Religion and Commodification: 'Merchandizing' Diasporic Hinduism

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Religion and Commodification


Routledge Research in Religion, Media and Culture

1. Religion and Commodification: ‘Merchandizing’ Diasporic Hinduism Vineeta Sinha



‘Merchandizing’ Diasporic Hinduism Vineeta Sinha


First published 2011 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Taylor & Francis The right of Vineeta Sinha to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sinha, Vineeta. Religion and commodification: “merchandizing” diasporic Hinduism / Vineeta Sinha. p. cm.—(Routledge research in religion, media, and culture ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hinduism—Singapore. 2. Religious supplies industry—Singapore. 3. Hinduism—Malaya. 4. Religious supplies industry—Malaya. 5. Hinduism—India—Tamil Nadu. 6. Religious supplies industry— India—Tamil Nadu. I. Title. BL1165.S553S56 2010 305.6'9453—dc22 2010011794 ISBN 0-203-84279-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13: 978–0–415–87363–5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–84279–9 (ebk)


For Ravi



Contents

List of Maps and Figures List of Plates List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments

viii ix xi xii

1

Everyday Hindu Religiosity and Ritual Objects

2

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects: ‘Diaspora Hinduism’ and ‘Puja Items’

24

3

Homes for Gods: Prayer Altars for Family Shrines

69

4

Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity: Disentangling ‘Material’ from ‘Deity’ from ‘Commodity’

109

Flowers for Worship, Flowers for Sale: Straddling the ‘Sacred’ and the ‘Secular’

148

Religion and Commodification: What Are the Possibilities for Enchantment?

189

Glossary Bibliography Index

206 211 222

5

6

1


List of Maps and Figures

Map 1 Map 2 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2

Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. Singapore. A drawing of a spiked ka¯vat.i with its component parts. A close-up of the intricate carvings and etchings on the base plates of a ka¯vat.i.

10 29 60 62


List of Plates

Plate 1

A signboard of a shop which advertises itself as a dealer and exporter of ‘thirukoil items’ in Nyniappa Naicken Street, Chennai. Plate 2 The frontage of a prominent shop in Penang, Malaysia, selling various items for puja. Plate 3 A view of the five-foot way along Buffalo Road in Singapore, with a flower shop in the forefront. Plate 4 A banner advertising the sale of items required for the festivals of Pon·kal and Tai Pu¯cam at ‘Sri Perumal Trading’ in Singapore. Plate 5 Customers buying items at the Pon·kal Festival in Little India in 2009. Plate 6 The entrance to the tented area lined with stalls selling Deepavali-related items at the ‘Deepavali Festival Village’ in Singapore. Plate 7 Itinerant vendors displaying their wares: colored threads for puja, laminated pictures of Hindu divinity, vibhuti and kun·kumam packets together with plastic bangles, costume jewellery and bindis, outside the Veerammakaliamman Temple in Singapore. Plate 8 A close-up of the items for sale by itinerant vendors, spread out on a cloth on the floor. Plate 9 An original painting of Munı¯svaran by a Singaporean Hindu devotee. Plate 10 An original painting of Munı¯svaran by a Singaporean Hindu devotee. Plate 11 A young girl carrying a home-made ‘pa¯lka¯vat.i’ on her shoulders at ka¯rttikai tı¯pam celebrations at the Tank Road Temple in Singapore, December 2009. Plate 12 Ready-made wooden, prayer altars on sale at Gokulam in Singapore. The cost of these fairly small-sized altars begins from a couple of hundred Singapore dollars.

4 37 40

42 44

46

52 52 55 56

58

85


x

List of Plates

Plate 13 A custom-made prayer altar housed in the store-room of a 5-room HDB apartment of a Tamil Hindu household in Singapore. Plate 14 A view of the entrance to the bomb shelter that has been converted to a puja room of a Tamil Hindu family in Singapore. Plate 15 A craftsman with his tools, working on ‘finishing’ a custom-made prayer altar at a prominent shop in Singapore’s Little India. Plate 16 Different size statues of the Laughing Buddha, together with pictures of Lord Subramaniam and the Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganesh at a shop in Mylapore, Chennai. Plate 17 Made in China statues of Hindu deities on sale at the ‘Deepavali Festival Village’ in Singapore. In the foreground, note the statue of Ganesh in a tub of water. Plate 18 Flower vendors displaying their wares at the wholesale ‘Kamraj Flower Market’ in Koyambedu, outside Chennai. Plate 19 A typical ‘flower shop’ set-up in Singapore’s Buffalo Road, with a freezer box for storing flowers and the Styrofoam boxes in which flowers are delivered by local suppliers. Plate 20 A Styrofoam box with flowers that have been packed in ice and flown into Singapore from Bangkok on Thai Airways.

86

90

92

112

119

160

163

165


List of Abbreviations

AVA CDC DVD EDL GRC HDB HEB IAEC ISKCON LI LISHA MOM MP ROM SEA SGD STB VCD WP

Agro-food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore Central Singapore Community Development Council Digital Video Disc Everyday Life Group Representative Constituency Housing and Development Board Hindu Endowments Board Indian Activity Executive Committee International Society for Krishna Consciousness Little India Little India Shopkeeper’s and Heritage Association Ministry of Manpower Member of Parliament Registry of Marriages Southeast Asia Singapore Dollar Singapore Tourism Board Video Cassette Disc Work Permit

A note on the use of non-English words Following the Tamil Lexicon, Tamil words appear in transliteration, while the Hindi and Sanskrit words have been italicised.


Acknowledgments

I begin by acknowledging a huge intellectual debt to my teacher, Geoffrey Benjamin, who has inspired me towards the study of religion in Singapore. Amidst a chorus of discordant voices, he has always encouraged me to pursue an intellectual interest in the numerically small Singaporean Hindu community. His observation that the small scale of a socio-cultural phenomenon by no means suggests its sociological irrelevance is an insight that has taught me a great deal and one I have appreciated enormously. The travels to Malaysia and Tamilnadu were facilitated by funding I received from the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Arts and Social Science ‘Research Staff Support Scheme.’ This book would certainly not have been possible without the support and co-operation of a large group of individuals I interacted with over a sustained period of fieldwork (in places like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Chennai). I am thankful to the retailers, salespersons and wholesalers who took the time to talk to me and patiently answered my questions about their trade in ‘puja items’; I appreciate the opportunities that made possible my intrusive presence in shops to observe traders’ interactions with customers and to document exchanges, negotiations and transactions between them. In particular, I am thankful to the scores of Hindus who not only shared details of their personal religious styles with me but also opened their homes, and their very private puja rooms and prayer altars to me. Special thanks are due to Joe and Kris who shared their personal ka¯vat.i(s) with me and allowed me to photograph them for the book. I am grateful to have had in Ms. Chitra d/o Pubalan, an extremely efficient research assistant, whose contributions to this book are invaluable: she helped me to conduct interviews, did transcriptions and a physical mapping of Singapore’s Little India, all with great fervour and professionalism. My appreciations also go to Dr Subramanian Thinnappan of the South Asian Studies Programme, NUS, for help with the transliteration of Tamil words, Mrs Lee Li Kheng of GIS, NUS for constructing the two maps and Mr Ravinran Kumaran for his artistry in producing the two drawings for the book. I would like to thank the two reviewers of the manuscript, together with Jolyon Mitchell, Stuart Hoover and David Morgan, the editors of the


Acknowledgments

xiii

‘Media, Religion and Culture Book Series,’ who have provided important intellectual feedback and encouragement for this project. At Routledge, I would like to thank Erica Wetter for facilitating the review process and Laura Stearns, Elizabeth Levine and Stacy Noto for assisting me through the copyediting and production phases. The task of writing (while teaching full-time) was only possible because of the much-needed moral support from good friends like Medha and Suriani over ‘half-cups-of-tea’ in the canteen. My very ‘transnational’ family, especially my parents and siblings, have, as always, sustained me emotionally across long distances. Saying ‘thank you’ to family and friends seems grossly inadequate as a returning gesture on my part. This book is dedicated to my husband, Ravi, in whom I have found both an enthusiastic champion and a stringent critic of the work that I do and who continues to anchor me in all my endeavours. Ashish and Akash—the next one will be for you both! Vineeta Sinha July 2010



1


Everyday Hinduism in Diasporic Locations: Securing and Using Ritual Objects Sustaining a Hindu universe at an everyday life level requires an extraordinary range of ritual apparatus and religious specialists. At the level of practice, everyday Hinduism is an embodied religion and grounded in a materiality that makes the presence of specific material objects and implements an indispensable part of its religious practices. The catalogue of items that one encounters in expressions of theistic and devotional Hinduism in homes and temples is indeed long and impressive; it is also one that can only be partially articulated in any rendition. My survey of the field generated this following broad inventory of religious imagery and symbolism associated with day to day Hindu practices: sculpted and painted statutes of Hindu gods and goddesses, framed prints of divinity, deity-specific yantras, brass and gold-plated oil-lamps, rudraksha beads, bells, incense sticks, oil and ghee, prayer altars, musical instruments, recorded devotional music,1 devotional stories in the form of VCDs and DVDs, religious literature and more transient objects such as fresh fruits (lime, coconut, sugarcane), dried fruits (raisins, almond, cashew), flowers (jasmine, hibiscus, roses) and leaves (margosa, mango, banana) for making garlands and decorations, all used by practitioners in a variety of ritualistic modes. This project then begins with recognition of the profound importance of ritual paraphernalia in the enactment of everyday Hindu religiosity. Hindu weddings, funerals and any number of daily and calendrical rituals, festivals as well as birthdays and anniversary celebrations are ‘crowded’ with things and marked by the colourful and lively presence of an apparently random combination of objects and materials which in fact do connote order. In fact, every item no matter how ordinary or small has a place and a value in Hindu ceremonial life. Starting with these observations, my aim is to document how material objects are used by Hindus in their everyday religious practices. Traditionally, in the Indian context, both services and objects required for the performance of rituals were provided and produced by ja¯ti(s), occupational groups, charged with these


2


responsibilities, the entire endeavour being ideally imbued with spiritual overtones and not approached merely as ‘work.’ The almost sacred connection between occupational groups such as garland makers, temple musicians and craftsmen, artisans and sculptors has been clearly severed in many diasporic locations, but also importantly in India itself—this being evident especially in urban spaces. As such, skills and expertise required for creating and making available an array of objects to support Hindu practices have gradually been taken over by clusters of individuals with no traditional, historical connection to caste-related knowledge, such proficiency having been relocated to the hands of entrepreneurs. Both the transference and disconnect just noted have been crucial for the ultimate commodification of objects that are required to sustain theistic Hinduism, leading to the emergence of a commercial industry that rests on the mass production of goods. The effortless and straightforward access to ritual objects is even more tenuous for Hindu communities in the diaspora as the resources and skills which are needed to produce them are not necessarily present in these locales. These rich and nuanced processes merit further sociological scrutiny in and of themselves but are further exciting in carrying enormous potential for theoretical reflections in a number of key fields of study, including the realm of everyday religiosity, the consumption of religious objects and material religion. The practice of Hinduism in a global, capitalist and diasporic context has created the need for a continuous flow and movement of religious commodities, and given rise to a group of entrepreneurs who have obliged, leading to what I am calling here a ‘merchandising’ of Hinduism. I do not use this word negatively here; neither do I use this to suggest the ‘selling’ of Hindu religion or spirituality. Rather, I mean by this the trading of a set of material objects as commodities, which are ultimately consumed as ritual objects by individual Hindus. It is further intriguing to ask if, and how, this complex process of commodification impacts the modes in which these goods are used in the ritual domain. The variety of objects required in the practice of Hinduism, and the fact of their incorporation into the global capitalist system of markets and commodities does mean their necessary commercialisation, but this by no means leads to a desecration of the religious realm. For overseas Hindu communities, their easy availability as commodities, which circulate and can be exchanged across transnational boundaries, is not only enabling but often vital for sustaining everyday religiosity. In this project my aim is to explore if, and how, the unavoidable and inevitable commodification of ‘puja items’ impacts their ritual consumption by practising Hindus. While I document practitioners’ attitudes to this category of objects, I also give voice to the numerous retailers and merchants who trade in these goods and unpack the nature of entrepreneurial transactions they are routinely engaged in. The book is grounded in primary ethnographic material drawn from Hindu domains on the island nation-state of Singapore, parts of West



3

Malaysia and Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Theoretically, the project is contextualised in a broader awareness of ‘Diaspora Hinduism,’ a complex global phenomenon, which provides an important grounding for this research. My work rests on the premise that the analysis of Hinduism amongst overseas communities is a viable and dynamic field of study and carries tremendous insight for theorising how a religion is practiced and sustained in locales far removed from its place of origin. Hindu communities the world over have constituted themselves in ways that have allowed them to sustain vibrant and energetic manifestations of devotional Hinduism, both in the public and private domains. Specifically, my intention is to engage with the issue of how one can meaningfully theorise the consumption of material objects within a Hindu sphere. But given my interest in diasporic Hindu communities, a prior question about access to ritual objects needs to be addressed; given the need for ritual equipment and expertise, how is it possible for overseas Hindu communities to continue to practice their religion at an everyday life level? Admittedly, the story of each of the items in the aforementioned list is unique and merits independent narration in itself. Nonetheless, it is possible to make generic observations about the processes and mechanisms that render them accessible to Hindus in the diaspora and to further document their ritualistic and symbolic utilisation. In the interest of specificity, I register the modes in which Hindus in Singapore approach material things that are commodities as well as ritual objects through a selection of three items that are central to sustaining domestic Hinduism—prayer altars (which house religious icons and insignia), visual representations of Hindu divinity (such as statues and framed pictures) and fresh flowers. These empirical foci allow me to engage conceptually with the overlapping fields of ‘everyday religion’ and ‘material religion.’ In my emphasis on the consumption of religious objects amongst Hindus, I have found the notion of the everyday life (EDL) an important one to work with. I approach the EDL as a collection of seemingly unimportant and ordinary activities, a body of culturally prescribed and routinized experiences and practices that reveal the ebb and flow of daily mundane existence. The religious domain, like other societal domains, is structurally defined by these features. My attention to the everyday life of Hindus signals a commitment to detailing the ways in which Hindus go about the routine business of ‘being Hindu,’ engaging in specific ritual practices within the domestic realm.2 The actualisation of Hindu religiosity requires a range of physical objects, tools, implements and paraphernalia which are now largely secured as commodities from the marketplace, a dependence which by definition draws Hindus as devotees/consumers into the dynamics of capitalist relations. Historically, the grounding of Hindu practices in material culture has especially been a challenge for Hindu communities located outside India, which continues to be viewed not only as the sacred centre for Hinduism but, more importantly, also for securing and


4


validating all things ‘Hindu.’ But this is not to say that without the importation of religious objects the practice of Hinduism in the diaspora would be jeopardised. Indeed, this reliance on the ‘homeland’ viewed as the source of all things Hindu is not unmitigated and absolute. Diasporic Hindu communities have sourced alternative resources and produced a variety of local responses in fashioning products and services to cater to their religious needs, leading in fact to the promising augmentation of ‘home grown’ industries. Thus the acquisition of skills and expertise required to reproduce materials and objects needed for sustaining everyday Hindu religiosity are discernible amongst segments of overseas Hindu communities, both on the part of entrepreneurs and laypersons. For Singapore, it is critical to note that not all of the previously listed items are necessarily imported; some things are not only conceptualised but also manufactured locally, through the effort of individuals who operate alone or in small groups linked through kinship alliances and friendship networks, resulting in small-scale production units. These data allow me to highlight diasporic locations as sites of production of ‘puja items’ and add to the broader discussions about their circulation and consumption. Additionally, I chart the status and value of a ‘puja item’ through to the end of its cycle of use and talk about its ‘post-consumption’ phase, especially in relation to establishing its sacrality. Admittedly, my emphasis is on the use of objects

Plate 1 A signboard of a shop which advertises itself as a dealer and exporter of ‘thirukoil items’ in Nyniappa Naicken Street, Chennai.



5

and thus I pay greater attention to the demand side of market relations, i.e., the consumers, as opposed to the supply side of the equation. Some examples of how these objects are approached conceptually are available to us from the existing literature: Haley, White & Cunningham (2001) use the label ‘Christian products’ to denote objects such as books, music, giftware, jewellery and clothing associated with Christianity, while D’Alisera (2001) finds the term ‘religious commodities’ appropriate for referring to bumper stickers, decals, informational pamphlets, kosher hot dogs and restricting the phrases ‘Islamic merchandise’ and ‘Islamic commodities’ for specifically Muslim items. Starrett (1995) uses the generic category ‘religious commodities’ and adds the suffix ‘Islamic’ to speak to objects associated specifically with Islam. Speaking more generally, Zaidman (2003) invokes descriptions like ‘religious goods’ and ‘religious objects’ in a comparison of traditional and new age religions in Israel, while Geary (1986) uses the phrase ‘sacred commodities’ to refer to medieval relics in European Catholicism. Some examples of objects that can be collectively encapsulated in these listed categories include the following: rosary or prayer beads, Tibetan singing bowls and prayer wheels, conch shell, bells, statues of deities, flowers, scared relics—like the Buddha’s tooth, medieval saints’ relics, printed pictorial images of deities, prayer rugs, etc. While there may be contextual merit in this set of labels, I have opted to use a description that has emerged from my ‘field.’ My survey of the market in Singapore, Malaysia, Chennai, London as well as the Internet generated the following generic descriptions: puja items, puja articles, worship accessories, temple accessories, temple items, thirukoil items, religious artefacts, puja accessories, Hindu prayer items, religious items, etc. Of this list, the expressions ‘puja items,’ ‘puja accessories,’ ‘puja things’ and ‘religious items’ are used most extensively and universally. In Singapore and Malaysia, my conversations with retailers and consumers alike revealed the routinized use of the phrase ‘prayer things’3 and ‘puja items’ to refer to a large collection of objects used in/for worship. My invocation of these two phrases is grounded in recognising its status first and foremost as ethnographic categories. There are obvious problems with essentialising and homogenising them, something I avoid in my usage. Furthermore, I am aware that these descriptors encapsulate a wide spectrum of objects and materials, which are defined by important distinctions, each with a specific biography and story. Yet, I argue that is it possible to make some general observations about the buying, selling and using of ‘puja items’; my specific intention here is to narrate the stories of a subset of three very different articles from the larger pool of ritual implements, i.e., fresh flowers, visual depictions of divinity and prayer altars. Even though objects used in religious ritual are produced as commodities once they enter the sphere of worship they acquire specific sets of meanings that only make sense within the given worldview of a particular religious tradition. They come to signify symbolism and evoke religious


6


significance within the context of the ritual in question. Even though they can be secured for a sum of money, and are transacted in the marketplace, they potentially embody a non-monetary value, often expressed by devotees as spiritual power and efficacy, which can be ‘animated’ through usage. Yet, what are consumed and appropriated as ritual objects by devotees in their religious lives, at one point in time also existed as commodities and goods with a price tag and are by-products of cycles of production and distribution in a capitalist marketplace. There is a clear awareness amongst the relevant parties that these articles are first and foremost commodities, with a price tag and often mass-produced. However, the insertion of the pre-fix ‘religious,’ ‘Christian,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘Islamic’ to these descriptors appears to mark their uniqueness from other categories of commodities. In contrast, it is not without significance that we do not encounter the expression ‘profane commodities’ either in everyday discourse or in the scholarship on the subject. It is further critical to ask how retailers and distributors of these items denote these articles—how are they described and talked about in the marketplace? These descriptions will expectedly be governed by cultural, religious and linguistic specificities of particular ethnographic contexts.

