Landscapes of diasporic religious belonging in the edge-city: the Jain temple at Potters Bar, outer London

Abstract

This paper extends current debates about diaspora cities to the suburbs, arguing that new forms of diasporic religious architecture in suburban and edge-city locations are indicative of complex geographies of migration, settlement, mobility, transnational networks and diasporic material cultures. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the building of a new Jain Temple built in Potters' Bar, on the edge of London, by the Oshwal Community of Jains, we argue that the temple reflects the distinctive hybridities of new suburban faith spaces. The paper also illustrates some of the conflicts between diasporic faith groups and other suburbanites which are shaped by contested narratives of distinctively suburban landscapes and society.

Keywords:

• diaspora cities
• suburbs
• Jains
• religious transnationalism
• architecture

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to members of the Oshwal community for discussing the building of the temple with us and to the architects Ansell and Bailey for sharing documents with us. We would also like to thank Felicity Green for assistance with archival work and Miles Irving in UCL's Drawing Office for making the maps. Thank you to Alison Blunt and to the anonymous referees for comments on a first draft of this paper.

Notes

The Green Belt was an integral element of the Greater London Plan of 1944 (more commonly known as one of the ‘Abercrombie Plans’), building upon a tradition of planning stretching back to the Garden City Movement, that sought to limit London's growth. The unprecedented expansion of suburbia in the 1920s and 1930s gave new urgency to initiatives that sought both to limit the city on functional grounds, and to provide protection to what were considered the emblematic English landscapes of the ‘Home Counties’. The Greater London Plan stated that the Green Belt, as well as providing recreational facilities and protecting productive farmland, was the ‘visual solace of man’ (Abercrombie 1945, p. 3).

See Banks (1994) for a discussion of the migratory movements of Oshwals from India, to East Africa and then to the UK, USA and Canada.

Jāti refers to an endogamous hereditary social group which is associated with specific occupations and a fixed position in the local social hierarchy (Cottam 1994, p. 82). Banks (1994, p. 134) further notes that jāti is identified with a particular physical territory so that, while there are several groups of people calling themselves Oshwal throughout Gujarat and Rajasthan, each group will often have a territorial term pre-fixing the name Oshwal.

There are two major Jain sects – Digambara or ‘sky-clothed’ and Svetambara or ‘white-clothed’. Historically, these differences applied to ascetics only, but since ascetics demand different ritual behaviour from the laity, the laity is also similarly divided, resulting in different ritual traditions, and separate temples (Banks 1992, p. 29).

Banks (1992) observes that Jain temples and other religious buildings are generally owned by jāti groups rather than sect groups or Jains as a whole.

The Oshwal Association did not accept any state funding in the construction of the Potters Bar temple and therefore did not have to comply with conditions of use. In contrast, the Jain temple in Leicester was built with donations from the local Jain community as well as two grants from Leicester City Council. The acceptance of state funding required a commitment to social inclusion and promotion of the building for non-religious community purposes (Gale and Naylor 2002).

We are grateful to Kim Knott for providing this interpretation at the Faith in Suburbia workshop held at Royal Holloway, 26 May 2011.

Gale and Naylor (2002) discuss similar building compromises necessitated by local planning regulations in the construction of a Hindu temple in Preston. However, in this case the result was one of aesthetic hybridity rather than a compromise of religious stipulations.

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/989/archbishops-visit-to-dawoodi-bohra-mosque-and-jain-temple, accessed on 22 May 2011.