1For several years, social and cultural anthropologists have been wrestling with the explanation of the entanglement and interconnectedness of humans with their environment. Central to this discussion is always the question of the possibility of agency or the attribution of agency by non-human actors. Lokesh Ohri’s book Till Kingdom Come: Medieval Hinduism in the modern Himalaya takes this discussion several steps further. It introduces a social actor, a divine king, whose example the author uses to show that the separation between religion and politics makes little sense in these contexts. Instead, he suggests that the agency that is clearly exercised by the divine king at social, religious, and political levels must first be acknowledged before it can be understood. 

2Till Kingdom Come: Medieval Hinduism in the modern Himalaya is an ethnography of divine kings in the Indian Himalayan region that lies between the two federal states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand: Jaunsar-Bawar and the kingdom of Mahasu, the divine king with various local manifestations. The four forms of Mahasu stand together as one against enemies and dangers from outside, but also fight among themselves. The followers of each form are sometimes allies, sometimes enemies. Ohri has written a special book here. His ethnography includes both long-term, thorough historical research and long ethnographic fieldwork on the banks of the Tons River where the kingdom of Mahasu lies. It is a book about a god who demanded tribute from the Dilli Durbar, a god who forced British officers to surrender, a god whom the state chief minister begged for support – in other words, a divine king. 

3Ohri shows that rituals are much more than just religiously oriented practices: they are actions which, at the moment the book was published, exercise real political power. He writes that his main concern is to understand, through his ethnography, the region he came to know in his youth as a region of cultural Others and backwardness, the region of Jaunsar-Bawar. People in the city of Dehra Dun, where he grew up and was educated, often called and still call the region the land of magic spells, the land where heroin was made and the land where home-brewed rice beer flowed. Instead of describing exotic practices, however, the author recounts political practices that are integrated into the rituals of these mountain communities, where the sacred and the profane exist as one. The gods exercise political control over large areas across federal-state boundaries. The separation between religion and politics does not exist. Political decisions are made in the temple. Mahasu dispenses justice, selects candidates for political elections, endorses candidates and, historically, had influence over individuals in the British colonial administration. The book ultimately asks how these practices should be read in the context of modern society. The practices Ohri observed and which he describes in his book did not appear to be irrational.

4On the contrary, the author writes, for the inhabitants of these mountains, the political, the religious and the economic are so interconnected that they cannot be separated from each other. The god who is worshipped in the temple in Hanol also intervenes in political decisions. He is a divine king who controls the country, collects taxes, is the head of a bureaucracy and holds court by speaking through mediums. At the same time, the mediums in his temples also cure people of diseases and very specific problems. Mahasu is the commander-in-chief of a militia that oversees the people’s land, while keeping an eye on the economic interests of the temple and the community. Thus, the god represents a unique political and social system. The god is a divine king. The system, the author argues, has not only survived the arrival of modernity in the region but has adapted to it. Even today, the divine king constantly travels the country, establishing on the way friendship and enmity with the followers of his other forms. The enmity is linked to the descent of the people from the hostile families of the Mahabharata epic. The power of the god in the population’s daily and political life is not really anything special for the people themselves, so the author writes. By contrast, the anthropologist is fascinated. According to the author, this says more about his subjectivity as an anthropologist than about the actual Otherness of the region. At the same time, according to Ohri, modern life and devotion to the god are not mutually exclusive. Many of the subjects of the divine king are trained medical doctors, lawyers in administration or engaged in police work, but still remain devoted to the divine king. In addition, the divine king plays a major role for politicians in neighbouring regions. The temple prasad, according to the author, is often considered as guaranteeing direct entry into the state chief minister’s room. 

5The modernity the author describes here is not to be understood as an efficient modernity that would emerge only after the abolition of backwardness and seclusion of the community. Instead, the author asserts that the political agency of the divine king in this mountainous region is evidence that humans and the god are adaptable and powerful enough to live on in this alternative modernity. Ohri accordingly describes the rituals of the place as at once extraordinarily conservative and at the same time as having a high degree of adaptability. He asks then, how it is that such an unusual practice and such divine political power still survive in this way in democratic India, playing a major role in both the everyday life of the community and the political life of region. Democracy has emerged and is being practised, but this has not diminished the power of the god. Instead, he is included in the region’s democratic processes. For the subjects of the divine king, this is a completely self-evident part of their lives and their daily routine, which is not questioned. 

6The book, published in 2019, is one of the first ethnographic books on the Himalayan region that attempts to take a decolonial standpoint in explaining local practices that run counter to the rationality of the Global North. Ohri argues that it is probably societies that perceive themselves as modern that have a deficit. They seem unable to understand let alone accept alternative ways of living and thinking. 

7After a lengthy introduction, chapter two provides ethnographic evidence that the ritual acts of divine processions described by the author cannot be understood as purely symbolic religious acts. Instead, they are an integral part of the society in which they take place, with wide-ranging political consequences, and they offer the possibility of dealing with all sorts of vital problems and issues for a large number of individuals. In particular, he argues that the ritual practices he observed cannot be seen as purely religious acts but as acts of political power and economic substance. This, Ohri writes, is not unusual in South Asia and has already been described by Kim Marriott. And on closer examination, it also becomes clear that in the South Asian context, religious processions and allusions to religion and deities are part and parcel of politics in many contexts. While human kings with political power in India had to submit to democratic rules at the end of the colonial period and at the beginning of the democratic period of independent India, divine kings and queens throughout India continued to exercise their power and legitimacy over their own territories. Ohri asks the question as to how divine kings actually maintained their power, not only over their subjects but also in the political arena. One of the ways the author identifies is the network of power that firmly anchors the divine king in the region’s social structure. In this network, individuals are primarily connected to their village elders; village elders are connected to regional elders; and regional elders are connected to the divine king. The network made up of the four forms of Mahasu, who appear as siblings, their mother and their human representatives is so flexibly and powerfully bound to social structures that it explains both the conservative preservation of the power of the divine king and its flexibility. The power is in fact extended and exercised through the various loyalties of different people within this system that is confirmed again and again through ritual action. 

