A Tale of Goddesses, Money, and Other Terribly Wonderful Things - Spirit Possession, Commodity Fetishism

a tale of goddesses, money, and other terribly
wonderful things: spirit possession,

commodity fetishism, and the narrative of
capitalism in Rajasthan, India
JEFFREY G. SNODGRASS
Colorado State University
In this article, I examine the spiritual possession of a young Indian woman—a

member of a community of performers known as Bhats—by her husband's
lineage goddess. The events unfold in the Rajasthani town of Udaipur where
Bhats now market traditional culture to tourists. Showing how this possession
responds to my informants' new exchange relations, I argue for the utility of
the Marxist notion of "commodity fetishism." / contend, however, that Marx-
ist accounts, because of their typically insistent condemnation of capitalist
transformation, are not able to account fully for the Bhat experience of new
money relations. I maintain, instead, that an analysis emphasizing multiple
moral narratives more completely illuminates the Bhats' complex encounter
with the economic forms of modernity. I further suggest that discourse-based
descriptions of spiritual possession also cannot do full justice to this woman's
case, which is as much a failure to communicate as a successfully articulated,
if disguised, mode of communication. I thus argue for an appreciation of the
way religious forms, and particularly spiritual possessions, represent a form of
language and the failure of language, as well as a kind of story and the inabil-
ity to narrate experience. Overall, I develop an analytical framework that
draws out the representational implications of the notion of fetishism—
which, according to Marx, describes a situation in which images (such as
money), if compelling enough, eclipse their referents (labor)—and that might
do more justice to the Bhats', themselves praise singers, own sophisticated
engagement with fictions. [India, spirit possession, religion, money, commod-
ity fetishism, capitalism, narrative, discourse, Marxism, poststructuralism]
In this article, I examine the spiritual possession of a young Indian woman by her
husband's lineage goddess. The woman, whom I refer to with the pseudonym Be-
dami, belongs to a community of low-status performers called Bhats. Bhats (lit.,
"Bards") are nomadic entertainers from the western or desert side of the state of Rajas-
than. Members of this caste, with whom I conducted over two and a half years of eth-
nographic research, are employed as genealogists, oral historians, mythographers,
buffoons, and praise singers in a local patron-client economy termed jajmani. In re-
turn for this work, they receive gifts in cash and kind from one of the most ritually im-
pure patron castes of India, an "untouchable" community referred to as Bhambis. In
the past 30 years, however, Bhats have taken up puppetry, now entertaining local and
American Ethnologist29(3):602-636. Copyright €> 2002, American Anthropological Association.

a tale of goddesses 603
foreign tourists in five-star hotels and at folklore festivals with their colorful stories and
wooden figures.1
As I see it, one of the striking characteristics of this woman's possession is the
Bhat community's, as well as the goddess', overt and insistent linking of this spiritual
event to money, and more particularly to Bedami's husband's attitude toward money.
My informants invariably told me the goddess incarnated because Bedami's husband,
whom I call Ramu, refused to spend on others—that is, Ramu was stingy (kanjus). The
goddess is thus said to have overtaken Bedami in order to convince Ramu to spend
more on the community, thus "fixing his mind" and "teaching him how to behave."
My informants, moreover, explicitly link Ramu's stinginess to the fact that he has en-
tered the new market economy in a manner unlike other Bhats—as a paid employee
at a local folklore institute, a job that regulates his life and values in ways that other
new Bhat pursuits do not. Ramu's pursuit of a regular wage, personal savings, and
even life insurance, according to many Bhats, instills in him a destructive stinginess
and forgetfulness toward his community, which is said to be the trigger of his wife's
possession.
Marx (1978a, 1978b), in a formulation that would seem to shed light on this Bhat
spiritual possession, suggests that persons inhabiting or entering a capitalist economy
may come to perceive the fruits of their labor, which in the capitalist mode of ex-
change Marx refers to as "commodities," as the source of economic value rather than
a mere product of the human imagination. Commodities, then, can come to possess a
seeming vitality and power surpassing that of the human beings who conceived them,
even assuming, in some ways, the status of divinity. Marx referred to this reversal,
which he sees as grotesquely misconceived and immoral, as "commodity fetishism."2
Ramu, recently entering Rajasthan's capitalist economy, would seem to view
commodities and people in much the way Marx might predict for such "capitalists"—
or, at least, the Ramu described by my Bhat informants would seem to behave as
Marx predicts. Many Bhats, for example, claim that Ramu no longer "believes" in
people but only in money. My informants also accuse him of "forgetting" his commu-
nity, stingily refusing to loan other Bhats even five rupee notes. Ramu is even said to
have sold out his own community in his blind pursuit of wealth, for example, by pro-
viding his folklore institute employer with his community's puppetry secrets. Some
Bhats suggested to me that money is Ramu's only god (in Hindi, devta). Ramu, in his
seeming deification of monetary relations and subsequent devaluing of people,
would appear to be a "commodity fetishist" in a classic Marxist sense.
Michael Taussig's (1980) account of the sugar plantation economy of western
Colombia helps to illuminate further Bhat attitudes toward Bedami's possession and
Ramu. Taussig explores the ways South American peasants and miners connect local
spirit beliefs with new global economic forms. In his own research, and in his reinter-
pretation of June Nash's (1972, 1976) work in Bolivian tin mines, Taussig suggests
that South American workers entering the capitalist economy perceive money as pos-
sessing supernatural powers. Miners selling their labor to the market, for example,
make deals with a corrupt god of wealth—referred to as El J\o, a composite of the
Christian Devil and an ancient god of the underworld—in order to increase their own
productivity in the mines and thus earn more money. The money earned through
these pacts, however, is believed to be morally tainted; it cannot be used for the good
of others within the community, nor can it be saved or otherwise put to productive
use. El Tio, the god of a new kind of productivity and a new social class, is believed to
encourage selfish pursuits and individualism, gnawing at the heart of previously cohe-
sive communities. Taussig suggests that beliefs such as these demonstrate the new
604 american ethnologist
proletariat's perception of the evil of capitalist relations of production and exchange.

