Drew Thomases’ Guest is God: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Making Paradise in India is a bright, accessible look under the hood of contemporary fieldwork in Pushkar, Rajasthan, northwest India. Based on thirty months’ residence in Pushkar spread over nearly a decade, Thomases’ conversations with priests and experiences in the city shape his explanations of how Pushkar articulates its identity as home to Brahma’s only temple, constructs “paradise” through ritualized environmentalism, and makes sense of encounters with millions of diverse visitors through processes of “brothering.”
After the Taj Mahal, Pushkar is a frontrunner for photographs of India in tourist advertisements and large-format souvenir books. Distinguished by turbans and camels, this always colorful (see chapter 4) destination has exploded in popularity since the 1970s. Yet there are few academic resources delving into the stories, societies, and structures behind these striking images. Guest is God is a welcome response to this lacuna, proving to be a nearly jargon-free, well-paced, and skillfully sequenced work, with Thomases’ arguments frequently presaging questions likely to be bubbling in the mind of a reader. As such, this slim volume (161 pages) will appeal to those who have travelled, or wish to travel, in India, but find Lonely Planet blurbs and travel blog essays imprecise or reductive. This work is also suitable for undergraduates interested in South Asian religions, ethnographic fieldwork, and applications of religious studies theory. Thomases is careful to introduce his theorists incrementally, with theories of ritual and sacred space applied to concrete examples (see Catherine Bell’s theory of ritual applied repeatedly in chapter two, for instance).
The chapters largely stand on their own, and with access to relevant endnotes and the succinct glossary, could be assigned in undergraduate courses. The standalone content chapters (the “what” of the book) come toward the end, so I will begin with them and move toward the more Pushkar-specific, methodological chapters (the “how”) at the beginning. The fifth and last chapter, tracing the Euro-American and South Asian combined discourse on vibration, is particularly self-contained—related tangentially to Pushkar, it is a modern history of religions case study relevant to many other contexts. The fourth chapter, on economies of color as a lens through which to consider spectacle while avoiding the pitfalls of the tourist gaze, is well contained and could be applied in other studies. The only point I would have liked to see developed is the color valuation inherent in colorism—Thomases mentions race, but does not consider how perceptions and experiences of color and colorism, beyond and in addition to Brown and White, form this space and those who move through it.
Thomases second and third chapters are the most Pushkar-specific. These are chapters I wish I could have read as an undergraduate before pursuing my own fieldwork in north India. Chapter 2 discusses the construction of “paradise” in Pushkar, and how this is done through a combination of circumambulation and ritualized environmental maintenance in line with both biological and soteriological modalities of reasoning—modalities which might not be wholly separable. Ethnographies of South Asia are growing in number, but this is an important addition to the ethnography of religion, which still over-represents Europe and the Americas in its catalog. Although appreciative of Thomases’ emplaced, first-person presentation of paradise-building, I do think the self-acknowledged fact that his interlocutors are all Brahman residents, and mostly male, limits excessively the analysis of a “paradise” that is perceived and co-constructed by millions of visitors per year.
The second chapter also takes on a problem endemic in summaries of Hinduism: the inadequacy of the “Hindu Trinity” model of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Thomases notes that Brahma is largely absent in India, and provides the narrative explanation for this absence, which stems from a curse leveled by Brahma’s first wife, Savitri. This explanation is enriched by comments from Pushkar’s priests, who see this as a reason that Pushkar is special, not that Brahma is limited. The misleading distribution of roles to Brahmā, Vishnu, and Shiva is not addressed, however, and is in fact reinforced with a local analysis of GOD as Generator, Operator, Destroyer (88). The parallel between Brahmā’s wives Savitri and Gayatri and the Rig Vedic Gayatri Mantra, which is called the Savitri, is likewise not treated.
Throughout, Thomases’ work is guided by a “hermeneutic of sympathy” (160), which may be a step too far past William Mahony’s hermeneutic of trust, itself a corrective to Paul Ricœur’s distilled hermeneutics of suspicion. In his first chapter, Thomases discusses “brothering” and conceptions of Sanatana Dharma as responses to diversity. While “sanatana” means “eternal,” the author glosses its use in Pushkar as “universal” (28). Beyond noting that this universality might still be hierarchical, there is relatively little exploration of the term as an articulation of a timeless, supreme Hinduism. Indeed, beyond a discussion of environmental purity (62), there are few comparisons to other sites. These Pushkar-specific examples do not apply in all contemporary Hindu contexts; conversely, comparison with literature treating other sites might clarify the specialness and specificity of Pushkar.
For example, discourse in Pushkar highlights the difficulty of getting into the city, and the good karma necessary to do so (74). Contrastingly, in the remarkably important pilgrimage and tourist destination of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, discourse emphasizes the city’s universal accessibility and complete efficacy. Neither is necessarily better, but they are different—and that is important. Little comparison is paralleled by scant critical analysis: Thomases frequently distances himself from “cynical academics,” and says he trusts that his interlocutors mean what they say (160). I’m sure they do, but this does not preclude a scholar, however uncynical, from observing how these positions play out. Does experience align with these earnest statements? Or is there rupture between, say, a Brahmanical assertion of universal brotherhood, and the experiences of those from other castes, religions, or countries in Pushkar? Such considerations are mentioned, but not developed.
His introduction to contemporary Pushkar complete, I look forward to Thomases future work as he develops the many threads of discourse started here.
Seth Ligo is an instructor of religious studies at Duke University.
Seth Ligo
Date Of Review:
July 28, 2023
