ABSTRACT
A three-dimensional image emerges highlighting social orders presented through inequalities and status distinctions by their linkage with territorial divisions. This chapter recalls a fierce ritual battle fought simultaneously over status, territorial allegiance, patterns of land distribution and power differentials. Political rituals are often centred on a text commemorating a mythical event, and they are embodied: during the subsequent ritual sequences people gather and segregate according to the ritual orders which, more often than not, correspond to the existing societal divisions. Two aspects of territoriality stand out in this account. First, territoriality refers to establishing borders within landscapes; second, it highlights significant sites that eventually may become objects or centres of contestations. Land is of interest here as the major commodity available in Belkot. The chapter demonstrates how one of the major Hindu rituals, the Durga Puja, has become subject to contestations in a minor historic site in Nepal, the last Hindu kingdom.
