Jatikaran: Caste,Rats,and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir

In a speech to a crowd gathered for the inauguration of the “Karni Mata Panorama” in Deshnoke, Rajasthan on July 28, 2018, Vasundhara Raje, the then Chief Minister of Rajasthan and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), proclaimed:

The Karni Mata Panorama is a museum comprised of intricate wax models that depict scenes of miracles that Karni Mata, the 14th-15th century saint, incarnation of the goddess, and member of the Charan caste, performed throughout her lifetime. In her explanation of Karni Mata's relevance to contemporary matters of governance, casteism, and environmental protection, Raje drew on hagiographic accounts of Karni Mata as an esteemed political leader, a protector of cows, trees, and “rats,” and an advocate against practices of untouchability during her lifetime (Charan, 2015; Kamphorst, 2008). Such accounts continue to structure multispecies relationships in Deshnoke, as is apparent in the Karni Mata Temple's ownership of several gaushalas, sponsorship of an annual gaukatha, the temple administration's ban on the cutting of trees in Deshnoke, and in the estimated twenty thousand “rats” who reside within the main Karni Mata Temple and who are cared for by the temple's workers. Indeed, the Karni Mata Temple is a popular destination for tourists and pilgrims that has become sensationally renowned, both in India and internationally, as “the rat temple.” However, to members of the dominant-caste Charan community, who administer and work in the Karni Mata Temple, these twenty thousand beings are entirely different from rats—they are kaba, the reincarnated descendants of Charans from the lineage of Karni Mata and they are considered and cared for as kin by members of the Charan community. Charans differentiate kaba from rats through a variety of discursive and material means such as the surveillance and control of the temple's boundaries, discourses of health and hygiene, concepts of transmigration, and practices of shared consumption and touch. As I will show, these ways of differentiating rats and kaba intersect with practices of caste at the Karni Mata Temple. Despite Karni Mata's advocation against untouchability and the institution of anti-untouchability laws in Article 17 of the Indian Constitution, local Valmikis and members of other Dalit communities, some of whom are employed by the temple, are excluded from the interior of the Karni Mata Temple. While Vasundhara Raje raised matters of casteism and environmental protection as disparate issues, it is vital to examine the ways that “caste and nature are intimately and inextricably interwoven in India” (Sharma, 2017, p. xiv). In this article, I draw upon ongoing ethnographic fieldwork at the Karni Mata Temple to analyze relational processes of jatikaran, or the discursive and material processes through which human and nonhuman bodies become reified along caste, species, and other classificatory lines and how this leads to differential access to mobility and resources for certain beings.

It is surely a spectacle to move through and immerse oneself in a space where thousands of kaba scurry, sleep, play, and eat from the hands of visitors. The Rajasthan Tourism Department (RTD) website explains how the Karni Mata Temple is an example of the “assertive Hindu belief of inviolability of animals” and that, within the Hindu tradition, “the life of an animal is held equal to that of a human.” ¹ Yet, what does it mean to be equal to the “human,” when the “human” itself is a stratified, exclusionary category (Weheliye, 2014; Wynter, 2003)? Both the RTD and Vasundhara Raje highlight the multispecies relationships at the Karni Mata Temple as emblematic of an environmentally conscious Hindu ethos. However, these discourses must be situated in the context of Hindu nationalist politics and the mobilization around environmental and animal-rights issues with the intent to promote Hindutva agendas, often which lead to increases in violence and discrimination toward minority communities, especially Muslims and Dalits (Baviskar, 1999; Govindrajan, 2018; Kent, 2013; Mawdsley, 2005; Narayanan, 2018; Sharma, 2012). As Gopal Guru asserts, in India, there is “asymmetry that turns worth in favor of the animal rather than the human being…the upper castes treat cows as more important than the Dalits” (Guru, 2009, 212). Although the nonhuman animal may be favored this way, it is also imperative to consider how the sacralization of certain nonhuman animals within Hinduism, such as cows, does not necessarily lead to their meaningful emancipation, but also to their further objectification and commodification (Narayanan, 2018). Much of the scholarship surrounding the relationship between Hindu nationalist, environmental, and animal-rights politics in India has focused on familiar nonhuman figures in Hindu nationalist ideology, such as cows, trees, and rivers. How then does a nonhuman figure that is widely regarded as a pest and vector of zoonotic illness, such as the “rat,” fit into this broader sociopolitical context?