Monetary relations are "fetishized" as creatures with seemingly destructive super-
natural powers. They are not deified, however, as Marx (1978a, 1978b) imagined in
his own account of "commodity fetishism," but demonized; and the workers under-
going dislocation seem as aware as Marxist critics of the moral travesty of capitalist re-
lations of production.
Bhat criticisms of Ramu would seem to resonate, as I show in the first sections of
this article, with these South American peasants' and miners' moral critiques of capi-
talist relations as sketched by Taussig. Ramu, as he pursues his salaried employment
at a local folklore institute, is branded the new economy's greedy, even wicked
(setan), agent. Bhats, in fact, refer to Ramu as a ghost (bhut) and demon (raksas)—
terms that, in Bhat parlance, refer to evil entities wandering on the fringes of society,
not respecting human values. Ramu's seeming deification or fetishisation of monetary
relations and subsequent devaluing of persons—which Marx saw as intrinsic to the
capitalist mode of production, and Taussig an inversion of traditional morality—
would thus seem to outrage a local deity who incarnates in order to chastise an evil
man (Ramu) and fend off a modern rival (money). This Bhat spiritual possession
would therefore seem to point to the Bhat perception of the evil destructiveness of
new capitalist relations of production—thus paralleling Taussig's own account of
economic transformation in South America.
Such a neat encapsulation of the Bhat take on new money relations, however,
does not do full justice to Bhat experiences of Bedami's possession, a point I demon-
strate in subsequent sections of the article. Ramu, for example, perceives the visitation
of the goddess, or devi, not as a condemnation of his modern values, but as a divine
boon and implicit recognition of his new superior way of life—for Ramu, new moneyed
relations appear intrinsically good and moral. Bedami, both as herself and as the goddess,
likewise at certain moments celebrates new money relations and overall holds deeply
ambivalent views on her husband's new employment. Marx, then, is ready to con-
demn capitalism as an inversion of a more traditional, and therefore a more humane,
economy. Taussig, too, criticizes new capitalist relations—and, in fact, suggests that
his South American informants do likewise. Bhat experiences with new market rela-
tions, however, do not seem to encourage a Marxist reading, with its sometimes sin-
gular morality. Rather, I argue, the Bhats' multifarious constructions of money and
wage labor necessitates a reading that documents the multiple discourses circulating
within local communities through which persons make moral judgments.3
Readings that emphasize the dynamic and even contradictory nature of struc-
tures of language and thought, as I refer to them in this article, often go under the
name "poststructuralist"—in the sense of beyond (post) any single moral lens (struc-
ture). I am thinking in particular of modes of analysis that rely on Foucault's under-
standing of discourse (see, esp., 1984) to refer to, as Etter puts it, "a sublanguage, a
manner of speaking linked to a particular social group or set of practices" (1998:2). In
other writings, Foucault (1970, 1972, 1978, 1980) defines "discursive practices" (or
"discursive formations") as languages of observation that systematically form their ob-
jects. In each of these cases, Foucault uses the notion of discourse to emphasize the
way that linguistic structures work to establish or "constitute" the symbolic worlds
that persons inhabit. The emphasis, in these contexts, is on multiple patterned linguis-
tic forms—an analytical model that would seem to parallel the diverse ways in which
Bhats narratively, and morally, construe new capitalist relations.
I further suggest in my concluding sections, however, that a poststructuralist fo-
cus on multiple moral discourses—or, to take a term more appropriate to this caste of
paid storytellers, multiple "morality tales"—does not account for Bedami's failure of
language and memory during certain moments of possession. Bedami, when chan-
neling the goddess, seems lucid at times, even allowing a complete phrase or two to
escape her lips, but more often than not, she is either mute, or she falls into a language
beyond language—wild screams, violent movements, and mad panting, or silent sob-
bings, wordless gestures, and mute rockings back and forth. After her transformation
into divinity, Bedami loses all ability to remember or speak of her actions. This young
Bhat woman's possession, then, if anything, demonstrates not an exchange of one
subject position for another or an excess of discursive or narrative frames—say, a
shifting between her patriline's condemnation of the new economy and her hus-
band's celebration of it. Rather, based on the mad pants and chaotic gibberish that
flow from her mouth, Bedami's spiritual possession sometimes seems a failure to lo-
cate her subjectivity at all, or at least not in any of the moral discourses at work within
the Bhat community. Bedami's possession, in some important manner, therefore
seems to escape, if only at certain key moments, any and all linguistic structure or sto-
ried pattern, and thus is not exactly discursive in the Foucauldian sense.4
In this article, I suggest that the Rajasthani economy does not merely organize the
production, exchange, and consumption of goods; nor do local religious beliefs only
reflect the parallel world of gods and spirits. Rather, both are complex symbolic sys-
tems, which share some of the features of language and are used to articulate, express,
and communicate aspects of Bhat identity. My aim in this article is to interpret,
through a case of spiritual possession, what these languages say about Bhat percep-
tions of new money relations, as well as about Bhat understandings of gender and
community. Nevertheless, if the economy and religion are languages—and languages
that get intertwined in all sorts of local, idiosyncratic ways—they are not only used to
protest injustice, economic or gendered, as some might suggest (e.g., Lewis 1989).5
Bhats, after all, sometimes celebrate the new economy, and, in a similar manner, Be-
dami's typically chaotic possession episodes represent as much a failure to protest as
a successfully articulated complaint.
Like Lambek (1980, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1993), I read possession, in part, as a
powerful system of communication. But, although building on Lambek's insights, I
question "communication" interpretations of spirit possession, or at least their appli-
cability to Bedami's case, in two important respects. First, I question whether spirit
possession is an idiom, culturally and historically sensitive, used primarily to articu-
late resistance against the economic or political forms of modernity, as some have ar-
gued (e.g., Comaroff 1985; Kendall 1985, 1996; Lan 1985, 1989; Ong 1987, 1988;
Ranger 1985; Sharp 1993, 1994, 1999; Stoller 1984, 1989a, 1989b, 1995; Taussig
1980,1987, 1997). Such interpretations, at least in this Bhat case, would not seem to
capture the range of meanings associated with Bedami's possession. Second, on a
more general level, I ask whether possession is primarily, or even exclusively, an id-
iom or system of communication, and thus centrally about meaning, again, as many
have argued (e.g., see Boddy 1988, 1989; Crapanzano 1977; Kapferer 1986, 1991;
Lambek 1980, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1993; Lewis 1989; Obeyesekere 1981; Ong 1987,
1988; Placido 2001; for a characterization of these "communication" or "meaning"
approaches to spirit possession, see Boddy 1994:412 and Placido 2001:209). By con-
trast, I suggest that Bedami's possession, in certain important respects, cannot always
be interpreted as exactly intentional communication, intelligible story, meaningful
discourse, or even "signifying practice." I instead argue for an appreciation of the way
spiritual possessions such as Bedami's—which I will contend are fetishistic—some-
times seem balanced between communication and the failure of communication,
story and the inability to narrate experience, meaning and confusion, signification
and silence.
spiritual openings
The terrible "feeling" (bhav) seized Bedami, a young Indian woman, around mid-
night. She and her husband Ramu, as the story was narrated to me, were making an
offering (puja)to Ramu's lineage goddess (kuldevi). This gift was intended both to in-
sure the health of their newly born son and to supplement Ramu's salary at a local
folklore institute by inviting a return from his clan's patron goddess. Incense and a sin-
gle candle were lit near the kuldevi's image, before which sat a blindfolded Bedami,
forbidden to view the image because she originates from a clan other than her hus-
band's. Clarified butter was poured over coals of burning cow dung, emitting a soft
light and sweet smoke, both of which the goddess was said to relish. For pleasing the
goddess is central to such offerings, which Bhats speak of as bribes (rispat) intended to
win divine favor.
Bedami and Ramu, along with 15 or so other Bhat families, most of them close
relatives, had settled more or less permanently on the outskirts of the town of Udaipur
(Rajasthan) where the events of this article unfold.6 Except for their sleeping children,
the young couple was alone, the other Bhats dozing peacefully in their own quilted
tents and ramshackle homes. All was quiet until Ramu presented rupee coins and
notes to the kuldevi, at which time his wife was grabbed by the "feeling" that con-
vulsed her body and sent her tumbling on the floor, beating her head against the walls
and tearing out strands of her hair. A gust of wind blew through the house, flinging
open the door; Ramu and his bawling children rushed out, closely pursued by a wail-
ing Bedami. At some point, the young woman's blindfold flew off, apparently of its
own accord, exposing the puja and revealing—in the words of the couple's now very
awake neighbors who tried and failed to restrain their normally staid relative—Be-
dami's eyes glowing like an automobile's headlights.
Bedami's first rush of emotion lasted a few minutes and departed as abruptly as it
arrived. I did not witness this initial fit that occurred late one night, for I lived in
Udaipur's Old Town with a Jain family, spending only my days with the Bhats, but I
was sharing an early lunch with the Bhats the next day—I supplied the goat meat, the
Bhats the rest—when Bedami's "feeling" returned. My interest piqued, I spent the fol-
lowing days and some nights with Bedami's parents whose home neighbored their
daughter's. During this time, I witnessed a succession of outbursts that filled Bedami's
body alternately with mute energy and silent trembling, or raucous anger and incom-
prehensible shrieking. As the days passed and the attacks showed no sign of abating,
the small Bhat community, perched on the edge of town in the jungle, grew fearful.
Bedami's own family, afraid to be left alone in the darkness with the "feeling," started
to spend evenings in the homes of reluctant Bhat neighbors. Bedami herself also grew
afraid of her own increasing loss of control. Although she always sensed the onset of
her attacks, she could do nothing to stop them. Instead, she became empty (shunya),
only able to watch herself, in her words "like one watches a Hindi film"—somewhat
detached and curious, wondering what might happen next.
My Bhat informants were not only frightened but confused by these events. Be-
dami was not considered volatile and had no history of mental illness. Her parents
also were known to be levelheaded and the stabilizing core of this small Bhat colony.
Bedami's father, the first Bhat to settle outside of his natal village, supported himself
by entertaining soldiers, pilgrims, and tourists with puppets. He was the leader of the
Udaipur Bhats, to the extent that this community of fiercely independent persons can
be said to have a leader. I, too, was caught off guard by the sudden outbursts of emo-
tion from the mild-mannered Bedami, who was my dharam ki bahen (adopted sister)
and a member of a family I had known for nearly two years.7
From her first attack, Bedami had always spoken while transformed, but her la-
ments were typically fragmentary, brief, and ultimately incomprehensible to her terri-
fied relatives. Even when they succeeded in making out the literal meaning, the im-
port of her words eluded them. After a week of breakdowns, however, Bedami began
to speak more often and more clearly, but my Bhat informants noted that her voice,
staccato and breathy, was unfamiliar and even unearthly. It was suspected, and had
been from the beginning, that this was no ordinary flood of emotions. In fact, although
one literal meaning of bhav a gaya is "feelings have come," the phrase is convention-
ally used by Rajasthanis to describe a state of spiritual possession.81 have relied on the
literal meaning of this expression not to mislead my readers but to suggest the Bhats'
own inability to make sense of Bedami's outburst—just as likely interpreting the event
as an emotional fit, or even insanity, as a spiritual possession. Spiritual explanations,
however, gained ascendancy. Indeed, given that gods and spirits in Rajasthan are said
to travel with the wind, the gust that had coursed through the house slamming open
the door appeared a likely sign of divinity. Bhats soon began to refer to Bedami's con-
dition not only with the common Hindu phrase for spiritual possession, bhav a gaya,
but also with the Muslim term for an intrusion of supernatural energy and desire—ha-
jari(lit., "presence").
As this interpretation grew in the hearts and minds of the Bhats, Bedami's speech
and movements gradually came in line with the stereotypical forms of spirit posses-
sion. Before long, Bhats even thought they had identified the spiritual intruder: Be-
dami, who bucked like an unbroken horse during her attacks, was probably being
used by Mataji, or the Mother Goddess, as a mount (ghorala, an archaic term originat-
ing from ghora, the Hindi word for "horse" [Gold 1988:34]). I was told by one excited
informant after one of Bedami's seizures, "She had the strength of ten men! She was
transformed one-hundred-percent completely [in English] into Mataji! Just like Kali!"
A few days later, the "presence" herself announced her identity through her
mount, clarifying that she was actually Kali's sister, Chavanda Mata. The Bhat caste
(jati) is composed of 16 intermarrying patrilineal clans (gotras), each of which is pre-
sided over by a clan goddess (kuldevi). Each Bhat clan goddess is viewed as an incar-
nation (avatar) of the Mother Goddess believed to have performed a miracle that
saved the clan's founder. But Chavanda Mata, being the oldest of the Nine Durgas or
"Nine Sisters"—who are seen to encompass the forms of the Mother Goddess—has
particular authority within the Bhat community. Most importantly for this article,
Chavanda Mata maintains authority over Ramu himself—for she is Ramu's own line-
age goddess.9
Bedami's claim was not immediately accepted by the Bhats—and certainly not
by Ramu—for possession by a clan deity was unprecedented. Male ghosts (bhut) and
female ghosts (churail), dead witches (dakan) and living witches (meli), and demons
(raksas), yes. Ancestors (pitra) with a grudge, or merely lonely, commonplace. Bhai-
ronji, a minor god (devta) of the underworld, seen as a "fragment" or "son" of Shiva,
