction to a set of essays exploring the meaning of the local in Indian cities in the 2000s, they deplore the situation of the local, claiming that it ‘increasingly derives its meaning from its juxtaposition to the global while the latter is privileged in the writings about globalization’ (Donner & De Neve 2006: 2). They try to reorient our attention to the urban people’s ways of ‘placemaking, and the role that locality plays in the construction of social relations against the background of changed global-local connections’ (Donner & De Neve 2006: 3). Their emphasis on the study of the meaning of the local is understandable when one considers the above-mentioned situation of urban Indian people. However, they point out that neighbourhood is still maintaining its social reality in Indian cities, and even where there is little interaction among neighbours, the neighbourhood retains its institutional and administrative role. They also try to clarify the meaning of the local, focusing on the neighbourhood (Donner & De Neve 2006: 10-11). The strength of the social reality of neighbourhood may differ from one city to another or from the position of one subject position to another; however, as described below, the neighbourhood has lost its traditional form and plays limited roles in making the locality that produces local subjects in Udaipur, even in its old town. Besides, as Appadurai pointed out, and as can be discerned by the case study of Udaipur used here, the administrative power in the nation state tends to exert itself to deprive the indigenousness of the neighbourhood that produces the locality (Appadurai, 1996: 189-192). So it is important to be wary of the perspective of Donner and De Neve, which sees the relationship between the neighbourhood and administrative power as somewhat affinitive. Through the examination of the practices of mediums and followers in the possession cults of the old city, this chapter considers how the local can be constructed in situations in which the neighbourhood cannot remain as a spatially limited community. As Appadurai suggests, locality can be produced and maintained without being based on people’s physical contiguity. Social contexts where the immediacy of people’s everyday lives can be maintained are important for the existence of locality. The possession cults provide their members with such contexts even though they are not living in physical contiguity because they can meet with each other regularly at the time of spirit possessions and other ritual occasions, and intimacy among them can be nurtured through sharing their pains. They do not belong to neighbourhood, but form a community based on network relationships. Ritual practices are important for the embodiment of community feeling in members of these cults. At the same time, sharing mythical stories about local Mewari heroes is also important in forming this possession cult. The formation of this kind of cult and the means of inheriting the story of the heroes at its core strongly reflect the contemporary condition of locality in a local Indian city.
