Being Tamil, being Hindu: Tamil migrants’ negotiations of the absence of Tamil Hindu spaces in the West Midlands and South West of England

Demelza Jones

doi:10.1080/0048721x.2015.1027968

Abstract

This paper considers the religious practices of Tamil Hindus who have settled in the West Midlands and South West of England in order to explore how devotees of a specific ethno-regional Hindu tradition with a well-established UK infrastructure in the site of its adherents’ population density adapt their religious practices in settlement areas which lack this infrastructure. Unlike the majority of the UK Tamil population who live in the London area, the participants in this study did not have ready access to an ethno-religious infrastructure of Tamil-orientated temples11For simplicity, the English term ‘temple' is used in preference to the Tamil Kōvil or the Sanskrit Mandir. My use of other Tamil terms follows the transliteration suggested by the University of Madras’ Tamil Lexicon. and public rituals. The paper examines two means by which this absence was addressed as well as the intersections and negotiations of religion and ethnicity these entailed: firstly, Tamil Hindus’ attendance of temples in their local area which are orientated towards a broadly imagined Hindu constituency or which cater to a non-Tamil ethno-linguistic or sectarian community; and, secondly, through the ‘DIY’ performance of ethnicised Hindu ritual in non-institutional settings.

Highlights

Reena2, -a woman in her thirties from the Tamil-majority region of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka-migrated to the UK 12 years ago
This paper considers the religious practices of Tamil Hindus who have settled in the West Midlands and South West of England in order to explore how devotees of a specific ethno-regional Hindu tradition with a well-established UK infrastructure in the site of its adherents’ population density adapt their religious practices in settlement areas which lack this infrastructure
The paper examines two means by which this absence was addressed as well as the intersections and negotiations of religion and ethnicity these entailed: firstly, Tamil Hindus’ attendance of temples in their local area which are orientated towards a broadly imagined Hindu constituency or which cater to a nonTamil ethno-linguistic or sectarian community; and, secondly, through the ‘DIY’ performance of ethnicised Hindu ritual in non-institutional settings

Summary

Introduction

Reena2, -a woman in her thirties from the Tamil-majority region of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka-migrated to the UK 12 years ago. Like the Tamil population itself, the regionalised Saivite Hinduism described earlier in the paper transcends state borders, and is practised in South India, northern Sri Lanka and the South East Asian, African and Mascarene sites of the colonialera diaspora, while more recent migrations have carried these traditions to the Global North. It is usual for research on Tamils in the UK to focus on the numerically superior Sri Lankan Tamil section of the population, but this study involved Tamil participants of diverse state origins, including Sri Lankan, and Indian, and in much smaller numbers, Malaysian and Singaporean.. While for Tamil Hindus in the population hub of London the former was readily available, for those in my fieldwork sites, attending a local temple involved negotiating different kinds of Hindu space

A South Indian temple in the West Midlands

Findings

Conclusions