Fieldwork Routes and Pathways My current interest in exploring the intersections of religion and the marketplace and its relationship to material dimensions of Hinduism has a history that needs to be articulated. I became especially aware of these thematics in the course of my earlier work on the contemporary worship of Munı¯svaran, (the male guardian deity from Tamil Nadu) who has been firmly placed on Singaporean and Malaysian Hindu landscapes (Sinha 2005). In the process of documenting visual manifestations of the deity and paraphernalia associated with his veneration, I encountered an astounding range of products in markets across Singapore, parts of Malaysia and Tamil Nadu. As I spoke to retailers who traded in these goods, I repeatedly encountered the expression that ‘Munı¯svaran is good for business,’ something which triggered a deeper interest in scrutinising how the ‘religious’ and ‘commercial’ spheres were constituted and responded to each other’s existence. It was apparent that the market was driven by the rising popularity of the deity and a particular style of approaching him ritually; retailers supplied products demanded by devotees and this trade was seen to be commercially viable and profitable. From these beginnings, my subsequent research was framed in the attention to a broader field of local retail businesses that dealt with ‘puja items,’ and to seek answers about where these came from and how they were made available to devotees in Singapore. In addition to the focus on the commercialisation of ‘puja items,’ I was also inspired to explore more fully the materiality of devotional Hinduism and establish the status and value of things in the enactment of everyday Hindu



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religiosity. This has required me to deconstruct the category ‘puja items’ and demonstrate the entanglement of physicality, materiality and sacrality as well as the commodity features within this category of objects, in an effort to further problematise discussions about the sacredness of physical articles. In this book, I document how the Hindu community on the island nation-state of Singapore strives to sustain everyday Hindu religiosity, itself grounded in the need for material objects. The ethnographic material for this project was generated via fieldwork primarily in Singapore, parts of Malaysia and in small measure in Tamil Nadu, undertaken between 2003 and August 2007. This extended period has allowed me to generate rich ethnographic data, which reveal that the ‘merchandising’ of ‘puja items’ together with the complex modes in which they are inserted into religious practices are exciting fields for scholarly reflection. Although I started this project with an empirical focus on Singaporean and Malaysian Hindu domains, even my earliest research inquiries strongly indicated that it would be impossible and unproductive to restrict my ‘field’ to these two geographic locales. Given the notice of the dispersed and wide-spread networks which connect producers, retailers and consumers in this trade, confining my inquiries to Singapore would have allowed me to only narrate part of the story of the production, circulation, distribution and consumption of ‘puja items.’ The inquiries and logic of my research have meant that I had to track the noted links and networks across transnational boundaries—both analytically and to some extent empirically, and to reflect on the consequences that follow from the notice of such linkages. Thus, I have found that it would be both limiting and inaccurate for me to frame my research exclusively in terms of a focus on ‘Hinduism in Singapore.’ Rather my ethnographic engagement with the latter has required me to make field trips to parts of West Malaysia (Penang, Malacca and Kuala Lumpur) and the state of Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Rameswaram and Trichy) in India. The nature of emerging data have demanded that these trips be made to follow through the various kinds of liaisons, connections and relationships I was learning about while being located in Singaporean Hindu domains—ties that connect devotees, ritual objects, religious specialists, temples (and thus spaces) and businesses into a complex network of exchanges, reliance and support. All of this serves to complicate the traditional ethnographic notion of a spatially bounded, self-contained, physically distinct ‘field site.’ As such, for me the ‘field’ was neither a given nor a disconnected entity, but instead constructed out of the confluences and convergences I noticed as I traced the mobility and circulation of ‘puja items’ across transnational territories and the commercial and cultural transactions that connect various clusters of individuals who straddle them. The ideas of ‘multi-sited’ ethnography (Marcus 1995) and ‘global ethnography’ (Burawoy 2000; Gille & O Riain 2002), resonate with my approach to fieldwork as these have offered meaningful analytical and

8



methodological frames for my work. Michael Burawoy argues that in an increasingly globalised, transnational context it is no longer possible to approach ethnography in classical modes which ‘has made a fetish out of the confinement of fieldwork, the enclosure of a village, the isolation of the tribe’ (Burawoy 2000: 1). George Marcus recounts this ‘methodological shift’ in ethnographic research thus: Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualised by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the ‘local’ and the ‘global,’ the ‘life-world’ and the ‘system.’ Resulting ethnographies are thus both in and out of the world system. (Marcus 1995: 95) This idea of ‘mobile ethnography’ (ibid. 96) in allowing one’s research to be led by the ‘unexpected trajectories in tracing a cultural formation across and within multiple sites of activity’ (ibid. 96) is intellectually appealing, although a tremendous challenge in practical terms. Additionally, while the comparative value of actually ‘doing of fieldwork in many places’ is obvious, as I see it, the larger message here lies in approaching the notion of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ conceptually, such that even if fieldwork in these multiple places is not possible, one’s research has to be attentive to diverse, cross-cultural, comparative locales relevant to the research at hand. Thus, given the questions I was asking, my research did take me to specific locales, including the city of Chennai, Kumbakonam, Mahabalipuram, in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and to the Malaysian cities of Penang, Malacca and Kuala Lumpur, where I conducted in-depth interviews with wholesalers, retailers, artisans, ‘assemblers’ as well as consumers of specific religious items. However, I also had to be attentive to, and pursue the significance of, relevant processes and events in places that I did not and could not visit, for theorising the phenomenon under question in Singapore. In this research, following Marcus’ argumentation, my position is that my research objectives could not have been accomplished ‘by remaining focussed on a single site of intensive investigation’ (ibid. 96). However, I do retain the notion of a ‘primary’ ethnographic site, which in the present context is, Singapore, where I spent considerable amount of time ‘hanging out’ in retail shops in Little India (LI) and in the Housing and Development Board (HDB) neighbourhoods, and had opportunities for participant observation, particularly watching the interactions between traders and customers and documenting the conversations, negotiations that ensued and transactions that were accomplished. The focus on the consumption and post-consumption phases of the life-trajectory of ‘puja items’ necessitated in-depth, repeated conversations with lay Hindus, who were both customers and consumers simultaneously. I was fortunate to



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be granted access into the domestic spaces and to spend time in the even more private and intimate prayer rooms, which I was allowed to survey, ask questions about and photograph.4 These interactions generated crucial information about prayer altars, statues and other visual depictions of divinity as well as ritual accessories and how they were approached and related to, and the connotations the materials carried through various moments of use and at the end of a cycle of utilisation. I was also able to ask about and observe religious practices in the private domain and thus detail how sacred spaces within homes were understood and approached on a daily basis. Following the self-reflexive turn in anthropological research (beginning in the 1970s and lasting through to the 1990s) and the theoretical debates and controversies (Asad 1973; Ellis & Flaherty 1992; Hymes 1972; Ruby 1982) this has engendered, some discussion of a researcher’s positionality and perspective has become the norm in contemporary ethnographic accounts, with the rightful caveat against self-indulgence. Like other researchers, I too have often been asked (by colleagues and students) how, and if, my biography has affected the research choices I have made. In my book on Munı¯svaran worship in Singapore (Sinha 2005), I had felt it necessary to address the complexities of my status as a researcher given my identity as a ‘Hindu’ and yet the experientially unfamiliar spheres of Tamil, Hindu folk religiosity I was researching. Within the context of this research, the ‘Hinduness’ of my identity was again an issue in the field, especially in my conversations with Hindus—as buyers and sellers of ‘puja items.’ Many of my questions about everyday ‘puja items’ and their uses, were met with a presumption that, ‘I should know the answers given that I too was a Hindu.’ Sometimes responses were brief and truncated for the same reason, which meant that narratives were not always forthcoming spontaneously. Beyond probing, ‘interviews’ were really long sessions involving back and forth exchanges about ‘our experiences as Hindus’ and the kind of normative practices and views ‘we’ collectively held about the use and value of ‘puja items’ for example. Consequently, I ended up sharing fragments of my experiences growing up in a Hindu household and the knowledge I ‘carried in my head’ about Hindu norms and practices, as much as my respondents imparted similar information to me. Not unexpectedly, we often struggled to articulate the taken-for-granted, normatively-given Hindu beliefs and practices about the topic in question; not surprisingly, we certainly did not agree on everything, often falling back on our familial and biographical experiences to account for the variations. The broader lens of ‘Diaspora5 Hinduism’ serves to contextualise my chosen primary ethnographic focus in this study, the almost 100,0006 strong Hindu community located within the modern nation-state of Singapore. Given the logic of my research inquiries, the patterns and processes I have observed in my focus on Singapore have required me to be conscious of similar phenomena and developments in other Hindu diasporic spaces by


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way of attention to existing secondary material. The Hindu community in Singapore is not an isolated entity but a subset of a larger global Hindu Diaspora. Not surprisingly, the total size of this bigger cluster is impossible to determine categorically. We do have access to a number of estimates and approximations, which are, however, not entirely conclusive as the various figures on offer are often inconsistent. According to the data provided by the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report 2006, the number of Hindus outside ‘India’ is approximately 69 million as compared to the 886 million within India. Globally, Hinduism is billed as the religion of roughly one-sixth of the world’s population. Whether we are looking at the 3,100 Hindus in Sweden or half a million strong Hindu community in South Africa, the point to note is that these clusters self-define themselves as Hindus in adherence to a religious tradition named ‘Hinduism.’ This forms a huge market for trading in ‘religious items’ and sees the participation of a number of players, from producers, manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers to consumers, scattered in widely dispersed spaces but who interact in complex ways through the flow of objects and personnel. There are common and unifying forces acting on this market and its various participants, including consumers. Theoretically, it is important to ask how the commercialisation of ‘prayer items’ connects individuals and groups (Hindu and non-Hindu) across these widely divergent spaces and communities and the kinds of interactions and encounters these produce.

Map 1 Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia.



11

Interestingly, retailers, suppliers and distributors of ‘puja items’ who are physically located in Singapore do not see their market as being confined to the needs of the Hindu community on the island. Rather they cast their net much wider, conceptualising a much bigger, global market and in fact export merchandise to Hindu communities in parts of Malaysia, USA, South Africa and Europe. Many of the retail businesses in Singapore list and count customers (both individual and institutional)7 from such places as Germany and the USA, playing the role of middlemen importing goods from India or Malaysia and then exporting them to the northern hemisphere. During my trip to Chennai in February 2006, in my visit to retail stores8 located in its Mylapore district, I learnt that many of them carried ritual goods that were popular with Singaporean and Malaysian visitors, especially paraphernalia and equipment associated with Tai Pu¯cam and Aiyappaan puja. There is overwhelming evidence that India continues to be symbolically real and vital for overseas Hindu communities; but my data also strongly point to the fact that Singapore, Malaysia, other Southeast Asian countries and China (see Map 1) are increasingly becoming important players in providing and manufacturing materials used in worship and thus sustaining specific kinds of Hindu religiosity in the Diaspora. The choice of my methodological routes reflect my anthropological leanings but also serve a further purpose—I view such ethnographic grounding as providing a crucial context and framework for enabling me to articulate the core substantive concerns of this book upon which rest my theoretical reflections.

The Book Taking Shape: Theoretical and Ethnographic Turns In this project, my interest lies precisely in exploring the intersection of ‘materiality’ and ‘ritual practice’ in the domain of everyday Hindu religiosity with a view to articulating the meanings connoted by ritual use of objects. Using the lens of ‘materiality,’ I offer insights into the everyday religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations. I concur with Keenan and Arweck (2006: 17) that: . . . social scientists have something to say . . . in the unfinished quest to reveal the mysterious yet ubiquitous connections between the material and the spiritual, the profane and sacred. Further, I am led by the premise that the exploration of religion’s location at the interstices of capitalism and globalisation offers exciting opportunities for creative research. I am inspired to contribute to on-going scholarly discussions about the materiality of Hindu ritual domains and to bridge this intention with my interest in narrating the stories of objects used in the act of worship. The present work complements the rich body of


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literature on theistic and devotional Hinduism in the Diaspora, evident in the focus on the founding and functioning of Hindu temples (Vertovec 1992; Waghorne 2006), the observance of festivals (Younger 2002), the performance of daily rituals in sustaining domestic Hinduism (Mazumdar & Mazumdar 1994, 1999; Michaelson 1987) and the enactment of public processions (Jacobsen 2008) in diasporic spaces. However, despite the tremendous activity and energy within this field and the burgeoning literature9 it has produced, it is my observation that the intersection of everyday religious life with processes of commodification and commercialisation has yet to be explored overtly and comprehensively. My search for contemporary academic works that deal systematically with these issues suggests strongly that this is an under-researched field with great potential for novel contributions. It is notable that analyses of visual Hindu culture and material religion that are available for India, including the incorporation of Hindu symbols and artefacts into the world of global capitalism and consumer culture, are not as readily available in studies of Diaspora Hinduism. Similarly, while the study of religion in Southeast Asian societies has received sustained scholarly attention, the interplay of religion and commerce and material religion, including accounts of Hinduism, have remained marginal concerns in this body of work. This lacuna in the scholarship is not peculiar to Asia or Southeast Asia. The editors of Materialising Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual (2006) note the same problem with the subfield of sociology of religion. They argue that the ‘study of materialised spiritualities—and spiritualised materialities’ has not been seriously pursued. Through the 1970s and 1980s, there was considerable academic interest in applying and testing Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic thesis’ (1947) in Southeast Asia (Alatas 1972; Buss 1984) producing provocative and controversial discussions about the sightings of the Protestant ethic’ in Asia and in non-Protestant religious traditions. Secularisation theorists have also turned to Asia in their effort to document ‘god free zones’ but have found little evidence for their claims in Asian societies, where different forms of religiosity show a vibrant and tenacious presence. However, the emphases on exploring material dimensions of religion, the symbolism carried in its artefacts and their multiple but simultaneous location in several societal domains (phenomena whose impact has been felt forcefully over the last two decades) are more recent developments occupying the energies of a small cluster of social scientists working on Asia. Some important contributions are carried in a recent volume, Religious Commodifications in Asia: Marketing Gods (2007), edited by Pattana Kitiarsa. In this collection, the location of religion in the interstices of capitalism and globalisation and its attendant consequences are explored in diverse religious traditions in places like Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. Here it is not only material objects that are discussed but also how ‘blessings,’ ‘merit’ religion itself is subjected to ‘commodifying tactics.’ Earlier notable works and commentaries on the



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subject include Lee’s (1993) work on the globalisation of religious markets in Malaysia, Yee’s account of the trade in Buddhist talismans in Thailand, who notes rightly that more attention must be paid ‘to material objects in religious practices’ (1996: 1) and most recently Yeoh’s (2006) analysis of material religion at a pilgrimage shrine in Malaysia. Another inspiration for this work comes from Robert Hefner’s observations that ‘the culture of consumption has yet to become an important field of research in East and Southeast Asia’ (1998: 25).10 Given the gaps I have noted in these various bodies of scholarship, this project aims to contribute to studies of material religion and commodification of religion in Southeast Asia and the Hindu Diaspora with a primary focus on the consumption of ‘puja items’ beyond the question of utility and functionality. Through primary ethnographic material this book engages key thematics in the fields of material religion, religion and consumption and visual Hindu culture, all of which intersect in important ways. I engage conceptual questions in these named fields via attention to these three following themes, an approach that allows me to present relevant slices of ethnographic data.

