Regional beliefs and practices in Indian villages are of great importance to understand village Hinduism as practiced and lived by the masses. Enormous diversity of Indian folk religion has been recognized since long, and so has been its assimilation with the great traditions. The interface between written and standardized forms on one hand and oral and dynamic ones on the other is mediated by the society and social institutions of the context in which they unfold. Various strands of Hinduism emerging from differing traditions and ideologies between and within caste groups, and simultaneous existence of folk and Vedic Hinduism traditions yield a fragmented picture. These forms, which at times even contradict each other, have sustained and survived for centuries. The fragments are integrated into a consistent and coherent system, which anthropologists have occasionally called Village Hinduism, largely achieved through the binding ideologies of origin and continuity, purity, pollution, reverence and maintenance, not just of the human society and world, but also of a supernatural world imagined parallel to it, which is equally social, almost a mirror image of it. How people make sense of all these seemingly fragmented strands all at once and experience their religious lives in the interface of continuity and change is what has been pursued in this study. This system has been undergoing transformations due to various forces in play, and the life of residents balances on the hinges of changing microcosmic world and their traditional identities. This study, based on ongoing conversations and observations made with participants, discloses ways in which people interact with each other and the world around them mediated by religion, how they reimagine and reconstruct their gods and related belief systems adapting to the changing conditions while also maintaining the coherence of the village religious system.
