Crossroads of Religions: Shrines, Mobility and Urban Space in Goa

Abstract

Wayside shrines - representing Hindu and Catholic divinities and saints - show an astonishing dynamic in the cities of Goa and India. Not only do they persist in a milieu of drastic modern change that often seems to be at odds with their traditional locations, aesthetics and purposes, but also some of them surpass temples, churches and mosques in popularity. The popularity of these seemingly marginal religious monuments is a response to three forms of mobility characterizing modern Indian urban environments: cultural mobility - the diversification and fluctuation of religious ideas and practices; social mobility - the diversification and fluctuation of people from different castes, social classes and geographical regions, as well as the change of caste and class status due to socio-economic change; and physical mobility - the movement of and movement around increasingly dense and complex flows of motorized traffic. The shrines modify and transform the centuries-old spatio-religious system of Hindus and Catholics to fit the conditions of late-modern city life. They allow a culturally diversifying, socially changing and geographically fluctuating population to engage with a variety of personalized deities and saints whose charismatic authority is not only quite independent from formalized local social hierarchies, but often also cuts across orthodox divisions between religious traditions. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2008 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Sacred Structures in the Landscape: The Case of Rural Czechia

“…For the most part, geographical research on sacred structures has focussed on the conflicts associated with the construction of new religious structures (Schmitt 2003;Bauschke 2009), which affect both faith-based as well as secular institutions, or on the significance of religious symbols and structures for the identity of people (Palmer 2002) concentrated in a certain area (Kong 2004;Henn 2008). Sacred structures often reflect the dominance of a specific religion in a given area; in Czechia, the Roman Catholic Church, more than any other denomination, holds such a position.…”

“…Henn (2008) points out that one of the greatest mistakes of modern social theory was the exclusion of religion from the public sphere. Modernization and Marxist theory professed that religious expression was primarily part of the private sphere of individual faith.…”

Shrines of Goa: Iconographic Formation and Popular Appeal

“…Quite obviously, their emergent character and diverse iconography also have a wide and popular appeal and have become a model for myriads of newly arising shrines throughout Goa. In fact, as I have elaborated in more detail elsewhere (Henn 2008), it is precisely the emergent character, local dispersion, and variable iconography of these shrines that makes them flourish in number and variety in the cities today, where they serve a changing, sociologically diversified, and fluctuating population. They not only prove able to adapt the old traditions of the wayside rakhne and devuncār to the hazards and concerns associated with modern traffic, industrial workplaces, and urban life, but also readily accommodate emerging trends of the worship of holy men and charismatic figures such as Shirdi Sai Baba and Satya Sai Baba.…”

Introduction. Wayside Shrines in India: An Everyday Defiant Religiosity

“…Due to the density and demographic flux where they are often located, these shrines allow a kind of democratization of publics (Henn 2008; Ghassem-Fachandi 2012). Although, wayside shrines are often rightly viewed as an expression of a certain class religiosity, 22 they are nevertheless able to attract different publics as many of the examples of this volume attest.…”