When Humans Need Gods and Gods Need Humans: Prophetic Authority and Ritual Negotiation in Himachal Pradesh

ABSTRACT In Himachal Pradesh, India, village deities act as political figures who play an active role in communal affairs, especially during periods of social change. Bakhan , an annual divination ritual in which these deities speak through human mediums, is a public event that offers forecasts and instructions. I argue that the bakhan is a social arena in which divine authority is publicly enacted and made answerable to communal judgment. Drawing on ethnographic research, I develop the concept of “performative accountability” to show how prophetic claims gain force through a process in which they are voiced, interpreted, increasingly questioned, and measured against subsequent events. Divine authority, I argue, does not rest on revelation alone but takes shape through ongoing relations of recognition and response between gods and villagers. The bakhan reveals a form of authority sustained through public scrutiny rather than being insulated from it.