An Elusive Himalayan Secularism: Managing Pilgrimage in Garhwal, 1815-2021

Abstract In November 2021, the state government of Uttarakhand, India withdrew the Cār Dhām Devasthānam Management Act, a law enacted only two years prior to establish state government authority over pilgrimage practice at fifty-three temples in Garhwal, a linguistic-cultural region in the Indian Himalayas. Supporters of this bill had sought to ensure transparency in the management of these major pilgrimage temples. Hereditary ritual specialists at the temples and others vehemently contested the law’s efforts to regulate practice at the temples associated with the Cār Dhām Yātrā pilgrimage, where ritual and administrative practice was long governed by diverse local traditions. The debates over this law mirror closely the century-long struggle during British rule to protect pilgrims, maintain pilgrimage infrastructure, and combat corruption while avoiding the entanglement in Hindu religious affairs that was prohibited by British law. Just as British officials were caught between the imperative to avoid involvement in the religious affairs of their Hindu subjects and the moral demands to protect pilgrims from exploitation, partisans in the 2019–21 debate differed on whether to accede to the “traditional” ritual rights of those attached to the temples or to reform temple practice according to modern organizational principles. This article argues that the debates over the 2021 Cār Dhām Devasthānam Management Act rehearse the tortured history of Indian secularism and reveal again its intractable contradictions.