While the term ‘tribalism’ in the West draws from outmoded anthropological theory to describe the hardening of partisan group boundaries, in Himachal Pradesh it describes the contested recognition of caste heterogeneity within Scheduled Tribes (ST). Based on 15 months of fieldwork among Gaddis, this article seeks to understand the intersectionality of low-caste groups embedded within tribal formations, partially assimilated, unevenly accepted and without legal protections afforded to other marginalised communities. I argue that recognising tribal casteism is the first step to theorise tribal multiculturalism and the ever-contested broadening of communal boundaries. By tracking the discourse of ‘Scheduled Tribe Dalit’ (STD) in the Western Himalayas, this article analyses the looping effect between emic belonging and the role of state ethnology in incentivising difference.

This article analyses the divergent, and occasionally overlapping, trajectories of Tibetan refugee and Gaddi tribal cosmopolitanism in Dharamshala, North India. In a place self-consciously branded as cosmopolitan, where Tibetan ethnocommodification is the primary symbolic currency, practices of inclusivity can broadly give way to Gaddi exclusions. Cosmopolitanism as an ordering ideology and set of intercultural competencies, often predicated on the dyadic relationship between Tibetan refugees and international tourists, propels Gaddi resentments and coarsens intergroup sociality. This does not mean, however, that Gaddis are forever consigned to tribal backwardness and reactionary forms of communal aspiration. Gaddis have forged an alternate, grounded cosmopolitanism based on cultural skills fostered through pastoral transhumance, seasonal labour migration corresponding with foreign tourists and ongoingethnopolitical redefinition of what it means to be tribal itself. By seeing past utopian propaganda and dystopian exaggerations about Dharamshala, a richer tapestry of group relations emerges which reveals divergent cosmopolitanisms in the promotion of shared struggles for state recognition and cultural preservation.

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The problem of tribal casteism – of Indian Scheduled Castes (SC) partially integrated into Scheduled Tribes (ST), facing discrimination without constitutional protections as doubly subaltern – is nearly absent in scholarship. The Halis of Kangra district, in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh, are one such SC community. Although most identify as Gaddi, the local tribe receiving coveted ST benefits, they are politically misrecognized. Through house church ethnography, this article explores how Hali sociopolitical liminality as tribal Dalits informs their popular Protestantism. By closely attending to vernacular hermeneutics, the sociopolitical context that shapes Hali textual ideologies, and homiletic emphases on protection from malign Gaddi spirits, I argue that Hali Protestants practise transgressive resignifications. The vocational roots of Hali symbolic pollution (ploughing and exorcism) are proudly reclaimed; Gaddi pastoralism, a contested terrain of caste exclusion, is reimagined as privileging Halis; Christ as the ‘Giver of Help’ is invoked as freedom from Gaddi spiritual affliction. These interpretive practices parallel broader efforts to realign discursive and social power within the Gaddi tribe.