In general, within Hinduism, rats and mice (in Hindi, both are referred to as chuhe) are associated with the elephant-headed god, Ganesha, due to artistic portrayals and puranic literature that depict the chuha as Ganesha's vehicle (Barnett, 2001; Burt, 2006; Martin-Dubost, 1997). From personal observations in Rajasthan, rodents are still regarded as pests that must be removed from domestic space, but Hindu families usually perform this removal through nonlethal mechanisms, such as cages, that trap rodents so they can be relocated away from the home. At the Karni Mata Mandir, Charan workers use these same methods of rodent control to prevent and discipline kaba from moving beyond the temple boundaries. Such practices of spatial control and surveillance of the temple boundaries are mechanisms that Charans use in the articulation of species difference between kaba and rats. Methods of policing the boundaries of the temple are also mobilized in practices of caste and the reification of caste difference, particularly between Charan and Valmiki communities in Deshnoke. In this paper, I examine the interspecies kinship shared between human Charans and kaba and how this kinship, caste relations, and multispecies relations shape and are shaped by social, economic, and political processes in the multi-caste-species spaces of the Karni Mata Temple.

Since 2018, I have performed multispecies ethnographic fieldwork at the Karni Mata Temple and other spaces in Deshnoke, and conducted interviews with temple administrators, workers employed by the temple, pilgrims, tourists, and shopkeepers from the shops in the temple complex. I supplement this fieldwork with archival research, the analysis of texts sold at the Karni Mata Temple, and reviews of scholastic literature. I primarily focus on the multi-caste-species relationships between Charans, Valmikis, kaba, and rats, but I also address how human relationships with a range of nonhuman actors, such as cows, dogs, cats, birds, and pigs, are entangled with practices of caste and the politics of Hindu nationalism. I share my experiences participating in spaces of work and timepass (Jeffrey, 2010) with male workers across caste lines. While I, like most foreign visitors to the temple, was restricted from entering the innermost sanctum (garbhagriha) where Karni Mata's murti is housed, I was, nonetheless, privileged with the ability to move across caste-demarcated boundaries. For this article, my conceptual framework combines multispecies studies, Dalit studies, and critical race studies. Specifically, I draw inspiration from recent scholarship on the phenomenology of caste (Guru, 2009; Jaaware, 2019; Kapoor, 2018; Lee, 2015, 2017), studies on the relationship between race and species (Boisseron, 2018; Jackson, 2020; Kim, 2015; Weheliye, 2014) and studies on surveillance and processes of identification (Beauchamp, 2019; Browne, 2015). I combine insights from these perspectives to explore the relationship between caste, species, spatial control, and the processes that I next describe as “jatikaran.”

When first meeting interlocutors in Deshnoke, one of the first questions I was asked was “kis jati se ho?” (Which caste are you from?) or “aapki jati kya hai?” (What is your caste?). Within Deshnoke, the primary term used to refer to “caste” is jati. Yet, jati is also the term used for “species,” along with a variety of other typologies. According to the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, “jati” can be defined as “birth, position fixed by birth; community or caste group, good birth, high caste, kind, race; genus, species; nationality, community, nation; tribe; family, lineage.” Scholars have pointed out the connections between “caste” and “species” in the term jati (Marriot and Inden, 1977; Singh, 2015). Marriott and Inden define jati as “the whole range of earthly populations that we call families, kin groups, genders, occupational categories, speakers of the same language, regional populations, religious communities, nations, races” and they point out the shared etymology between genus and jati in the Sanskrit root jan, meaning “categories due to a common origin, genesis, or birth” (1977, 230). Jati is thus an expansive term that can refer to a wide range of taxonomies and social categories, but especially those rooted in understandings of birth and descent. In conceptualizing jatikaran, I retain the multivalence of the term jati to center the etymological and material intersections of “caste” and “species,” but also to other social categories and forms of belonging, such as kinship, nationality, and religious identity. The Hindi suffix “-karan” denotes action and, similar to the English suffix “-ization,” marks a noun's processual nature. Thus, jatikaran can be translated broadly as “processes of classification,” but more specifically here to “the doing of caste/species.” However, jatikaran is not a neologism, but a term sometimes mentioned in studies of caste and sociopolitical discourse pertaining to caste, as is apparent if one searches the “#jatikaran” hashtag on Twitter.

In her discussion of “Dalit patriarchy,” Uma Chakravarti refers to the process that “led to upper caste norms and upper caste patriarchal practices percolating into the lower caste ranks” as “the process of Sanskritization or ‘jatikarana’—intensified castification” (2003, 88). ² Relatedly, Maciej Karasinski describes the term jatikaran as referring to “the historical process through which society was reorganized according to caste lines” (2020, 544). While I draw on both understandings above, I also borrow extensively from Simone Browne's concept of “racializing surveillance” by using jatikaran to refer to the discursive and material mechanisms, practices, and processes through which human and nonhuman bodies and borders become inscribed with jati. This conceptualization of jatikaran stems from engagements with critical race studies and theories of “racialization” that challenge biological and cultural understandings of “race,” and instead, center on how “race” is produced through discourses, practices, performances, institutions, etc. (Weheliye, 2014). I follow Rawat and Satyanarayana (2016) in attending to the possibilities for comparative analysis and exchange that can emerge by bringing critical race and Dalit studies scholarship into sustained dialogue. Overall, I have two primary aims for this conceptualization of jatikaran:

