Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the role of ritual practices in shaping ethnicity and identity in the Eastern Himalayas, focusing on the Indigenous Rong community. It highlights how Rong shamans navigate between ritual practice and belonging in a multiethnic and multireligious contested social space.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the interplay between ritual practices, ethnicity, and identity in the multiethnic societies of the Eastern Himalayas, where ethnic movements and the quest for recognition shape social and cultural dynamics. Using ethnographic data from the Rong community, the study focuses on shamans (Mun-Bongthing) as ritual practitioners who serve as custodians of the Indigenous religion, healers, and mediators between human and other-than-human entities. These rituals, rooted in oral traditions and religious cosmologies, emphasize communication with deities, spirits, and ancestors, highlighting their agency in co-inhabiting the social space with humans.

The paper explores the dual dimensions of ritual practice: as a site of localized spiritual engagement and as a performative act embedded in broader ethnic and political claim-making. For instance, community rituals like the Chyu-Rum-Fat are recontextualized as public programs to assert Indigenous identity, while private rituals prioritize healing and negotiation with deities. These practices are further complicated in multiethnic contexts, where ritual practitioners navigate competing demands from communities, and different recognizing agents such as political organizations, the state, and the deities themselves. This paper seeks to understand how indigeneity, religiosity, and ethnic boundaries shape and reshape the interrelated nature of Rong shamanic ontologies.

Through interviews with shamans and observations of rituals, the paper reveals how the Lepcha cosmology accommodates diverse agents—human, non-human, and other-than-human—while situating ritual practices as essential to Indigenous communities' survival, health, and identity. The study ultimately contributes to understanding the dynamic interplay between ritual, ethnicity, and belonging in contested social spaces.