Rituals to Make the Rain Fall on Time and Mend the Concrete Caves

Propitiating the Land as Repair and Care in Sikkim

Abstract

Since Sikkim became a part of India in 1975, the landscape of the state has been fundamentally transformed by projects that are presented as forms of “state development.” Roads have been cut into cliffs to reach even the most remote villages; huge tunnels have been dug into mountains; and rivers have dried up or stand stagnant as a bright turquoise green where they are contained by dams. These new interventions of the landscape can be interpreted as ruptures in Sikkim’s sacred landscape, and much of the powerful activism that has taken place in Sikkim has been inspired by traditional narratives from Indigenous and Buddhist worldviews that position these interventions as part of narratives of the damage, decline, and loss of Sikkim’s spiritual wellbeing. This activism has successfully halted a number of large-scale projects. However, scars and gashes in the landscape have been left behind in the form of half-built dams, tunnels that are filled with water, and large abandoned pieces of construction machinery left to rust. These forms of disturbance have taken place at a time when climate-related disasters and disruption have become part of daily life in the mountains.

Rather than posit that these changes represent a decline without hope of return, in this paper I explore how these interventions and changes can be enfolded within Sikkim’s sacred geography, as processes of prophetically-inspired remaking and reimagining of inter-dimensional relationships and conceptions of abundance. By engaging with the ritual of the Nesol (Propitiation Prayer for the Sacred Landscape), I demonstrate how this ritual provides a history and ritual communication that acknowledges the continued sacrality of the land. This vision of the land posits an alternative for how relationships between human and more-than-human forces in the land may be rehabilitated with care, and how they may continue to provide futures as they have historically done in communities in west Sikkim.