Mapping Objects in Spaces: Ethnographic Grounding My interest in mapping spaces and objects that inhabit them extends from what may be labelled ‘local’ spaces to ‘global’ sites and moves from ‘real’ locales to ‘virtual’ settings. In ‘real’ space, marking spaces where religious objects are traded implies attending to the highly localised retail sites, for example, in sundry, grocery and provision shops as well as specialist shops that carry religious paraphernalia in enclaves known as ‘Mini India’ or ‘Little India’ (in such cities as Chicago, Toronto, London, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore). It is noteworthy that these local businesses are plugged into a complex global network of commercial linkages, often relying on the same wholesalers, suppliers, manufacturers and distributors of religious items from India or are indeed linked with each other in exporting or importing select items across transnational boundaries. This makes it possible to conceptualise a larger transnational space of the global marketplace, one that deals with ‘Hindu religious objects’ and sees the participation of retailers and businesses located in various Hindu diasporic spaces. Given that a primary objective in the book is to narrate the stories of objects that are used in devotional Hindu practices, a good starting point is to begin with the mapping of spaces across the island of Singapore where ‘puja items’ are concentrated, bought and sold. A primary site where these articles are marketed and traded is in the formally organised world of retail and wholesale businesses located in the ‘Little India’ (LI) district of Singapore, defined as an ‘Indian community space.’ The emergence of this space as a hub of commercial activity designed to cater to the needs of the Indian and Hindu community have been conditioned by a combination of historical factors. Today, LI is unequivocally identified as an ‘Indian’ area


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and in offering specific goods and services continues to draw Indians from all over the island. However, there are other secondary locations dispersed across the island where a network of individuals trade in merchandise specific to the needs of the Indian community, together with ‘puja items,’ making them available to consumers, including members of non-Indian and non-Hindu communities. Examples of the latter include the precincts of Hindu temples and shrines as well as retail businesses (such as groceries shops and flower shops) in residential enclaves known as ‘HDB estates’ which house up to 80 per cent of Singapore’s largely urban population. The prevalence of the Internet in the realm of religion is now largely taken-for-granted (Cobb 1998; Waters 1997; Zaleski 1997), and has been documented across diverse religious traditions. Much has been written about the role of the Internet in the creation and sustenance of a diasporic Hindu identity (Lal 1999; Rai 1995). In addition to surveying ‘real’ places, my research highlights the centrality of the infinitely vast stretch of the Internet for the trade in ‘puja items.’ Not surprisingly, as a twenty-first century phenomenon, the Internet surfaced in the course of my research as a critical space that has been colonised by manufacturers and distributors of religious objects and, crucially, by lay practitioners themselves. This has been approached as a medium for disseminating information, advertising and publicity for products, in addition to being a ‘market space’ where products are bought and sold. Entering relevant phrases like ‘puja articles’ and ‘puja accessories’ into Internet search engines of Google and Yahoo generates literally hundreds of websites11 and web portals, carrying details of manufacturers, suppliers, importers, exporters and distributors of this merchandise, based in Bangalore, New Delhi, Singapore, New York or London. In addition to entrepreneurs, one also stumbles into blogs, discussion groups and forums with individual posts about how to build your own altar, to how to decorate a puja thali, where various puja accessories can be purchased and even the list of items required for the performance of puja(s) and festivals. Judging by the kind of activity that occurs routinely in this setting, the Internet has clearly surfaced as a powerful new marketplace not only in the trade of ‘puja items’ but also as a critical teaching and learning platform. The latter is intended to impart information about essential items required for conducting different types of puja(s) and about the proper methods of performing them. This is hardly surprising given the ubiquity of computers, the modes of technological possibilities they enable and their impact on so many facets of contemporary existence. This is indeed a well-narrated tale by now, even as the reach of the Internet continues to awe and overwhelm. Expectedly, the Internet emerged in the course of my research, both as a source of data and as an important methodological tool, both of which need to be theorised. With this realisation, in ‘mapping’ the locales where prayer items are bought and sold, I had to move beyond these physical spaces and consider the value of the Internet as a ‘new marketplace’ for these items. I encountered the presence of the



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Internet in this domain in several modes: one, and the most obvious in which local and international retailers and suppliers of prayer items registered their existence to consumers by setting up websites and displayed their wares, including through visuals; two, was the presence of lay individuals who used the medium to publicise knowledge they possessed about where, how and for how much prayer items could be secured, to advertise for sale specific items they had picked up in the course of their travels to India or Malaysia or to seek relevant items for worship. The former strategy reveals a fairly conventional usage which serves to supplement and consolidate a business that also exists in the ‘real’ world and by now is perfunctory as a survival strategy for reaching out to consumers and in being visible. Many of the big Singapore-based retail and wholesale businesses that trade in ‘puja items’ also have a virtual presence and market themselves quite successfully to a global customer base. However, there is at least one establishment in Singapore that is interactive in the sense that it operates with the concept of online shopping but most others have not moved beyond using the Internet to disseminate information, advertise goods and to communicate with potential customers. The latter approach inspires more curiosity as it signals several important shifts and developments. As a medium, the Internet facilitates such interaction and encounters and serves as a platform where these prayer items can be advertised, deals negotiated and secured. The emergence of the Internet as a new bazaar, enhanced by the circulation and dissemination of different kinds of knowledge, stands to transform the traditional dichotomous relationship between seller and buyer. This new mode of forging ties has also led to the creation of new networks of reliance and business which are temporary and transient in the sense that they come into existence as and when necessary. This trend is further sustained and supported by other factors, including the ease with which people are connected and embedded in networks where they have access to information and resources. Numerous discussion groups relating to Hinduism have appeared on the Internet in the last decade or so. Many of these are initiated and operated by Hindus located in Malaysia and Singapore, groups to which I belong, my research being made known to the groups in question by virtue of my earlier research on Hinduism. In this domain I have noted the overwhelming use of e-mail messages and posts on the discussion group to circulate information about prayer items that are sought, advertised and offered for sale not by retailers but by lay Hindus themselves, which is an important shift in theorising market relations. This development represents another mode of securing required items and sees individuals who are otherwise laypersons temporarily slipping into the role of sellers and in fact bypassing retailers completely. Significantly, it adds a variation to the ‘buyer-seller’ dualism and reduces exclusive dependence on traders and entrepreneurs. It is also notable that the messages about products and services are directed at a concentrated audience—Hindu devotees all of whom are potential customers.

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Highlighting Circulation and Distribution Processes Following from the fore-mentioned a core interest in the book is to literally ‘go behind’ the articles on the shelves and ask questions relating to their origins and then move forwards to their cycle of usage, drawing on the notion that objects have a biography and a social history. While the use of religious objects in worship is a fascinating phenomenon (and a critical component of the book), it is equally, if not more intriguing to try and make visible their distribution and circulation mechanisms and mark the routes they travel before they become available to devotees/ consumers. Thus I not only itemise objects that are available but also uncover their networks of distribution with a view to demonstrating where these items are produced, how they are ‘marketed’ and disseminated globally as commodities. Essentially, I am inspired to narrate the story/stories of these articles prior to the act of consumption. Important related questions then surface: Where do they come from? Who is responsible for producing them? How are these objects secured? Who brings them to Singapore? Who are the importers and suppliers? Who distributes them in the market? The actual practices on the ground demand an avoidance of simplistic and quick answers. The staggering variety of different routes, strategies and mechanisms through which these objects find their way into diasporic locations like Singapore is striking. ‘Puja items’ as commodities are procured and appear in the local market through both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ mechanisms. The former typifies the modus operandi of larger, established businesses that have access to resources for establishing contacts with suppliers and manufacturers of products, the wherewithal in other countries and can mobilise an extensive network of package, storage and transportation nodes which deliver goods to the doorstep of retail outlets in Singapore. These businesses have the capital and other resources to place large orders, to pay for container space for shipments and air flown goods and to facilitate port and custom clearances, etc. This also means that the expenditure of all these processes is factored into the final cost of the product by the time it appears on the shelves in the local market. In addition, to these big entrepreneurs who rely on standard, formal mechanisms for trading in ‘prayer items’, are the medium and small-scale entrepreneurs who seem to be able to secure the products they want without ever leaving the country. They function through more informal channels, where it is imperative to be plugged into the right networks. The latter means knowing the market, being aware of the products that are desirable and knowing how to secure them without having to go to India or other places, thus reducing overhead costs of travel, shipping, transportation and port clearances, etc. Additionally, a group of ‘couriers’ travel between Singapore and India carrying suitcases laden with ‘puja items’ that have been requested by local retailers and thus also serve as distributors of



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these goods. Sometimes they bring merchandise without prior orders and literally go from door to door introducing their goods, securing orders and making a sale. These couriers may make as many as four to five trips in a year, sometimes more, entering the country on a social visit pass; their passage and lodging is paid for in return for carrying goods and taking back more orders and cash from sales. My focus on production and distribution mechanisms serves to address these following questions: Do consumers know where the goods whose presence they take for granted and use at an everyday life level come from? Does such knowledge or lack thereof, make a difference to the act of utilising these objects?

Connecting to Patterns of Consumption As important as it is to highlight the production and distribution processes, it is also critical to ask if it is necessary for consumers to have knowledge about these for the various modes in which they are used by Singaporean Hindus. The focus on consumption is thus a necessary component of the larger story I am trying to narrate. This is not least because knowledge of consumption patterns can be a critical factor that stimulates the very production of commodities and their subsequent treatment and handling by distributors and retailers. Therefore, I offer important data about consumption patterns of religious objects amongst Hindus. From the vast assortment of items available in the market locally, I have chosen to focus in detail on the consumption of a select few, namely, visual representations of divinity—structures which house them and fresh flowers required for sustaining devotional Hinduism in the home. This selection is guided by the logic that these articles are associated specifically with domestic Hinduism, where everyday devotional Hindu religiosity finds expression. In trying to make sense of everyday patterns of consumption of religious objects, it is clearly not feasible to work with the assumption that individuals are driven by the satisfaction of temporary, superficial, restless and worldly appetites. Neither is it sufficient to jump to the obvious but equally simplistic and rather vague conclusion that this sort of consumption leads to spiritual fulfilment. It is far more challenging to conceptualise ‘consumption’ in this domain and ask what its effects are on forms of religiosity and religious consciousness. What does the consumption of religious articles signify, what function does it serve and what are its consequences? Is there a qualitative, substantive difference between consumption of material objects as ‘commodities’ and as ‘religious objects’? My data suggest that everyday consumption of religious objects is a complex phenomenon, despite the recognition of existent normative notions about the treatment of religious objects within Hinduism. To some extent the manner of approaching pictures and statues of gods and flowers in worship is also inscribed and sometimes even prescribed by custom and tradition. But one of my interests is to query precisely what happens to


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religious objects at the sites of reception and what do individuals actually do with them as they are used in the ritual domain. In particular I explore how ‘once upon a time’ commodities enter the religious domain as ritual objects (and are thus doubly consumed) and what sorts of concomitant meanings they carry along their journey. My interest in the use of objects for religious purposes is less from a ritualistic and theological perspective, but more an attempt to uncover how and if an awareness of production and distribution mechanisms and details are integral to the act of consumption. I am specifically interested to generate discussions about the kind of symbolism objects are seen to embody before use in worship, during the act itself and in particular what happens to them once they are seen to have served their purpose. My engagement with consumption of everyday objects in Hindu religiosity has highlighted two central thematics that I attend to here: first, the question of what makes objects used in Hindu worship ‘sacred’ and second, what are the prospects of disentangling the convoluted modes in which materiality, sacrality and commodity are simultaneously mixed up and implicated in a category of objects, known in the field, as ‘prayer things’? These reflections are grounded in the awareness that the consumption of ‘ritual objects’ reveals a trajectory, a life cycle, including its ‘pre-consumption’ and ‘post-consumption’ moments. Extending this research inquiry beyond the consumption of religious objects adds a novel dimension to studies of material culture; I see this as highly significant theoretically in addressing questions about the status of objects (especially their ‘sacredness’) during the cycle of usage, from beginning to end. Such ethnographic foci allow me to revisit conceptual deliberations about the life history of objects and the relationship of humans to objects at various points in the trajectory of their use. A meaningful way to analyze the process of consumption in the religious domain is to ask how human beings relate to things—as ‘commodities’ or ‘ritual objects’—and to articulate the relationship between the two. The field of material culture is embedded in a long historical anthropological tradition but one that Buchli (2002) argues has suffered from scholarly neglect in recent years. It explores human relationships to ‘things-in-use’ (Lury 1996) and how specific modes of utilising objects facilitate the creation and perpetuation of individual identities as well as social relationships. This line of thinking can be extended to the everyday consumption of religious objects, in the attempt to establish their meanings and symbolism and ask how this facilitates the enactment of worship and the actualisation of religious experiences. According to Lury, ‘The consumption that is referenced via consumer culture can, through the lens of material culture, be seen as conversion, or, more precisely, “the manner in which people convert things to ends of their own”’ (Strathern 1994: x, cited in Lury 1996: 3). In this context it is not meaningful to speak of the idea of fetish in relation to consumption of religious objects, in the same way



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that Marx talks about commodities. Yet, for religious practitioners, religious objects do encompass a sense of power and efficacy, but this is not derived from their exchange value in the marketplace, but rather from the sacrality and efficacy they are seen to embody. I have found it insightful to turn to Arjun Appadurai’s work, The Social Life of Things (1986) and the important notice therein that all objects have a life cycle, a life history and a specific ‘cultural biography’ (cited in Lury 1996: 19). Appadurai and others have noted that meanings of objects are not static but change over time, through different contexts and patterns of use. This mutability of meanings is conditioned partly by human relationships to objects which also undergo transformations in the process of being used. More recently, this thematic has received enhanced scholarly interest and has been explored further through a focus on how individuals relate to objects, particularly in the course of performing routine, mundane, everyday activities. Alan Costall and Ole Dreier’s recent edited volume, Doing Things with Things: The Design and Use of Everyday Objects (2006), Susan Pearce’s edited volume Interpreting Objects and Collections (1994) and Patricia Spyer’s Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces (1998) are good exemplars of such a trend. In the introduction to their edited volume, Costall and Dreier make a case for focussing on: . . . how things are incorporated into our activities over the course of time, and, how, in that process, they come into new relations with other things and other people, and thus take on new significance. (2006: 5) This perspective finds favour with Spyer’s collection where a call is made to place things, as fetishes or otherwise, at the centre of human, social experience. My own approach in this book lies in exploring how specific objects move in and out of the religious lives of Hindus as they are used or not, no doubt with altered meanings and connotations. I further agree with Costall and Dreier that objects should not be considered in isolation but through their incorporation, integration or participation into a set of practices. I am further persuaded that ‘situating things within practices’ (Costall & Dreier 2006: 7) is a valuable move and attempt this in subsequent chapters as I contextualise the value of a set of objects—prayer altars, fresh flowers and visual representations of Hindu divinity—in the everyday life of Hindus through detailing their actual use and consumption. Another significant recent work that extends this very useful perspective in the field of material culture is, Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (2007), a compilation edited by Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell. Here the editors propose the ‘germ of a new methodology’ i.e., ‘to think through the things’ and produce an ethnography of things, articulated thus:

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With purposeful naiveté, the aim of this method is to take ‘things’ encountered in the field as they present themselves, rather than immediately assuming that they signify, represent, or stand for something else. (2007: 2) There is a call in this position against approaching a ‘thing’ as if it could be unproblematically pre-assigned a set of meanings. Rather what it means can be arrived at only through understanding its specific use in a set of practices. I am also led by Alex Preda’s critique of sociological theory in treating things as ‘marginal, irrelevant or passive with respect to the production of social order’ (1999: 347). Above all, this project seeks to narrate the stories of a cluster of objects used by Hindus in actual fields of religious activity; such a slant rests on the premise that things are neither blank nor vacuous, but can be read and interpreted variously and indeed have tales to tell, ideas also formulated simply but elegantly by Lynn Festa in a piece entitled ‘Tales told by Things’ (2006: 111, 118): The fact that things stir to life and begin to speak during this period reminds us of the intricate, intimate connections between subjects and objects, of the world of persons and the world of things are reciprocally made. Things are no more fixed in their meanings than persons; they too have stories, and these stories are inseparably bound up with stories of people. Abstracting from Festa’s approach, and concurring with her, in this book I try to tell the stories of flowers, altars, statues and pictures of divinity by asking where these objects have come from, how they have been secured, how they are used and by whom and what happens to them thereafter. In addressing these queries which connect with the processes of production, distribution and consumption, I am guided by the recognition that these narratives about things must necessarily take into account the various social actors whose hands they pass through and ultimately come to rest in. Collectively, these theoretical problematics and ethnographic observations have provided the enthusiasm and stimulus for the ultimate rationale and form of this book. I have constructed this as a six-chapter book which is organised as follows. Chapter 1 details the methodological, ethnographic and theoretical foundations which anchor the research problematic conceptualised in this book. Chapter 2 turns to a mapping of spaces and religious objects found therein. This interest straddles specific ‘local’ spaces and ‘global’ sites and moves from ‘real’ locales to ‘virtual’ spaces. Here, I elaborate on the notion of ‘Diaspora Hinduism,’ which enables me to argue that Hindu communities in Singapore, Malaysia and Tamil



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Nadu are linked in key ways. With this contextual grounding the chapter then moves to detail the ethnography of ‘Little India’/‘Serangoon Road’ district of Singapore—an Indian ‘community space.’ Trading practices and commercial mechanisms demonstrate that it is possible to speak of processes through which a range of items are ‘marketed’ as commodities. This includes ‘God pictures,’ prayer altars, and organic substances like fresh fruits, flowers and leaves. Although ‘Serangoon Road’ is strongly associated with things Indian and Hindu, this chapter also points to spaces across the island where ‘prayer items’ can be secured by devotees. This chapter also allows me to highlight Singapore as a space where production and making of ‘puja items’ occurs, which is an important segment of the story I am relating. Chapter 3 considers how Hindus conceptualise and construct sacred space in the domestic realm. Within Hindu homes, an area is typically demarcated from secular, profane spaces as ‘sacred space’ and a place where divinity resides. Hindu gods and goddesses are ‘housed’ in Hindu homes in family shrines and prayer altars. My data detail the material conditions which enable the practice of providing homes for gods in the domestic arena. I survey the range of options that exist in the local retail market for satisfying this ritual need, including enhanced demand for custom-made prayer altars. In Chapter 4, I focus on the range of religious imagery that is important for sustaining the realm Hindu worship and ritual both in domestic and temple worship. This chapter documents the trade in a range of visual representations of Hindu divinity within the multi-facetted realm of Hinduism in Singapore, including its folk and Agamic variants. The local retail market is flooded with an astonishing array of divine visual representations, many of which continue to be secured from outside of Singapore. In a similar vein, the creative impulse in the Diaspora is demonstrable in the growth of a local, ‘Made in Singapore’ industry—which adds newer ritual products and commodities for consumption in a Hindu market. The centrality of fresh flowers in Hindu worship is explored in Chapter 5. Here, I narrate the story of flowers and their consumption in Singapore Hindu domains. Working backwards from the realm of consumption, I ask where flowers used in ritual events come from, tracking the key mechanisms and processes through which they are secured and distributed. Furthermore, I use these slices of data to reflect on the category ‘sacred’ by raising questions about the meanings of flowers in Hindu discourse. On the basis of the presented ethnography, the concluding Chapter 6 not only raises the larger theoretical questions about the complex relations between religion and the process of commodification, but also carries my formulated responses to them. I ask if the shift towards mass production of ‘puja items’ by ‘non-believers’ is an issue for Hindus who use them in rituals. How does one approach the need for material objects in religious practices and their inevitable entry as commodities into the capitalist system of social relations? This chapter attempts to resolve the problematic

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vis-a-vis the entanglements of ‘commodity’ and ‘puja items’ in order to reconceptualise what is meant by consumption itself, especially in view of the ways in which individuals relate to specific ritual objects at the level of practice.