8It is clear that the divine king intervenes in political events. He demands respect from the political leaders of the region and the state, and therefore respect from his followers. They tell stories about his power, which for them extends as far as governments. Proof of this is the involvement of the divine king in election campaigns for example, but also the personal relationships between politicians and the deity. In his historical research, the author found evidence that this influence reached as far as Delhi. Another anecdote tells the story of how Mahasu was able to settle a legal dispute between the king of Tehri and a critical administrative employee. The divine kingship described here is a lived reality. It is a power that is manifested and ritually negotiated through a network made up of the divine king and the people who consider themselves assigned to him. Thus, the book is indeed an early example of postcolonial rebellion against Western knowledge structures without actually including this explicitly in the argument. The strength of the book lies primarily in its combination of intense ethnographic descriptions and well-researched historical details. The highlight of this book, however, is the chapter in which Ohri’s own ethnographic notes occupy most of the space. Here we get an idea of how many people are involved; the priests are mentioned; the material culture is explained; all the people who take part in the various rituals around the temple and do work there are mentioned; and their role in the temple and for the god is explained. The most important argument in this chapter is that of ritual obligation, that is obligations that all persons and non-human actors involved in the network of the god fulfil. The fulfilment of obligations then also has a direct effect on the position of power of the individual actor, human and not human. That is to say that, in this chapter, it becomes clear how non-human agency works. The author makes a very strong argument against the claim that human actors of ritual action are manipulative. He comments that the power relations that are negotiated here are always intensely and discursively won. Mahasu is part of the political and religious life of the people who, in turn, are part of the network of divine agency. Only in those moments where this is accepted can ritual practices be understood in all their complexity.

9The author thus succeeds in tracing the history of Mahasu in both the colonial and early postcolonial eras up to the present day and in describing how the god’s position as a political power holder has repeatedly adapted to the various political constellations. And with that he also describes the people who feel assigned to the God, who could keep their autonomy when belonging to Mahasu, without at the same time having to withdraw completely from modern life. Ohri thus disputes the tone of previous studies about the region, which have largely dealt with evidence of the region’s backwardness, namely practices that show it in this light: practices of polyandry, for example. So far, stereotypes about the backwardness of the region have always been proven by these studies. Ohris’s book therefore also appears as an attempt to highlight the region’s distinctiveness but at the same time to place it within modern India. Yes, the region has long been marginalised. Nevertheless, the political structure the author describes in his book is not backward nor is it to be seen as backward. The structure links warrior castes to each other and they in turn to priests, the Brahmins. And musicians, drummers and bards are no less important to the political structure. They tell stories of generations that link the king to the land and to the people, and thus form the foundation of his power. 

10At the same time, however, the worship of Mahasu is also a manifestation of the social relations between people and, in particular, a manifestation of the caste system. However, this is mentioned only in passing: for example, when talking about the drummers’ functions and tasks, when mentioning that members of lower castes have other gods travelling with them. It would surely be a study in itself to write a book about the entanglements and interests of these people. Ohri does devote a chapter to the subject of caste, however, in which he focuses more on the marginal status of the region and less on the experiences of people who do not belong to the Rajputs or Brahmins. He notes that the divine king is in fact very much entrenched in the caste system in the area. The people who are closest to the divine king, or who may come closest physically, all belong to the Jatis who are considered to be the purest. Preservers and keepers of knowledge and song, drummers and singers, however, must stop at the thresholds of the temples, which they are not allowed to enter. Although central to the preservation of power, they remain on the periphery. This is also relevant because, in other regions of the Himalayas, these same musicians – for reasons of discrimination – increasingly tend to fail to educate their children in this direction. The author accordingly describes the protests against the ban on entering the temple. It becomes clear that this is not a matter of discrimination of individual ideas, but that this network actually forms a regime of norms that has a great impact on the emotional and affective reactions of the people who are part of Mahasu’s network.

11The book, however, not only covers the political and historical dimensions of the local god but also provides a very good introduction to the mythological background of Mahasu and links it to the great pantheon of Indian deities, such as the story of Shiva and Parvati. It also provides a link to the great Indian epic Mahabharata. In its own local manifestation, the relationship with the great epic is at the same time a symbol of the region’s independence despite its connection to Indian society. The author quotes large portions of locally told stories in his book, which makes the book interesting also for scholars who study local myths and the Mahabharata.

12What makes the book particularly valuable are the long passages from the notes of the British official Emerson who made graphic notes on the rituals in the temples, the political networks and the rituals practised at the end of the 19th century. Since the manuscript has never been published before, the passages printed here are valuable for any scholar of the region.

13Today, the author would probably integrate the book in the discussion about the ontological turn and the discussion about the decolonisation of knowledge. The book can be understood as a point of entry for discussion about this theoretical reflection. Above all, it is a homage to the human and non-human actors Ohri encountered during his research.