Similar to how social theorists have challenged essentialized understandings of race, gender, sexuality, and disability, my first aim in conceptualizing jatikaran is to mobilize a concept that challenges essentialized understandings of “caste” and “species,” and that centers analysis on the processes, performances, and practices through which bodies become inscribed with the social meaning of jati. Aniket Jaaware describes how “epistemological categories get mapped onto ontological categories, especially when it comes to caste” (Jaaware, p. 66). To unsettle the ontological basis of caste in birth and the assumed biological and psychological differences inherent to different castes, Jaaware (2019) argues that analyses of caste must center on the practice of caste, which is fundamentally rooted in practices of regulating touch. I extend Jaaware's theory of the practice of caste by considering how quotidian practices of both “caste” and “species” intersect. In his ethnographic work with taxonomists, Eben Kirksey delineates the method of “species praxiography,” which examines how categories of species emerge both through nonhuman agency “as they intra-act with humans” and “as they are isolated and stabilized by our technologies and practices” (Kirksey, 2015, 776). Praxiography refuses distinctions between epistemology and ontology and shifts attention to the ways species is enacted and performed in situated social, political, and economic settings. In this way, I do not question if the representation of kaba and their differentiation from rats is accurate. Instead, I explore the discursive and material processes through which the category of kaba and categories of jati become reified at the Karni Mata Temple. I embrace Emily Yates-Doerr's assertion that the power of multispecies scholarship lies “in its challenge to conventional taxonomic formulations of classification and belonging” (2015, 309). In challenging essentialized understandings of “caste” and “species” in this way, I do not intend to elide difference, but rather to trace the processes through which difference becomes articulated and focus critical analysis on the “social relations that convert difference into oppression” (Rege, 1998, 40). This leads to my second aim in conceptualizing jatikaran.

Charans, Valmikis, and the Karni Mata Mandir

Deshnoke is a city located in Rajasthan about 30km south of Bikaner, the district capital. According to the most recent census data, Deshnoke has a population around 18,470, nearly 26% of which belongs to Scheduled Caste (SC or formerly “untouchable”) communities (Directorate of Census Operations, Rajasthan, 2011). While the census does not list data for specific castes, the history of Deshnoke is intimately bound to Karni Mata and the Charan caste, which is currently listed as an Other Backward Class (OBC) in the state of Rajasthan. Karni Mata was born as Ridhubai to Meha-ji and Deval Devi of the Kiniya Charan lineage sometime between the 14^th and 15^th centuries (Charan, 2015; Kamphorst, 2008). During her lifetime, Ridhubai became recognized as Karni Mata, the third incarnation of the goddess born into the Charan caste, preceded by Avar Mata and Hinglaj Mata. According to hagiographic literature, Karni Mata founded the city of Deshnoke, and played a central role in the establishment of the Rajput Rathore dynasties of Bikaner and Jodhpur, served as advisor to Rao Bika, and was the kuladevi, or “clan-deity” of the Rathore dynasties (Charan, 2015; Harcourt, 1993; Hooja, 2006; Kamphorst, 2008). Despite their listing as an OBC, within Rajasthan, Charan caste identity and wider societal recognition are based on a high-ranking sociopolitical status that stems from their historical role within and patronage by Rajput courts as poets, historians, religious specialists, and political advisors (Kamphorst, 2008; Shah and Shroff, 1958; Thompson, 1991; Tod, 1920). In this way, it is helpful to situate the OBC status of Charans in connection to broader OBC politics in Rajasthan. Jaffrelot and Robin (2009) trace the historical social, economic, and political processes that led to the classification of Jats as OBC in Rajasthan. The authors describe how Jats are overrepresented in political positions and argue that, despite their listing as an OBC, they are nonetheless a “dominant caste.” Indeed, politics surrounding OBC status has been a site of controversy in Rajasthan. One such example is the Shri Rajput Karni Sena (SRKS), an organization of Rajputs who invoke the name of Karni Mata in their title, and whose central aim has been to secure caste-based reservations for Rajputs through their designation as OBC. Despite the OBC status of Charans in Rajasthan, I consider the Charan caste-community in Deshnoke a “dominant caste-community,” due to their wielding of local socioreligious, economic, and political power (Srinivas, 1959).

