In Defense of Brothering: The "Eternal Religion" and Tourism in North India

This paper explores the discourse of sanātan dharm ("the eternal religion") as it exists in the North Indian pilgrimage and tourist town of Pushkar. Despite the term's complex pedigree, it is most frequently deployed in Pushkar as a code word for universalism. I consider it a technique of "brothering," a process which suggests that through blurring distinction and drawing large enough boundaries, the other can become the self. Tourism serves as a catalyst in the creation of this discourse, manifesting in a vast repertoire of sayings and phrases that promote a type of Hindu universalism. At the same time, given its place in Pushkar's tourism economy and its nationalist history, the promise of egalitarianism can seem at times tenuous. This article discusses how issues of moneyed interest and virulent nationalism shape, and are negotiated within, discourses of the "eternal religion," while simultaneously giving serious consideration to the prospect of brothering.