Ghost Dog and the Return to Kaliphat

I am recently returned, as strange and as accurate as that sounds, to Ukhimath after approximately two months out of station. Kaliphat is an old name for this area: it means the area surrounding the Kali river. Now the same river is generally called the Mandakini. The main events of my sojourning were the marriage of my friends Kate and Paul and, already being in Britain, research about Kedarnath at the British Library (see previous post). I even squeezed in a quick trip to America.

There has been a lot of nomadism, recently. Now that I think about it, I have not slept in the same room continuously for more than two weeks since the end of the season in Kedarnath. In such situations I seem to develop inner, instinctual antennae that search out ways by which other kinds of continuity, non-locative ones, could be established. I’m usually not so successful, but I try. The clearest example of what I mean involves the film Ghost Dog. Early on during my time in Britain I heard the phrase “Ghost Dog” thrown out, perhaps on television, in a context utterly unrelated to the film. However upon hearing the phrase I was suddenly possessed, viscerally, with the need to see Ghost Dog again. For those of you who are not familiar with the film, it is Jim Jarmusch’s homage to the sub-genre (of which I am very fond) of hip-hop martial arts films. Forest Whitaker plays the protagonist of the film, a modern-day, unlooked for samurai/assassin who lives on the roof of a building with his pigeon flock and owes his allegiance to a Mafioso who saved his life several years before. The pacing of the film, cinematography, and soundtrack are phenomenal. So I downloaded the film, and watched it. And then watched it again, with a friend, in Delhi. And then again, with another friend, in Ukhimath. I am not quite sure what in me needed to see this film so many times, but there it is. Perhaps I want to see my life as an art film with a good soundtrack. Who knows? Other instances of continuity establishment involved watching bits of an old Raj Kapoor film in an airport hotel in London and in Ciraag Delhi. And perhaps beyond continuity and into the realm of meta-continuity, was a successful attempt at a profoundly stirring musical juxtaposition as I walked across the Thames at night, fighting the wind at every step. I started with a recording of a local Garhwali jagar singing the story of the rakshas Banasur and the marriage of his daughter Usha to Aniruddh. Many of the pilgrimage priests of Kedarnath consider themselves to be descended from Banasur and the Lamgondi area where many of them live is understood to be his area. I then shifted right from the jagar to Limelighters by Aesop Rock. The power generated individually by both songs and even more so by their juxtaposition and eerily powerful musical continuities almost took me out of my body for about 5 minutes.

These days I am in Ukhimath, with upcoming trips scheduled for Garhwal Srinagar, Lamgondi, and possibly Pauri Garhwal. I am trying to learn more Garhwali, and work through data I have collected, prepare for the beginning of the 2008 pilgrimage season, and plan my re-entry.

Pursuing Kedarnath Through the Archives

This is a brief digest of what I found in London at the British Library in the first part of January 2008. My interest in such historical documentation at the moment is primarily both to understand the issues that inform current debates about rights of administration and collection of dakshina in Kedarnath and to find specific, historically situated details about rituals relating to the Kedarnath temple.

-Important information for searching on Garhwal in the India Office Library:

“In 1833 the Bengal Presidency was divided into two parts, one of which was styled the Presidency of Agra. In 1836 Agra was re-named the North-Western Provinces and was placed under a Lieutenant-Governor. The kingdom of Oudh was annexed in 1856 and was placed under a Chief Commissioner.The North-Western Provinces and Oudh were joined together under a single administration in 1877. Their name was changed to the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in 1902 and shortened to the United Provinces in 1912.” (Administrative Note from in house Reading Room Binder, p. ii. )

-Information about Garhwal in the India Office library could be filed either under Kumaon (since British Garhwal was part of Kumaon) or under things relating to the princely state of Tehri-Garhwal.

Summary of Findings

    Findings ended up being more heuristic than anything else. It became clear that

1) the Kedar valley (part of pargana Nagpur, a land division which included both the shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath) was the site of geographical, administrative, and political slippage in the form of disputed boundaries between British Garhwal and Tehri Garhwal, and that Bamsu (that is to say, the area where many of the pilgrimage priests of Kedarnath are from) would seem to have played a special role in this) and

2) Kedarnath, from the top down, has been treated administratively and legally mostly as an appendage of Badrinath.