not infrequent. Even certain incarnations of the goddess, such as Kali, were known to
grab (pakarna) humans, but in Bhat recollection, a clan deity had never done so.10
Bhats had other reasons to doubt this was the goddess, for a force for good would
surely not allow Bedami to deteriorate physically. If this were a possession by the god-
dess, it was also questionable why Bedami should be chosen to receive such a gift.
She was not devout, had no special talent (gun) or sixth sense that allowed her to see
into the spirit world, and unlike her father, who commonly wrestled demons, she had
never even seen a spirit. Some suggested that Bedami was faking. Yet, even this was
less than satisfactory, for the adjective most frequently used to describe this young
woman—Bedami was about 23 years old, Ramu 29—was bholi, best translated as
"simple/' or honest and straightforward with a touch of naivete. Bedami was the op-
posite of "clever" (chalak), a phrase typically applied by outsiders and Bhats them-
selves to members of this community of players. It thus seemed unlikely that she was
staging a drama (natak karti) for illicit gains as her kin were known to do.
An exorcist was called. After being paid handsomely—too handsomely accord-
ing to my informants, themselves ritual specialists—the spiritual specialist informed
the community that this was in fact Ramu's lineage goddess, Chavanda Mata, and she
appeared benevolent.11 With the exorcist's blessing, and after cleansing this divine
vessel according to the devi's regimen (niyam) or command (hukam), Bhat believers
and nonbelievers alike actively began to summon Chavanda Mata into Bedami's
body. "Come and sit with us, our power, our Mother" (Hamari shakti, Mataji
padaaro), Bhats would chant. After ten or fifteen minutes at the most, amidst the relax-
ing smells, rhythmic drumming, and devotional songs, the devi would alight (utarna)
on her medium. Bedami performed a series of miracles during these ritual invoca-
tions, such as one remarkable incident in which she was seen to cure a baby that was
expected to die within the hour. This event electrified the Bhat community and made
them more willing to believe that the goddess was real (sach) and not a lie (jhut), that
Bedami was not merely crazy (pagal) or playacting (natak karna).n
Despite these wondrous happenings, many Bhats, and even Bhat believers, still
advanced natural explanations for Bedami's seemingly supernatural strength. They
pointed out that, only weeks before her possession, Bedami had given birth to her
fourth child and was therefore in a weakened physical state. Bhats, like many Indians,
believe that a mother should eat fatty foods, such as ghee, in order to restore her
strength following childbirth, but Bedami did not do so, mainly because her husband
refused to buy them. Without the rich foods, Bedami, who was still breast-feeding her
new son, complained frequently that her new child, her other children, and even her
husband were "eating" her. On numerous occasions (well before her transformation)
because of her weakness, Bedami fainted, becoming unconscious, in some ways re-
sembling her state when possessed by the devi.
More importantly, Bedami, on her husband's insistence, had been sterilized a
few days before her first spiritual attack. (Ramu believed that his paltry salary could
support no more children.) Moreover, the institution that performed the operation re-
neged on its promise to pay Bedami for her sterilization through its incentive program,
leaving her still unable to purchase the foods needed to regain her strength and further
contributing to her dizzy spells and fainting. In short, although Bedami appeared a
simple person with few conflicting emotions, as Bhats themselves pointed out, her in-
tegrity had been threatened long before the devi's intrusion: she had given birth to a
child, and thus quite literally had been separated from a part of herself; the violent in-
trusion of a medical sterilization had also cut her off from an important part of her
body, as well as her ability to reproduce; the resulting weakness caused her to dissoci-
ate from her consciousness; and, finally, she was the victim of a lie, of words (signifi-
ers) that do not possess the meanings (signified) that they claim. Aptly summing up the
situation, although taking the metaphor of a battery and not of physical dismember-
ment, my Bhat informants told me Bedami had been losing power and that the devi,
real or imagined, recharged her.
a stingy man
Throughout Bedami's transformation into Chavanda Mata, her husband seemed
less than pleased to exchange his wife for a goddess. He was frustrated at continually
relinquishing his home to the raucous summonsing of the devi. Ramu's attitude gives
insight into the primary reason, according to most Bhats, for the possession. My in-
formants said that Bedami's childbirth and sterilization lent this event "meaning," or
in Hindi, a matlab. Nonetheless, most Bhats claimed these contextualities were ancil-
lary. They invariably suggested that the goddess overtook Bedami in order "to i\x
Ramu's mind," "to make him understand/' or "to teach him how to behave." Discus-
sions of Chavanda Mata inevitably became character assassinations of Ramu, fortify-
ing the opinion that he was not a good man. According to the Bhat community and, in
fact, according to the goddess herself, the root of the problem was therefore not to be
found in Bedami's emotional or bodily disintegration—but rather in Ramu.
I was struck by the fact that Bhat explanations of this possession very commonly
focused not on Bedami, but on Ramu. I was also struck by the fact that the commu-
nity, like the devi, voiced one consistent complaint. When asked why the goddess
came into the body of Bedami, they said she did so because Ramu refused to spend on
others, just as he refused to spend on his wife after her giving birth. For example, he
put off his kuldevi puja to Chavanda Mata because of the expense, although it was
supposed to be done immediately after the birth. When he finally did perform the rit-
ual, he did so minimally. No one was invited and Ramu refused to distribute sweets to
the community after the ritual, once again because of the cost. For these reasons, the
devi appeared at the moment when Ramu was making his meager offering of coins
and notes, repeatedly shouting, "Wrong! Wrong!" (Galti, Galti). The devi was dissatis-
fied with the puja, objecting not only to the filth and disarray in the house (it was
soiled with children's urine and feces) but to the paucity of resources contributed to
the worship. Ramu's disrespect led the goddess to ask him, "Why are you mocking
me with this pitifully cheap puja?" and to demand that another puja be done festively
(kushi se) with pomp and show (that bat se)—and most importantly, without regard to
expense (karch). One Bhat woman, gleefully interpreting the deity's request of Ramu,
said; "He's gonna have to spend a lot of money!"
Ramu, according to many of the Udaipur Bhats, had cut himself off from his com-
munity. Long before his wife's possession, he was criticized for not throwing commu-
nity feasts, such as public pujas. Even if he did so, it was believed they were poorly
done. Bhats claimed it took a Herculean effort to get a five rupee loan from Ramu. If
he did lend the money, then he pestered them incessantly until he was repaid. (At the
time of my research, US$1 was equivalent to Rs30 Indian). Bhats value those who
properly welcome (swagat dena) and honor (adab or ijjat dena) guests into their
homes with food and drink, or at the least with smokes (both Indian bidis and foreign-
style cigarettes). Ramu, however, rarely visited the homes of the others in this small
encampment, much less invited them into his own, as I was told, in order to avoid the
expense of reciprocal entertaining. Not surprisingly, the most common descriptors
applied to Ramu were kanjus (stingy) and tere-mere sochte karte hai, a phrase that has
several meanings but here is used to describe a person who clearly distinguishes his
property from that of others and thus, literally, "thinks in terms of yours and mine." As
one man told me to demonstrate Ramu's lack of understanding of reciprocity (and to
direct another point in particular to me), "If we send you a letter in America, then
you'll send an answer, right? Ramu doesn't understand this."
As mentioned, it was Ramu's failure to spend properly on his wife after she had
given birth that supposedly brought on her weakness (kamjori), thus precipitating her
transformation into the goddess. Not only did Ramu refuse to produce the cash for
ghee, but he supposedly skimped even more than usual on basic expenses. And rather
than helping Bedami with her household chores, as a husband in a family without ser-
vants often does after his wife has given birth, he refused to take any time off from
work, staying at work well into the evenings and even on Sundays. As a result, he was
rarely around when Bedami needed him—whether to buy vegetables, carry water
from the well, or cook. Moreover, Ramu, unlike the rest of the Bhats, refused to give
money to his children for small candied treats and was thus seen as having a "heart
like a stone." Ramu (unlike most Bhat husbands) controlled the family's purse-strings,
and so the weakened Bedami could do nothing to stop her children's daily begging.
Most strikingly, shortly after the devi's first appearance, Bhats celebrated Raki, a
Hindu holiday in which brothers offer money and small gifts to their sisters in recogni-
tion of their mutual affection for each other. Unlike most Bhats, Ramu only gave to
one woman, the daughter of his father's brother—in other words, to a woman closely
related through patrilineal descent and thus, in the Bhat clan system, more like a true
sister. As it was explained to me, he could have, and should have, gifted to many
other women within the colony who also were like his sisters—for example, his wife's
two younger sisters, his father's sister (who was married), and his many moral (dharam
ki) sisters. Instead, he chose to interpret his fraternal obligations narrowly and thus,
according to the community, transformed Raki, a time when one extravagantly ex-
presses love for one's sisters, into a holiday of miserly calculation.
Ramu was also seen to have skimped on his offering to his clan deity, and it was
this deficiency in the worship that first caused Chavanda Mata to take control of her
mount, Bedami. Accusing Ramu of treating the puja as an obligation to be finished as
quickly and painlessly as possible, rather than a gift joyously given, she demanded
that he sponsor a second jagan (all night puja) in her honor, sparing no expense and
inviting all members of the community. In preparation for this second puja, the devi
also demanded that Ramu have a new floor built for his home, as the old one was un-
finished and unsightly, and thus an insult to a divine guest. Ramu responded immedi-
ately to the request to build a floor, that is, to the opportunity to increase the value of
his private property. He took out a Rs2,000 advance on his wages from the folklore in-
stitute where he worked, which he planned to pay back at the rate of Rs500 per
month. He responded less than enthusiastically, however, to the devi's request for the
public puja. The devi had to repeat her request, and even then, Ramu remained reluc-
tant. He invited the other Bhats, beginning, "Chavanda Mata has invited you to a
puja," and then specifying, "I am not inviting you, and it doesn't matter to me one way
or the other whether you come, but Chavanda Mata has invited you." The others, al-
though respecting the wishes of the goddess, were quite understandably offended,
asking me rhetorically, "What kind of invitation is that?" and "Who can attend such a
puja?" And they did not, in fact, attend. Out of the entire Udaipur Bhat colony, only
one old woman, the mother-in-law of Bedami's sister, participated, and she did so be-
cause of her failing health and her inability to get money out of her sons for medical
treatments, hoping to find relief through the devi.
Not surprisingly, the second jagan, like the first, was a failure, further enraging
Chavanda Mata, who now asked not only for a third jagan, but also a goat sacrifice
that was to be performed during the Hindu holiday Nav Rath, the nine days of Durga
(an incarnation of the Mother Goddess), a celebration that was quickly approaching.
Once again, this was to include the entire community and was to be accompanied by
music and festivity. Furthermore, this third jagan would be quite expensive and would
require an even larger advance on his wages, once one calculated not only the price
of the goat but of the spices, rice, and sweets that the goddess demanded. I should add
that the devi made her last "request" in the most forceful terms imaginable, informing
Ramu, "If you do not do as I ask, then I will kill you and your son."
Even after Ramu more or less satisfied his kuldevi's demands, he continued to
make mistakes that revealed his selfishness and brought further criticism both from
the goddess and the Bhat community. One Sunday night, Ramu returned late from
work only to find that the devi had been summoned in his absence, despite his ex-
plicit instructions to the contrary and despite the wishes of Bedami who wanted her
husband to be a part of the festivities. Ramu was furious, chasing his wife's relatives
from his home. Then, later that night, after securing the door to his home, Ramu him-
self privately summoned the devi. When she arrived, much to Ramu's surprise, she
was furious. In a powerful quip, Chavanda Mata zeroed in on Ramu's attempt to
hoard her power for himself and asked, "What are you doing? Did you pay for me at
the market?" Ramu was speechless, having no answer. Then, the goddess screeched
at him, "Open the door! Why do you bother me by closing the door? Why do you stop
others from telling me their problems?" With this, the door flew open without being
touched, according to the Bhats—an appropriate symbol for the manner in which
Ramu's private worship is "opened" to the community at large—and his wife's rela-
tives, who had been secretly listening outside, poured into Ramu's home and poured
out their litany of woes.
According to my informants, Ramu's selfish attitude demonstrated how little he
regarded them, that is, how little value they had in his mind. Ramu was often referred
to as proud (gamand), thinking himself superior to others in the colony. He refused to
feed them or to visit them in their lowly tents (Ramu had built himself a house). He
even refused to greet elders decked in turbans and dhotis (single pieces of white cloth
wrapped around the lower body and worn in place of pants)—dress that signaled
these persons' village ties and traditional (paramparik) ways, and that Ramu found
"backward" (piche). This behavior, my informants said, demonstrated Ramu's lack of
ijjat, which might be translated as "honor" or "personal restraint." A person of ijjat
curtails his own desires, for example, spending on those others who inhabit a commu-
nity with a common history. Ramu, however, preferred to be free (azad) like a foreign-
er (videshi)—saying what he wanted, when he wanted, to whom he wanted. For
Bhats, the manner in which Ramu followed his selfish impulses without regard to the
needs of others implied a lack of social smarts (akal) and decorum (maryad). It dem-
onstrated, as did his refusal to take time off from work, that he had become like an An-
grezi (Englishman) whose love of money was stronger than his love of people.
the salary man

