Opinion Rescue apart, there’s tunnel vision in ‘Dev Bhoomi’ Uttarakhand

Today, however, multiple Dev Bhoomis exist in Uttarakhand. While the majoritarian pantheistic establishment looks at the Dev Bhoomi’s Char Dham as the milking cow for national vote share and corporate greed, the Dev Bhoomi of the mountain communities looks askance for more empathy and understanding from their destiny makers in New Delhi, occupying thrones higher than their local deities. No wonder then, every disaster in the region is accompanied by a backstory of violation of local belief systems.

In the 2013 Kedarnath floods, the main topic of discussion in the villages was the forcible shifting of the Dhari Devi image. The Joshimath disaster resonated with the legend of the end of Badrinath in Kaliyuga, with the Bhavishya Badri replacing the venerated shrine of Badrinath as the main site of Vishnu worship. People in the region know that a time would come soon when the Narsingh Temple of Joshimath would disintegrate with the Jay and Vijay peaks blocking access to the shrine of Badrinath. As cracks appeared in the Narsingh Temple along with homes and hotels in Joshimath, thanks to digging of tunnels underneath on loose moraine, there was no doubt in people’s minds that Kaliyuga was round the corner.

And today, the villages around Uttarkashi resound with the story of the destruction of the Buakhnag shrine, that to their thinking has led to the unfortunate tunnel collapse at the site. Most of these local deities like Baukhnag, Narsingh or Dhari Devi serve communities as kshetrapals or guardians of the landscape, its people, wildlife, and resources, and as the bhumiyals, lords of the land. They are carried by devoted locals in palanquin processions over their designated territories, converting vast landscapes into conservation zones, not by government decree but by their presence that attributes sacredness to them.

While there may be no scientific evidence to link disasters like the one in Uttarkashi with the invasion of the thans or seats of local deities and the belief systems around them, the people on the ground make their linkages. Himalayan communities know that their Dev Bhoomi is now othered from the nation’s Dev Bhoomi of multi-lane highways, rail networks, helipads, and v-logs of Char Dham travel. They also know that they have no agency to resist the imposition, and that there is no end to their sacrifice for what is always touted as the greater common good.

In a region where local beliefs have helped retain social cohesion and ecological balance for centuries, what emerges from this uncompromising clash between these beliefs and the tunnel-vision (harsh pun intended) of the national establishment is a dangerous trend. It belies a complete lack of local knowledge on part of the national leadership and the spinelessness of the local political establishment to stand up for its own people.

Take the case of Uttarkashi, where the current tunnel collapse has occurred. The district is a transition zone, culturally and geographically, the only one in Uttarakhand with two of the four Char Dhams – Gangotri and Yamunotri — places of origin of our great rivers. It has had a long history of disasters where almost every attempted government incursion since Independence has failed miserably. Earthquakes, floods, the sliding of Varunavat mountain, cloudbursts — Uttarkashi has seen everything. In such a volatile landscape, our ancestors were not fools in ensuring a system where the gods would descend from their abodes before the onset of winter, allowing the landscape to recover before the next pilgrimage could begin. But all caution was thrown to the winds in building an all-weather road without even conducting an environment impact assessment. The immense ecological cost of shortening the highway in this stretch by just 20 km will be paid for by local communities for centuries to come.

What is ironic is that the same establishment that projects religion as their main claim to power and seeks votes from the national majority by publicising visits to these shrines, turns completely “rational” and irreligious when it comes to tearing through landscapes and awarding projects to corporates.

The current establishments, both in the state of Uttarakhand and at the Centre would do well to remember that contestations between local and global in the past have snowballed into movements like Chipko and anti-dam protests, finally leading to the carving out of a separate state. For an average village resident of the Uttarakhand Himalayas, little has changed since the days of British rule or the times under Uttar Pradesh. Where we go from here will depend on how and whether the two Dev Bhoomis reconcile.

The writer is an anthropologist, author and activist based in the Himalayas