Historically, the Karni Mata Mandir and Charan community in Deshnoke have served essential roles in the legitimation of political regimes in Rajasthan (Harcourt, 1993). After the Partition of India and Pakistan, the Karni Mata Temple replaced the Hinglaj Mata Temple in Pakistan as the most important pilgrimage site for devotees of Charani sagatis, or Charan women who became recognized as incarnations of the goddess during their lifetimes (Kamphorst, 2008; Schaflechner, 2018). Through the temple's feature across media such as National Geographic, Morgan Spurlock's documentary Rats, and Indian tourism sites and literature, the Karni Mata Temple remains a popular destination for tourists as well. Due to its driving of the tourist and pilgrimage economies, the temple is the primary economic hub in Deshnoke. The temple is administrated by an elected committee of Charan men and is the predominant landholding institution in Deshnoke, the owner of several pilgrimage centers or dharmshalas, two museums dedicated to the history of Karni Mata, and two large gaushalas, which produce dairy and other products that derive from the bovines kept there. At the temple, Charan workers serve as religious specialists and conduct various rituals such as puja and aarti, receive offerings from visiting pilgrims, sell photography tickets to pilgrims and tourists that allow them to take pictures and videos within the temple, clean the inner spaces of the temple, conduct surveillance in the CCTV room and at the main entrance of the temple, and provide care for the kaba. The temple administration and supervisors exert direct control over the labor and income of its employees, who, aside from Charans, mainly consist of members of the local Valmiki community. Thus, the relationship between local Charan and Valmiki communities must be situated in the broader context of caste politics and relations between Dalit and OBC communities in India. Anupama Rao describes how:

Today, Dalit power is challenged by the rise of the BCs and OBCs, who are at the forefront of anti-Dalit violence in many parts of India. The numerical dominance of the middle and lower-middle castes and their entry into the reservations regime, together with competition for state protection, presages new ages of political contradiction and violence.” (370 n.44).”

Relatedly, in his reflection on being a Dalit in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Rajasthan, Bhanwar Meghwanshi asserts that “the tragedy of the Backward Castes is that they consider themselves pure Hindus and, under the sway of Hindutva, are at the forefront of committing atrocities against Dalits (Meghwanshi, 2020, p. 130). Both Rao and Meghwanshi highlight the perpetuation of caste discrimination and violence toward Dalits by OBC communities and Hindu nationalism, both which are essential to foreground throughout my analysis. However, it is also crucial to address attempts to bring Dalits themselves under the sway of Hindutva, especially so in the case of Valmikis.

In Rajasthan, Valmikis or Balmikis are listed, under a variety of other names such as Bhangi, Chura, Mehtar, Halalkhor, and Lalbegi, as a Scheduled Caste. In North India, Valmikis are predominantly associated with and relegated to roles in sanitation labor, a highly stigmatized form of labor in South Asia (Lee, 2015; Prashad, 2000). Anand Teltumbde explains how this form of labor is stigmatized to the point that Valmikis have become “a miniscule minority among Dalits and are considered untouchable even by other Dalits” (Teltumbde, 2018, p. 323). At the Karni Mata Mandir, Valmiki workers conduct labor on the perimeters of the temple complex where they operate the free-service shoe stall where pilgrims and tourists leave their shoes before entering the temple, maintain and clean the latrines, and conduct repair work and other forms of manual labor. In the wider town of Deshnoke, Valmikis generally work as janitorial staff in the dharmshalas and hotels or as garbage collectors and sweepers for the Deshnoke municipal council. Despite constitutional bans on the practice of untouchability, Valmikis and other local Dalit communities continue to be excluded from the interior of the main Karni Mata Mandir. Beyond the boundaries of the temple, the Valmiki settlement, or basti, is segregated from those of other caste communities in Deshnoke. These forms of spatial segregation and control are primary mechanisms of reproducing and naturalizing caste hierarchy, and Hindu temples have served as potent symbols for these exclusionary regimes (Lee, 2017; Rao, 2009; Rawat and Satyanarayana, 2016; Teltumbde, 2017). When referring to Valmikis, members of other castes in Deshnoke strictly used the term “Harijan” (“children of god”), a term coined by Mohandas K. Gandhi to replace the pejorative terms “Bhangi” or “Chura.” Dalit activists and scholars have criticized the use of the term “Harijan” for its paternalism and basis in a Hindu, Brahmanical social ontology that attempts to romanticize and ritualize the stigmatized labor performed by Valmikis and other sanitation labor castes (Rawat and Satyanarayana, 2016). Throughout this article, I maintain the use of “Valmiki” when referring to Valmiki interlocutors, as this was their term of self-reference, but it must be stressed that “there are no neutral terms. There are no caste labels devoid of political content” (Lee, 2015, 28). The label “Valmiki” itself stems from the work of Hindu reform organizations, such as the Arya Samaj and Harijan Sevak Sangh, who began, in the early 20th century, to associate these sanitation labor castes with Valmiki, the composer of the Ramayana (Lee, 2015, 2019; Prashad, 2000). This was largely an effort by these organizations to include these communities, who primarily regarded themselves as Lal Begis, under the political category of “Hindu,” an identification that was historically contested (Lee, 2015). Indeed, the history of the Hinduization of Valmiki communities is intimately bound to the histories of Hindu nationalism and colonialism. Prashad (2000) describes how Hindu reform organizations and militant Hindus provided historical narratives that blamed Muslims for the origin and continuation of practices of untouchability, both to stoke enmity toward Muslim communities and to exonerate savarna Hindus from casteism. Valmikis and other sanitation labor castes did not extensively participate in the anti-caste political movements of the twentieth century, and Valmiki commitment to Hindutva projects, which valorize Brahmanical ideology and the ontological inferiority of Dalits, has haunted scholarship on caste and anti-caste activism (Lee, 2015; Prashad, 2000). These historical ties between caste and Hindutva politics are apparent at the Karni Mata Temple today, and multispecies relationships often become a site for their articulation.

