“Homeless” Deities and Refugee Devotees: Hindu Temples, Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora, and Politics in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article explores the role played by Hindu temples in Sri Lankan Tamils’ lives in the diaspora in the United Kingdom. It investigates why those temples became not only places for religious worship but also hubs for the expression of Tamil nationalistic political views, while temples in Sri Lanka managed to keep those politics at bay. Departing from studies on religious belonging in the diaspora, I argue for the specificity of the Sri Lankan experience as mingled with the suffering of war and Tamil nationalistic politics, thus suggesting that historical and political processes are key to understand ways of belonging. I use the lens of the capacity of the sovereign deities to unravel the various ways employed by deities to cater to their devotees’ needs. I explore how Hindu deities and refugee devotees in London, while accommodating nationalistic politics, try to establish their own power and claim a form of belonging in the new country. I argue that in the process, both the new sovereign deities and Tamil migrants/refugees not only need each other but also need the deities from home across time and space. [politics, religion, sovereign deity, belonging, diaspora]

Temple Tracks

“…Barring some exceptions, much of the scholarship on migration and religion has been anthropocentric, focusing predominantly on the movement of humans across territories. This emphasis has generated nuanced theoretical insights about how such flows have enabled the export of religious practices, institutions, sentiments, ideologies and solidarities (Ahmad 1994;Engineer 1986;Khan 1997;Maunaguru 2020;Nye 1995;Rudolph 2005;Rukmani 2001;van der Veer 2002;Vertovec 1994). Here I focus on this rather exceptional category of travellers, whose mobility was deeply and intimately entangled with the historical movement of labour from India to Malayan territories to feed colonial infrastructural projects.…”

“…Taking a conceptual leaf out of Maunaguru's (2021) inspiring work on 'homeless deities' and 'refugee devotees', I speak of Muṉīsvaraṉ as a 'refugee god' -constantly on the move, displaced by urban and railway development projects, and rendered seemingly powerless. However, as Maunaguru argues, it is precisely in the interstices of vulnerability that dislocated deities 'reassert their power ' (2020: 686).…”

“…My long-term ethnographic research on the mobilities of deities beyond their local territories and the narratives of his devotees lead me to reject -like his devotees -the notion that these deities are destabilized and their powers neutralized in these transnational shifts or that they are 'out of sync' and powerless in the new locales they inhabit. The complex processes that transport and emplace deities in diasporic settings have been well theorized by Maunaguru's (2020Maunaguru's ( , 2021 research on Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus who have built temples and sustained Hindu religiosity in diasporic locales. My conversations with Muṉīsvaraṉ's diasporic devotees as they narrated their experiences and sentiments about the deity vouch for his visceral and primeval presence in their lives.…”

“…1. See Maunaguru's (2020Maunaguru's ( , 2021 important works on these themes in the context of Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu diasporas. 2.…”

Intimità sacra e nuove appartenenze nella devozione dei Mauriziani induisti a Santa Rosalia (Palermo)

“…Attraverso tali forme di contatto rituale, i devoti induisti stabiliscono un intimo rapporto affettivo con la patrona di Palermo, caratterizzato dalle costanti manifestazioni salvifiche della santa, che riproduce il carattere dialogico delle pratiche votive induiste. L'attitudine inclusiva dei migranti mauriziani permette di abbracciare la santa cattolica e il Monte Pellegrino nella fenomenologia induista del sacro, secondo una relazione dialogica di interdipendenza tra devoti e entità non umane (Maunaguru 2021). L'adozione del nuovo culto permette ai migranti di acquisire una forma di controllo rituale (Younger 1992) sul contesto di arrivo e allo stesso tempo di riprodurre il «calore» (Benadusi 2015) delle familiari esperienze devozionali.…”