That Ramu was referred to as a "foreigner" was not coincidental, for he had taken
on the values and habits of the bourgeois citizen—beliefs and practices increasingly
universal although of European origin. He had been in the Indian army, something
unusual for Bhats. Literate, he spent much of his time composing written poems com-
menting on inner experience. Also, unlike most Bhats, Ramu had severed all ties with
his family's village patrons, remembering none of their genealogies or panegyrical
verse. But, most importantly, at least for my arguments in this article, Ramu was the
only Udaipuri Bhat with a regular salaried job (nokri).u
Ramu worked at a local folklore institute where he taught indigenous persons (re-
ferred to by Rajasthanis as Adivasis, "tribals" in English, or by these persons' specific
tribal affiliations) to make and dance puppets for the tourist industry. This was part of a
state-sponsored uplift program for groups that, because of their historically low status
and poverty, are classified in the Indian constitution as "backward" or "scheduled"

communities (i.e., "scheduled" for participation in Indian-style affirmative-action pro-
grams). The folklore institute, a local landmark, is heavily involved in promoting and
profiting from the folk arts. It consists of a museum documenting local folk art styles
and themes, a theater in which local artists perform daily (many of these artists are
maintained in a more or less permanent "stable"), and workshops in which artists craft
their wares. The employees of this institute see the Bhat community as a valuable re-
source, given their immersion in histories, genealogies, stories, and puppets. Thus,
hiring Ramu was a real coup, because most members of the Bhat community assidu-
ously avoided the institute, fearing its staff would steal Bhat caste secrets.
Many Bhats, as mentioned, currently participate in a patron-client system
termed jajmani. This moral village-based economy—moral because production, ex-
change, and consumption are regulated by inherited duties and obligations, often
framed in a religious idiom, rather than by mere market mechanisms—is said to re-
volve around the grain heap. Landowning patrons (termed jajmans, originating from
the Sanskrit term yajamana or "patron of the sacrifice") make gifts of grain to clients
(termed yachaks and mangats, both terms literally translating as "beggars" or "suppli-
ants"). Payment levels are primarily fixed by custom and include not only grain but
other gifts in kind such as clothing, sugar, fodder, and ghee (Kolenda 1967:34; Fuller
1989:34). Such a description, as I note in this article's introduction, can be applied to
Bhat relations with an untouchable caste called Bhambis. Although freelancing, Bhats
maintain the exclusive right (hak) to work as the entertainers, genealogists, historians,
praise singers, and jesters for this community. They thus refer to themselves as clients
(yachaks) of their Bhambi patrons (jajmans).14
In the past 30 years, however, Bhats have migrated throughout India so that one
now finds members of this community in virtually all of India's major cities and
towns—Udaipur, but also Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta. In these new urban settings,
Bhats have formed economic ties that might be conceived in terms of money and the
market. They market traditional (paramparik) culture to tourists in hotels and folk festi-
vals throughout India and record devotional songs for local radio stations. They also
perform educational dramas in the name of the Indian state, staging puppet plays con-
cerning AIDS, communal violence (Muslim Hindu clashes), family planning, hygiene,
and the proper use of fertilizer—in short, selling modern values and practices to In-
dia's poor. Most Bhats, then, are stuck between an old and a new economy. But, as
discussed, Ramu has entered the new economy in a manner unlike any other
Bhat—as a paid employee of a local folklore institute. Such an entrance into the mod-
ern economy, and the peculiar way it regulated Ramu's life, according to many within
the Udaipur Bhat community, led to a destructive stinginess that triggered his wife's
possession.15
Ramu attended his job religiously, working from nine to five, at least six days a
week. He was paid a fixed hourly wage, and thus earned a predictable monthly sal-
ary. He also had, as he often bragged to me, health insurance and a retirement pack-
age, and planned to open a bank account shortly, something other Bhats, although
they advertised for state banks (e.g., putting on puppet shows teaching Indian peas-
ants the nuts and bolts of tractor and water buffalo loans, interest rates, and savings
accounts), would not do. And although Ramu was occasionally docked for being late,
he was told by his employers that, if he proved a steady worker, he could expect in-
cremental raises. In our discussions together, Ramu frequently berated others within
the community for having no "worry" (phikar). He told me worry was good for you,
for in worrying, one is forced to bachat karna (to "make a budget"), and thus take
responsibility for one's future and the future of one's children. Yet, Ramu seemed
oddly isolated in his new job. Not only did he literally spend the entire day away from
his family, but financially, he chose to rely on the impersonal mechanism of his own
salary and savings, rather than the highly personal mechanism of mutual support. In
his economy, that is, in his pursuit of the promises of the salary man, there are traces
of what has been called the modern ethic of "possessive individualism" (Macpherson
1962)—an idea I return to momentarily.
Most Udaipur Bhats craft and perform puppets for the tourist industry. Their work
is done within their own homes, and as they carve the heads and clothe the bodies of
their wooden figures, they joke and drink with each other. Families also assist their
performances: fathers, hidden behind a curtained stage, dance the string puppets and
whistle through a reed to create the puppets' voices; mothers sing, play a small dou-
ble-sided drum referred to as a dholak, and narrate stories of brave Rajasthani kings
like Amar Singh Rathor; and children help out where needed. Most Udaipur Bhats,
too, have developed relations with tourist hotels. This work, unlike Ramu's, is not
salaried, although some draw a small stipend to cover transportation costs. Instead,
Bhats perform for tips and the opportunity to sell their puppets to tourists. Bhats who
engage in these new kinds of work do not work according to a regular schedule, but
rather come and go as they please, and typically stay for no more than two hours a
day. In fact, they are known to disappear for the months of the wedding season when
they return to their villages to perform for their patrons. For these reasons, Bhats do
not conceive of hotel managers as "bosses" (using the English word), as did Ramu, in-
stead preferring to call them, if half jokingly, jajmans (patrons), recognizing that their
new bosses are not exactly equivalent to their traditional patrons. Hotel managers do
not constantly watch over them and tell them what to do (if they were to try, Bhats
would walk); instead, according to the Bhats, this is more a relationship of mutual de-
pendence, in which managers are as much protectors as employers. Bhats have no
health insurance or retirement packages but, they told me, they do not need them be-
cause their community, and especially their own sons, are their health insurance and
retirement packages. They see the appeal of a regular salary and the security it pro-
vides, but they are reluctant to exchange what they see as their freedom for such secu-
rity, and they look with absolute horror at having to work in a manner that would cut
them off from friends and family for the entire day.
Ramu's neighbors explained his behavior toward the devi as the consequence of
the ideology of the "salary man," with its implicit individualism and isolation. Ramu
did not want to spend on communal pujas because he preferred to invest in his own
future rather than wasting his hard earned money on others. He tried to "possess" the
spirit that "possessed" his wife because he did not see her as a communal resource, as
did others, but as private property that could be controlled as part of his household.
We can even understand why, after it was established that Bedami was indeed the
goddess, Ramu proposed she should only be called on Sundays, at a fixed hour
and—in the name of efficiency—only when the entire community was assembled.
Fearing that too many requests would drain her power, he treated her much like he
did his salary, as a scarce resource that should be rationally managed.
Ramu also symbolized the exploitative forces of the new economy. Ramu was
believed to be taking the caste secrets of his community—not only the skill of making
and dancing puppets, but also the old stories about the kings of Rajasthan—and sell-
ing them directly to the Bhats' competitor. The Bhats saw the indigenous persons
Ramu trained, as well as the folklore institute itself with its museums and daily per-
formances, as a menace. By his actions, Ramu was in fact threatening the livelihood
of others and was frequently referred to as a traitor who had turned against his own
brethren. Just as he wanted to exploit the devi for his own use, so was he exploiting
the other Bhats by taking their traditional caste knowledge and putting it to use for
himself—or, at least, this is how I perceive Bhat views on these matters. This explains
the supernatural labels that were applied to Ramu: he was called a ghost (bhut), a de-
mon (raksas), or simply, wicked (shetan). In refusing to take part in the niceties that
constitute social life, Ramu resembled a ghost, a lonely creature on the outskirts of so-
ciety who was no longer fully human. Furthermore, the danger of evil spirits lies in
their tremendous appetites: they devour not only huge quantities of food but also hu-
man beings. Ramu, like the demonic middlemen who bought Bhat puppets for resale,
was said to take more than he gave and was thus draining the very life out of his own
society, robbing them of their daily bread (roji), and quite literally "eating" them.
It thus seems as if commodity relations and capitalist values were the "evil" that
triggered Bedami's possession. Ramu's stinginess, the way he refused to spend on oth-
ers, made him a pariah. Ramu's isolation, in turn, was very painful to Bedami. There-
fore, in the form of the devi, which could be interpreted as Bedami's disguised voice,
she tried, even if unconsciously, to force Ramu to behave more in line with commu-
nal values. To a large extent, she seemed to succeed. Within weeks of her initial trans-
formation, Bedami's nuclear family, which had up to then been perceived as a drain
on the community, takers and not givers, was able to give back in the form of the
devi's power (shakti). Nevertheless, Ramu's stinginess, which triggered the entire
event in the first place, was no mere stinginess. Rather, the "stingy" and independent
Ramu became symbolic of the dangerous aspects of the new economy, the fragment-
ing forces of private property, savings, and wages, and the terrible ethic of possessive
individualism (see Macpherson 1962). The goddess was thus a punishing force meant
not only to fix Ramu's mind—a stand-in for Ramu's furious wife as well as the furious
Bhat community—but more generally to do battle against an encroaching capitalism.
To the Bhat community, Ramu appears as a supernaturally evil personification of
new commodity relations—a ghost and a demon. Resolutely individual, self-contained,
and self-concerned, he locates value in impersonal capitalist mechanisms such as
money, a wage regularized with the clock, life insurance, personal savings, and a re-
tirement package, rather than in people and social relations. It could be said that
Ramu, therefore, became an incarnation or fetish of these evil forces for the Bhat com-
munity. In similar terms, and again from the Bhat community's point of view, Bedami
as the devi seemed to fetishize the traditional economy, with its emphasis on reci-
procity and the recognition of social others—that is, in Marx's (1978a, 1978b) terms,
the devi comes to be perceived as the source of economic productivity rather than a
mere product of the imagination.
Moreover, when Ramu placed rupee coins and notes on his altar, he was making
use of money that did not really belong to him. In part, this offering was an expression
of his own labor at his new job, but it was also an expression of the alienated labor of
the Bhat community, given that Ramu's salary was predicated on his exploitation of
the Bhat community's traditional knowledge. I am thus not surprised that printed and
graven images of the devi that sat on the altar next to the money, a divine symbol of
economic productivity (and thus akin to the Hindu goddess of wealth Lakshmi),
jumped to life—seeming to Bhats to spring into the very body of Bedami. For the
money on the altar, like the other objects offered to the devi, were filled with the life
of the Bhat community, and thus within their religious worldview took on a spirit akin
to that of a dangerous god. Nor was it surprising that the goddess herself seemed to
condemn Ramu as immoral presumably because he, being a capitalist wage laborer,
located money rather than people as the source of value. His wife's possession, then,
is seemingly a straightforward spiritual response to such greed: the goddess rides in on
her charger (ghorala), like a Hindi film hero, in order to reprimand Ramu for his miser-
liness, and remind him that people are more valuable than money.
This narrative—in which the community is a helpless victim and the seat of mo-
rality, and the new economy a disruptive intruder, and in which Bhats are staunch
moralists and Ramu a dangerous player—would seem to explain elegantly Bedami's
spiritual condition. My informants clearly enjoyed condemning Ramu as an agent of
an outsider worldview, a threat to their harmonious (extended) family values. It also
makes sense that Bhats would defend the value of generosity—after all, as praise sing-
ers, Bhats serve as curators of a moral economy based on flamboyant spending, and
their livelihood depends to a large extent on the gifts they receive from their Bhambi
patrons. The Bhat condemnation of Ramu also resonates with Taussig's account of the
intrusion of capitalism into previously harmonious South American communi-
ties—seeming to lend this Bhat story further credence. Finally, my informants' repre-
sentation of Bedami's situation would even seem to validate accounts that view spiri-
tual possessions as modes of resistance—disguised forms of protest, typically
culturally and historically sensitive, against unjust institutions such as global capital-
ism and gender inequality, but also in other cases against colonialism, social margin-
ality, and hegemonic narrations of history, racism, and parental control.16 But, does
such an interpretation, in which capitalist relations are more or less univocally con-
demned, tell the whole story in this Bhat case? To answer this question, I would like to
consider how Bedami's possession was experienced by Ramu and Bedami herself.
the curse of community
Over the four years previous to Bedami's possession, Ramu suffered from split-
ting headaches that, like his wife's "feelings," came without warning and left as sud-
denly. The pain brought on by these headaches disoriented him, making it difficult for
him to concentrate on even the simplest of tasks, much less carve statues and puppet
heads (given the stress it placed on his eyes). Such headaches necessitated Ramu's
move to the folklore institute where he, as a teacher rather than as a full-time artist,
was able to spend less time engaged in the actual art of carving (which stressed his
eyes); he gave up his forte, carving, to take up his new salaried employment. Ramu
visited many doctors, even neurological specialists, but none of their treatments
eliminated his suffering. During the first two years of his illness, Ramu lived in Bhopal
with his patrilineal kin. Although I never heard all the details, Ramu was said by his
neighbors to be collecting a stipend from Union Carbide, his share of the damages
awarded to the victims of the 1984 gas spill in Bhopal.17 Ramu ascribed his headaches
to his toxic exposure at Bhopal, and periodically he would travel to Bhopal to collect
this money. Most Bhats I knew considered this a clever scam—suggesting that Ramu
was nowhere near Bhopal during the gas spill. They also thought such a scam atypical
of the straight (siddha—i.e., not clever or tricky) Ramu.
After two years of brain scans, doctors' fees, experimental drugs, and loan after
loan, Ramu exhausted the good will of his patrician. At this point, Ramu's father-in-
law, Bansi Lai, traveled to Bhopal and brought Ramu and his family to his own home
in Udaipur. In settling in his wife's natal home and leaving his own patrilineage,
Ramu placed himself in an unusual position, at least as evidenced by the following
Rajasthani saying about the relations between a son-in-law and his in-laws (my loose,
not literal, translation of this saying reflects Bhat comments on this poem's meaning):
Das kosh ka a van-Java n

