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Abstract
Focussing on performative displays at Tamil Hindu annual festivals in London, UK, this article examines the use of sound and ritual movement, in territorialising and organising space and in celebrating Tamil identity. Notions of ‘dwelling and crossing’, taken from Tweed's work (2006) on the analysis of religion, as well as theoretical material from spatial and human geography shed light on the tensions between such diasporic groups' migratory movement and their emplacement in city life. An analysis of the soundscape of such moving processions reveals how sonic elements can be a powerful force in marking out processional space, in ritualising and assisting in the sacralising of the space through sonorous, loud and auspicious music that speaks directly to the deities.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank those who commented on an earlier draft of this paper presented at the seminar at the Open University, Milton Keynes on Religion, Culture & Materiality, as well as the editors and readers of this paper for their helpful suggestions and critical engagement with the text. Research was supported by the AHRC and by the Ford Foundation, USA, through the SSRC, New York.
Notes
1. Such diasporic spaces discussed here complexify the idea of the public and the private. The public worship of Tamil Hindus in the temple and surrounding streets, where several hundred devotees may attend on special festival days, still remains only relatively public. It does not incorporate a wider body of worshipers of other faiths, nor of other ethnicities. It does not attract the ‘general public’. Therefore these events would perhaps be considered more ‘private’ in terms of the broader public sphere of recognisable multicultural religious practice in the UK, for example, which tends to acknowledge Hinduism by the more publicity-conscious Swami Narayan Temple in North London (a Vaishnavite temple). In this sense, the ambiguity of diaspora environments in relation to notions of public and private reveal a fluidity between the borders of what is considered public and what is private.
2. These include the London Sivan Kovil in Lewisham, the Highgatehill Murugan Temple in Archway, the Sri Kanagathurakkai Amman Temple in Ealing and the Sri Rajarajeswary Amman Temple in Surrey.
3. In interviews, devotees allude to the power and purity of the new Murugan temple, as well as to the respect held for the senior priest, Siva Sri Kailai R. Naganathasivam, who has been working there since 1987.
4. The local Council attempted to close down the temple in 1981 and even took their case to the high courts, but the temple won and was allowed to remain open.
5. It is important to note here that the progression of the musicians, the chariot and whole body of the procession transforms the public, outdoor space into a sacred and ritual one. The musicians use their instruments to signify that change. This is very different to the setting of a pilgrimage, where the movement is towards a sacred place.
6. The term ‘moral geography’ was first used by Driver (Citation1988) and is now widely used in discussions in human geography.
7. Territorialise in the sense of marking out ownership, occupancy and belonging.
8. Orr (Citation2000, 92) notes in her important work on the South Indian Hindu temple in medieval times and the role of women in temple service that the ‘people deemed most essential to temple life were priests and their assistants, gardeners and garland makers and drummers’ and that the role of the drummer ‘looms large in Chola period temple life’.
9. Although these instruments are considered ‘outdoor’ ones because of the volume of their sound, I have seen them increasingly used inside UK Tamil temples at special festival times as well as during outdoor processions. Music played on these instruments is used for daily ritual in the temples, but it is recorded, not live. Professional musicians playing periya mēlam are being brought into stage performances during some arangetrams in London (first solo dance display in the classical form of Bharatanatyam after several years of training), aligning the dance performance with a ritual context. I have also witnessed dance performance in one of the London Tamil temples at festival times where the periya mēlam ensemble played for the dance items.
10. Viswanathan and Allen (Citation2004, 82) also note that: ‘to many South Indian Hindus, the sound of this music means temple. When Tamil emigrants to Malaysia and Burma, where there were no Hindu Temples, first heard nagasvaram music over the radio in the late 1930s after decades living outside India, many reported that they felt they were hearing the Hindu temple, an intense emotional experience’.
11. Religious studies scholars Wilke and Moebus (Citation2011, 4) in their recent book Sound and Communication. An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism, ‘investigate the sacred syllable OM not only in terms of ritual theory and its historical occurrence in texts, but also acoustically’.
12. It is interesting here to note the difference between the very publicity conscious Gujarati Swaminarayan group and the Tamil community. The opening of the London Swaminarayan temple in Neasden, north London was shown on BBC TV news broadcasts and attracted many high-profile visitors. It continues to be the only Hindu temple that Londoners know about. The opening in May 2005 of the first South Indian traditional temple to be built in London by the Tamils in East Ham (the London Shri Murugan Temple) was featured on Tamil TV and attended by the local mayor, but no further publicity was actively sought for such a major event.
13. See David (Citation2008) for more detail on this practice. It is now quite common to see this quite extreme embodied devotional undertaking at Hindu festival events in the UK. Body rolling is performed by men only and lasts for the duration of the procession of the chariot (about 4–5 h). Other helpers support the men by clearing the road of any sharp stones and medical attention is available if needed.
14. Newham has one of the highest non-white ethnic minority populations of all the districts in the country, the second highest of all London boroughs at 63%. The largest religious group is Muslim, and the Muslim community is the second largest in the whole of England and Wales (information from the 2001 Census: http://www.newham.gov.uk/yourcouncil/censusinformation/newhaminthecensus-asynopsis.htm) (accessed 12 February 12).