Notes 1 Local stores report a brisk business in the sale of audio cassettes and CDs of recorded religious music in a range of Indian languages, including especially Tamil, Hindi and Sanskrit. Religious music is a crucial component of the story about the merchandising of goods associated with religion and worship and has been the focus of much scholarly work (See Manuel 1993). Unfortunately, this is not something that I can undertake here with respect to the Singapore scene. 2 Given the logic of my research inquiries, here I focus on the practice of Hinduism within the home, with the awareness that a comprehensive approach should pay equal attention to the phenomena of ‘temple Hinduism’ and ‘festival Hinduism,’ in addition to ‘domestic Hinduism.’ 3 In the field I also heard Hindi expressions like, ‘puja ka saaman’ and ‘puja saamagri’—literally ‘things required for puja.’ In the Malaysian context, the Malay expression ‘barang barang sembahayang’ found on sign boards of shops that trade in these items carries the same translation. 4 I am grateful to my research assistant, Ms Chitra d/o Pubalan for helping me with interviews with traders of ‘puja items’ in Singapore’s LI. 5 Following Parekh (1994) and others (Baumann 1995; Vertovec 2000), I assume the viability of invoking the notion of a ‘Hindu Diaspora’, while being aware of the debates and controversies entailed in extending the term ‘Diaspora’ beyond its original reference to the Jewish community (Baumann 1995; Clifford 1994; Hinnells 1997; Safran 1991). 6 The Indian community in Singapore in June 2009 is reported to be 9.2 per cent, up from 7.1 per cent in 1990 of a total resident population of 4,987,600 (Population Trends 2009, 4). The document released by the Department of Statistics does not carry data about religious affiliation of the population. For the Hindu community there are clear signs that its numbers have registered an upward move in recent years. An article in the local daily, ‘Hindu temples seeing more worshippers; Growth in numbers due to influx of India-born workers’ (The Straits Times Friday, 16 October 2009, p. A16), notes that the larger crowds of devotees at local temples both during festivals and ‘quieter months.’ The greater demand for ritual services at temples is attributed both to the increased numbers of ‘immigrant white-collar executives and short-term labourers’ in Singapore. 7 Some of these are tourists who have traveled to Singapore while others have encountered websites and placed online orders for such items as temple doors and pillars, brass lamps as gift items and statues. 8 The entrepreneurs admitted that although the business from Singaporean and Malaysian tourists was a small percentage of its total commercial volume, they nonetheless found it worthwhile to cater to this group and stocked the items that had been requested and in demand. 9 For a selection of works on religions in diasporic locations, with specific reference to Hinduism, see Coward et al. (2000), Diesel (1990, 1998), Fenton (1988), Ghasarian (1997), Gupta (2003), Jacobsen & Kumar (2004), Jayawardena (1996), Jha (1989), Kelly (1995,), Khan (1994), Kurien (1997), Rukmani (2001), Waghorne (2006) and Younger (2002).


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10 Some fields have however been scrutinised for the consumption practices embedded within, for example shopping (Chua 2003) and food (Wu & Tan 2001). 11 The following very select sample of a list generated from entering ‘puja items’ in Google search engine (accessed on 19 February 2010) is illustrative. All the websites I visited offer online facilities for making inquiries about available products, purchasing them and having them delivered to one’s doorstep. The sites carry information about the history, mythology and symbolism of spiritual accessories and are accompanied by colourful visual images. In many instances, ‘the Hindus abroad’ are targeted overtly (but not exclusively) as a potential customer base: a) http://www.garamchai.com/puja.htm—which ‘features Puja, Puja vidhi or the method of worship, Puja items, samagri, altar, rudraksha, punchang, Indian festival, slokas and related links for Indian Americans and those interested in Hindu mode of worship’ and is directed at Hindus in North America; b) http://www.godandguru.com/—which introduces itself as an ‘Online Hindu Puja Portal, We are feeling great to introduce godandguru.com as an online website which offer complete Online Puja Services and puja items including various Hindu puja rituals’; c) http://uttamhandloom.com/—‘Our company is trying to give all aspects of Hindu culture and mythology in brief, on[sic] this site, to enable Hindu worshippers, particularly those staying abroad, to fulfil their cultural and mythological desires and dreams. Our catalogue[sic] is perhaps one of the most comprehensive spiritual catalogue on the internet, fulfilling the needs of customers across the globe with over 500 products. We have full range of religious, Hinduism[sic] books, idols of Indian gods, torans, puja items, etc. we are constantly increasing our products range. This website has been amply enriched with informative articles about Indian religions and culture. Our items are appreciated in the countries like USA, Canada, Mauritius, South Africa and other places. Our quality always stands exclusive at most reasonable price. If you[sic] are a wholesaler, retailer or home-based small entrepreneur, uttamhandloom.com is the right place where u can find a complete range of puja[sic] and wedding items.’ d) http://handicraft.indiamart.com/products/religiousproducts/-devotes considerable space to a comprehensive section on ‘religious products,’ including ‘holy powders and pastes, religious idols, incense sticks, rosary beads, rudraksha, religious threads, yantras, cow dung, Ganga water, etc.,’

2

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects


‘Diaspora Hinduism’ and ‘Puja Items’

Preamble Attempts to situate ‘puja items’ in spaces where they are marketed alerts us to a variety of active sites, framed by dualisms of ‘local’/‘global’ and ‘real’/’virtual.’ Regardless of their actual physical location, devotees as customers are not restricted in terms of the access they enjoy to marketplaces where a range of ‘spiritual merchandise’ is traded. With due acknowledgment of the emerging role of Internet sites which advertise, publicise and sell puja accessories, retail stores in real bazaars do offer a directness and immediacy to consumers that reaffirms their value and function even in this age of cyber-everything. Nonetheless, these two trading domains are not isolated and separate but interact in interesting ways. With this grounding this chapter details the ethnography of Singapore’s LI in Serangoon Road, which is associated historically with all things Indian. Given the research focus here, I map the formally organised world of retail and wholesale businesses that deal with ‘puja items’ and which are located in the region. I detail the inventory of goods in the market that are associated with Hindu ritual domains and specify the routes through which how they arrive here. However, it is important to reiterate that the Hindu community in Singapore is a subset of a bigger global Hindu Diaspora (in India and beyond) and interacts with this broader population in a number of different contexts. I offer some brief remarks about the wider Hindu diasporic community by way of offering context for the specific discussion at hand.

‘Diaspora Hinduism’ Unquestioning invocations of the terms ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hindu’ as selfevident and convenient descriptions of complex ‘religious’ scenarios in practice are no longer possible in scholarly discourses. The intellectual critique that the designation of a religious identity in the label ‘Hindu’ and the use of ‘Hinduism’ to denote a single, unified, coherent religious tradition are alien impositions and distort forms of religiosity practised


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 25 in the Indian subcontinent, constitutes the starting point for students of Hinduism today. However, the latter also have to contend with the easy adoption and acceptance of these terms by practitioners themselves who have legitimised and normalised them as valid and meaningful categories. On the basis of such self-identification, individuals mark their religious identity as ‘Hindu.’ This applies to Hindus in India as much as those who live beyond Indian territories, both those whose ancestors left India several generations ago as well as more recent departures. It is striking that the latter continue to engage in forms of Hindu religiosity in new locations, and in so doing reveal an attachment to ‘tradition’ while at the same time, display an openness to introducing changes in order to function meaningfully in new socio-political and religious terrains. The allusion to the idea of ‘Diaspora Hinduism’ is a problematic one for a variety of reasons but has nonetheless been used to register the location of Hindu communities, both new and old, outside of the territorial boundaries of the nation-state of India. Invoking the concept of ‘diaspora’ to reference Hinduism outside Indian territories is open to contestations through queries about its appropriateness for theorizing expressions of religiosity amongst overseas Hindu communities (Cohen 1997; Hinnells 1997). While being aware of the debates and controversies entailed in extending the term ‘diaspora’ beyond its original reference not only to the Jewish community but also largely to dispersed ethnic groups (Baumann 1995; Clifford 1994; Hinnells 1997; Safran 1991), I nonetheless assume the viability of invoking the notion of a ‘Hindu Diaspora’ (Baumann 1995, 1998, 2001; Rukmani 2001; Vertovec 2000).1 Grounding ‘Hinduism’ in India’s mythological, cultural and physical landscape means that India as the ‘home of Hinduism,’ has a looming presence in Hindu diasporic consciousness, even if the ‘myth of eventual return’ is absent. Efforts to reproduce elements of Hinduism outside India reveal a continuous orientation to India, which is approached as an authentic, legitimate religious-cultural reservoir for nourishing the religion beyond Indian shores. The idea of ‘coming home’ to India for everything to do with Hinduism no doubt carries a symbolic dimension; yet part of the effort in this book is to articulate precisely how the idea of India is activated to sustain diasporic Hindu religiosity at an everyday life level. Numerous social science and historical accounts of Hinduism in diaspora spaces remind us of this ‘Indian connection,’ a historical link that does need to be theorised. But a different point merits attention. The continued reference to India certainly does not mean that diasporic Hindu communities are nostalgic about or ultimately desire to ‘return home.’ Ethnographic data allow us to cite a number of instances of indigenous innovation within the realm of ‘diaspora Hinduism’; in these instances an inherited, imported religious tradition is utilized as the base, but reconstructed with an awareness of local conditions, highlighting select features of Hinduism. In this I make a case for approaching diasporic spaces


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as the site for innovation, creativity and invention. For Singapore we see at work the inevitable role of elements of an inherited religious tradition, but with local creating and producing something quite novel, unique and distinct, certainly as a result of encounters with non-Indian and non-Hindu cultural and religious traditions. The description ‘Hindu Diaspora’ alludes to the presence of individuals and communities (originating from ‘India’), performing rituals and festivals that can be encapsulated within the fold of the label ‘Hinduism,’ now located outside ‘India,’ some for 6 to 7 generations. Depending on the historical moment in question, the reference to ‘India’ could refer either to old ‘British India’—a socio-political category created by British colonialism (encompassing what would later become separate, independent nation-states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka)—or to a post1947 India, the rather more restrictive territorial space of the independent Indian nation-state. One problem with the term ‘Hindu Diaspora’ must centre on the question what constitutes the ‘homeland’ in this case. ‘Hinduism’ is tied to, and historically, embedded in the geographical and socio-cultural space known as ‘India.’ It is striking that Hindus who have left India continue their orientation to India as the birthplace of Hinduism and consider this to be crucial in all matters pertaining to this religious tradition. It is as important to identify distinctions between what we might usefully call ‘older’ and ‘newer’ diasporic Hindu communities placed along a continuum. Although, admittedly, this scheme is not problem-free but nonetheless useful as a heuristic device. For example, Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka who think of themselves as part of the ‘original’ Hindu Diaspora, might be placed at one end of the scale while the recent Hindu migrants to Sweden might be located at the other, with Hindu groups in Malaysia, South Africa and the Caribbean somewhere in the middle. Then there is the critical recognition between permanent and settled communities versus transient migrants. Which group is or should be included in the expression ‘Hindu Diaspora’? These observations serve to highlight the complex historical conditions which have led to the presence of these ‘Hindu’ clusters beyond Indian territories. Large-scale movement of Hindus as indentured labour to colonial sugar plantations started with the first batch of Indians arriving in 1834 to Mauritius, followed by British Guyana in 1838, Trinidad in 1845 and Dutch Guyana (Surinam) in 1873 (van der Veer & Vertovec 1991). Similar groups were taken to the Fiji islands between 1879 and 1916, East Africa and the French island of La Reunion. The system of migration theoretically allowed for the possibility of return to India after a period of service, but in reality many in fact stayed on with few returnees. It is estimated that between 1830 and 1917, 2.5 million Indians were placed around the world as indentured labour of which possibly only a quarter returned to India (ibid. 150). Along broad religious lines, about 84 per cent of the Indian labour to the Caribbean was ‘Hindu’, amongst whom members of the


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 27 Brahmin caste were present in smaller numbers (11–15 per cent), and the peasants and lower caste communities constituted the bulk of the community. In the Caribbean, the Brahmin migrants became essential to sustaining and directing the religious life of the community. This was markedly different from the Malayan situation where no Brahmins worked on the plantations. It was the non-Brahmin caste groupings and Adi-Dravida (Untouchable) groups from Tamil Nadu who made up the bulk of the Indian import. Since many of the migrants stayed on in these spaces, today thriving Hindu communities are present therein: 34 per cent in Guyana, 25 per cent in Trinidad and Surinam (ibid. 150), 11 per cent in Fiji, almost 50 per cent in Mauritius and about 4 per cent in Singapore. A second surge of Indian migrations saw a different group of Hindus moving outside, a post-colonial and post-World War II phenomenon which brought a large number of educated, professional Indians to North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, amongst whom a majority were Hindus. Over time, as the latter settled in their new locations and raised families, they also had access to different kinds of social and cultural capital in addition to being well placed financially to mobilise members of the community and form cultural and religious organisations as well as found places of worship. Starting with Indian cultural centres with a strong Hindu bent, temples societies were then formed. These culminated eventually in the building of Hindu temples, many of which were ecumenical in character in bringing together under one roof, deities and rituals from separate (and sometimes conflicting) strands of Hinduism—something that is less typical in the Indian settings, and possibly non-existent. Today, Hindu elements are firmly etched in the diasporic landscape, perhaps most conspicuous in the towering gateways and vibrant domes of Hindu temples like the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in London, the Vishnu Mandir in Toronto, the Sri Venkateswar temple in Pittsburgh, the Kasi Visvanatha Temple in Flint, Michigan and the Madurai Minakshi Temple in Houston—institutions that have achieved a prominence and efficacy not unlike their well-known Indian counterparts. These Hindu temples are more than places of worship serving also as community spaces with an expanded set of functions and exist in major urban centres in North America (Linda 2001; Waghorne 2006), the United Kingdom (Knott 1986, 1991; Vertovec 1992), Germany (Baumann 2001; Luchesi 2004; Wilke 2004), the Netherlands (van der burg 1993), Australia (Bilimoria 1997), Indonesia (Howe 2001) and Malaysia (Kent 2000, 2005; Lee 1989; Ramanathan 1999; Yeoh 2001, 2006). Additionally, worship within the home at the family altar remains the core of Hindu religiosity in the Diaspora, a trend which demonstrates well the materiality of Hindu ritual and practice. Apart from the trend toward some degree of syncretism with non-Hindu religious communities, regional and linguistic differences have often remained significant in the Diaspora as Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Uttar


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Pradeshi and Hindu-Punjabi groups mark their distinct identity while forming cultural associations and instituting places of worship along communal lines. In the 1970s, Hindus in North America and Europe were joined by their counterparts from the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania—the ‘twice migrants’ who came armed with the experience of creating a space in a foreign land for reproducing their religious and cultural traditions, having once already done it elsewhere. These communities experienced double displacement: first, the move from India to places beyond and then from the latter, moving a second time to greener pastures, escaping political persecutions, seen in the movement of Indians out of East Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Fiji, Surinam, and into USA, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands. Many of these migrant populations of midnineteenth century and post-World War II era have by now acquired citizenship of the receiving countries. In contrast, the largely male Indian labour population that was drawn to the oil-rich states and the Gulf countries since the 1970s continues to be secured on ‘contract’ terms strictly for employment and does not come with the option of permanent settlement in host countries. This also applies to the male, Indian construction workforce and the female domestic labour now present in large numbers in such places as Malaysia and Singapore. Hinduism in the Diaspora has been defined by pluralism and syncretism from the outset, evident in strong attachment to theistic and devotional Hinduism, in the worship of a range of Vaisnavite, Saivite and village deities, venerated in homes and temples, and reflected in the everyday acts and religiosity of practitioners. Foundational elements of Sanskritic and ‘nonSanskritic Hinduism’2 have not only travelled with clusters of Hindus as they have moved globally but also sustained through variety of initiatives and efforts in conditions markedly different from ‘home.’ In fact components of oral traditions and practices conspicuous at the local, regional levels, including the role of household and cult deities, have by now been institutionalized in places like Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Singapore and Malaysia, together with ‘Great tradition’ of ‘Sanskritic/Brahmanic Hinduism’ (Singer 1972), seen as an overarching ‘all-India’ phenomenon.3 Festivals from across the Agamic and folk Hindu traditions continue to be customarily celebrated in the Diaspora and require a compendium of materials, goods and services. Festivals such as Tai Pu¯cam, Deepavali, Navaratri, Krishna Jayanti, Sivaratri, Thai Ponggal, Holi, Dussehra, Durga Puja, Ram Navmi and Vinayagar Chaturthi4 persist in diaporic locations. In some places the ritual domain was directed and controlled by groups of migrating Brahmins, whereas in others, non-Brahmin ritual specialists and laypersons were in charge. A series of everyday ceremonies and seasonal festivals (associated with a number of ethno-linguistic and regional South and North Indian communities), the strong presence of a theistic and the predominance of bhakti, a devotional stance, the veneration of a range of village deities, together with an array of India-based


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 29 Hindu reform movements, from Arya Samaj to ISKCON to Sai Baba, all of which co-exist under the rubric of ‘Hinduism.’ Despite specific substantive shifts and contestations in the constitution of Hinduism in diasporic regions over time, the ritual complex surrounding the veneration of local, household and village deities, a strong feature of folk Hinduism, is one stable element that has continued and in some places even been revitalized. The village deities-gramadevata (male and female) were firmly placed and literally grounded in the religious landscape of newly adopted homelands and shrines and temples built for them. Some of the village deities (such as Mu¯nı¯svaran and Ka¯li.yamman) have grown much ‘bigger’ and moved into Agamic temples, experiencing an upward social mobility that parallels the improved status of their devotees. Vertovec (2000) has noted divergent conceptions of Hinduism in the Diaspora as well as the contestations between its ‘Official’ and ‘Popular’ versions. In addition, it is hardly surprising that in many diasporic spaces, ‘popular Hinduism’ is defined by strong religious syncretism and hybridity. This entails a free and liberal use of deities, symbols and ritual practices associated with ‘other’ religious traditions. In Singapore and Malaysia this takes the form of liaisons with a variety of religious/folk Taoism (Sinha 2008) whereas in Trinidad convergences have occurred across Shango, Spiritual Baptist and Kali Mai traditions. This attachment to a village-based Hindu tradition and the scope within it towards syncretism demonstrates both the persistence of received tradition as well as innovation amongst overseas Hindus. The popularity of devotional and theistic Hinduism, seen in the persistence of domestic worship, growth of Hindu temples and increasingly visibility of

Map 2 Singapore.


