While the medical landscape in garhwal is as elsewhere in rural india highly pluralistic , there is an important factor that makes the Garhwali case different from medical pluralism described for other indain and nepali rural contexts. This is the important role in people’s everyday lives of practices of possession linked to the cult of territorial deities amongst the different categories of local deities who have an active ‘social life’ through being protagonists of institutionalized practices of possession, it is the village deities that, by way of healing and divination ritual practices , have the strongest impact on people’s daily life. Each village,s tutelary deity has a mobile from called, consisting of a wooden palanquin that can be carried on the shoulders of two ritual specailists. People regularly come to the village temple to seek the help of the got. In order for people to communicate with gods, two men-the deity mediums called take the palanquin on their shoulders; at this point the deity enters their bodies which in turn start to move. The two mediums’ body movement make the palanquin itself swing in different direction. These movements of the palanquin which can only be understood by an elite group of knowledgeable people who ‘ translate‘ it for the public. The entire institution is controlled by the villages’ hegemonic groups , which in the past were linked to the central royal power and which belong to the two upper castes of brahmans and Rajput. Both the interpreters and the palanquin the tutelary deity uses other froms of communication, all entailing possession, such as communication through the words of a medium or the sound of a ritual drum played by a low caste musician. The legitimacy of the entire system is based on the belief that villagers are naturally subject to the will of the gods , who have control over the relationship that links them to their subject is a combination of care and control. Virtually all personal or collective events must be brought before the village god’s palanquin to be provided with meaning. Suck events range from physical illness to unusual individual behaviors, emotional distress, household disagreements, subsistence practices, disputes between neigh bouts or relatives over land tenure, natural catastrophes, and sudden deaths. Aside from offering directions for action, territorial deities perform healing rituals that are often referred to as which literally means ‘protection’ or ‘the act of taking care of somone ’