Resettling a River Goddess

Dhārī Devī is a local version of the goddess Kali. Her statue and the temple are situated on the river Alaknanda in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand (UK). Due to her popularity, mainly among the local population, but also among pilgrims, the place receives a steady flow of worshippers, especially during religious festivals. The river Alaknanda and with it the goddess’s temple forms part of the sacred waterscape of the Ganges. This fact – that the cultural identity of the goddess is shaped by the water course ¹ – recently resurfaced, when in 2008 the construction of a 330 MW hydropower project was taken up by the GVK Company in its vicinity at Srinagar (UK). Since the deity’s temple lay in the submergence zone behind the envisaged dam (90 m height from deepest foundation), plans were made to shift the statue onto a platform erected above its original location. This prospect met with local resistance and evolved into a sizeable culturally shaped environmental struggle comprising conflicting epistemologies about water.