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the public performance of festivals and processions has marked the life of overseas Hindu communities—a phenomenon I capture in the expression ‘Diaspora Hinduism.’ A significant issue in discussions of ‘Diaspora Hinduism’ relates to the shape of connections and contact between overseas Hindu communities and India. The Hindu religion continues to be strongly associated with India, despite having a sufficient stronghold beyond Indian shores. Yet, Hinduism’s original association with India geographically and mythologically remains firm. Hindus in the Diaspora continue to maintain symbolic, cultural, linguistic, familial, business and spiritual contact with India. These are manifested especially in the importation of temple craftsmen, religious specialists (Brahmin priests and pan.t. a¯ram) and ritual equipment for worship that are deemed necessary for a ‘proper’ functioning of temples and thus the sustenance of ritual and ceremonial life in the Diaspora. This project demonstrates the presence of transnational links, between diaspora and homeland and ties among Hindu Diaspora communities, as seen in the need for religious objects and the established avenues for securing them. My data confirm the presence of links and interactions amongst Hindu devotees in the Malaysian Peninsula, and also linkages amongst customers and entrepreneurs in the broader Southeast Asian region. In particular, the Malaysian connection allows for the production of a specific type of Hindu ritual complex in Singapore and provides the requisite resources to reproduce the domain thus constructed. Malaysia becomes more interesting for a variety of reasons. What are now recognised as the separate political entities of Singapore and Malaysia have, of course, a long history of shared, intertwined socio-political and economic experiences, most recently through the encounter with British colonialism. While many differences can today be identified across these recently forged national borders, I propose that it is meaningful to view the Malaysian Peninsula (including the island of Singapore) as a common ethnographic space. Indeed, with respect to the practice of Hinduism, this is very much the case. These connections demonstrate the creation of ‘new’ ties as well as, possibly, the severing of old ones. We witness the forging of transnational linkages between Malaysian and Singaporean Hindu domains, and for some domains, the potential shifting of the ‘sacred’ centre from India to Malaysia, although India remains in the consciousness of Hindus overseas as the ultimate, legitimate source of all things ‘Hindu.’ This notice of transnational links is certainly seen when individuals across national and societal boundaries are placed in, and connected to specific networks. These associations are not confined to links between traders or between customers and entrepreneurs. Broadly speaking, commercial ties and kinship alliances amongst the diasporic Indian community and India are not new and travel to the homeland has long been regular and frequent for many. Today, however, scores of Singaporean Indians routinely visit Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai for business, tourism and


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 31 entertainment. Physical distance and even cost of travel may be non-issues in the present, given the ease, convenience and affordability of air travel. Changes in modes of transportation have dramatically reduced both travel time and cost, making it possible for laypersons to undertake trips and straddle distances that seemed insurmountable in the past. The ease with which Hindus in Singapore travel to parts of India is surely a factor and makes possible exposure, familiarity, access to ritual resources and knowledge about prices of goods as well as the capacity to secure religious objects personally. In the context of this research, location is clearly not a barrier in accessing goods. Direct travel, without the presence of intermediaries, to sites of production is yet another mode through which prayer items can be secured. Crucially, this serves to also dent the traditional ‘buyer-seller’ dichotomy and breaks the reliance and dependence on the seller and creates possibilities for autonomous and self-sufficient consumers.

Primary Ethnographic Site: Coming to Singapore A concentration on the idea of ‘Diaspora Hinduism’ provides an important context for this research project. Multi-religiosity is a familiar and taken-for-granted reality in Singapore. Forms and modes of religious expression continue to have a presence in Singapore despite her modern and secular outlook. Here, attachment to religion is strongly discernible, as seen in Census data over at least the last 50 years and confirmed by social science analyses of the local religious scene (Kong 2001, 2005; Tong 1992). Today, Singapore provides a full religious spectrum from very orthodox, traditional religious orientations to independent spiritual clusters and new religious movements. Signs of religiosity are visible in the public domain, from the multitude of places of worship—churches, Hindu, Taoist and Sikh temples and mosques—that dot the island, to the array of conspicuous communal festivals that punctuate the calendar year. While private religiosity is not only constitutionally guaranteed and is indeed largely unregulated, the relevant authorities are far more circumspect about collectivised expressions of religiosity in the public domain which are thus subject to a variety of regulations and constraints. Hinduism is but one religious tradition that finds adherents on the island. Merely 99,9045 strong and constituting only 4 per cent of the total population of Singapore, Hinduism is a minority religion by way of number of devotees, yet it has a conspicuous presence in the public domain. Numerous markers of Hinduism dot the Singaporean landscape and the Singaporean Hindu community is marked by internal diversity and complexity. Under the rubric of ‘Singaporean Hinduism’6 one finds the co-existence of these intersecting and interacting strands—the presence of Puranic and Agama-based Hinduism and the predominance Saiva Siddhanta precepts and bhakti (devotional) stance given in the strong


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presence of a South Indian Tamil–Hindu population. This theistic focus is manifest in the practice of Saivism, Vaisnavism and mother-goddess worship, together with the reverence of folk, village deities (both male and female) from Tamil Nadu and finally, a wide assortment of Indiabased Hindu reform movements, from Arya Samaj to Sai Baba, as well as a number of ‘home grown’/local movements.(Sinha 2008a). Expectedly, a dominant strain here is a reformist brand of Hinduism that highlights the rational, philosophical and scriptural aspects of this religious tradition, and more importantly discourages the more ritualistic, the superstitious, ‘primitive,’ highly emotional elements of the same. The strong influence of English-educated, middle class Hindus is evident in producing an officially sanctioned version of Hinduism. But constructions of ‘Official Hinduism’ and ‘Popular Hinduism’ are obviously class-related phenomena, as well as the outcome of Singapore state discourse on religion. Everyday Hindu religiosity on the island reveals varied and contrasting religious styles and is recognizable through a series of daily rituals and festivals in Hindu homes and the 24 officially registered Agamic Hindu temples, the earliest of which is dated to 1827. Hindu temples are scattered across the island, mostly built in the archetypical South Indian style with colourful, towering gopuras (gateways) and vimanas (domes) featuring figures, motifs and legends from Hindu mythology. The Southern Indian style temples are constructed and function according to the Agamas, Puranas and Tantras,7 and through the service of Brahmin priests secured from Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka. It is hardly surprising that the Singapore Agamic temples are similar in form and function to their counterparts in Tamil Nadu, given the strong links that persist between these two regions. Today, Hindu temples as places of worship and as symbolic manifestations of spirituality are firmly entrenched in the religious cityscape of Singapore and central to the everyday lives of Hindus. Temples derive their strength from donations, which may be in the form of cash contributions made at the hundial (donation-box) or fees for arccana.i on a daily basis, personal or familial sponsorships of a range of festivals as well as payments for a variety of services, including the marriage ceremony and other lifecycle rituals conducted at the temple. These contributions go a long way towards sustaining temples and reproducing the ritual complex within, and allowing these religious institutions to remain economically viable. Here, the performance of daily and calendrical rituals within temples and homes continues to see reliance upon a number of crucial ritual apparatus. As is well-known, the story of Indian migration to Malaya reveals that the caste system was not reproduced in totality in the region. While many service castes did come in large numbers, the ja¯ti(s) catering to the religious needs of the Hindu community (including the garland makers) were not represented in the original migrant group. Some ja¯ti-based skills have not been reproduced in the local Hindu diaspora, such as stone sculpting, but many others have been. Yet, over time, members of other castes (including


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 33 non-Brahmin and Adi-Dravida communities) have learnt this skill (many have learnt by observation and others are self-taught) and have established successful businesses as a result. Most ja¯ti-based skills have not been reproduced in the local Hindu Diaspora, such as stone sculpting, playing of traditional musical instruments and garland making. As is well-known, the story of Indian migration to Malaya reveals that the caste system was not reproduced in totality in the region (Mani 1977; Sandhu 1969). While many service castes did come in large numbers, the ja¯ti(s) catering to the religious needs of the Hindu community (including Brahmin priests, garland makers and temple musicians) were not represented in the original migrating groups. Yet, over time, members of other castes (including non-Brahmin and Adi-Dravida communities) have learnt and acquired a variety of skills required to sustain the Hindu domains in practice and have established successful businesses dealing with trade in religious items. Features of Hinduism that continue to persist in Singapore arrived with migrating groups of Indians (primarily from the Southern Indian states, in particular Tamil Nadu) from the turn of the nineteenth century. This large-scale and wide-spread movement of Indians was initiated through the efforts of the agents of the English East India Company, which driven by its politico-economic concerns transferred huge numbers of Indians globally to enhance its commercial agenda. Starting in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the Kangani system provided largely South Indian labour for Malaya, Burma and Ceylon (Sandhu 1969). Usha Mahajani, dates the emigration of Indian labour to Malaya to the 1830s, when Tamil and Telugu labourers from India were brought to work on the coffee and sugar plantations (Mahajani 1960: 96). The specific migrating conditions, the profile and structure of the moving populations have shaped the subsequent socio-cultural, religious and economic life of Tamil, Hindu diasporic communities. In terms of religious affiliation, the majority of the Indians who migrated to British Malaya were of a ‘Hindu’ background and formed about 80 per cent of this group, others being Sikhs, Muslims and Christians (Sandhu 1969: 161). With Hinduism in the Diaspora, a clear pattern emerges: particular structural and cultural details of Indian populations that moved (or were moved) have left an indelible mark on present manifestations of ‘Hinduism’ overseas. Significant amongst these are the regional locus of migrating groups, their size as well as the class and caste descriptors. For Malaya, much of this labour was drawn from the lowest rungs of the Indian class and caste hierarchy, that is, from the non-Brahmin and Adi-Dravida communities (Arasaratnam 1970; Mani 1977; Sandhu 1969; Siddique & Puru Shotam 1982). We learn that over one-third of the migrants to Malaya belonged to the ‘untouchable’ castes as well as to a cluster of depressed castes and agriculturalists that were ranked medium to high in the prevailing caste hierarchy. In contrast to the Caribbean, where Brahmins constituted up to 15 per cent of the indentured


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labour population, Jain (1970) notes that no Brahmins ever migrated to work in the Malayan plantations. This numerically small Hindu community in Singapore is located in a largely non-Hindu space in a highly urbanised setting. The diasporic location of this vibrant cluster necessitates the securing of religious goods and services from outside-in the main from specific places in India-which continues to be revered as the locus and source of all things relating to ‘Hinduism.’ As evidence of the reliance and dependence of the local Hindu community on outside sources the list of countries from which the ‘prayer items’ and the resources that are required to construct them is a long one— China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and India among others. It would seem that each place has something unique to offer. For example, flowers and fruits are secured predominantly from India but also from parts of Malaysia Indonesia and Thailand, while China has only recently been in the news for producing statues of Hindu gods and goddesses reflecting fine workmanship that is aesthetically appealing. The ‘Made in China’ items are mass produced and intended for consumption as aesthetic articles as well as religious objects and their presence in the Singapore market is far from unique. In the course of my fieldwork, I have found them in retail stores in Tamil Nadu, Malaysia and London and some have found their way into the homes of Hindu devotees. However, it is notable that most of my respondents purchase these as decorative items rather than as objects for/of worship.

‘Little India’: Community Space Walking through the streets of LI enclaves in Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang and Singapore, it is impossible to overlook the many differences amongst these locales as they are rendered unique due to exceptional and distinctive features. Yet, the experience of these diverse spaces is further marked by a hint of familiarity and similitude. On my fieldtrips to these cities, amongst the grid of lanes in parts of the city that are marked as ‘Indian,’ I encountered dozens of retail stores as well as road-side stalls promoting and advertising a variety of Indian wares, produce and commodities. Indeed, one is confronted by an assortment of sights, sounds and scents: the textile shops draped with saris and colourful fabrics, the waft of aromatic spices from the grocery and provision stores, the sound of Tamil and Hindi songs, not to mention rows upon rows of neatly arranged audio CDs and cassettes and DVDs of ‘Tollywood’ and ‘Bollywood’ films in ‘music stores’, the ubiquitous Banana Leaf restaurants with a sumptuous fare of spicy biryanis, vegetarian thalis and dosas, the small eateries selling Indian snacks and sweetmeats, the jewellery and cosmetic stores selling Bindis and offering henna services, the money changers, the beauty salons, the fragrant flower stalls with garlands of fresh jasmines and the fast-growing shops marketing goods (such as colourful ‘god


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 35 posters,’ brightly painted statues of gods and goddesses, joss sticks, oil, vermillion powder) used by Hindus. It is hard to miss this compendium of objects in the older parts of the city of Kuala Lumpur, specifically the areas framed by Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and Jalan Masjid India, as well as in Brickfields, which is located south of the city centre. LI in Georgetown, Penang near Lebuh Chulia reveals a similar picture as does its counterpart in Malacca, at the intersection of Jalan Bendahara and Jalan Temenggong in Bandar Hilir (albeit on a much smaller scale) where one encounters the same collection of Hindu religious paraphernalia for sale. The city-state of Singapore today features an impressive area marked off since the early 1980s as LI along its well-known, main street—Serangoon Road which is lined with businesses dealing with ‘prayer items’ or ‘puja things’ and which are nestled amongst a variety of retail outlets dealing with all manners of things ‘Indian’—from groceries to clothing to cooked food. For Singapore, in the last 180 years or so, a distinct Indian and Hindu space has emerged where it is possible to obtain almost any item required for sustaining the cultural and religious life of the community on the island. The marking of this particular site on the island as ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindu’ is by no means accidental. It reflects early patterns of settlement, determined by the larger politico-economic logic of the British colonial government. The latter’s plan to apportion parts of the island for occupation by different groups of ‘natives’ is shown in the indelible mark of emergent racial spatialization on the island. Historically, the residential and employment imperatives through which groups of Indians functioned have resulted in specific concentrations of these groups across the island.8 A prominent example is the designation of what is known today as LI9 as an Indian ‘community space’ (Siddique & Puru Shotam 1982) and which has deep-seated historical roots. In these early decades, a primary economic activity that defined the Serangoon Road area was cattle rearing and trading and attracted a good number of migrants, in search of economic opportunities. Prior to this the region was popular for agricultural activity given the presence of inland waterways like Rochor and Kallang rivers and the swampy land, both of which were conducive for farming. The decline of the cattle trade in the 1940s saw a reconfiguring of the locale as retail and commercial space; this offered different kinds of economic opportunities and saw the inflow of ‘a new wave of commercial Indian migrants’ (Yeo 1999: 62) such as goldsmiths, garland makers, grocery and textile stores all of whom catered to the everyday needs of the Indian community (Nafizath 1997). The description that now rolls so easily off the tongue of Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans alike as Singapore’s Indian area—LI, was already noted in the early 1980s by sociologists S. Siddique and N. Puru Shotam as ‘the territorial centre of Singapore’s Indian minority’ (ibid. x). This area is rightly viewed as distinctly Indian in providing access to a wide array of goods and services


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(both informally and through established institutions) that cater to the socio-cultural and religious needs of the migrant Indian community. It is further an ethnically and religiously diverse space in having a number of religious institutions (Hindu temples, mosques and churches), but it is approached as displaying a predominantly Hindu character, evidenced primarily in the numerous Hindu temples and Hindu organisations that are located in the area. The belt of Hindu temples in the area is a function of the early, selective presence of the Hindu community and specific caste groupings in the area (Siddique & Puru Shotam 1982). Siddique and Puru Shotam offer this understanding of the term ‘community space’: CMIO community space can be defined as an environ wherein one of these constituent communities provides the definitive identity. This identity arises out of that community’s actual physical domination of the territory which is a prerequisite for the development and maintenance of a particular, recognizable and unambiguous social-cultural and religious identity. (1982: ix) It is not without significance that these early trades have persisted into the contemporary period, making LI a thriving commercial space, with a range of wholesale and retail businesses—dealing in everything from groceries, spices, cooked foods, textiles, recorded music, cosmetics, jewellery to ‘prayer items.’ These spaces, marked as ‘Indian’, are fascinating for a host of complex reasons. They constitute a point of entry for this book primarily because they house dozens of retail businesses (big and small, formal and informal) that trade in goods and commodities known variously as ‘puja items,’ ‘prayer items’ and ‘religious items,’ targeted largely, but not exclusively at members of the local Hindu community. Apart from the numerous restaurants, textile stores, music and video shops that offer ‘Indian’ fare, the locale is marked by the presence of shops whose shelves are lined with ‘prayer items.’ Many of these are ‘specialist’ stores that trade primarily, if not exclusively, in the latter. Amongst these there is a mix of small and large-scale enterprises which offer a variety of commodities. The larger, more established businesses have been in the area for several decades, which co-exist with more recent initiatives founded in the last 10–15 years and finally the very new ventures that are barely a few years old.10 Many retail outlets that were household names in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Durga Store, Vasu Bangle Store and Arasu Bangle Store) which some of my respondents remember patronizing have now disappeared; the oldest existing establishment in this trade in LI is ‘Jothi Flower Shop’ dating back to 1969. But the departure of older players has not left a vacuum in the marketplace. Over the years, tremendous commercial potential is associated with the trade in ‘puja items’ and new businesses continue to appear on the scene, even if some fresh entrants vanish prematurely. Newer


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 37 players see a market for trading in this category of goods and, with good reason, as many do flourish despite stiff competition. My data reveal that trading in ‘puja items’ is perceived as a lucrative business and numerous Singaporeans (both Hindu and non-Hindu) are increasingly attracted to this business purely as commercial ventures. Both conventional ritual paraphernalia as well as more recent innovations in ‘puja items’ are available in the marketplace. There is also a demand for cheaper more affordable mass-produced goods as well as high end, customised and more expensive products. Individual traders make trips to different parts of India to personally view products and hand select specific items and vetting these for quality and appeal. It is not uncommon for retailers to accept requests for individual orders from customers with very specific requirements and to personally go to India to oversee the successful completion of the job. In the latter cases, the desire for quality and customer satisfaction mean that the cost of the product is high as well, but clearly there are customers willing to pay these high prices. It is notable that I have encountered few instances of bargaining in the trade in religious items, and rarely so, which is a curiosity that needs to be theorised within the context of capitalist market relations. In addition to shops that concentrate on ‘puja items,’ objects that are used in Hindu worship are also found in general provision and grocery

Plate 2 The frontage of a prominent shop in Penang, Malaysia, selling various items for puja.

