Riging a guitar to make it sound like a sitar without pedals

Ive tried lots of things.
ended up going for the next best thing.
A jerry Jones Sitar guitar.

on that instrument there is a wooden tongue like thing coming off the bridge. one raises and lowers that ,so as to touch the strings, to get the amount of sitar buzz needed.
maybe you could look at one or google a pic. and adapt that idea to what you want.

or go buy a sitar guitar. they are way cool. and mine really really sounds great.

I quite often mess around with where I'm picking - from wooly sounding half-chords by strumming over the twelvth fret to metallic twang by picking hard about 1 centimeter from the bridge. It's not going to be the same obviously, but it might be enough of a hint of the sound you want :)

You can just touch the strings with the side of your hand. It takes practice to make them buzz without muting them, but it's really cool when you do it right.

A sitar bridge is designed to buzz. It's shaped more like slightly tilted plateau, than the roller or knife edge bridges we have on guitars. You could try inserting a flat, flexible piece of metal or plastic very, very close to the strings near the bridge -- even slightly touching may work. A piece of wire might be worth a try as well.

While playing, I can get a sitarish buzz by bringing a fingernail close to the vibrating string. This works best either near the bridge or close to the fretted end.