Bis kosh ka ghee gilavan
Pachis kosh ka mathe ka mor
Ghar ka jamai gandak ki thor
[When he lives 20 miles (10 kosh) from us, our son-in-law comes and goes as he
pleases (to our house)
At 40 miles (when he visits), our son-in-law, (is treated with even more respect and) is
fed ghee (and other fine foods)
At 50 miles (when he visits), our son-in-law (receives still more respect and) is given a
fine turban (a mark of honor)
But a son-in-law who lives in our house (or village) is beaten like a dog]
This lack of respect based on his living situation was compounded by the fact
that Bedami's parents had invested thousands of rupees in Ramu's treatment, as well
as in the feeding and clothing of his family. Bansi Lai did not complain about the fact
that Ramu had never repaid them, nor that he and his wife continued to care for two
of Ramu and Bedami's four children, but he did complain that Ramu did not seem at
all grateful for his kindness, even though he had surely saved his life. "I did his service
for years, and now he has forgotten me," Bansi Lai told me.
In fact, most of the Udaipur Bhats had some story about how they had helped
Ramu—whether it was taking him to the hospital late at night, letting him sleep in
their homes when the terrifying "feelings" arrived, or lending him money. Ramu
rarely repaid their loans or kindnesses, instead "eating them," yet he remained proud,
thinking himself superior to them. They, like Ramu's father-in-law, complained that
he lacked memory (yad), a quality centrally important to a community of historians
and genealogists. As Ramu's debts increased, and his pride showed no sign of wan-
ing, the Bhats even suggested that he suffered only from worry (phikar), suspicion (av-
ishwas), and "tension" (they used the English word)—a coward's (darpok) disease.
They insinuated that he was consuming their wealth for an expensive treatment that
was neither necessary nor effective. And the devi echoed these sentiments, arriving at
one point just as Ramu was taking his pills, knocking them savagely from his hands,
raking him with her nails, and screaming, "Stop eating those tablets! You have no
sickness! All you have is bhem (fear)!"
This only begins to touch on the "tensions"—they used the English word here
too—between Ramu and his wife's natal kin. As an example, in the year before Be-
dami's possession a fight had been brewing over the marriage of Bedami's younger
sister. Bedami's parents had already engaged the girl to a boy in Jaipur, but Ramu, dis-
approving of the match, and wanting to marry her to a boy from his own clan, argued
incessantly with Bansi Lai and Koshila. This dumbfounded Bansi Lai, who was
amazed at the arrogance of his young son-in-law, and who told me, not mincing
words, "As her father, I can marry her to whom I want." Koshila, Bedami's mother,
even insinuated to me that Ramu was not really interested in marrying the girl into his
own patrilineage, but simply wanted to sabotage the engagement, making her and
Bansi Lai look bad when they went back on their word.
In a similar manner, on the very day that Chavanda Mata first entered Bedami's
body, Ramu was bickering with the rest of the community over whether Ramu's niece
(his brother's daughter), Kamal, who was married to Bedami's first cousin, should be
allowed to visit her mother in Bombay for Raki. Ramu, siding with his brother, who
was visiting Udaipur, and thus against the entire Udaipur Bhat community, vehe-
mently argued that she should be allowed to visit Bombay, especially because her
mother had just been injured in a scooter accident. Bedami's relatives, however, did
not trust Ramu's brother to send Kamal back and argued that it would be costly for her
husband personally to have to fetch her from Bombay. (The trip would be expensive
not only because of the bus ticket, but because Ramu would be "forced" to stay, dur-
ing which time he would spend a lot of money on food and drink, borrowing if he
must, from his in-laws.) Then, the second arrival of the devi came right at the moment
that Ramu's brother—against the wishes of the Udaipur community—was dragging
his daughter Kamal away from her husband, forcing Ramu's brother, if only temporar-
ily, to postpone his trip to Bombay.
Bedami's repeated possession by Chavanda Mata—although potentially a font of
spiritual power (shakti) and wealth (dhan-dolat) and thus the answer to Ramu's prob-
lems—only added to his stress. Once the pandit's authoritative diagnosis—or authori-
tative as any brahmanic opinion can ever be for Bhats—was made, the Udaipur Bhats
immediately tried to put Bedami's power to use. Whenever Bedami entered an altered
state of consciousness, the word would spread quickly. Dropping whatever they were
doing, whether carving a puppet head or mending a tent, Bedami's kin sprinted to her
location—typically, Ramu's house—and swarmed around her in a tight circle, which
grew ever tighter as the Bhats struggled to get close to, even touch, divinity. All the
while Bedami's relatives would shout a confusing mix of questions, requests, opin-
ions, and demands, which invariably concerned money: "Will that merchant give me
the loan I requested?" "That other baniya who loaned me the money, Komal, he
doesn't have his goondas [thugs] after me does he?" "How will I pay for my daughter's
wedding?" "How much dowry might Shanti Lai pay?" Or, more simply, "I've hit hard
times, could you hide some cash under a rock just outside my house?" Ramu's house
had been invaded first by the raging devi and now by his wife's roiling relatives.
Ramu frequently complained to me that these chaotic talks with god were mak-
ing him much like his wife: insane (pagal). To combat the disorder, as mentioned, he
demanded that the goddess be summoned according to a regular schedule. The other
Bhats, who rarely listened to Ramu anymore, refused to abide by his time tables, in-
stead calling her haphazardly, and frequently when Ramu was away at work. If any-
thing, after the implementation of his rules, the devi was appearing more, rather than
less, often. These summonsing—which the furious Ramu called "pesterings" (satana,
"to pester") because Bhats called the devi for even the most minor of ailments—ex-
hausted Bedami. As Ramu put it, his wife's relatives would spend all their money on
alcohol and expensive feasts, and then summon the deity and ask her why the gods
had cursed them with poverty. On one occasion, he described his brother-in-law (Be-
dami's sister's husband) who spent Rs50,000 on a funeral feast (mosar)ior his father,
telling me, "He could have had a scooter and a new house for that" and adding,
"These people earn well, but they appear dirt poor, with not even enough money for
medicine or decent clothing. They feed guests alcohol and meat, and then go hungry
for three days." He continued, "They eat and drink their lives away, and then when
they fall on hard times, they cry like children to the devi. How can the devi possibly
approve of this?" Furthermore, Ramu was not only furious and dumbfounded by Bhat
spending practices that he saw as "crazy," but frightened by the other Bhats' seeming
lack of respect for the goddess, telling me, "If we continue to call her whenever we
have some little problem, then she may get angry and leave, not coming any more."
Then, pausing for a moment to consider his words, he added, "She may kill one of us;
she may kill me!"
In an idyllic construction of community, living in a small, face-to-face, primarily
kin-based settlement might be seen to offer a respite from the many vicissitudes of
modern life. At first, this seems apropos to Ramu's situation. He gets sick and the
community, first his patrilineage and then his wife's relatives, rally to his defense, sup-
porting him financial ly and emotionally in a time of need. But before long, because of
the loans that he could never hope to pay back and the respect he lost in the process,
the small tace-to-face community becomes the very source of his problems. His wife's
relatives' continual demands for money (or at least for Ramu's recognition of his de-
pendence on them), ridicule of him as an outsider unable to support his own family,
opposition to the interests of his own patrician, constant demands for reciprocal en-
tertaining and feasting, love of argument and revelry, inappropriate invasion of his
home, and overall seemingly irresponsible attitudes toward money only exacerbated
Ramu's headaches. Whether because of his own bad manners or the chasm between
his values and those of the Udaipur Bhats, Ramu's symbolic and financial capital with
his wife's relatives dried up, and the Udaipur Bhats became merely a drain, or more
appropriately, a "headache."
New forms of capitalist wage labor, then, seem to have a very different meaning
for Ramu than for the other Bhats. Ramu admits that his new job can be stressful. His
labor is constantly scrutinized by the authorities at the institute where he works. He
must report on time, and if he is late or takes time off, then his salary is cut. His work is
also clearly work, time consuming and labor intensive, and his salary is less—in many
cases much less—than what I calculate as the average Bhat income. (Ramu earns
Rs1,300 in salary, plus Rs300 more in filling private orders. The average Bhat in
Udaipur, as I calculate it, averages Rs2,500 per month.) Such limits on their freedom,
financial and other, were intolerable for most Bhats, as was frequently explained to
me by my nomadic informants. But for Ramu, the wild demands for reciprocity that
are characteristic of traditional Bhat society are terrifying, and the new economy's
steady wage, life insurance, and bank accounts—that is, its restrictions—are precisely
what appeal to him, for with them he is secure and taken care of. In his new job,
Ramu imagines a life free from the unpredictable demands of his community; he sees
the promise of debt-free ownership of his own life and thus the opportunity to be his
own man.
In these terms, certain capitalist forms like wage labor are not a source of destruc-
tive evil, as it seems to be for other Bhats, but a soothing balm that Ramu applies to his
malady. Likewise, if the goddess represents a stand-in—that is, a fetish—of the old
economy, she does not point to the good of traditional relations of exchange, but the
dangerous and unpredictable horror that pulses within them and that threatens to rob
Ramu of his peace of mind. Or, at other moments, Ramu sees her as a reward for his
new economic values, and thus a fetish of the stable and beneficial life within new
commodity relations. As Ramu explained to me, ancestors and ghosts frequently en-
tered the bodies of Bhats, but a lineage goddess was a real boon, and her choosing Be-
dami as a vessel must imply divine approval, wanting to bestow on him and his fam-
ily, like Ramu's salary, a steady and assured source of productivity.
Ramu does indeed turn his back on traditional Bhat morality and notions of com-
munity. But, in their stead, he substitutes a new morality and sense of social relations
that seem equally compelling to him. Specifically, he chooses to locate himself within
an ethic of saving and planning for his family's future, as well as within the social
spaces of his nuclear family and his new place of work. Sbch changes do not lead,
however, at least not in his mind, to the denigration of his person. If anything, landing
such a job instills in him a newfound confidence in his talents as a teacher and crafts-
man. His turn to the new economy, then, does not seem to reflect an inherent immor-
ality or lack of sociality on his part as some members of the Bhat community would
imply, but an alternative morality and alternative sociality.
In fact, Ramu viewed his new work at the folklore institute, despite its many re-
strictions, as liberating in another important respect. As mentioned, most Udaipur
Bhats maintain ties with their traditional Bhambi patrons. Bhats use their praise and
insult poetry to inculcate in their patrons values such as unrestrained generosity. It
could be argued that Bhats are thus curators of a traditional gift economy. Neverthe-
less, as Ramu frequently pointed out, Bhambis are still considered untouchable by
most Rajasthanis, and Ramu thus saw his new employment as providing an escape
from a traditional patron-client relationship that marked him and his community as
the "lowest of the low," to take the words of one local Rajasthani folklorist.18
Bedami's spiritual possession, then, inflected as it is by conflicting Bhat ideas on
domesticity, clan, and territoriality, exposes the multifarious and even contradictory
views Bhats hold on new economic relations. To simplify, I would point to two Bhat
narratives about money. In the first, the new economy, with its terrible power to dis-
rupt local moral communities, is fetishized into lonely ghosts and punishing god-
desses. In the second (Ramu's version of the story), the meaning is neatly reversed, the
traditional community is depicted as a source of evil and instability and the market
economy a source of comfort and stability. I would add that each of these stories dif-
ferently construes the goddess Chavanda Mata. In the first, Ramu's kuldevi is inter-
preted as an enraged defender of traditional values, as Taussig might predict. But, in
the second, Bhats ask this goddess all manner of questions related to their new liveli-
hoods, for example, if she could help them go to "foreign" (using the English word),
that is, land a lucrative performing gig in a foreign country; here, rather than a protec-
tor of traditional relations of exchange, the goddess facilitates the Bhats' smooth en-
trance into the new economy.19
Based on these details, I would argue that Marxist accounts of capitalist relations
are too enmeshed within a rigid moral framework—this despite Taussig's tacit attempt
to escape such a framework through a consideration of culturally specific fears and
fantasies—to explain my informants' experience fully. Instead, I would suggest that
Foucault's (1970, 1972, 1978, 1980) notion of "discursive practices"—or languages
of observation (theories about the new economy and Bedami's possession) that create
their objects (a stingy man or an upright man, an angry wife or a dangerous god-
dess)—might be more useful and appropriate in this context. Such a notion of consti-
tutive language could be used, for example, to explain how Bhat subjectivity is con-
tradictorily constituted. Here, multiple discourses—or multiple narratives, as discourses
plotted in time—could be seen to circulate within the Bhat community, as in the
back-and-forth wrangling over money between Ramu and Bedami's relatives, for ex-
ample. Individual Bhats would move between these stories, finding them alternately
compelling or not based on a variety of familial and communal contingencies. Such a
reading, with a concomitant emphasis on dynamic and even contradictory frames of
meaning, would seem to do more justice to the Bhats' complex constructions of new
economic relations. In fact, a notion of plural subject positions even seems to corre-
spond nicely with the idea of spirit possession, with its escape into radically different
and divine subjectivities.
possession and the failure of voice