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stores. I certainly found this to be the case in Singapore’s LI,11 Kuala Lumpur and Penang; this pattern is replicated in such sites as London’s Southall12 district, where a business like ‘Sira Cash and Carry; The Indian Food Specialists,’ a provision, sundry and grocery store offering food items, kitchen utensils and appliances and toiletries doubles up as a space for marketing commodities that carry a religious association. During my visit to the shop in May 2008, I found ‘religious goods’ placed on shelves, interspersed with everyday profane items. My field notes from this visit read thus: rows upon rows of statues of Hindu gods and goddesses, Chinese Laughing Buddha, framed coloured pictures of Guru Nanak, sculpted and painted statues of Jesus, Mary, Kali, Shirdi Sai Baba, water features and fountains bearing Hindu insignia and symbolism made in China, sitting in close proximity to stainless steel thali(s) and tumblers, placed next to shelves that carry things like shampoo, hair oil and henna. This interesting juxtaposition of objects that one might intuitively place in categories deemed to be mutually exclusive is not unique to this site, having also been reported by Starrett (1995) for Cairo, where he remarks on the ‘peculiar carelessness’ (ibid. 58) in the display of ‘religious goods.’ My own fieldwork experience confirms this same casual but respectful approach to the arrangement and exhibition of ‘puja items’ for sale within shop premises, signalling that for entrepreneurs, marking boundaries between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ objects is not a primary concern. In LI, the pattern is for specialist traders in permanent retail outlets housed in buildings to co-exist together with ‘pavement-based occupations’ and ‘five foot way tradesman’ (Siddique & Puru Shotam 1982). Historically, the ‘five foot way’ traders have been a conspicuous feature in LI, documented in the presence of paanwallahs, dudhwallas, to¯cai. and vat. a.i sellers, barbers, garland makers and fortune tellers, just to list a few of these occupations (ibid.). Commercial activity was not in the past confined to ‘proper’ shops but spilled over into corridors. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the relevant authorities made some effort to clear these walkways of the clutter and chaos and achieved some measure of success. Long-term tenants and residents of LI speak nostalgically of the passing of these passageway activities, adding that they injected colour and flavour to the area, enhancing the cultural character of the environment. However, although many of the older commercial activities have disappeared from these pathways, in recent years the space has reclaimed some of its earlier hustle and bustle. The narrow passageways are today home to numerous strikingly colourful and fragrant ‘flower shops’ that have become a trademark of LI, and conspicuously concentrated in a street associated with this trade, i.e., Buffalo Road.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 39 Apart from the larger established flower shops which have independent and permanent retail spaces in buildings and shophouses, a majority of the flower shops in LI are literally located in the passageways bordering the main shops, and operate out of very small physical spaces, sometimes no larger than the size of a table top. The proprietors rent these spaces from the main tenants who sublet their shop front for some profit. They provide ‘prayer items’ such as loose flowers (jasmine, roses, orchids), garlands, decorative items (such as door hangings), wicks for oil lamps, oil, coconuts, lime, mango, banana and margosa leaves and offer packages for ‘wedding services’ and ‘religious events.’ While the specialists deal exclusively with specific kind of ‘prayer items,’ the general stores offer a motley of ‘Indian’ items—including costume jewellery, cosmetics, cultural and decorative artefacts, stainless steel utensils, together with ‘prayer items’ which include visual representations of Hindu gods and goddesses, prayer altars and everyday items like josssticks, prayer oil, cotton wicks, camphor and oil lamps. The collection of products in the market is diverse and ranges from mass produced items (which can be rough in their finished form) to custom-made and individualised pieces marked by fine workmanship and much higher price tags. Some entrepreneurs offer customers personalised and tailor-made services and even assist in designing and conceptualising the desired product. The prototype image is then sent to select craftsmen in India, where the item is constructed. Several LI businessman noted that they only approach well-known communities of capati (Sanskri.t silpis, sculptors) for customorders, for their artistry, experience and knowledge. These entrepreneurs are careful to add value to the product by controlling quality, ensuring exclusivity and guaranteeing customer satisfaction. Some large retail outlets in Singapore have, by now, also successfully branded themselves as specialists in specific items such as home prayer altars, gold plated prayer utensils and hand-made ka¯vat. i(s) and are thus famous not just on Singapore but also amongst Malaysian Hindus. The retail market for ‘puja items’ is closely allied with the substantive features of Hinduism in Singapore. In fact the popularity of folk Hindu practices and the currency of ‘festival Hinduism’ are reflected in the kind of goods available in the marketplace. It is hardly surprising that rituals and festivals from the religious traditions of South Indian villages have become embedded in Singaporean Hindu domains and, moreover, persist, especially those which are integral to the life of its predominantly Tamil community. Today, the landscape of Hindu festivals on the island reveals the demographic profile of Indian and Hindu migration to Malaya: the scene is thoroughly mixed up with deities, rituals and festivals straddling the Agamic and folk Hindu variants which co-exist and find expression in homes and other public sites.13 More recently, I have observed greater visibility and prominence accorded to festivals organised in veneration of deities from the non-Sanskritic, folk pantheon. This has been occurring on


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an enhanced scale, and even in what are by now ‘proper’14 Hindu temples. It is notable that these festivals are initiated, and led by, lay non-Brahmin devotees and held in community halls, homes, HDB void decks, tented fields and outdoor spaces, just to mention some popular locales. Some examples include festival celebrations for Munı¯svaran, Madurai Veeran, Bhagvati Amman and Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman,15 undertaken, organised and sponsored by families and communities. Given the internal differentiation and complexity of the local Indian and Hindu community, the local festival calendar is jam-packed. Throughout the calendar year, one witnesses the observance of festivals associated with different Indian linguistic and regional groups. Elsewhere I have mapped the current field of ‘folk Hinduism’ in Singapore and Malaysia as an important component of contemporary Hindu religiosity in these regions (Sinha 2006), asking what implications are carried in this tenacious attachment to this marginalised domain. The articulated preference for ‘folk’ Hindu elements amongst clusters of Hindus in Singapore has translated in the enactment (and often revival) of a set of rituals associated with the ‘old ways’ and ‘ways of the ancestors’ but it is also here that one encounters instances of religious innovation, creativity and pushing of boundaries (Sinha 2005). A religious stance that privileges the world of spirit-mediums, trances, ritualistic healing and the performance of rituals that facilitate devotees’ ability to sense and experience divinity is furthermore a highly embodied and materialised domain, requiring defined anthology of religious equipment and

Plate 3 A view of the five-foot way along Buffalo Road in Singapore, with a flower shop in the forefront.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 41 apparatus. Thus the ritual complex that defines theistic Hinduism is reliant on a phenomenal assortment of objects for their successful and efficacious enactment, a need that the market is more than willing to fulfil. Retailers in LI confirm that over the last decade there has been manifold increase in the demand for items associated with sustaining festival Hinduism and folk Hindu religiosity. Established businesses are wellpositioned to notice fluctuations and emergent trends vis-a-vis sales, and several revealed that they have had to bolster their supplies to address recent increased demand for the requisite ritual items. With the growing popularity of kaaval deivam like Munı¯svaran. and Karuppanca.mi, local merchants report an exponential increase in demand over the last decade for materials that support their veneration. For example, participants in the folk Hindu ritual complex express the need16 for the following items: pictures and statues of Munı¯svaran. and Karuppanca.mi, deity-specific yantras, personal effects such as lockets, pendants and wallet-size laminated photos of deities, walking sticks, aru(i)va¯l., tan.t. am, kajam, nail slippers, ca¯t. t. ai (whip), suruttu, musical instruments such as urumi, udikai, me¯ .l am and recorded religious music in the form of cassette tapes and compact discs.17 A survey of the local retail market reveals that all of these items are easily available here. If they are not, they can be secured as mass-produced commodities or as custom-made articles through reliance on a network of friends and family in India (Chennai, Mahabalipuram and Kumbakonam) and Malaysia (Klang, Penang and Kuala Lumpur) or ordered through local commercial businesses that can export them. My inquiries in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Chennai confirm that businesses based in India produce and provide some of these items to cater mainly to this overseas demand. The popularity of guardian deities and folk Hindu practices have created a market and produced an industry that serves to sustain the former by continuously supplying the necessary merchandise. Some local businessmen I have met are highly critical of this current ‘fixation’ with Munı¯svaran, Madurai Veeran, Karuppanca.mi, etc. and see this devotion as misplaced and misguided. Yet, many others view this current trend positively, as a good business opportunity and one certainly not to be missed; some have even capitalised on it to create and promote newer products for the market. For instance, a couple of enterprising individuals have devised and marketed novel, more spectacular versions of ‘traditional’ symbols (such as the ‘Munı¯svaran stick’ and It. umpan Kat. t. ai) that are now greatly sought-after by devotees. Being driven by pragmatism and instrumental rationality, most entrepreneurs approach their business purely as a commercial venture and do not have anxieties about its attendant consequences of rising attachment to folk Hindu elements. According to one such businessman: It is not my job to tell them how to be properly religious. Or what a Hindu is. It is up to them. I am just a businessman. I am an artist. If people want it, I give it to them.


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Thus while practitioners of folk Hinduism are criticised from a middleclass reformist perspective, by and large local businesses do not complain about the demand for religious paraphernalia required by their style of religiosity. The market is thus flooded by retailers and business entrepreneurs (big and small, formal and informal, both on the Internet and in ‘real’ space) who are involved in the trading of individual products, commodities and objects that are utilised/consumed in Hindu ceremonial life. In addition, I have observed the ‘packaging’ of a combination of items as a ‘set’ for specific rituals, ceremonies and increasingly festivals. For example, a shop that has been established relatively recently, opposite the Perumal Temple in LI, advertises the sale of ‘Full Taippon.kal. Set,’ ‘Vinayagar Chaturthi Set’ and ‘all required items for Tai pu¯cam.’ In 2010, Jothi Flower Shop, the oldest local business, packaged and offered for sale ‘Taippon.kal Poojai Set’18 and ‘Thaipusam Poojai Items,’19 a practice that is just a few years old but seems to be popular with customers. My conversations with Hindus generated this select list of puja(s) and ceremonies that are observed in homes on auspicious occasions: ‘Ganapathy Homam,’ ‘Lakshmi Kubera Puja,’ ‘Satyanarayan Puja,’ ‘Saraswati Puja,’ ‘Annapraasan’ and ‘Grahapravesam Puja.’ Local retailers I spoke to confirmed that they had the means and

. Plate 4 A banner advertising the sale of items required for the festivals of Ponkal and Tai Pu¯cam at ‘Sri Perumal Trading’ in Singapore.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 43 capacity to supply all the materials that are required for conducting these prayers in homes or in temples. My fieldwork highlights that businesses make these items available either in a ‘pre-constituted package’ or assemble them for the customer upon request. My respondents—both devotees and retailers—observed that ‘in the past,’ typically a priest would write out the list of items needed for specific pujas, and the individual devotee would secure them either locally or sometimes from India, ‘now’ it was possible for customers to bypass religious specialists altogether and go directly to the retailers either to secure a ‘ready-made’ ritual package or to seek information about material requirements for a specific ritual. My data suggest strongly that retailers are not merely passive suppliers of objects but in fact also offer ritual counsel and guidance, a pattern that emerges repeatedly as I present various slices of ethnographic data in the following pages. The entrepreneurs note that the packaging of individual items into a ‘set’ is embedded in consultations with religious specialists or other experts in the field, by learning from customers’ requests and finally from some degree of self-awareness and self-knowledge. These observations have led me to thus ask what is in fact entailed in ‘packaging’ materials for rituals and festivals and whether this act leads invariably to shaping the substance of the ritual domain itself. For retailers, the articulated rationale for marketing packaged sets is a practical one and is envisaged as a ‘service’ to the customer. The argument is that making these sets available to customers is helpful, economical and convenient, as they save time and the hassle of having to collect all the items either from scattered shop shelves or in having to visit different shops to secure everything. Some businesses provide an additional service by delivering the set to the customer’s doorstep and report that this has been welcomed and appreciated as well. This was confirmed through my interview data as I encountered numerous devotees who had availed themselves of this facility. Certainly, the fact that retailers facilitate access to materials is appreciated by customers, many of whom note that it is ‘easy to do prayers’ in Singapore because ‘everything is available here.’ There seems to be an emerging market for such merchandise and services but it is intriguing to query if the market is driving the ritualistic domain as well by fashioning and/or augmenting a need for products and services which then come to be seen as indispensable. My sense is that the conscious putting together of ‘essential’ items for rituals impacts their observance in crucial ways. The argument I advance is that the business industry does not passively respond to the demands of the market by simply fulfilling given needs and is certainly more than a medium for providing materials needed for sustaining religious practices. It is in the nature of all successful industries to further create needs through the introduction of newer products and services, thereby ensuring their own survival. These innovated, invented and manufactured ritual items feed back into the domain of worship and thus also re-configure it, producing important shifts within.


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. Plate 5 Customers buying items at the Ponkal Festival in Little India in 2009.

Paul Younger’s book, Playing Host to Deity (2002), is devoted to a documentation of a phenomenon he calls ‘festival religion,’ a domain that in his assessment has been somewhat neglected by scholars (2002: 3). In practice this is in fact a space that has been crucial for the sustenance of devotional, theistic Hinduism. My data from Singaporean and Malaysian Hindu domains support Younger’s observations about the centrality of a festivals and rituals associated with them in the everyday life of Hindus. Neither are these recent events, having been observed in the named regions since the early decades of the nineteenth century, both in public and within homes. Festivals like Tı¯miti,20 Tai Pu¯cam and Churruck Puja have attracted both popular and scholarly attention and we have strong evidence of the incidence of other calendrical festivals as well.21 A glimpse into the impressive range of ‘things,’ services and ritual expertise that are needed to sustain festival Hinduism and determining how they are secured in diasporic locations, would be crucial for reflections on the materiality of theistic Hindu religiosity. My survey of the local retail scene confirms that the marketing of specific materials is closely linked to various festival season/s, as retailers respond to the need for these items by making them available to customers. That the market is festival-driven is evident from the seasonal inventories of goods that are stocked in stores as described by one businessman:

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 45


Recently, during the month of Ka¯rttikai, it was Aiyappan season and strings of prayer beads were very popular. Many Aiyappan devotees who are going to Sabri Malai will wear these strings of prayer beads around their necks. Like this, as the season changes, I will bring in different items to the shop. For the Taippon.kal. season, we will sell sugarcane and clay pots, for the Aiyappan season, we’ll sell prayer beads. Mr Viknesh,22 the proprietor of a prominent flower shop in LI, was amongst the numerous businessmen who reported lucrative business during the festival season, for instance the harvest festival of Taippon.kal. . He explained that he secured two varieties of sugarcane (an essential ingredient for the festival) from local suppliers who import it from Malaysia and Indonesia. He itemised the other materials required for this festival: For Pon.kal. I bring in ‘two kinds of sugarcane, a¯lan.karumpu and ‘Sini Karambu’-ginger and turmeric shoots, clay pots, mango leaves and braided coconut leaves (thoranam). We sold about 300 to 400 sticks of sugarcane this year. He explained that while his mainstay remained the sale of flowers, his business did peak during festival periods given the demand for specific materials and items. Expectedly, the flower business is also a profitable one at these times: On festival days however, we’ll place orders for more flowers because we expect business to be more brisk on those days. For example, on days like Aekadesi, Sivaratri, Taippon.kal. or Deepavali, we’ll call our suppliers and ask for more stocks on that day. In recent years, Campbell Lane in LI, itself marked as a distinct cultural and heritage district, has become the site of what has been described by its organisers as a ‘festival village’ on the occasion of Pon.kal and Deepavali, two important festivals in the Indian and Hindu calendar. Amongst numerous other activities planned in conjunction with the festivals, this initiative is defined by the construction of a temporary marketplace, which brings together the various merchants of LI for the express purpose of marketing goods specific to the two festivals. The year 1999 initiated the Deepavali-related festivities in LI, while the ‘Pon.kal Celebrations’ followed in 2001. Apart from the tented bazaar, packed with vendors trading festival-specific wares, an additional feature is the ‘lighting up’ of the streets in LI. For example, during Pon.kal, the stretch of road from Serangoon Road to Cuff Road announces the festival with lighted bulbs and strings of coconut and mango leaves, while during Deepavali, the roads between Rochor Road and Lavender Street,23


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Plate 6 The entrance to the tented area lined with stalls selling Deepavali-related items at the ‘Deepavali Festival Village’ in Singapore.

have been literally ablaze with lights. The two events have been hugely popular with members of the local Indian community as well as tourists, as both are highlighted and publicised on tourist radars as important cultural and religious events. Such endorsement has clearly paid dividends, seen in large numbers of visitors to LI, which has also been good for the merchants located therein. Mr Mah Bow Tan, the Minister for National Development, in his speech at the ‘Deepavali Light up Switch on Ceremony’ in 2007, noted: In the last few years, there has been a reported increase in pre-Deepavali business in Little India. According to the Singapore Tourism Board, last year, the Tekka area alone saw a 16% increase in visitorship during the Deepavali festive month. An estimated 1.4 million Singaporeans and tourists visited Little India during Deepavali.24 Since 1999, Singaporeans have witnessed the annual organisation of a ‘Deepavali Festival Village,’ in Campbell Lane, marked by the setting up of a marketplace, through the combined efforts of the Hindu Endowments Board (HEB), Little India Shopkeeper’s and Heritage Association (LISHA),


