ABSTRACT
In the late 1990s, I conceived the idea of conducting research on the religion of the lowest castes of Uttarakhand, an Indian state in the Western Himalayas. I knew many Harijans 1 , I had interviewed them, recorded and translated their songs, and visited them in their homes. But I had never done proper ethnographic research amongst them, never lived with them for long periods of time, never focused on their social life and customs, or asked them in detail about their lives. Now I thought that it was time to do so, and I wanted to focus on their religious practices.
