Abstract
The home is the a priori sacred space and place in Brahminical Hindu life, particularly in its supporting role for the ritual reproduction of the Hindu family. Predicated on the establishment of this critical sacred space and place, an architecturally distinctive temple culture in diaspora emerges considering relevant regional styles in India, local cultural aesthetics and available materials and globalized representations of Hinduism. A synergy between the micro (individual home) and the macro (global Hindu diaspora) sacralization of space and place is key to our understanding of the continued vibrancy of Hindu communities in lands often unsupporting or even antagonistic to their religious life. Hindu home temples in Trinidad, Zimbabwe, La Réunion, Malaysia and Suriname are featured vis-à-vis their Indian subcontinental roots. The humanistic approach in cultural geography provides a framework for understanding the experience of Hindus abroad as many continue to struggle to reproduce their way of life in an alien world. The home temple is explored as an authentically Hindu act of dwelling that has been essential to people’s survival as a distinctive community into the twenty-first century, despite the persistent onslaught of proselytization, discrimination, and exploitation under nineteenth and twentieth century (post)colonial conditions.
Now it is time that gods emerge from things by which we dwell….
Ranier Maria Rilke 1925 (The first lines of a poem cited by D.F. Krell in Martin Heidegger 1977 )
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Notes
- 1.
The term Hindu is largely a British colonial invention that, in some ways, is meant to cover most if not all indigenous faith traditions from the Indian subcontinent (Doniger 2009). Strangely to us today, colonial Brits included the localized practice of Islam in this category. Sikhs and Jains have been somewhat successful in distinguishing themselves from this broad category. Many other faith communities simply accept the designation while others struggle to reject this label. Dalits, who represent countless village traditions, are among the more activist today (Kumar 2004). Still, an extraordinary philosophical literature and a rich ritual tradition have developed over several millennia that are more or less linked through a number of common sensibilities. In this sense, the term holds enough relevance for our purposes here. In any case, we are stuck with this term for now. Throughout this essay, the term Hindu will largely encompass the classical Brahminical tradition with which many in the world are familiar as well as the village traditions upon which it is often juxtaposed. Brahminical Hinduism, aka Sanatan Dharma, encompasses the classical Hindu pantheon of great gods and goddesses and the complex ritual heritage that attend them. The great temples are likely to be Brahminical. Village Hinduism varies widely in local practice, includes the sacrifice of animals, usually to the local goddess that protects the village, and it is strongly linked to local natural elements (Wiser 1971; Dubois 1906; Schwartz 1967; Mines 2010). These two broad classifications are not mutually exclusive as they often intersect, intertwine, and interpolate each other in actual practice. The terms Great Tradition and Little Tradition were coined by Western anthropologists decades ago to distinguish them and may be outdated in usage today. Thus, the terms Brahminical and Village traditions will be used here, though reference may be made to usage of the earlier terms.
- 2.
Khajuraho, eleventh century, northern Madya Pradesh (southeast of Delhi); Mahabalipuram, eighth century, northeastern Tamil Nadu (south of Chennai); Dakshineswar, nineteenth century, eastern bank of the Hugli River (south central Kolkata).
- 3.
Lindsay Jones (2000: 141) notes that, “…for most Hindus, the focus of their ritual lives was not the famous temples but the small altar that existed in virtually every private home.”
- 4.
Catholics, especially of an older generation, may have a shrine inside the home or yard. Evangelical Christians invite God into their home through prayer, and many Muslims set aside a place for daily prayer. Espiritistas, Santeras, and Mambas of Afro-Caribbean faiths often use their homes in the U.S. as ritual centers. Homes in traditional cultures around the world have some degree of sacred organization or functionality. Moreover, the home may be an initial place to worship for any religious community when they are a minority in a new land and with limited resources. The particular ways in which this plays out will have its own dynamic.
- 5.
I want to extend my deepest appreciation to the many families in India and the diaspora for taking me into their homes. My life is so enriched by all of you. Basday, Lucy, Lydia, Vaidehi, Mala, Neeraja, Kiran, Ruth, Bhadra, Mrs. Ismail, Kanchan, Daphne, Dinesh, Amoy, Nirmala, Sherry Ann, and Padma are especially dear to my heart. Importantly, Rose Salville-Iksic deserves special recognition for her critical role in French translation, the day in—day out survey of La Réunion family temples, and her cheerful support in all things geographical.
- 6.
The British were the first European colonizers to transport people from India to their colonies as a source of labor on plantations (for example, sugar, cacao, rubber) and to build railroads Laurence (1994). The French followed but to a lesser degree. The Dutch took advantage of the British system and arranged for laborers in their Caribbean holdings. The Dutch later used laborers from the island of Java in the same way. My field work has primarily occurred in India, Trinidad (of Trinidad and Tobago), Suriname, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, and La Réunion. Other fieldwork in the U.S., UK, Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Nepal, Australia, and New Zealand is not the focus of this essay, but the ideas here do hold some relevance.
