The Jaunsari people of Garhwal, Uttarakhand’s Jaunsar-Bawar region, are a tribal community separated among castes such as Brahmins, Rajputs, Bajgis, and Koltas. The Jaunsaris claim to be the descendants of the Pandavas from the Mahabharata. Because of its history and topography, the area is environmentally and culturally distinct. In 1967, the Jaunsaris were recognised as a Central Himalayan tribe by the Gazette of Government of India No. 107.
Mahasu devta is one of the principal deities in the Indian Western Himalayas and is prominent and most popular in the Jaunsar-Bawar region of Uttarakhand and parts of Himachal Pradesh. Mahasu devta is the common name of four brother deities from the Western Himalayas who are locally considered God-kings.
The paper attempts to explain how predominant pan-Hindu notions of divinity are recognised and integrated into the epistemological conceptions and social process prevailing in Mahasu devta’s realm of Jaunsar-Bawar, Garhwal, Uttarakhand through semi-structured in-depth interviews with Jaunsari people and the magico-religious priests and shaman’s of Lakhwar village, a Jaunsari village located in the Kalsi development block of the Dehradun district, Garhwal region, Uttarakhand. The paper explains the changing role of the devta due to pan-Hindu identity and technological and education-related developments.
The paper's relevance lies in that it seeks to understand how tribal communities react to the contemporary manifestation of their magico-religious traditions as they come into contact with the theological, economic and technological innovations that affect its interpretation in modern times.