During her speech at the Karni Mata Temple, Vasundhara Raje referenced accounts of Karni Mata's advocation against the practice of untouchability. One such account (Charan, 2015) describes how there was a man named Dashrath from the Meghwal community who worked for Karni Mata as the caretaker of her cows. One day, Dashrath died while protecting Karni Mata's cows (gaurakshak) from bandits. Due to his protection and care for her cows, Karni Mata declared that respect be given (sammaan dilaana) to the Meghwal community, and to have a shrine built for Dashrath in the Karni Mata Temple (Charan, 2015). This account and its retellings in the context of Hindu nationalist mobilization around gauraksha and anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit violence are evocative in showing how processes of jatikaran unfold across multispecies relationships. In the story of Karni Mata and Dashrath, inclusion into the “Hindu” fold requires the embrace and valorization of the cow, which, in the contemporary context of Hindutva politics surrounding gauraksha, is implicitly based upon the devaluation and denigration of Muslim and other Dalit communities. Yet, the retelling of this narrative in a space dedicated to Karni Mata where practices of untouchability continue renders visible the contradictions, failures, and instability of processes of jatikaran and the promises of Hindu nationalist politics. Throughout this piece, I will attend to the ways that multispecies relationships become primary sites for the articulation of jatikaran. In the next section, I turn to the relationship between human Charans and kaba, how this kinship is predicated on the differentiation of kaba from rats, and how the articulation of this difference parallels and reinforces the reification of caste difference between Charans and Valmikis.

That is not a Rat, it is a Kaba

I sat with Raj and Mahesh on blue cushioned pads in the CCTV (closed-circuit television) room of the Karni Mata Mandir. ³ As the images of pilgrims, tourists, laborers, kaba, and pigeons meandered across the several televisions in the dark, air-conditioned room, Raj, upon my inquiries, began to narrate an account of Karni Mata's life. He described the meaning of Karni as “she who performs miracles.” After detailing several prominent miracles that Karni Mata performed throughout her lifetime, Raj explained that Karni Mata was an embodiment of shakti and therefore did not have any sexual relations. She married her younger sister to her husband, Depa-ji, and they had four children together, the youngest of whom was Lakshman. One day, Lakshman drowned in a pool in nearby Kolayat while bathing. Her younger sister pleaded to Karni Mata to bring her son back to life, asserting “you have done a lot for Rajputs, but nothing for your family.” Thus, Karni Mata lifted the dead body with her hands and brought it to where the murti is now, closed the doors, and said not to open them. She went to the god of death's abode and demanded him to give Lakshman his life back. The god of death queried, “if so, how will the cycle of rebirth work? By what law will it move?” Karni Mata responded, “after this my family will not come to you. Wherever I live, they will live. When they die, they will stay with me.” Then, Karni Mata chose the embodied form of the kaba—so that when human Charans from her lineage die, they will be reborn as kaba and live near her within the temple, and when kaba die, they will again be reborn as human Charans. After completing this narration, Raj motioned outside to the small, furry being attempting to crawl in and stated, “look, that is not a rat; It is a kaba. The kaba do not go outside of the temple, and rats (chuhe) cannot come inside. This is a tradition that has been going on for five hundred years. These are Karni Mata's children. Karni Mata is our mother. This is our family, and we live together in this family.” I then asked Raj how this interspecies kinship between Charans and kaba is put into practice. Raj stood up and motioned for me to follow. We stepped outside the CCTV room into a thick wall of summer heat. I followed Raj up the steps to the left where Lalu, another worker at the temple, was seated next to two plastic crates filled to the brim with watermelon and banana. He was slicing watermelon as a kaba laid in his lap, a common display of shared interspecies touch at the temple. Lalu took note of us observing him, placed a piece of watermelon in his mouth and pointed to the kaba, “he is resting.” Lalu then picked up the kaba, gently placed them on top of the fruit, patted them, and uttered softly “sleep here.” He stood up, grabbed a handful of fruit from the pail, and began tossing it to groups of kaba in the nearby corners, who excitedly scurried to their meal.

