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In today´s India, environmental squalor is a salient feature of cities, standing in surprising contrast to clean private settings. This study of ideas and practices relating to cleanliness in a South Indian town neighbourhood found that hygienic and so-called ritual concepts of purity and pollution are closely related. They are nearer to orthodox beliefs than to germ theories. The danger of dirt is less its direct threat to health but its impact on social status and on the mood of deities, who penalize impurity with misfortune. Cleanliness is crucial for private well-being, whereas public pollution is obsolete.

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Damaris Lüthi is an Associated Researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Berne.

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