To the extent that the issues of legality and tradition are different for Kedar and Badri and that the knowledge base by which such issues could be revolved is in comparison to Badrinath slightly scanty, the documents I looked at frame potential Kedarnath issues but do not discuss them directly for the most part. One question for the present time might then be at what point did Kedarnath-related legal disputes become legally distinct from those of Badrinath? Another question that emerges out of this question is the lack of precision evinced in the record (both for Badrinath and Kedarnath) regarding the details of the identities of the Southern pujaris. They seem to get it mostly right for Badrinath but the colonial record at times contradicts itself regarding the identity of the Kedarnath pujaris, at times calling them Virashaivas (which is what they are now) and at times Brahmins from Kerala (i.e. similar to Badrinath). There is no evidence of such confusion now. It is also clear (though fuzzily clear, if you will) that the religious/secular (bracketing the problematics of this distinction for the moment) administration of the Panch Kedar were different for various Kedars, thus highlighting the composite nature of this pilgrimage system as a “system”.

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Main Documents Worked With or Sought (note: I also looked at numerous other documents, especially histories of Garhwal and gazetteers but did not note them extensively or spend time with them after I confirmed through World Cat that they were available elsewhere):

Atkinson, Edwin T. Notes on the History of Religion in the Himálaya of the N.-W. Provinces. Calcutta: the Author, 1883.

 Atkinson, Edwin T. The Himalayan Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India Vol. III (Forming Volume XII, of the Gazetteer, N.-W.P.). Allahabad: North-western Provinces and Oudh Government Press, 1886.

 Batten, J. H. . Report on the Settlement of the District of Gurhwal in the Province of Kumaon. Agra: Orphan Press, 1843.

 

Crown Representative’s Records: Political Department Records. “Tehri-Garhwal Darbar’s Claim for the Kedarnath and Badrinath Shrines.” 1936. Ior/R/1/1/2951. India Office Library.

 Government of India Foreign and Political Department. “Representation from the Tehri Darbar in Regard to the Badrinath Temple, Restoration of the Village of Tapoban, and the Settlement of the Sankot Leases. File No. 306 – Political / 1931.” 1931. R/1/1/2129. India Office Library.

 Hamblin, R.E. “Report on Civil Justice in the Kumaun Division During the Calendar Year 1899.” In Judicial Proceedings of Northwest Territories with Index, 1900.

 India Office. “Appointment of a Chief Priest, or Naib Rawal, at the Temple of Badrinath in British Garhwal.” October 1895. Judicial and Public Annual Files 1901-1999. IOR/L/PJ/6/408. India Office Library.

 MUIR, John. Notes of a Trip to Kedarnath and Other Parts of the Snowy Range of the Himalayas in the Autumn of 1853. with Some Account of a Journey from Agra to Bombay. Edinburgh: Printed for private circulation, 1855.

 “The Religious Endowments Act, 1863 (XX of 1863) (As Modified Up To The 10th August, 1936).” . Delhi: Manager of Publications (Government of India: Legislative Department), 1936.

 “The United Provinces Shri Badrinath Temple Act, 1939.” In A Collection of Acts Passed by The Legislature of the United Provinces in the year 1937. Allahabad: Superintendent, Print. and Stationery, United Provinces, India, 1939.

 Traill, George William. “Report on the Districts of Kumaon and Garhwal by the Commissioner, George William Traill (with Associated Correspondence).” September 1823. Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India 1784-1858. IOR/F/4/828/21951 . India Office Library.

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There were also two documents for which I spent a good deal of time searching, fruitlessly:

1) 1899 Scheme of Management for Badrinath Temple passed by Kuamon Commissioner’s Court

2) 1948 Uttar Pradesh Amendment to 1939 Shri Badrinath Temple Act (which broadens the scope of the act to include Kedarnath)

The search continues for these documents here, in India.

Angles of Approach are Upward