Raj and Lalu are two of the many Charan men who work in the interior of the Karni Mata Temple and who trace their lineage back to Karni Mata. Charans refer to the kaba as their kin and ancestors and enact various forms of care for them, such as feeding them fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, and sweets, providing them with milk and water, providing them with fans on hot days, cleaning their living spaces, and protecting them from potential predators such as birds, dogs, and cats. Along with these practices of care, kinship is constituted through the sharing of physical touch and food between Charans and kaba. Such acts can be considered practices of “inventive kin-making” or “learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present” (Haraway, 2016, 1). Indeed, the space of the temple is rendered an observable depiction of a human Charan's next life, as well as a space to continue to enact kinship relations with their ancestors within and beyond this life. As Jitendra, a Charan who manages the dharmshala adjacent to the temple, explained to me, “after dying, I will stay here. Our heaven is right here. I will eat prasad, drink milk and liquor, have fun, and even bite this guy's toes” as he laughed and slapped the knee of his friend. Given the high population density of kaba, it certainly appears that life is good for kaba in the temple. According to Charan interlocutors, there are more than twenty thousand kaba that reside within the Karni Mata Mandir. Kaba reside in spaces throughout the inner temple complex, including within the main temple, the kitchen, near the massive iron pots used to make halwa, in the various side rooms, and on the rooftop. In each space, there are different foods available to the kaba. Those nearest to the murti of Karni Mata feed on the various forms of prasad offered to the goddess such as laddu, nuts, coconut, and sugar crystals as well as milk, roti, grains, fruits, vegetables, and even liquor. For those kaba who reside on the rooftop and near the iron pots, their diet consists mainly of grains, fruits, vegetables, roti, and water. Despite these differences in where they reside in the temple, kaba generally have access to a rich array of resources and protection from predators through their interspecies kinship with Charans. However, Haraway (2016) explains that, within these practices of inventive kin-making, it is vital to unravel the ties between “genealogy and kin” and “kin and species.” The kinship between Charans and kaba is predicated upon and bound through a shared genealogy and caste identity. Scholars have addressed how Hindu conceptions of karma and transmigration work to configure hierarchical formations of jati as part of nature (Doniger, 1976; Guru, 2009; Nelson, 2006; Sharma, 2017). In such conceptions, one attains a “higher” or “lower” birth in their next life, whether human or nonhuman, depending on the actions that they perform throughout their lives. For example, on the wall of the gaushala near the Karni Mata Temple, there is a quote painted that reads: “if one performs good actions, they rise as high as gods. If one performs bad actions, they fall even lower than animals.” Charan transmigration differs from this general understanding of Hindu transmigration then, in that jati is maintained across births despite being in a differently embodied form. As Naresh, another Charan worker at the temple, emphasized to me, “this is our lineage, our family…We, indeed, are kaba” (ham hi kaba hain). In this way, it is vital to acknowledge the ways that interspecies kinship and the fluidity of boundaries between the human/nonhuman may not be as subversive as they first appear, but a space from which power becomes redeployed and reinforced (Jackson, 2020). In Raj's narration above, it is evident that the kinship between Charans and kaba is predicated on the differentiation of kaba from rats. I will now describe the discourses that Charans use to articulate differences between kaba and rats and how these discourses intersect with and reinforce those used in practices of caste.

I met Suresh outside of his shop on the perimeter of the temple complex which sells prasad, murtis, portraits of Karni Mata and the temple, cold drinks, and snacks. We sat together, sipped hot chai, and watched the pinkish-golden hue of sunset descend over the marble façade and pink walls of the temple. Suresh inquired why I was in Deshnoke for an extended period. I explained that I was a student in anthropology and interested in the relationship between the Charan community and kaba. Suresh nodded in approval when I used the term kaba, rather than chuhe. He then asked, “did you know that if a rat attempts to enter the temple, the kaba will eat it?” (usko khaaenge). Certainly, I had heard this before, although other interlocutors often stated how the kaba will “kill” (maar daalenge) rats who attempt to enter the temple. Along with this policing of the boundaries of the temple by kaba, Suresh articulated how kaba and rats are different in terms of hygiene and the spread of zoonotic illness. He explained how “an American scientist came to the Karni Mata Temple after the 1994 outbreak of plague in neighboring Gujarat. The scientist came to test the kaba for plague, but he found no signs of the disease whatsoever.” Similarly, the Shri Karni Lilamrit, a text sold in the nearby bookshops, describes how kaba do not spread zoonotic illness, which was proven through governmental tests (sarkaari janch) and that during the 1994 Surat outbreak, those who were afflicted with plague came to the Karni Mata Temple, drank the same milk as the kaba, and were cured. The text further details how kaba and rats differ morphologically—that kaba have an enlarged gland on their posterior that does not occur in rats, and they do not produce the bad smell (badbu) of rats, even upon death. Both Suresh and the Shri Karni Lilamrit mobilize discourses of hygiene and zoonotic illness, spatiality, and bodily morphology in their differentiation of kaba from rats. Shared across these discourses is the valorization and rendering of kaba as touchable in contradistinction to rats. Indeed, the sharing of food, liquid, and touch between human Charans, pilgrims, and kaba is an essential aspect of religious praxis at the temple. Kaba surely appear to be habituated to human interaction and touch. On many occasions, I watched as kaba would scurry across and lay in someone's lap or perch on their shoulders while they sat in the temple. I often observed kaba eat from the hands of visitors and from the same thali as Charan workers in the kitchen. As Suresh further highlighted in this regard, “we eat with kaba, but we would never eat something that a rat had also eaten.” This rendering of kaba as touchable, through practices of shared consumption and discourses of hygiene and zoonotic illness both draws on and reifies understandings and practices of caste. Indeed, who you eat with and what you eat have long been considered primary markers of caste distinction (Appadurai, 1981; Dumont, 1980), and caste and untouchability are often communicated through veiled discourses of hygiene and cleanliness (Govindrajan, 2018; Guru, 2009; Jaaware, 2018; Pinto, 2006). Even the discussion of kaba producing no malodor upon dying must be read in connection to how malodor and the handling of dead bodies become inscribed with jati and associated with stigmatized forms of Dalit labor (Kapoor, 2018; Lee, 2015, 2017). The ways that these discursive processes of jatikaran intersect with and reinforce one another across human and nonhuman bodies became more readily apparent during another conversation at the Karni Mata Temple.

