Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore local responses to two weather-related disasters in a village of North India. I analyse responses to these events, which carries a juxtaposition of two rather different temporalities; the narrative of climate change and the cosmology of vernacular Hinduism.

Paper long abstract:

During my fieldwork in a small Shivalik Hill village in North India, 2013, a devastating flood took place in the neighboring state of Uttarakhand.

This event generated a lot of talk, and worry, which the arrival of the monsoon tend to do. A few weeks later, a smaller landslide in the village it self increased the level of distress, and following precautionary action was taken.

By paying attention to the local reactions and interpretations of these two events, I found that weather is mainly interpreted within a framework of vernacular Hinduism, but that it is also in a certain extent juxtaposed with western scientific tropes of global warming.

This is an interesting juxtaposition, as the environmental narrative of climate change carries with it a linear temporality, where humans propel towards environmental destruction and final apocalypse; whilst Hindu cosmology is largely cyclic, where every end of an era also carries prospects for renewal and a new beginning.

In this paper, I argue that the local perception of the monsoon as purifying agent plays an important part in enabling the people of Rani Mājri to alternate between these two cosmologies, and that weather and temporality both carry social aspects.