Bedami's voice could be located within the first Bhat narrative in which Ramu
and the new economy are condemned. Bedami's sterilization, the violation that
seems to precipitate her possession, exacerbates her anger both toward her modern
husband as well as toward the Indian state. Her husband insists on the operation, and
the state agency performing the procedure reneges on its promise of a cash payment.
Perhaps these experiences were closely linked in Bedami's mind: her betrayal by the
modern Indian state evokes her husband's own inability to deliver the wealth prom-
ised by his new job and salary—an inability that in Ramu's view, necessitated Be-
dami's sterilization.
Bedami's possession could then be interpreted as an angry outburst against her
husband, and, through him, against the corrupt, modern world. From this interpretive
standpoint, her sterilization brings suppressed emotions to the surface, which are then
given form as a goddess—a divinely sanctioned stand-in for Bedami's own anger to-
ward her husband's modern-inspired greed. Bedami, in this form holding particular
authority over her husband, chases Ramu from his own home in response to his piti-
fully cheap pujas or at another moment, attempts to circumvent his stinginess by de-
manding a costly new marble floor, and generally castigates him for failing to recog-
nize his dependence on divine and communal traditional powers.
This tells at best half of the story, however. Bedami herself, during the years pre-
ceding her sterilization and transformation into the devi, did sometimes criticize her
husband's stinginess, usually through friendly jokes, both to her Bhat relatives and to
myself. But, this was atypical of Bedami who did not usually display overt antagonism
either toward her husband or toward the modern world. Bedami frequently, and quite
lovingly, praised Ramu in my presence. And such praise was inextricably bound up
with Bedami's perception of her husband's ostensible modernity: Ramu's long hours
at work demonstrated his love for their children and desire for their advancement; his
stint in the Indian Army, which no other Bhats in the Udaipur community had experi-
enced, showed his patriotism and bravery; even his written poems, and most Bhats in-
cluding Bedami were illiterate, revealed both the power of his mind and the depth of
his soul. All in all, Bedami finds it difficult simply to condemn Ramu's modern ways.
This is, in part, out of her feelings of love and loyalty for her husband, but also seems
because of the fact that Bedami, too, shares in the dream that she and her family will
be raised up, even saved, by Ramu's new employment, bank account, pension, and,
in an unfortunate emergency, life insurance.
Even Bedami's possession, in many ways, demonstrates a warmth and sympathy
for Ramu. This is most clear in the manner that Bedami repeatedly insists, in as force-
ful terms as possible, that Ramu be included in any summonings of the goddess and
communal feasts held in Chavanda Mata's honor. On numerous occasions, Bedami
stands firm against the wishes of her patriline, insisting that the goddess not be called
or feted until her husband returns from work, no small feat for this soft-spoken young
woman. Similarly, the goddess herself never gives up on Ramu despite his recidivist
stinginess—offering Ramu opportunity after opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes
of the community. The goddess even criticizes many Bhats for thinking in terms of
fere-mere (yours and mine). This phrase, as previously mentioned, is applied to per-
sons such as Ramu who refuse to share economic resources, but the goddess also uses
the phrase to criticize gossips and backbiters in the Bhat community—those who, in a
perverse spirit of sharing, take what is not theirs, such as a secret, and share it with
others with whom they should not—clearly intending to protect Ramu from those
who spoke negatively of him behind his back. Bedami, in both her conscious and
possessed states, therefore seems ambivalent toward Ramu—although Bedami's devi
form surely allows for more overt expression of hostility toward him.
Bedami, then, is caught between the demands of the Udaipur Bhat community
and the demands of her husband. The conflict between her natal family and her hus-
band, centering around Ramu's debts, makes it impossible for her to take sides. Living
near and sometimes in her parents' home only exacerbates Bedami's already difficult
situation—making it impossible for her to minimize the centrality of this dispute in her
life. Bedami's relatives may celebrate community and condemn the modern econ-
omy, but Bedami herself, out of duty toward her husband, cannot do so fully. Ramu
may embrace the new economy's ethic of individualism, especially given his distance
from his own patrilineage and thus from legitimate demands that could be placed on
his money, but again, Bedami, immersed as she is in the communal space of her
childhood, cannot. As I interpret Bedami's feelings, the new economy, as perceived
through her husband's new work, seems to be alternately demonic and divine, dislo-
cating and comforting, exploitative and just.
Bedami's possession might be thought of as an attempt to forge a third story
somewhere between a condemnation and celebration of capitalism. Bedami, in the
form of the goddess, does condemn those who fail to respect community. She does
not, however, treat money earned in the capitalist economy as intrinsically evil, but as
the very means to demonstrate loyalty to community. Ramu, simply by channeling his
wages into communal feasts, and thus allowing his outside earnings to be domesti-
cated by the community, would avoid most if not all of the devi's wrath. In fact, I often
got the impression that Ramu's cash infusions into communal feasts and the devi's
gifts of healing were read by Bedami as mutually convertible currencies. Transformed
into a goddess, a source of power from which her relatives could draw, Bedami com-
pensates for her husband's stinginess.
Bedami's possession, then, unlike the first two narratives, is neither a condemna-
tion of her greedy husband nor of her own backbiting relatives. Rather, it represents
an attempt to fuse old and new worlds and thus reintegrate her husband back into the
community. The goddess's replies to questions put to her by the community demon-
strate this point, given they inevitably emphasize unity and harmony: her most com-
mon responses were, "Everything will be alright," "Don't worry," "There is nothing to
fear," "I am with everyone," "I will take care of everyone," "I will bring everyone hap-
piness," and "You have no enemies here" (the latter responding to accusations of
black magic within the community). If Bedami the goddess emphasized harmony
over conflict, Bedami the person clearly enjoyed those festive periods following her
possession. I am thinking in particular of a puja honoring Chavanda Mata, sponsored
by Ramu, in which communal exuberance was particularly pronounced. Bedami, for
the first time since her husband's protracted illness, seemed truly happy as she
watched her husband laughing and carousing with the other Bhats, enjoying himself
with her relatives as he used to when, as Bedami put it, "All were 'one' [ek]."
The power of the devi's voice, in this case to forge unity from conflict, contrasts
with Bedami's own personal difficulty in finding her voice. As mentioned, the people
in Bedami's community usually describe her as bholi—which implies a simplicity of
disposition as well as a tendency to bow to the will of more clever others. Such diffi-
culty in being heard is especially troubling to Bedami given the talents of the other
members of her family. Bedami's father is the wise and very vocal leader of the
Udaipur Bhats, and her mother is similarly renowned for her cleverness. Each of Be-
dami's four sisters—to the chagrin of her father (Bedami has no brothers)—is also con-
sidered unusually bright and expressive. Her eldest sister, Gita, is seen as one of the
most able voices within the community, turned to in times of stress, and the true
brains of her marriage. (Gita and her husband had also moved to Udaipur. But, per-
haps because of Gita's husband's docility, they experienced none of the troubles of
Bedami and Ramu.) Bedami's younger sister, Santosh, is also viewed as one of the
most clever of all Bhats despite her mere 13 years, and sure to be a Bhat leader one
day. Bhats turn to her, given her literacy and volubility, for most of their letter-writing
needs. And Bedami's youngest sister is considered equally precocious and beautiful—
the latter quality particularly troubling for Bedami given that physical attractiveness is
her primary claim to recognition, as Bedami's parents once pointed out to me.
Bedami's difficulty in being heard might be imagined as, at least in part, an issue
of gender and the relative value of different voices in this community.20 After all, In-
dian women are generally asked to demonstrate verbal and emotional restraint before
fathers, husbands, and other men. And in this context, possession itself is clearly a
gendered phenomenon: certainly, Chavanda Mata herself is feminine, and women
account for most of the goddess's supplicants; men, if they participate at all, linger
hesitatingly at the door waiting to ask a few terse questions. Similarly, the Bhat experi-
ence with capitalism is framed by ideas about the proper behavior of men and
women—men earn money outside the home, and women, referred to as Lakshmi,
typically decide how such money is spent and thus domesticated. Nonetheless, such
a construal, although surely partially correct, would ignore the fact that Bedami's
mother and sisters do not experience such a difficulty airing their opinions or having
their voices heeded. Neither would it account for the fact that Bhats, unlike many In-
dian communities, recognize remarkable equality between the two sexes.
Whatever the origins of her difficulty with voice—whether gender expectations,
personal difficulties, intrafamilial dynamics, or something else—as the goddess, Be-
dami is endowed with a violently expressive manner of speaking and moving that
contrasts with her typical calm. Previously silent and even invisible, she becomes in
possession the focus of Bhat attention—heard and recognized in an unprecedented
manner. Nowhere was this reversal more apparent to me than when Bedami's
mother, among others, fell begging and whimpering before the terrible (katharnak)di-
vinity that had settled in Bedami's flesh. Bedami, according to an interpretation of
spirit possession as a gendered critique, in this way seems to find the voice that so
eludes her in everyday life (e.g., see Boddy 1989, 1994; Lewis 1989; Obeyesekere
1981 ;Ong 1987,1988).
But, such a perspective, I feel, does not do justice to the confusion, disorder, and
very literal failure of voice that also sometimes characterizes Bedami's person when
incarnated as the goddess. During her initial seizures, Bedami, for the most part, does
not speak. Rather, she voicelessly tears at her clothes and rolls madly about. At this
point, her movements and anger, unfocused, are directed simultaneously at Ramu
whom she chases through the door of their home, at her relatives who try, often un-
successfully, to restrain her, as well as at her own body, as when she beats her head
angrily against the walls of her home. When Bedami utters any sounds at all, they are
usually screams, rants, and sighs of pain. When a word or two escapes her lips, the
phrase is typically fragmentary or repetitive—for example, a passionate and perplex-
ing repetition of the phrase, "Wrong! Wrong!"
Bedami's identification as Chavanda Mata does, in some sense, seem to give her
a firmer and more centered voice. And in the course of each episode, her violent fits
become more ordered—after awhile, she typically pants rhythmically in place and
breathes staccato-like with her hands clasped above her head, rather than raging
across the room. But, even after her initial seizures are finally identified as spiritual
possession rather than insanity, Bedami still demonstrates, during the descent of the
goddess, mostly an almost impossible struggle to speak, to allow even the simplest of
phrases to escape her lips. Bedami typically answers questions put to her in incom-
plete phrases, often incomprehensible, and always choked by a litany of gasps, sobs,
gurgles, coughs, and moans. This explains why questions of a yes or no form—"Will I
get that job in Sikkar?"—or at least questions that allow for one-word answers
"Whose ghost is pursuing me?"—are typically put to her. Any response longer than a
few words is next to impossible—and, in fact, such a fragmentary voice, or lack of
voice, is typical of many forms of spiritual possession that afflict Rajasthani women.21
Bedami's identification as the goddess, then, does not totally relieve her problem
of voice and her problematic perspective on the changes around her. If anything, her
possession exacerbates her already tremendous difficulty in articulating her experi-
ence. As the goddess, Bedami is pulled even more forcefully in different directions by
diverse factions within the community who struggle to contain and control her power
and meaning. Unable to take sides in this dispute, Bedami falls even more deeply into
a structured kind of possession theater—at times, simply sitting and swaying and pant-
ing wordlessly, at other moments, lunging madly at unseen enemies and ranting inco-
herently—a performance that, despite its characteristically loud emotional outbursts,
keeps Bedami, once again, paradoxically silent.
Spiritual possessions such as Bedami's are sometimes interpreted as a protest
against gender and capitalist oppression (e.g., Ong 1987, 1988).22 Bedami's spiritual
attack, in effect, is a kind of protest both against her husband's demands and against
the new economy; at certain moments, Bedami even seems to experience it as such.
But, for the greater part, one might question whether Bedami herself experiences her
possession as a protest, conscious or unconscious—or, rather, largely as an inability
to protest. Unable to articulate her experience through narratives that univocally con-
demn or celebrate her husband as an agent of change, Bedami, at times, multiplies
herself so as to occupy two different subject positions—the loyal and loving wife and
the demanding devi. But, I would also suggest that Bedami, at other moments of her
possession, seems to drop into a confused and typically speechless state that is not as-
sociated with any clearly defined subject position. Bedami's spiritual possession is not
simply a multiplication of her subjectivity into a number of conflicting discursive po-
sitions, although it is surely this in part, but a failure to locate herself exactly in any
stable and coherent subject position at all. As the devi, and especially in those gasp-
ing speechless moments, Bedami seems, at times, to be caught somewhere between
her various possible selves.
conclusion: bards, spirits, and fetishism

Based on the details of this article, I wish to contrast the other Bhats' experiences
of capitalism with Bedami's. Most Bhats, and here I speak also of Ramu, demonstrate
narrative experiences of new capitalist relations. They seemingly have little difficulty
fitting their experiences of the new economy into grand stories concerning the
changes going on around them—either condemning Ramu's sins, or from Ramu's per-
spective, validating his goodness. A reading of this situation emphasizing multiple
narrative and discursive frames, in fact, would straightforwardly account for the Bhat
community's contradictory morality tales.23 Bedami, however, torn as she is by the
contrary wishes of those around her, seems able to narrate her experience only with
great difficulty. After suffering from an initial burst of inchoate emotion, she falls into a
scripted and, given the frequent inability to express herself through words, only
problematically verbal performance. Her relatives transform her experience into nar-
rative—for example, a tacit and tactical condemnation of Ramu as himself an incar-
nation of the evils of the new economy. But, Bedami herself is not always able to do so.
Bedami's difficulty in narrating her experience may be especially painful to her
given her community's caste profession. The Bhats' capacity to narrate their experi-
ences with capitalism effectively—and these comments are meant to be suggestive
rather than definitive—seems to relate to their caste profession. Bhats are bards who
earn a living with their facility with words. For the Bhat community, "discourse" and
"story" are emic concepts. My informants not only love to talk, but to talk about talk,
or as Bhats would phrase it, about bol (speech), bhasha (language), matlab (meaning),
buddhi (wit), and kahani (story). In Bhat narrations of this young woman's possession,
then, can be found a celebration of the bardic art of storytelling, a skill central to this
caste's craft as historians and performers. In this sense, Bedami's sometimes failure to
enter into narrative not only reflects a failure to be heard above the din of her verbose
relatives. Rather, surely more painfully, it may reflect a failure of what it centrally
means to be a bhat (or bard)—to render clear and compelling in language what is in-
choate and disturbing in experience.
In this article, I speak of capitalism as a moral (or immoral) narrative, but I may be
only partially accurate. Such a perspective can be fruitfully applied to Bhats—Ramu
included. But, it is equally true that any one narrative fails to encompass the diverse
ways that capitalism is represented by the Bhat experience. And, more importantly,
narrative itself may be an inappropriate term for construing the changes going on in
modern Rajasthan, at least from Bedami's perspective, given that her experience
seems at times to escape the storied and even the symbolic.24
Bhats, then, render both the new economy and the goddess in a similar manner—
simultaneously evil and good, stultifying and liberating, frightening and "boring"
(they use the English), and thus replete with both terror and wonder. Bedami, on the
other hand, because of the contradictory and highly gendered manner in which capi-
talist relations become embodied both within her community and within her actual
physical being, is at times unable to render her husband's new position in the world in
any particular way at all. Instead, she often falls speechless before its terrible wonder,
seemingly eluding any particular moral position.
In these terms, Marx's and Taussig's notions of "commodity fetishism," with their
implicit condemnation of capitalist relations, would not seem to account fully for this
Bhat case of possession. Bedami's spiritual possession is a form of protest against her
husband as well as against, in some indirect manner, the new money economy; how-
ever, such an interpretation is but partial. Bhats—and I am speaking particularly of
Ramu—actually celebrate the new economy in many contexts. Also, Bedami's pos-
session would seem to represent as much a failure to protest as a clearly articulated
critique of her husband's actions. Despite the limited applicability of a Marxist under-
standing of "commodity fetishism" to this Bhat case, I would still suggest that the no-
tion of a "fetish"—in the more general sense of an object, image, or concept receiving
undue and even irrational attention and reverence—might still importantly illuminate
Bedami's possession, or at least the various interpretations advanced to explain Be-
dami's spiritual state. I would contend, for example, that for Western analysts, or in-
deed for Bhats themselves, to pay attention to Bedami's resistance or protest alone
would be to risk fetishizing such accounts. Where Marx's notion of commodity fetish-
ism would seem to refer to a kind of "object worship"25—that is, the worship of money
and commodities—fetishism more generally and abstractly may also point to the
manner in which images (such as money, a tool for representing value) become so
compelling as to eclipse their referents (labor). This alternative logic of the fetish,
which emphasizes the process of representation, could theh be extended to images
such as words and stories, so that accounts of capitalism, and indeed accounts of fet-
ishism itself, too, may be fetishized. And other accounts of spirit possession as a form
of resistance—such as Comaroff 1985; Lan 1985, 1989; Ong 1987, 1988; Ranger
1985; Sharp 1993,1994,1999; Taussig 1980—would run similar risks of fetishization
if they only pay attention to the resistance dimensions of such experiences.26
Fetishism, I would therefore propose, seems to touch on issues related to poetics—

