The Last Polytheism of the Hindu Kush

The Kalash people of the Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir valleys in Chitral, northern Pakistan, keep the last pre-Islamic polytheistic religion in the region, centered on Dezau, a supreme creator, alongside a wider array of deities and spirits addressed through animal sacrifice and a calendar of seasonal festivals. Part of that calendar is closed: the Chaumos winter solstice festival carries purity and seclusion rules that exclude outsiders from significant portions of it, and the community has publicly objected when researchers or visitors have pushed past that boundary, so this article does not reconstruct the closed segments of Chaumos from outside accounts.

What is public is that Kalash religion has survived as a living faith in a region that has been overwhelmingly Muslim for centuries, a fact reference works on comparative religion treat as historically remarkable in its own right, and that survival is documented rather than assumed. Kalash numbers have fallen under demographic and social pressure over the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and the valleys have become a point of scholarly and public interest precisely because so distinct a religion persists there. The religion remains actively practiced today by a community that continues to mark its calendar in public as well as in its closed observances.