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 47 Central Singapore Community Development Council (CDC), together with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB). The latter offers an interesting association which has crucial implications for the ‘packaging’ of the festival for public (especially tourist) consumption. This bazaar, set up in what is perceived to be a ‘core area’ in LI, brings together its merchants who set up temporary stalls which display their wares during this festive season. One finds here a veritable explosion of goods—both secular and religious—which line the shelves of the various stalls and compete for the attention of the devotees/customers as consumers, including clothing, food, decorative household items, brassware, paintings, ornaments and jewellery, stalls offering henna hand and body art (which are extremely popular especially with local and foreign tourists). Traders noted specifically that in recent years the list of items they offer for sale has been shaped by the large numbers of expatriate Indians who are present in Singapore. An example is the conspicuous marketing of ‘Lakshmi Ganesh’ statues, something that is strongly associated with the observance of Deepavali25 as a ‘religious’ event amongst North Indian Hindu communities and business communities like the Marwaris, Gujeratis and Sindhis. The Chairman of LISHA noted the input of the expatriate Indian community in reconfiguring Deepavali within the Singapore context: Gradually now what has happened is, we’ve had a large influx of expatriates who have come into Singapore, who have changed what Deepavali is. For the North Indians if you look at it, Deepavali is very religious. For a businessman ah, it’s actually the opening up of a new book of accounts, for a family it’s a special puja for Lakshmi. It’s not a one day affair it’s almost a ten day affair. They have a special day called dhanteras. It’s actually a day where they have to buy something in gold and all that, so we have to stock all those up. We are learning okay, we are learning, and gradually the types of things we are selling . . . are those that are . . . required by the new citizens, the new residents who have come into Singapore to celebrate Deepavali. So this has actually changed the meaning of Deepavali for local Indians so you know . . . I mean a celebration sort of a function has changed into a religious event . . . of course celebrations are still there. It has become commonplace for Hindus—local and foreign—to visit this site at least once during the month-long fair, to pick up the required items or to just soak in the ambience and mood of the festival. The inventory of festival-specific goods sold here includes clay oil lamps, candles, fireworks, oil, ko¯lam . decorations, colourful, decorative lighting (battery-operated and electronic), Deepavali cards, thoranam, an array of mouth-watering Indian sweetmeats, savouries and other local/delectable delicacies as well as statutes of the Hindu deities Lakshmi, Ganesh and Kubera, offering the convenience of ‘one stop shopping.’ These


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‘temporary’ stalls are rented for the one-month period by the permanent businesses in LI as they stock up for the festive season by securing the needed items from India and Malaysia. As I discovered in my interviews, the stalls are indeed patronised by Hindus during Deepavali. My respondents noted that the trip to the bazaar has assumed something of a symbolic value and even as they complained about the crowds, the heat, the high prices and the fact that it did not really sell ‘religious goods.’ This annual festival site is constructed specifically as a space that caters to the festival needs of the Hindu community but it is also simultaneously an exhibition, a display of all things associated with the Indian and Hindu community. The itinerary of goods and services on offer is clearly targeted at a mixed clientele, including large numbers of local and foreign tourists. The fact that it is partly sponsored by STB is notable and marks it in a certain way. It is mentioned and publicised as one of three festivals26 in a brochure, ‘Your One City, Three Festivals Self-Walking Guide’ and visitors are encouraged to visit the Deepavali festival village ‘for a dose of lively bazaar spirit.’ In Singapore the celebration of Taippon.kal. 27 (which in Tamil literally means ‘boiling over’), a festival that signals the end of the harvest season28 coincides with the start of the auspicious month of Tai, the first month of the Tamil almanac. Through the organisational efforts of LISHA, the festival has now attained a visibility in the public domain and has also been inserted into Singapore’s heritage calendar for tourists. For a period of 8 days, Campbell Lane in LI29 is closed to vehicular traffic and fashioned to simulate a ‘rural’ setting, packed with stalls selling fresh turmeric, sugarcane sheaves, colourful clay pots, mango leaves just to mention some items associated with the festival. The flavour of a ‘village’ ambience complete with vegetation and cattle, is conjured up with cows and calves positioned at a ‘Heritage Corner,’ for adults and children alike to see and appreciate the animals up-close, a rarity for all in an urban setting. This festival has assumed a high profile, and has become something of a national event, seeing the presence of important statesmen and dignitaries throughout the eight-day event.30 For example, the 2009 festival celebrations saw the participation of Dr Balaji Sadasivan, the Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Ms Denise Phua, MP for Jalan Besar GRC and Mr Hri Kumar, MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC as guests of honour.31 This public marking of the festival has been enthusiastically received by Singaporean Hindus. Taippon.kal. is by no means a ‘new’ festival on the local Hindu landscape, having had a long presence on the island, observed and sustained in homes. Local Tamil Hindus I spoke to noted that in their experience and memory, the festival is important for the family and household and observed primarily in the domestic arena. They remarked that the things required for the festival, a clay pot, milk, rice and sugarcane, could be easily accessed locally. However, many in this cluster highlighted that the public celebration of the festival, and the setting up of the bazaar has been consequential

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 49 for the mode in which their families now mark the festival. For instance, Mr Mahesh, a Tamil Hindu man in his fifties noted:


Now we can get all these fresh things in Singapore—sugarcane, turmeric, banana leaves, mango leaves. Before it was not so easy to get from India and Malaysia. We can do Taippon.kal. like they do in India, like our parents and grandparents. It is like before. No excuse for not doing things properly. Cannot complain—can’t get this and that in Singapore and all that—now everything we can get. I encountered this sentiment repeatedly through fieldwork, with a strong sense that the very visibility and easy availability of these named materials in the marketplace served as an important reminder to the community about how to ‘properly’ celebrate Taippon.kal. . Some noted the pedagogical value of the organised celebrations, especially in teaching the younger generation about old practices and ultimately encouraging them to continue these; I heard some anxieties about the possible disappearance of traditional practices in an increasingly modernised society. The public registering of festivals like this, therefore, is also seen to serve a further function in keeping them alive and in the consciousness of future generations of Hindus. I approach these two events and their presence in LI as focussed sites and marketplaces that enhance the visibility of festival-specific objects, facilitate access to these and certainly enable and encourage their consumption. They have by now become more or less permanent and routinised features of LI’s religio-cultural landscape and add to its status specifically as a ‘community space,’ for local Indians. While LI enjoys this dominant position, and customers gravitate towards businesses and services housed therein, increasingly one notes the availability of these items in other retail spaces outside of LI. Although I heard repeatedly from businessmen and Hindus that ‘Serangoon Road’ is the best place for both selling and buying ‘all things Indian,’ my research points to other spaces where many ‘prayer items’ can be secured. First, I note the retail businesses that are located increasingly in the HDB estates—known locally as the ‘heartlands’—shops that sell a mixture of ‘Indian’ items-including ‘prayer items’, but also Indian groceries and spices. It is interesting that these spaces also service the nonHindu and non-Indian communities, such as the Chinese religionists and Buddhists, who also require oil, flowers (jasmines, roses, garlands, etc.) for their religious rituals and festivals. Second, are some Agamic temples (e.g. Holy Tree Balasubramaniam Temple in Yishun, Sri Ma¯riyamman Temple in South Bridge Road), which have within their premises a space marked as a commercial spot for selling ‘prayer items,’ mostly a ‘flower shop’—again carrying the same range of items required for performing pujas in homes and temples.

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Securing Ritual Objects: Formal Networks versus Couriers The diasporic location of this numerically small and vibrant community necessitates the securing of religious goods and services from the outside, in the main from specific places in India, which continues to be revered as the locus and source of all things relating to ‘Hinduism.’ As evidence of the reliance and dependence of the local Hindu community on outside sources, the list of countries from which the ‘prayer items’ are imported is a long one: China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and India. Each place has something unique to offer. For example, flowers and fruits are secured from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, while China has only recently been in the news for producing statues of Hindu gods and goddesses which have also entered the Indian market. India, expectedly, remains a centre from which various religious items and expertise continue to be brought into Singapore. An important question then arises: how are these objects secured and who brings them here? The actual practices on the ground suggest that no simplistic and quick answers exist. I was struck by the staggering variety of different routes through which these objects find their way into Singapore. Religious objects as commodities are procured and appear in the local market through both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ mechanisms. The formal processes are what the established businesses engage in—this entails having contacts with suppliers and manufacturers of relevant products and goods in other countries and using an established network of package, storage and transportation nodes which deliver goods to the doorstep of retail outlets in Singapore. These businesses have the capital and other resources to place large orders of products, to pay for container space for shipments and air flown goods and to facilitate custom clearances, etc. This also means that the expenditure of all these processes is factored into the final cost of the product by the time it appears on the shelf in the local market. Established retail businesses in LI are embedded within a network of connections with wholesalers and suppliers based in different Indian and Malaysian cities. For instance, the city of Kumbakonam is an important hub for securing statues whereas decorative items would require contacts in Madurai. It is also notable that ‘prayer items’ from India often come to Singapore via Malaysian cities like Kuala Lumpur and Johore Baharu. Malaysian suppliers, a critical link in the supply chain, visit Singaporebased retailers (sometimes on a daily basis) to secure orders and deliver goods to their door-step. Apart from Malaysian and Indian suppliers, large Singapore businesses, which are also importers, supply a range of goods to smaller local establishments. A name that surfaced regularly in this context was ‘Jothis’, which functions as an importer and sole distributor of specific items to smaller businesses which are happy to rely on the established players for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they can secure products at ‘Indian rates,’ a highly attractive option. Apart from the cost factor, this


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 51 route eliminates a great deal of administrative, bureaucratic and practical ‘work’ as well as capital investment that is entailed in importing things into Singapore. The bigger businesses, therefore, shield the small retailers from having to perform this work and this translates into lower costs and resource allocation for performing this necessary labour. In addition to these big entrepreneurs who rely on standard, formal mechanisms for trading in ‘prayer items’, are the medium and small-scale entrepreneurs, who seem to be able to secure the products they want without ever leaving the country. They work through the more informal channels, and what is important for them ‘is to plug into the right networks.’ The latter means knowing the market, being aware of the products that are in demand and knowing how to get them without having to go to India or other places (and thus cutting the cost of travel, shipping, transportation, etc). This task, I learnt is not as difficult as it might appear. As one of my respondents explained: There are these people coming from India all the time. They don’t know anything about the products. They don’t carry anything with them. Only hand phone. They come to your shop and say ‘I can get you this statue for this price. How many pieces do you want?’ They don’t carry pictures or samples or brochures or anything. They see something in the market and say ‘I can get this for you.’ You won’t believe it I place the order today with this guy and in two days the goods are delivered to my shop in Singapore. I don’t pay delivery, storage, transport nothing. All inside the cost of the product. I pay up front to the agent when I order. That’s it. No hassle, no fuss. What is being described in the aforementioned account is known locally as the ‘courier system,’ which takes many different forms in practice, has been in currency in the local market for decades and continues to thrive. Its mode of operation was explained to me thus. Suppliers and manufacturers of goods and products in India engage couriers (who may or may not actually physically carry any goods) to come to Singapore. Depending on how long they remain in Singapore, the Indian counterpart pays for accommodation, living expenses and of course the airfare. The courier need not know anything about the product he is promoting and has no real interest in expanding and maximizing profits beyond ‘covering’ the cost of his/her visit and stay, with the added benefit of coming to Singapore, doing some sightseeing and shopping. I have met individuals who have made a career out of being couriers and who have been doing this for years. Many of them cite lack of permanent jobs and occupational opportunities ‘back home’ as a motivation for this chosen career path. Some admitted the attraction of going to ‘foreign places’ as another strong impulse. The couriers are both male and female and come mainly from Tamil Nadu. This informal sphere adds to the formally organised field of importers, distributors and


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Plate 7 Itinerant vendors displaying their wares: colored threads for puja, . laminated pictures of Hindu divinity, vibhuti and kunkumam packets together with plastic bangles, costume jewellery and bindis, outside the Veerammakaliamman Temple in Singapore.

Plate 8 A close-up of the items for sale by itinerant vendors, spread out on a cloth on the floor.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 53 suppliers, and is sustained by the regular back and forth movement of individual couriers who function as suppliers in LI. They have an entrenched position and presence in local retail spaces and networks and they provoke mixed responses to the services they offer. The larger retail outlets do not rely on this mode of trading and are in fact rather critical of the couriers who they say ‘spoil the market.’ Yet, the couriers are very useful for the smaller traders who are happy to work within a very narrow profit margin, unlike the large entrepreneurs who cannot afford to do so, given their bigger capital investment. This leads to tensions between the different businesses which are often selling the same product but at widely divergent prices leading to something of a ‘price war’ in the market. Some retailers who do not find their wares of acceptable standards consider their practices to be illegitimate and hence as a rule do not encourage them. Others are more open and do consider displaying their products for sale in their shops. But this method of securing supplies is not permanent or regular but occasional and random, and by and large ‘kuruvi(s)’ are not welcomed with open arms by all the retailers in the market. Several categories of couriers can be recognised. Some enter Singapore on business visas with the express intent of establishing ties with local businesses and promoting their own commercial interests; others enter Singapore on a tourist visa and ‘carry’ goods on behalf of businessmen who sponsor their visit in return for securing orders, distributing ordered goods to shops and advertising their business in general. While some couriers come through agents in India, others are independent operators and come on their own, through the sponsorship of friends or family members. In 2007, I had occasion to interview 2 such women who were peddling their wares outside the Veerammakaliamman Temple, one of the oldest Hindu temples in Serangoon Road, located at a busy road intersection, which sees plenty of pedestrian traffic. These two women, one aged 50 and the other 60, had stationed themselves on the footpath, directly outside the temple. On the ground, they had spread a piece of cloth upon which were displayed, in no particular order or organisation-costume jewellery, black and red string, laminated pictures of Hindu deities, small and somewhat crudely configured statues with a gold and silver simulated appearance, and other items that might be used in worship. These women, I learnt in my conversations with the temple authorities, were a ‘regular feature’ outside the temple. According to one priest (who is from India and has been here for eight years), he has been seeing the same women peddling their goods since he has been in Singapore. Others had noted a different, itinerant group of women. It is striking that the peddlers outside the temple were all women—this is a phenomenon one observes in temples across the Indian landscape. I have seen similar scenes outside the Yishun ‘Holy Tree Balasubramaniam Temple’ on the occasion of Pan.kuni Uttiram and at the entrance of the ‘Tank Road Temple’ on the occasion of Ka¯rttikai Tı¯pam . celebrations. The two women told me that they had come from Thanjavur


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for two weeks, and were staying in a room (shared with several others) at the cost of S$8 per day. Their trip was sponsored by their children and they had simply brought all the items they were selling in their suitcase. They told me that they were forced to do this because of poverty—one of the women had been badly burnt and said that she was unable to get a job in India. They were willing to talk to one and all, and invested time and effort in persuading and cajoling potential customers to buy their goods. I noticed that many ‘customers’ simply handed them a couple of dollars and moved on without ‘buying’ anything. Others selected some item just to appease the women, but seemed keener to offer a ‘donation.’ There was no haggling and bargaining over prices. Some of the ‘customers’ I spoke to said that they only stopped because ‘they felt sorry for the women’ who were ‘obviously there to fill their stomach.’ The temple authorities are quite aware (as are the women) that this activity is ‘completely illegal’ and have tried to discourage the women from locating themselves outside the temple. But the priest I spoke to also said sympathetically ‘they are here because of poverty.’ As such although the women are technically outside the temple premises, they straddle the entrance to the ko¯puram . (temple tower and gateway). Apparently they had not been reported to the authorities. The women themselves seemed quite nonchalant about what they were doing, keenly posed for photographs and answered all my questions without reservations.

Innovating Religious Goods, Made in Singapore My survey of the local Hindu domains suggests that most of the items required for the perpetuation of domestic Hinduism and ‘festival Hinduism’ are obtained from outside of Singapore. Items needed for this purpose are imported from India into Singapore, something that is deemed to be both indispensable and normal, given India’s ‘natural’ and ‘logical’ association with Hinduism. The material I have thus far presented offers overwhelmingly evidence that Hindus in Singapore are reliant upon materials, goods and services from the Southeast Asian region and from India for performing everyday religious acts. This might lead to the rather unsurprising conclusion, and typically-held view, that Singapore is primarily a site for consumption of imported objects, with little evidence here of productive or manufacturing capacity. Attention to the assortment of festival-centred objects and materials comes to rest inevitably on their ‘Indian link and origins.’ However, it is also important to highlight the various ‘local’ efforts that are made to make/create the required religious apparatus. Yet, further scrutiny of the field led me to rethink this pervasive, commonsensical position. My efforts to make visible the sites of origin and production of goods and to track the circulation and distribution pathways of objects that I encountered in the marketplace also led me to view Singapore as a site which offers constituent materials for constructing ‘puja things’ and


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 55 where their component parts are made, interestingly many of them, in home-based workshops. The continued strong and dynamic presence of Hinduism on the island has meant that an industry of sorts has emerged to respond to specific ritualistic needs of the community, and in fact sustains the ritual domain by continuously supplying the needed products, services and commodities. Furthermore, I was led to identify individual Singaporeans who not only conceptualised and designed but also made and created ‘puja items.’ In this connection, I use the case ‘ka¯vat. i-making’ to demonstrate that Singapore is a site for the production and manufacture of specific goods, both through the initiative of commercial businesses as well as individual efforts. In addition to the task of ‘putting together’ and ‘readying’ products for sale in the retail market, Singapore is further striking as a locale from where fifth/sixth generation Hindus (as devotees and as entrepreneurs) conceive a range of ‘prayer items’, design and construct their parts or manufacture them in totality. These newly created commodities are marketed not just for local consumption but also for Hindu communities elsewhere. In particular, I present evidence of creativity and innovation in the making of specific ritual objects from Singapore. The elucidation of these processes requires a turn to a separate body of ethnographic data, i.e., material from local visualisations of kaaval deivam and the making of ka¯vat. i(s) as illustrative cases. Theistic Hinduism is grounded in concrete manifestations of divinity, such that both the visualisation and symbolisation of deities are essen-

Plate 9 An original painting of Munı¯svaran by a Singaporean Hindu devotee.