how, for example, ultimately lifeless images seem to acquire a compelling force equal
to or greater than life itself.27 The image of money, as Marx suggests, can be fetishized
in such a way as to usurp the human labor it supposedly merely represents—attaining
in the process a life force seemingly equal to that of gods and devils. But, I would also
suggest that words and stories—Marx's and Taussig's, my own, even the Bhats'—can
be similarly fetishized. I say "fetishized" because these stories describing new eco-
nomic relations seem to grow in such a way as to eclipse alternative narratives that,
for example, celebrate rather than condemn the new economy; such stories can even
eclipse the complex experiences, such as Bedami's, that place no easy moral judg-
ment on money. And I would suggest that framing fetishism in terms of poetics seems
appropriate in this Bhat case. For Bhats, as bards, particularly delight in the interpre-
tive and representational dilemmas posed by Bedami's possession.28
As I read them, Bedami's utterances and silences during her spiritual possession
seem to evoke a truth at the very heart of the notion of fetishism itself: any image, rep-
resentation, or moral structure—be it a goddess, money, a condemnation of a stingy
man, or even an anthropological account of goddesses and money in Rajasthan—can
be wielded to articulate certain human truths, while inevitably rendering other as-
pects of experience disturbingly silent. I would thus propose that fetishism can be
construed in an idiom even closer to my central concerns in this article. Certain im-
ages—be they monetary or linguistic, Bhat or Western—can indeed gain such a se-
ductive force as to conceal as much as they reveal about experiences such as Be-
dami's. To my mind, however, this does not suggest only poetics, as I suggest above.
Rather, such stories—with all of their congealed power to overwhelm, and thus ulti-
mately to hide the complex texture of reality—would seem, in some fundamental
way, capable of possessing those who hear them. Any explanation of possession,
then, would seem itself to risk a double possession: analysts risk being possessed by
seductive theories; that is, such analysts, in a manner of speaking, can thus come to
possess already possessed spiritual mediums.29 Bedami's transformation into the god-
dess, in the manner it foregrounds her potent anger and occludes other depths of
emotion, thus might be interpreted as a kind of fetishism. Nevertheless, any powerful
narrative explanation, if pursued with singular enough passion and vigor, also seems
both a kind of fetishism as well as a possession. As a result, Bedami's spiritual condi-
tion—like the stories, Bhat and Western, that purport to explain this condition—are
not only examples of fetishism. Rather, they would seem to invite reflection on, and
even participation in, the very meaning of fetishism.
notes
Acknowledgments. The research and writing of this article was funded by the National
Science Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Spencer Foundation, the Na-
tional Endowment for the Humanities, the University of California, San Diego, the Izaak Walton
Killam Foundation of the University of Alberta, and Colorado State University. This article is
based in part on my Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology entitled "Big Words, Little People: Cash
and Ken in Modern Rajasthan" (Snodgrass 1997). Many persons have contributed to the final
form of this article, but I am most indebted to the Bhats of Rajasthan for knowledge and support
that transcends words, Ann Julienne Russ for her uncanny insight (parts of the article are as
much hers as mine), Michael Meeker for his ever brilliant engagement with my work, F. G.
Bailey for his incisive commentary and tireless editing of numerous incarnations of this article,
and more than a handful of anonymous readers, each of whom greatly enhanced the quality of
this article.
1. A note on caste names and identities: Bhat is a generic term for Bard applied as a short-
hand to a range of mythographers, including those employed by village nobles. Bhats were his-
torically referred to as Nats (Dancers) by their patrons, but Bhats themselves consider this
denigrating and do not use it as a term of self-reference. Designating themselves "Bhats" allows
my Informants to distance themselves from communities that allow their women to dance be-
fore other castes and are thus imagined to be linked with prostitution. The Raj Nats are one such
community. My informants have also started referring to themselves as Kathputli-Bhats (Puppet-
eer-Bards), a more recent form of self-reference.
Bhat patrons, the Bhambis, are also referred to as Meghwals and Balais. Rajasthani castes
typically have three names: one respectful, one neutral, and one demeaning (Kothari 1994:
205). In this case, Bhambis is the most neutral of the three terms. Meghwals is used by Bhambis
to make a higher status claim—specifically, to be descended from Megh, a Hindu Saint. Balais,
on the other hand, connotes certain degrading forms of leatherwork. Historically, Bhambis
scavenged animal carcasses and worked them into shoes, satchels, sacks for drawing water
from wells, and harnesses for beasts of burden. As leatherworkers in close contact with death
and decay, Bhambis are considered grossly impure, even untouchable. Bhambis thus resemble
Chamars, another untouchable leatherwork ing caste, although all Bhambis and Bhats vehe-
mently deny the connection, claiming higher status. Bhambis also worked as all-purpose Rajput
servants, for example, planting and harvesting their masters' crops, and the Bhambi headman
typically served as a village watchman, messenger, and protector of guests. Since Indian inde-
pendence and land reform, Bhambi status has improved but remains low; many Bhambis have
given up their leatherwork.
2. Marx suggests that such a reversal occurs because, in a capitalist economy, persons
generally no longer consume the products that they themselves have fashioned. Rather, they
purchase the products of others' labor in a competitive market, and thus tend to forget that these
goods, so alienated in time and place from the circumstances of their production, were indeed
fashioned by people. Mistakenly, they may imagine that these products have sprung ex nihilo
into the world like magical beings, glowing and animate with a wondrous spirit all their own.
Marx further suggests that similar mistakes are made with regards to money. Marx sees money
as the abstract referent of value that, through the imposition of a generic standard, facilitates the
exchange of commodities in the capitalist market. He argues, however, that persons inhabiting
a capitalist economy become mystified on this point, as Allison puts it, "Believing that the
power of money exists as a natural property immanent in money itself rather than as its embodi-
ment of labor and social relations" (1996:xvi). The fetishism of money specifically, rather than
of commodities more generally, is my primary focus in this article.
3. Taussig (1980), in order to condemn capitalism, has been accused of overlooking ex-
ploitative pre-European imperial systems, such as those instituted by the Incas, which belie the
simple story of harmonious gift economies being destroyed by exchange-oriented capitalism
(e.g., see Harris 1989 and Sallnow 1989). Bloch and Parry (1989), commenting on work such as
Taussig's, point out that most societies, even those outside the centers of capitalist develop-
ment, manifest both selfish ethics that celebrate impersonal, calculating, and acquisitive activ-
ity, as well as solidaristic ones that celebrate altruism and the long-term production of the
community. Although I am critical of aspects of Taussig's early work on commodity fetishism in
South America, his writings remain the inspiration for this article. In later work, Taussig (1993,
1997) considers the ways in which meanings are constructed in complex political contexts—for
example, how subalterns imitate colonials in order to gain power over them—as well as the lim-
its of Western modes of representation, a mode of analysis more amenable to my own.
4. Abu-Lughod (1986:275 n. 23) draws attention to the fact that Foucault refers to pat-
terned language in his notion of discourse, and also to patterned actions. That is, in certain con-
texts, Foucault (1994) seems to suggest in his notion of "discourse" an alignment between
language and institutional practices. Even this more general notion of discourse, with its empha-
sis on form and pattern, however, would not seem to account adequately for Bedami's case of
spiritual possession; Bedami's actions during her seizures—with her chaotic and confused roll-
ing about on the ground, for example—seem in some important sense to lose their sense. Fou-
cault, then, admirably sketches the way in which human actors are discursively constituted.
a tale of goddesses $27
But, I suggest, he less successfully sketches the manner In which persons escape particular dis-
cursive structures. More importantly for this article, Foucault does not dwell on the manner in
which some persons, such as the possessed or the insane, may escape any and all discursive for-
mations.
5. In his seminal study, I. M. Lewis (1989) proposes that, cross-culturally, poor and subor-
dinate persons are more likely to become possessed than those playing central roles in society.
Other subsequent analyses of spirit possession have followed the general line of Lewis's argu-
ment, if challenging certain aspects of his thesis. For example, Boddy (1989), in her study of the
Sudanese zar cult, notes that women are more likely to find a voice through spirit cults that are
marginal to mainstream, male-dominated Islam. Although, as she points out in a review article
of the spirit possession literature (1994), Boddy hopes to focus attention less on instrumentalist
aims of the women in these cults—that is, how they use spirits to solve practical problems—and
more on how spirit cults, as submerged discourses, challenge established meanings and natu-
ralized realities.
6. Five sisters and a brother, all in their early to mid-fifties, and one of them Bedami's
mother, constitute the core of the Bhat community. A second brother died, although his three
sons lived in Udaipur, and a sixth sister lives elsewhere. Around this sibling core are a mishmash
of children, grandchildren, spouses, cousins, friends, and hangers-on, all of whom shaped my
experience of the Udaipur Bhat community.
7. This article is based on two and a half years of dissertation fieldwork on the Bhat com-
munity, conducted first in the summer of 1990, and then between August 1992 and December
1994. The events recounted in this article unfolded in late 1994 in the town of Udaipur, a rela-
tively small town by Indian standards with a population of about 400,000, which is situated in a
valley of the Aravalli Mountains in southern Rajasthan. I also worked with Bhats in Jaipur, the
capital city of Rajasthan, as well as in their natal villages in the districts of Nagaur and Sikkar in
the Western, or desert, side of the state. I returned to the Udaipur Bhat community during the
summer of 1998, while a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. At this time, I
investigated a form of possession in which women were "grabbed" by the spirits of still-living
men, subsequently visiting a Sufi Saint named Mastanna Baba to be cured (see Snodgrass 2002).
During this last period of research, Bedami and Ramu had moved to Bhopal in the neighboring
state of Madya Pradesh, and I had no contact with them. I should also point out that I use pseu-
donyms throughout this article.
8. Other meanings of bhav, in a dictionary entry that reads like an extended metaphysical
poem, are "sentiment," "idea," "existence," "being," "sense," "purport," "gist," "nature," "tem-
perament," and interestingly enough for this article, "price" (Chaturvedi and Tiwari 1990).
9. See Bennett 1983 for the ways in which Mataji (the mother goddess) and Devi (the god-
dess) mediate between positive and negative aspects of womanhood (the sacred virgin, personi-
fied by the Hindu goddess, Parvati, in the former case; young, married, and sexually active
women, like Durga and Kali, in the latter). For interesting studies of Hindu goddesses and the
kuldevi tradition (one Rajput and the other of a Marwari Merchant caste), see Harlan 1992 and
Hardgrove 1999 respectively.
10. Gods (devta) such as Kali, Hanuman, Bhaironji, and Tejaji (a god of snake bites) com-
monly seize human mounts. Supreme Cods, such as the Hindu triumvirate of Brahma, Vishnu,
and Shiva, do not possess Rajasthani persons, for it is believed that their overwhelming power
(shakti) would cause a human vessel's head or body to explode. For more on Rajasthan's spiri-
tual landscape, as well as their Rajasthani translations, see Gold 1988 and Kothari 1982.
11. Bhats referred to this exorcist as a pandit (priest). Most North Indians refer to such per-
sons as bhopas or ojhas—perhaps best translated "shaman"—distinguishing between Brahmin
priests who would not deal with spirits (who are called pandits) and spiritual specialists (bhopas).
12. Gold says of the domestication of spiritual forces:
In village Rajasthan, spirits, both divine and destructive, are frequently understood to enter
and control human bodies, either in response to a summons or for purposes of their own.
As has been noted for many parts of India (and elsewhere in the world), episodes of spirit
possession in village Rajasthan are generally distinguished according to whether their
sources are deities, on the one hand, or malign beings such as "ghosts" (bhut-pret) or
"witches" (dakan, meli), on the other. These two categories are not, however, totally ex-
clusive, at least over time. The afflicting ghost of a deceased relative, for example, may be
transformed, through enshrinement and nourishment, into a beneficent household deity.
Possession by that spirit, formerly a dreaded attack, may then become an invited source of
diffuse blessings and specific knowledge. [1988:35]
13. In this article, I sometimes speak of Ramu as a "capitalist." In using this term, I do not
wish to imply that I see capitalism as having a homogeneous form. Rather, I use "capitalism" to
refer to a number of different social realities. For example, I see Ramu as a very specific kind of
capitalist, a wage laborer; other Bhats within the community, by contrast, seem closer to free-
wheeling entrepreneurs. Also, I see capitalism as taking very specific forms in India, and surely,
to do justice to the local Bhat experience of capitalism would require multiple lenses, exploring
everything from the British Rajs', or even the Mughals', curious commingling of politics and
trade to the emerging Indian tourist industry—topics, however important to understanding the
particular way capitalism incarnates in India, well beyond the scope of this article.
14. For publications on Rajasthan's many performing communities, see Bhanavat 1971,
1971-72, 1986; Erdman 1985; Joshi 1976; and Kothari 1994. See also Emigh and Emigh 1994
on Rajasthan's Bahurupiya (professional mimics or impostors), and for Rajasthani puppetry,
new and traditional, see Samar 1966,1971, and 1972. Also, Tod (1978) derives much of his his-
tory of Rajasthan from bardic accounts, and Shah and Shroff (1959) describe a "caste of gene-
alogists and mythographers" from Gujarat (the state to the south of Rajasthan) that resemble the
Bhats.
15. Fuller (1989)—citing historical research by Basham (1971), Bayly (1983), Ghoshal
(1929), and Habib (1963) on regional networks of trade, tribute, taxation, money, and markets
since at least the 9th century—criticizes early anthropological studies on jajmani such as
Kolenda's (1967) and Wiser's (1969). He suggests these studies idealize India in a way similar to
Dumont (1970) and Marx (1964) by establishing an unchanging, static, archaic economy that is
the inverse of a moneyed, market economy. He thus refers to Kolenda's account as "largely a
figment of the anthropological imagination" (Fuller 1989:34).
I find Fuller's arguments compelling, and even agree largely that jajmani is not an accurate
analytical category, given that it refers to a historically dynamic economy that today as in the
past seems to encompass both nonmarket (i.e., customary) and market (i.e., money) mecha-
nisms. But, I am bothered by the tone of Fuller's piece and even wonder if a counter myth might
be at work—one resembling Obeyesekere's (1992) critique of Sahlins' work in the Pacific—
which as Sahlins (1995) points out, defending himself, equates "them" (all anthropological sub-
jects) with "us" (the West), flattening difference and universalizing the experience of the ever
calculating, ever market-oriented bourgeoisie.
Fuller goes so far as to refuse to italicize jajmani, because it "corresponds only question-
ably to an indigenous concept" (1989 n. 1). (I italicize the term per AAA style.) Bhats, however,
continue to refer to themselves as "tied behind'' (piche lagayaa hua) their Bhambi patrons (ja-
jman). They return to their natal villages every harvest season in order to recite Bhambi genealo-
gies during their weddings. And they accept gifts of grain, goats, cloth, sweets, and the
occasional camel for this work—which they refer to as dan (religious alms), but sometimes
daksina (honorarium). In fact, and much to the amusement of my Bhat informants, Bhambis
must still support their bards no matter how poor their clients' memory for names or storytelling
skills—and thus overall I consider jajmani to be an indigenous Bhat term. For more on patron-
age relations in contemporary Rajasthan as they relate to Rajasthar\'s performing communities,
see the illuminating essay by Kothari (1994).
16. See, for instance, Boddy 1988, 1989; Brown 1994; Lambek 1998; Lewis 1989;
Obeyesekere 1981; Ong 1987,1988; Stoller 1984,1989a, 1989b, 1995; and Taussig 1987. See
Placido 2001 for an interesting commentary on interpretations of spirit possessions as social
contestations and critiques.
17. The Pesticide Action Network North America (1998) describes the spill as follows:
On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide's pesticide-manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India