- 7.
This chapter could just as easily have used a feminist approach, or a post-colonial, post-modern, or political economy approach to understanding Hindu home temples in diaspora Jones (1997).
- 8.
The concept of ritual pollution is operative in most societies in a variety of ways and to different degrees. Here in the United States, insects or bugs if you will, are polluting as a social factor. People with bugs (for example, bed bugs, roaches, fleas, lice) in their living space or on their bodies are considered socially inferior—remember the reference our society still uses to indicate some marginalized people as having “cooties”? It is not my intention to minimize or rudely represent this sensibility. Instead, it is merely an indication of how we humans mark and marginalize the “other” in our daily lives. In Brahminical Hindu life, consuming most animal products, manufacturing products from dead animals, and handling animal/human remains for disposal all place a person in spiritual jeopardy, and by extension, implicates many aspects of social life. Contact with polluting substances, and or persons polluted by them, can affect one’s socio-spiritual status. Avoiding and/or ameliorating one’s contact with proscribed substances and/or people (thus protecting oneself and one’s family) through daily practice and cleansing rituals is continual. Keep in mind that such sensibilities are difficult to erase in any society, but government policies and activist groups in India are working to eliminate discrimination based upon these age-old social attitudes. Issues surrounding ritual pollution have some elements calcified and others eliminated altogether from one diasporic community to another.
- 9.
Traditional, conservative families who practice Brahminical Hinduism are most likely to enact this relationship between a woman’s shakti strength and the expected health of the patriline. Many social proscriptions on women’s mobility, social relations, and access to resources such as education derive in part from the desire of the in-laws to reserve her shakti for the benefit of the extended family. Eventually, her socialization into married life becomes self-regulating, and as her own male children marry, her status will improve within the family yet continue to exhibit many of the restrictions commonly accepted as a woman’s role in life. Keep in mind that non-Brahminical practices may or may not make the same demands or regulate a woman’s daily life in the same manner or to the same degree. Also, many individual families have liberalized their practice, especially in the education of their daughters. Thus, while the status of women in India and its diaspora, in general, has been low, much progress is being made in all sectors of each society. Today, Trinidad & Tobago has an Indo-Trini woman as prime minister. In diaspora, the conditions vary greatly from one region to another.
- 10.
Read Vertovec (1992) and van der Veer and Vertovec (1991) to grasp the complexity and significance of this process in the Caribbean. They maintain that the Trinidadian form of Brahminical practice has evolved into its own identifiable, ethnically based system where a north Indian, Vaishnavite form of Brahminical Hinduism eventually became ascendant and Village Hindu practices profoundly marginalized today—though still evident if you know where to look. In La Réunion, Village practices such as animal sacrifice, spirit possession, and fire-walking are still important and widespread, even though much pressure against these practices by Brahminical Hindus is on the rise—so much so, that priests are being imported from India to displace local “creole” priests. On the other hand, read Mearns (1995) and Prorok (1998) to better understand how village practices from India prevail in Malaysia even as Brahminical organizations struggle to influence them and represent Hindus as a group to the government. As you go from one community to another around the world, the degree of Brahminization varies. More importantly, caste based social organization and practice varies widely from one former colonial community to another.
- 11.
Malaysian rubber plantations stand as an exception to this situation. Recruitment of laborers tended toward keeping people from the same, or neighboring, villages together and promising them the support of a temple on the plantation as an inducement to migration.
- 12.
Read Prorok (1991) to see how a uniquely Trinidadian temple architecture emerged over a 100 year period.
- 13.
It must be recognized that Hindus, like all human communities, have family situations where addiction and abuse occurs. Thus, the home may still not hold the promise of existential insidedness, of belonging, as described by Relph, Husserl, and Heidegger. It is also worth noting that the larger society’s evolution towards greater acceptance of Hindus and Hinduism is ongoing, though the process is not yet complete. In Trinidad and Tobago, the nation elected its second Hindu as prime minister in 2010 yet the religious and cultural heritage of Hindus is still not included in any meaningful way in the definition of what it means to be Trini or Trinbagoan. Malaysia guarantees religious freedom in its constitution yet Hindus have difficulty getting permits to hold public religious events, and authorities remove temples they believe stand in the way of development. Mosques are not subject to the same practice. These examples and many more from diasporic lands illustrate the difficulty in experiencing full inclusion as a Hindu.
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Prorok, C.V. (2015). The Diasporic Hindu Home Temple. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_101
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