Open AccessTHE HEADLESS HORSEMAN OF CENTRAL INDIA: Sovereignty at Varying Thresholds of Life
Author(s) -
SINGH BHRIGUPATI
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01148.x
Subject(s) - sovereignty , politics , ambivalence , sacrifice , power (physics) , sociology , philosophy , theology , law , political science , social psychology , psychology , physics , quantum mechanics
Building on recent anthropological discussions on sovereignty and life, I examine the political theologies of Thakur baba, a minor sovereign deity in central India. How might we understand spirits and deities as cohabitants with the living? Following Gilles Deleuze, I set out the idea of “varying thresholds of life.” How do we conceptualize relations of power between these thresholds? Engaging Thakur baba's capacity to harm and to bless, I show how this sacred ambivalence may be understood as an expression of deified sovereignty. In contrast to Agamben and Schmitt's more absolutist political theology, I set out a “bipolar” concept of sovereignty as varying relations of force and contract, a tension I find best named by the Vedic mythological pair of Mitra‐Varuna. Rather than a direct mirroring of social or historical sovereignty, I locate Thakur baba's vitality in a weave of kin and spirit relations, and in his status as a human sacrifice. In conclusion I analyze how these deified powers might wax and wane.