I sat with Giriraj and Prakash, two of the Charan workers that operate the checkpoint at the main entrance of the temple. As we were conversing, Ajay, a worker at one of the shops on the perimeter of the temple complex, walked up to the main entrance. With two fingers pinched together, Ajay held the tail of a kaba, who dangled and squirmed in the air. Ajay walked into the temple and released the kaba. I turned to Giriraj and Prakash asking for an explanation. They explained how Ajay brought the kaba from inside his shop, because the kaba will eat the prasad that they sell. I questioned if it were outside the temple, how could they tell it was a kaba and not a rat? Prakash described how they could tell the difference— “they look different, their bodies are different, they eat different things. It would be impossible for a rat to come into the temple. If someone put a rat inside the temple, it would die instantly because the kaba would kill it.” Giriraj then chimed in, explaining how “in India, there are many different jatis.” He seamlessly led the conversation to a discussion about caste, describing how they can recognize which caste someone is from, and how they use different greetings for different castes. He then motioned toward the shoe stall, where visitors leave their shoes before entering the temple and which is the primary site of Valmiki labor and timepass at the Karni Mata Temple. He explained how Valmikis and Charans do not share food or drink, and that Valmikis cannot enter the main temple. While Giriraj did not explicitly identify Valmikis with rats, the way that he utilized an example of caste relations to explain the differences between kaba and rats rendered clear the relational articulation of caste and species, of processes of jatikaran. This connects to Narayanan's (2021) discussion of how animal metaphors and binaries become mobilized to maintain hierarchical and adversarial caste positions. More than being discursively and metaphorically connected though, I argue that processes of jatikaran are also materially connected. In the next section, I explore how processes of jatikaran at the Karni Mata Temple emerge through everyday practices of surveillance, spatial control, and the regulation of touch.

The control of human and nonhuman space

Giriraj puffed on a bidi and mentioned how the baridari was changing that day. The baridari refers to the current Charan man from Karni Mata's lineage elected to serve the duty of head ritual specialist A rotating list held by the temple administration determines who the subsequent baridari will be. While the baridari is always a Charan male from Karni Mata's lineage, they are not always residents of Deshnoke and will often come with their family to stay in Deshnoke for their month-long role as baridari. The baridari is the only individual able to step into the innermost sanctum where Karni Mata's murti is housed and is unable to leave the temple boundaries during their month-long role as baridari. Giriraj explained that during the change of baridaris, “Ma's shoes will be brought outside, and many people will come to take darshan.” He stated how this is a particularly auspicious occasion, and that “if you take darshan and ask that your research will go well, Ma will grant it.” I nodded and affirmed that I would observe the ritual. Giriraj then forcefully exclaimed, “but do not go over there. Do not sit there,” as he motioned toward the shoe stall. He continued, “take off your shoes, say ‘hello’ from afar, and go directly into the temple. Absolutely do not touch their hands and come inside.” According to Giriraj, an intimate exchange of touch with Valmikis, through a handshake, would result in not receiving Karni Mata's blessings. He continued, “Harijan, Meghwal, Dholi, etc., they cannot come inside. If people see you touch hands or eat with Harijans, they will not allow you into the temple. We do not eat with them, we do not live with them, we remain strangers.” Here Giriraj explicitly elaborated on the exclusion of local Dalit communities from the interior of the temple and the lack of shared sociality and touch between the communities. Giriraj mobilized jatikaran discourses here that connected the spatial boundaries of the temple, regulations on touch and mobility, and intercaste dining to reify caste difference between Charans and Valmikis, to reify the Valmiki body as untouchable. This relates to Marriot’s (1976) conception of “dividuals” which he contrasts with Western liberal conceptions of the individual, and points out how, in South Asia, beings are not considered self-enclosed entities and are susceptible to the sharing of particles and substances. Touch is a primary mechanism through which such particles become exchanged, and the regulation of touch, surveillance, and control of the bodies that enter the space of the temple are fundamental to processes of jatikaran. This intersects with the ways that Charan workers enact forms of surveillance and spatial control in disciplining kaba to remain within the bounds of the temple.

