ABSTRACT
Karin Polit focuses on the ritual journey of a deity called Jakh in the Central Himalayas of North India. His worshippers understand Jakh to be a reigning king, for what reasons he is accompanied by a large entourage, including three personal servants, the dharis, who are chosen by the deity (and the village community). They served Jakh for the entire six months of his journey. In March 2007 the entourage returned to their home village Kujaum and held a great festival to receive Jakh, but also to bid farewell to the deities and people who had kept him company during the pilgrimage. The three young men who served Jakh experience the greatest change. As the community’s past is performatively brought into both the landscape and people’s daily lives for the duration of the ritual journey, the young men’s identity as descendants of warrior heroes is re-created and newly negotiated. This identity is enacted and consolidated through affective and emotional attachments to deity, land and community. In the course of this chapter, the author scrutinizes the divine ritual journey as well as the festival in which it culminated as performative events with a focus on the ways young Himalayans are involved and changed by their affective and emotional responses to them.