leaked 42 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate into a sleeping, impoverished commu-
nity—killing more than 2,500 people in the first night of the disaster and injuring up to
200,000 others. According to some estimates, more than 16,000 people have died since
that time as a result of medical problems related to their exposures; 50,000 people are still
suffering significant long term health impacts and over 500,000 people have filed injury
claims with the Bhopal Compensation Courts. There have been no criminal verdicts issued
in the Bhopal case, however, Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for
US$470 million in 1989. To date, Bhopal survivors or their families have received
US$3,300 for loss of life and US$800 for permanent disability. Union Carbide has since
abandoned its Bhopal plant, which originally produced pesticides for use in cotton pro-
duction and has refused to clean up the extensive pollution of water and soil it left behind.
18. Ramu, like many Bhats, sometimes spoke of the gifts received from their patrons as
morally perilous, bringing madness, disease, and ruin. In India, some categories of gifts—for ex-
ample, those labeled dan (alms), which are how Bhats refer to their patrons' donations—are be-
lieved to embody the substance, and even sins (pap), of the donor, and are thus seen as highly
dangerous (see Heesterman 1964; Hubert and Mauss 1964; Parry 1986, 1989; Raheja 1988,
1990). Bhambis, in generously gifting to Bhats, at weddings, for example, can transfer not only
their impure substances into their clients, but they can also "move away" their sins into Bhat
"vessels," thus rendering the event auspicious (shubh) and increasing the probability that the
marriage will be a prosperous one (the language of "moving away sins into vessels" is explored
in Raheja 1988, 1990). Ramu's fear of threats to his social status, then, may have been com-
pounded by a fear of a "bio-moral" peril (the phrase is Marriott's, see 1990). I deal with issues re-
garding the dangers of Hindu alms, especially as they are inflected by caste concerns, in
Snodgrass 2001.
19. In fact, this is an oversimplification. Most Bhats hold multiple attitudes, and tell multi-
ple stories, about money and the capitalist economy. Thus, Bhat criticisms of Ramu as a corrupt
agent of the new economy are as contradictory as they are heartfelt for many Bhats have entered
the capitalist economy, not as wage laborers or salary men but as free-wheeling entrepreneurs.
They pursue, and indeed celebrate, a life of wild speculation, living for those occasions when
German tourists step off a bus and buy every last one of their puppets. Bhats can earn 10,000 ru-
pees in a single day and then go for months without selling a single puppet, even losing money
because of transportation costs to and from the hotels where they hawk their folk productions.
Quite simply put, I found among the Bhats a narrative "land of shifting sands" (dharti dhoran ri)
vast and seething (see Erdman 1985 for the power of this metaphor to explain the shifting mean-
ings associated with Rajasthani artistic performances and negotiations between patrons and cli-
ents), which buried the simple equation, capitalism = destructive dynamism = the spirit of evil.
Most Bhats, like Ramu, are capitalists of a kind, but, again, this reflects neither an elevation of
money over persons, nor an inherent immorality. If anything, the Bhat sense of community, and
thus their perception of the importance of people, is reinforced by infusions of cash from the
new economy, which allow them to sponsor elaborate feasts and pujas. At the least, their new
puppet work gives them increasing freedom from a degrading patron-client relationship, allow-
ing them to establish new and more dignified forms of social relations.
Even Ramu is deeply ambivalent toward the new economy. Although he typically spoke of
money as the key to his happiness, in other contexts he voiced his fears in terms of money, criti-
cizing what he referred to as the typical Bhat pagal (insane) attitude toward spending. Here,
money is instantly convertible into any other commodity and thus could, in his words, "flow
through one's hands like water." From Ramu's point of view, money can be construed in two
contradictory manners: as a means of storing value, it is, to take Ramu's simile, "like a good
friend"; but as a medium of exchange, money was transformed into, as he put it to me, his most
dangerous "enemy" (dusman). For an analysis of money as a force that erodes moral bounda-
ries, and thus a force for moral relativism, see Simmel 1990,1991.
20. Such a possession might be coterminous with other forms of Indian gender protest—as
explored, for example, in Gold and Raheja's (1994) work on Rajasthani women's folktales.
21. Spiritual possessions of Rajasthani women are often characterized by violent seizures,
unfocused and chaotic movement, panting and gasping, and a general struggle to speak. For
more on such possessions, see Gold 1988 and Snodgrass 2002.
22. Spirit possession, however, is not inevitably linked to protest. Prakash (1986), for ex-
ample, suggests that low-caste Indians' beliefs about spirits can legitimize dominant ideologies
and hierarchies. The idiom of spirits and spiritual possession, then, can be conceived as a lan-
guage that allows for many forms of communication—some subversive, others oppressive.
23. Again, such readings, as I refer to them in this context, often go under the name "post-
structuralist." These critiques of society often emphasize, as does Foucault, the power of lan-
guage to construct wojldviews, and they especially point to the rejuvenating possibilities of
linguistic forms, the way, for example, subordinate groups overturn the discourses of elites in or-
der to find new meanings. I would include here Wittgenstein's (1968) notion of "language
games." I would also point to Bakhtin's (1984) writings on the "carnivalesque" rejuvenating lan-
guage of the laughing folk who turnover the words and practices of elites, as well as the "lan-
guages of heteroglossia" that Bakhtin (1981) sees as offering specific ways of conceptualizing
the world in words and are particularly resident in the modern novel. I also am thinking of de
Certeau's (1984) informal and disorderly "tactics" or hijackings of linguistic meaning, as well as
Burke's (1969) notion of discursive "fore-grounding" and "back-grounding," the process by
which meanings are brought to the surface or submerged, thus rendering discourse inherently
dynamic. Finally, I would add Derrida's (1977, 1978) notion that meaning is not present in any
individual linguistic utterance or sign but somehow resident in an ultimately unstable relation-
ship of signs with each other.
24. The account of possession I present in this article, as being beyond any fixed discur-
sive structure, is admittedly problematic. It could be pointed out, for example, that possession in
Rajasthan and elsewhere is very often highly choreographed and stereotyped—both on levels of
speech and action. I might agree, then, that possession consists of a stereotypical failure of struc-
tures or meaning and subsequent drifting into confusion. I leave it to the reader to decide
whether such a choreographed failure of meaning and coherence, with a resulting transference
of consciousness to a vaguely defined supernatural elsewhere, itself constitutes, to draw on the
vocabulary of Victor and Edith Turner (1978), "structure," "anti-structure," or both simultane-
ously.
25. The English word fetish seems to derive from the Portuguese feitico, or "charm." This
term was common in Medieval Europe, for example, used by 15th-century Portuguese travelers
to the Guinea Coast of West Africa to refer to ritual magic involving mystical talismans. Fetish
was more or less synonymous with witchcraft and sorcery, a dangerously heretical and typically
illegal magical practice in which objects were attributed mystical force. The modern anthropo-
logical meaning of the term is the "worship of inanimate objects as gods." Here, fetishism is
construed as a religion and not merely a heretical form of magical practice—a variant reading
believed to have arisen in the circa 1760 writings of Charles de Brosses, whom Marx is said to
have read. In this paragraph, I closely paraphrase Dant (1996:497-498).
26. I simply wish to point out that Marx and Taussig seem to occupy a moral and political
space. Their accounts in fact possess the same tone as the currently proliferating critiques, typi-
cally Marxist inspired, of the new global economy—the World Bank, the International Mone-
tary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Their stories, however, are belied by other
morality tales—or, even, by the difficulty persons experience in certain contexts of formulating
any tale at all about the new economy—and thus might be partial. I would also suggest, at this
point, that Bhats, as bards, are aware of the representational complexities and ambiguities sur-
rounding their narration of Bedami's situation—by being taken in by one elegantly formulated
critique of Ramu, I may therefore have fallen prey to the wiles of clever performers.
27. Fetishism—to push the origin of this word back further than the Portuguese feitico (or
charm)—originates from the Latin facticius (made by art), connoting the way a craftsman gives
form to the formless and life to mere substance (Dant 1996). This etymology would seem to en-
courage my poetic reading of the term.
28. My informants often seemed, to me at least, more interested in their own narratives, be
they condemning or celebrating Ramu and the new economy, than in grasping the deeper,
more ambivalent, and often worldless, truths of Bedami's situation. Bhats, then, would seem,
like Marx and Taussig, to fetishize certain narratives concerning this woman's spiritual condi-
tion. I would add that the primary task of my Bhat informants, as bards and praise singers, is pre-
cisely to craft images that become so compelling as to eclipse other representations of reality—
Bhat panegyrical verse, for example, aims to occlude the Bhats' patrons' presumed bodily im-
purity. Bhats, furthermore, suggest that possession is akin to such a process—a woman's divine
performance (an image) eclipses her real life person (the thing itself): Bedami so identifies with
the image of the goddess as to in some way actually become the goddess. Moreover, this lan-
guage for construing the fetishism-like force of performances such as this spiritual event (i.e.,
mere words and images) becomes an object of delight more compelling than the actual posses-
sion (the thing itself). In this sense, and perhaps because of the centrarity of fiction to my inform-
ants' livelihood, Bhats seem to fetishize their own critical theory of fetishism—they fetishize
fetishism so to speak. For more on the Bhat aesthetic, performative, and imagistic views of spiri-
tual possessions, see Snodgrass 2002.
29. See Placido 2001 for the relevance of the possession metaphor for theoretical inquiry.
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accepted July 10, 2001

final version submitted September 20,2001
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
Department of Anthropology
C-209 Andrew C. Clark Bldg.
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787
jsnodgra @lama r. colostate. edu

A Tale of Goddesses, Money, and Other Terribly Wonderful Things - Spirit Possession, Commodity Fetishism

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a tale of goddesses, money, and other terribly

wonderful things: spirit possession,

In this article, I examine the spiritual possession of a young Indian woman—a

American Ethnologist29(3):602-636. Copyright €> 2002, American Anthropological Association.

proletariat's perception of the evil of capitalist relations of production and exchange.

the salary man

and poverty, are classified in the Indian constitution as "backward" or "scheduled"

the curse of community

Das kosh ka a van-Java n

possession and the failure of voice

conclusion: bards, spirits, and fetishism

Fetishism, I would therefore propose, seems to touch on issues related to poetics—

On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide's pesticide-manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India

Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss

Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner

accepted July 10, 2001

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