I leaned against the wooden platform of the main entrance checkpoint when Lalu came into the stand, leaned over the side, and picked up a small metal cage. Inside the cage were some pieces of fresh fruit and three kaba. Having never witnessed this before, I asked Lalu what he was doing. Lalu explained that workers use the small cages to catch kaba who attempt to leave the temple and bring them back inside so that “they learn to not leave.” He mentioned how this was for the protection of kaba, because dogs, cats, and other predators will eat them if they leave. As mentioned earlier, protecting kaba from potential predators is an important task for Charan workers at the temple. There is a net spread across the open spaces of the temple to prevent the entrance of predatory birds. Charan workers utilize larger metal cages with a sliding door and a bowl of milk placed inside to capture cats who come to the temple in search of a meal, and they chase dogs out of the temple complex with stones and lathis. ⁴ Thus, the privileged positioning and care for kaba requires the exclusion of and potential violence toward other nonhuman animals whose survival may come into conflict with the survival of kaba. This observation also made me question how this practice of capturing kaba who attempt to leave related to Raj and other's statements that “the kaba do not go outside.” I consider these everyday practices of spatial control and their interaction with the agency and spatial practices of kaba to be productive of the very category of kaba. This consideration connects to Toby Beauchamp's work on transgender politics in the context of the U.S. security state and the everyday practices of surveillance that “produce the very categories and figures of gendered deviance that they purport to simply identify” (2019, 2). Indeed, the boundaries of the temple become a primary site from which processes of jatikaran unfold across human and nonhuman bodies, especially through practices of surveillance and regulating touch. Charan care for and kinship with kaba relies on practices of spatial control and the exclusion and potential violence toward other beings. Practices of caste shape and are shaped through relationships with both human and nonhuman beings. These processes of jatikaran at the Karni Mata Temple also emerge in relation to broader politics of religion.

Conclusion

In this article, I have sought to trace the quotidian practices and discourses through which processes of jatikaran, the reification of human and nonhuman bodies along caste, species, and other classificatory lines operate in the multi-caste-species space of the Karni Mata Temple and in the broader contexts of caste politics and Hindu nationalism. Despite being upheld by some as exemplary of an environmentally conscious Hindu tradition, the practices of care and “inventive kin-making” (Haraway, 2016) between Charans and kaba at the Karni Mata Temple are, nonetheless, embedded in caste dominance and its reproduction. Various scholars have highlighted the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of the human/nonhuman binary and have argued that destabilizing or rethinking this binary is essential for combatting multiple intersecting forms of oppression (Boisseron, 2018; Kim, 2015; Weheliye, 2014; Wynter, 2003). Here, I have attempted to show how instances where there is a deconstruction of species hierarchies and fluidity between the human/nonhuman can still form part of a hierarchical and unjust map of differential identity formation (Jackson, 2020). While the boundaries between human Charans and kaba remain fluid, this relationship is founded upon a shared caste genealogy and relies upon the differentiation of kaba from rats through discourses of hygiene and zoonotic illness, along with practices of surveillance and spatial control. Furthermore, these methods of differentiating kaba from rats draw upon and reify discourses and practices of caste difference in Deshnoke. In this way, this analysis contributes to broader conversations on multispecies justice that center how “reforms posing as an inclusion or equal treatment may in fact perpetrate deeper forms of exclusion” (Celermajer et al., 2020, 480). Throughout, I explored how the inclusion of Valmiki and other Dalit communities into the Hindu fold at the Karni Mata Temple is framed as requiring their valorization of the cow and commitment to Hindu nationalist politics, along with the devaluation of other multispecies relationships, particularly pigs. While the dominance of Charans in Deshnoke rests upon the segregation, exclusion, and devaluation of Valmikis and other local Dalit communities, the valuation of normative understandings of Hinduness has required Charans to transform their own practices of animal sacrifice and diet.

Overall, I have emphasized the importance for scholarship surrounding multispecies justice in South Asia to center critical reflections on caste and Hindu nationalism, and for studies of caste to address the ways that caste traverses beyond the human and both shapes and is shaped by relationships with nonhuman worlds. Narayanan (2021) argues that making “species” central to identity politics and social justice movements in South Asia is vital for the dismantling of caste in what are multispecies worlds. I contribute to this project through my conceptualization of jatikaran, which foregrounds the multivalence of the term jati to include caste, species, and other classificatory regimes of belonging and challenges essentialized understandings of jati by centering analysis on the processes through which bodies become inscribed with jati as well as the impacts this has on livelihoods and relationships. It is also vital to attend to moments of instability, contradiction, and failure of jatikaran, as it then becomes apparent how “alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never total or consistent” (Halberstam, 2011, 88). Ultimately, I offer this analysis of relational processes of jatikaran “in order to understand these operations so that we can find ways to end them” (Jaaware, 2018, 1). I hope that this conceptualization of jatikaran will be expanded upon and prove to be useful for social scientists and activists working at the intersections of multispecies and social justice in South Asia.

Highlights