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tial for individual worship and devotion. No set grammar or formulaic specification exists for visual representations of folk, non-Sanskritic deities like Munı¯svaran, Periya¯cciamman and Karuppanca¯mi. The absence of homogenised, codified blueprints for their representation enables devotees to imagine their physical, material forms in unencumbered modes. I have documented, for example, how Singapore devotees of Munı¯svaran have invoked his images through their personal encounters with him in dreams, visions, sightings, meditative reflections and artistic endeavours (Sinha 2005). In so doing, devotees see themselves as ‘artists’ and their work as

Plate 10 An original painting of Munı¯svaran by a Singaporean Hindu devotee.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 57 ‘spiritual creations,’ and produce original visual representations of divinity. This notice allows me to argue for the presence of creative, imaginative energies amongst forms of Hindu consciousness in the Diaspora, concretised through material manifestations of divinity. Good illustrations include the numerous novel and original iconographies of Munı¯svaran as well as those of other folk and guardian deities produced by Singapore devotees of the deity (Sinha 2005). I have previously detailed several cases of how I encountered images of the deity, two of which I revisit here. The first is a drawing/painting of ‘Pandi Munı¯svaran’ I saw being displayed in retail stores from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Klang, Penang, Madurai and Chennai and in possession of devotees. Given my interest in locating the parties responsible for producing specific ‘prayer items,’ I was curious to identify the artist who had portrayed ‘Pandi Muni’ with a golden moustache sitting under a shower of sunflowers. My searches led me to Mr Anba, a 42-year-old third-generation Singaporean Tamil man, born into a Roman Catholic household. He claimed not to have had any prior artistic training and had produced the image in 1997, through numerous visions, ‘sightings’ and dreams of the deity. A second example comes from several dramatic portrayals of Munı¯svaran in paintings by a Mr Bala, a Tamil man in his thirties who is a taxi-driver by profession. He comes from a family background of artists and has produced several paintings, including a spectacular one of the goddess Ma¯riyamman.32 The first image of Munı¯svaran was re-produced and marketed successfully for circulation. What is striking about these personal creations is that they are the work of individual devotees, for whom their production is a highly charged spiritual event, yet they travelled as far as Penang and Chennai and were subsequently available for public consumption. These depictions are either reproduced in their original form as drawings or paintings, or transferred onto a range of objects such as t-shirts, pendants and car decals which appear in the market as commodities. The second example that is helpful for advancing the present discussion is the making of ka¯vat. i(s)33 in Singapore. The act of bearing ka¯vat. i is associated with veneration of the Hindu deity Murukan, and can be seen in Singapore on the festive occasions of Tai Pu¯cam, Pangguni Uttiram and Periya Ka¯rttikai, observed in temples dedicated to the deity. Tai Pu¯cam34 celebrations in Singapore are held annually with a 4 kilometre foot procession undertaken by ka¯vat. i-carrying devotees from the ‘Sri Sreenivasa Temple’ in Serangoon Road35 to the ‘Thandayuthabani Temple’ in Tank Road. The procession is approached as a pilgrimage, with the bearing of ka¯vat. i as a vital element. The Tamil Lexicon defines a ka¯vat. i at its simplest as ‘a decorated pole of wood with an arch over it’ (cited in Diehl 1956: 223). Basically it is a structure which devotees use to carry offerings and gifts (milk, honey, flowers, jaggery, etc.) to Murukan, either to offer thanks and gratitude for granting a wish or in fulfilment of a vow for requests made to the deity. I have observed five types of ka¯vat. i(s) in the


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Plate 11 A young girl carrying a home-made ‘pa¯lka¯vat. i’ on her shoulders at ka¯rttikai tı¯pam celebrations at the Tank Road Temple in Singapore, December 2009.

Singapore context: the most basic and popular type of ka¯vat. i is the ‘pa¯lkut. am’ which is essentially a pot of milk carried by the devotee. Two other varieties include the ‘pa¯l ka¯vat. i’ (known locally as an ‘ordinary ka¯vat. i’) which is composed of a wooden arch on a wooden base, and the entire structure decorated with peacock feathers and other ornamentation, carried on the shoulder, and the ‘spiked ka¯vat. i/alaku36 ka¯vat. i,’ an elaborate, multi-tiered structure made of a metal framework that supports a shrine carrying a statue or visual representation of a deity in whose name the ka¯vat. i is carried, with metal rods, spears and couplings with complicated decorations.37 The latter may be carried with a broad waistband to which are attached needles, rods and chains that are hooked to the participant’s chest and back. Some of the more experienced participants go without a waist belt and support the entire weight of the ka¯vat. i on rods pierced into folds of the skin on the stomach and the back.38 A small number of devotees also pull a ‘te¯ r ka¯vat. i’ which sees a devotee drawing a ter, a rath, or a te¯ r on wheels (which could weigh up to 60 kg), carrying an image of a deity, with a rope that is hooked onto the skin on the back. Finally, some devotees also carry the it. umpan kat. t. ai, a wooden pole with two baskets (with offerings of rice, milk, jaggery, etc.) hanging at each end, resembling a structure carried by a street hawker. Regardless of the form, the ka¯vat. i


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 59 itself is considered to be an offering that is personally delivered by the devotee to Murukan. Sometimes limes, oranges, coconuts and little stainless steel pots filled with milk are also hooked on to the devotees’ back, chest, thighs or legs. The piercing of certain body parts (forehead, cheeks, tongue, thighs and back) with metal hooks, rods and needles of varying sizes and spears (vel) and inserting metal rods in the tongue and cheeks39 visible in the Tai pu¯cam ritual, although it is not obligatory. Specifically, with my discussion of how ka¯vat. i(s) are accessed by Singapore Hindus, I move towards the critical notice that Singapore is not only a site of consumption but importantly a location where these are designed and manufactured. Let me begin by itemising the various routes through which Singapore devotees can secure a ka¯vat. i. As is obvious, carrying a pa¯lkut. am is a straightforward affair, requiring a simple steel pot, which devotees buy and keep for use year after year if a vow is undertaken for a set number of years. With respect to pa¯lka¯vat. i and spiked ka¯vat. i, three channels were highlighted to me: devotees can rent,40 buy or make ka¯vat. i(s). Ready-made pa¯lka¯vat. i(s), made in India, Malaysia and Singapore, are now easily available in LI’s retail stores. It is an annual practice for local businesses to import the latest designs of pa¯lka¯vat. i41 from Tamil Nadu. Typically, they are imported in separate parts and sections, which are assembled and finished here with the adding of decorations, ornamentation and embellishment. Very few local businesses are dedicated solely to ka¯vat. i(s), because trade in these items is ‘seasonal’ rather than permanent. Retailers in LI reported an increased local demand for custom-made ka¯vat. i(s) as well as paraphernalia associated with ka¯vat. icarrying. For example, some customers present their own design for a vel, ka¯vat. i, a¯n.ippa¯tam or it. umpan kat. t. ai, and request construction according to given specifications, often at fairly high costs. Local businesses report that customers pay minute attention to detail, particularly in the construction of ka¯vat. i(s) because the endeavour of bearing-ka¯vat. i is a highly spiritual and emotional one, and demands tremendous personal investment of time and resources. The spiked ka¯vat. i(s) (the largest of which could weigh upto 30–40 kg) is often multi-tiered, with the appearance of a dome or a tower, complete with elaborate and intricate decoration and ornamentation together with an image of the deity placed atop the entire frame. The more elaborate the structure, the higher the cost incurred in its construction, sometimes adding up to thousands of Singapore dollars.42 Despite the high cost, these ka¯vat. i(s) remain extremely popular with devotees. Their designs and decorations assume greater elaboration and innovation with each passing year. Spiked ka¯vat. i(s) can be purchased in their entirety from numerous retail businesses in LI. However, few of the latter have the manpower and expertise within their business to deliver the final product.43 I learnt that most retailers outsource the making of these ka¯vat. i(s) to individuals or small units in Singapore upon receiving orders from customers. My

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respondents shared that the making of these ka¯vat. i(s) in the local market was in fact ‘controlled by individuals not shops.’ Even the retailers linked up with individuals who operate as freelancers and are the ones who actually make the structures which are then marketed and offered to customers via established businesses. My search for individuals who make spiked ka¯vat. i(s) not just for selfuse but also for others in Singapore led to the realisation that several such providers exist in the market. It is not possible to map this entire latter field here. However, I describe briefly the efforts of a group of seven Tamil

Figure 2.1 A drawing of a spiked ka¯vat. i with its component parts.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 61 men who are bound by kinship ties and who work together to make spiked ka¯vat. i(s) in Singapore. They are linked through familial ties straddling two generations and are well-known locally for their expertise in constructing ka¯vat. i(s), a reputation that goes back to four generations. Collectively, they embody a wealth of experiential, inter-generational lay knowledge which continues to be relevant and is put to good use in the designing and making of ka¯vat. i(s). I had access to this network through my interviews with two individuals who are maternal cousins—Mr Jaga, a 39-year-old UPS employee, and Mr Kala, a 29-year-old Safety Manager with a marine company. They have learnt the ‘art of making’44 ka¯vat. i(s) from their fathers and uncles (who picked up these skills by observing their fathers and uncles), who are today in their sixties and seventies and are thus less active in this domain. However, they are still approached as resources, in being mobilised by members of the younger generation for their abilities and accumulated experience in this expertise. My conversations with both these individuals generated the following knowledge. This unit is composed of 7 men, each of whom has a specific role to play and specialises in performing a particular task such as cutting the base plate or sharpening the needles or drawing designs on the kavat.i. The making of a spiked ka¯vat.i involves several crucial steps—designing the entire structure, cutting the base plate into the appropriate shape, drawing designs of Hindu motifs and images of divinity on the base plate, sharpening the needles and rods and making the hooks, decorating the entire structure—all of which are done locally. All the required raw materials—aluminium strips, sheets and plates, brass sheets, stainless steel rods, needles and hooks—are secured locally, from metal and hardware businesses and factories located in the island’s numerous industrial estates. A spiked ka¯vat. i is a structure that is composed of different parts that are assembled and fitted together: ucci ka¯vat. i: (topmost), semi-circular structure known as the ‘pumpkin,’ base plates or star plates, small decorative side ka¯vat. i(s), four vertical rods that stabilise the whole structure and needles and rods that are inserted into the body (Fig. 2.1). The different components are not made by one individual. Instead there is a clear division of labour in the group. The members work with very rudimentary tools (such as a dot punch, fret saw, chisel, grinding machine, tap die machine, etc.) and little or no physical protection in domestic spaces (like kitchens, service balconies and puja rooms of HDB apartments) that are converted temporarily into workspaces. It is further notable that these different tasks are accomplished in the ‘spare’ time, leisure time and ‘time off’ from full-time employment the men are otherwise engaged in. The individuals I interviewed say that they do not have any training in engineering or mechanical skills, but have instead picked up the various required skills by watching their fathers, uncles and grandfathers and also through trial and error in the process of self-experimentation. The only input from Indian expertise comes in the form of etching/chiselling/carving of designs (that have been imagined and drawn by members of


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the Singapore team) on the base plates (Fig. 2.2) and aluminium strips for the ‘pumpkin’ by Kumbakonam-based craftsmen associated with ‘templework.’ The base plates and aluminium strips (in bulk) are hand-carried to India for more ornate carving-work and transported back the same way by couriers and sometimes by one of the members in the cluster. I learnt that the seven-man unit had the capacity to produce the entire spiked ka¯vat. i from scratch given the expertise and know-how within the group. Typically, members prefer not to undertake decoration and ornamentation work of the ka¯vat. i, which they approach as a personal and creative endeavour and which they argue should be undertaken by the participant himself. The data I present in this book confirm that materials required for everyday Hindu religiosity are indeed obtained primarily from outside of Singapore. Yet, further scrutiny has revealed that Singapore is indeed a site

Figure 2.2 A close-up of the intricate carvings and etchings on the base plates of a ka¯vat. i.


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 63 where a number of other religious objects, as products and commodities, are ‘assembled’, ‘finished’ and even manufactured. Some examples include the framing of pictures of Hindu deities, gold-plating of brass objects used in prayer items, varnishing and fine carving and sculpting of home prayer altars, making of ka¯vat. i(s), decorative brass carvings for ka¯vat. i(s), producing car and motorbike decals and stickers, printing of pictures of gods and goddesses, dyeing in turmeric of sari(s), ve¯t. t. i(s), t-shirts, kurta(s) and shorts for Tai pu¯cam45 and Tı¯miti.46 With this contextual grounding, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 present data about the various channels and strategies through which ‘puja items’ are secured and also detail their patterns of consumption by Hindus in Singapore. From the vast assortment of items available in the market, I have chosen to focus on a select list i.e., visual representations of divinity (statues, photographs and paintings), structures which house them (such as prayer altars) and fresh flowers. This selection allows me to address the interface between spirituality, commerce and consumption in the performance of individual devotion within the home.

Notes 1 The term has also been extended to refer to South Asian diasporas (Jacobsen 2008; Jacobsen & Kumar 2004). More recent debates in the field have proposed the alternative descriptor, ‘neo-diaspora’ to speak of the formation of a complex South Asian transnational presence globally (Koshy & Radhakrishnan 2008). 2 This is also characterized as ‘folk’ and ‘popular’ forms of Hindu religiosity and associated with rural-based lower caste groups and communities in the Indian context. 3 The idea that it is possible to work with an ‘all India’ universalistic framework that applies to the diverse and complex manifestations of Hinduism from Kanyakumari to Kashmir has been subjected to critical scrutiny by scholars. 4 In addition to these festivals which occur in official Agamic temples and others which are observed within Hindu homes, others routinely take place in the numerous informal, unofficial and ‘illegal’ ‘jungle temples’ as well as community halls, open fields, HDB void decks etc. 5 Singapore Census of Population, 2000. 6 I have used the description ‘Singaporean Hinduism’ to mean the following: [it] denotes a particular configuration of substantive elements that constitute what is labelled ‘Hinduism’ amongst the migrant, Hindu community on the island nation-state of Singapore. The diversity of the local Indian, Hindu population, the principle of secular, bureaucratic governance and the multi-religiosity of social life here make it possible to speak of the making of ‘Singaporean Hinduism’ which, not surprisingly, is a process that reflects multitude positions and hence disagreements about what constitutes ‘proper’ Hinduism. (Sinha 2006) 7 The Puranas are post-Vedic texts which typically contain a complete narrative of the history of the Universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of the kings, heroes and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology and


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8 9

10 11

12

13 14 15

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‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects geography. There are 17 or 18 canonical Puranas, divided into three categories, each named after a deity: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. There are also many other works termed Purana, known as ‘Upapuranas.’ (http://www.sacredtexts.com/hin/index.htm#puranas, accessed 9 May 2010). ‘The Tantras (“looms” or “weavings”) are sectarian scriptures dealing with certain aspects of a god and rules for discipline for the worshipper. Tantras are scriptures dedicated to each of the three major theological traditions of Hindu dharma: Vaishnavism, Shavism, Shaktism (Divine Mother). Each denomination adores its god as the Ultimate Reality. Tantras are associated with “medieval India,” having been written between 500 and 1800.’ (http://www. religionfacts.com/hinduism/texts/tantras.htm, accessed 9 May 2010). I refer the reader to Sandhu (1969), and Siddique and Puru Shotam (1982) for a comprehensive historical account of Indian settlement on the island. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, Indians were not concentrated in Serangoon Road. They were located in such areas as High Street, Arab Street, Tanjong Pagar. The attraction to Serangoon Road occured after the intensity of cattle trading there. A careful historical account of the rise of businesses related to ‘prayer items’ is essentially, a comprehensive task that is not possible within the scope of the present work. For example the signboard of Om Siva Sakthi in Buffalo Road reads ‘Flowers for all occasions, prayer things and provisions.’ The well-known hypermarket, Mustafa Shopping Centre also carries religious paraphernalia for use by Muslims and Hindus together with food items, household goods, garments and textiles, electronics, furniture and books in its 15,000 sq. feet premises. Other stores in the area that carry religious items are ‘Khalsa Store,’ ‘ABC Music,’ ‘Little India’ and ‘All U Need.’ These stores are further marked by the range of multi-religious accessories they carry including, religious music and literature, visual representations of divinity like religious posters and statues. The website of the Sri Sreenivasa Perumal Temple in Singapore lists 38 Hindu festivals, many of which are observed within the temple while others are homebased (www.heb.gov.sg/hindufestivals/html, accessed 12 January 2010). A good recent example comes from the observance of the ‘Sri Munı¯svaran Pat. aiyal Festival’ at the Sri Vadapathira Kaliamman Temple in Serangoon Road. In 2009, this was a 10-day festival and lasted between 15 to 25 December. For example, the Kuul Varuppu celebrations for the deity Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman was initiated on a small scale seven years ago through the efforts of a Singaporean Hindu couple of non-Brahmin ancestry, with a middle-class background. While the list of items that is available in the market is telling, it is as crucial to register those things which are missing from the shelves. In my survey, it was quite striking that religious literature does not have a presence in the local market. I encountered only a handful of stores in LI that carry religious books for adults and children. The proprietors of these stores report limited local demand for religious books, both English and Tamil. I did find some books from the ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ Series of picture books, with a strong educational bent, targeted especially at children to introduce them to Indian folklore, mythology and religion. A selection of comic books with stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Jataka tales do line the shelves of LI stores, but retailers note that they are not hot selling items with consumers. These publishers have also ‘gone virtual’ with a strong presence on the Internet (amarchitrakatha. com) since 2008, which has created opportunities for securing their products without having a physical retail presence in any part of the world. The LI stores

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 65


17

18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27

also carry Tamil and English books on Saiva Siddhanta philosophy, Tirukural, life and writings of Thiruvalluvar and Alvar and Nayanmar saints. An ‘urmi me¯.lam group’ is a short hand description of a type of musical group where practitioners sing bhajans to the accompaniment of a range of percussion instruments. These groups, which are typically all-male, with huge participation from teenagers, have been quite prominent in Malaysian Hindu domains especially during Tai pu¯cam and temple tiruvila¯(s). In the last ten years or so, they have begun to have a presence in Singapore as well. They are marked by tremendous enthusiasm, rhythmic and pulsating musical beats and catchy songs dedicated to various deities. They are especially visible during the festivals of Tai pu¯cam and Pan.kuni Uttiram, as participants invite them to provide musical accompaniment before the start of the procession. My respondents and I counted about 20 such groups in Singapore. This was being sold at Jothis in LI for SGD 10.00. This included the following items: turmeric powder, kun.kumam, sandalwood paste, vibhuti, agarbathi, matches, flattened rice, roasted rice, pot. t. u kadalai, red sugar, diya, wicks, ghee, doopakkal, instant ca¯mpira¯n.i, camphor, panchamritham, rose water, honey, cardamom, dates, dried grapes and cashewnuts for a sum of S$16.50. Additional items that were available included lemon, banana leaf, betel leaf and areca nuts and fresh flowers. All of this equipment used in the festival (for the initial prayers in preparation for carrying the ka¯vat. i and during the procession itself) is provided by the devotees themselves, including the needles, mouth-piece and the ka¯vat. i itself. For example, according to temple records of the Sri Mariamman Temple, the first fire walking festival is recorded to have been held on its premises in 1840, the temple itself being dated to 1829. Examples include goddesses like Ma¯riyamman, Ka¯lı¯yamman and Periya¯cciamman-central in managing pragmatic issues relating to fertility, health and well being, protection from diseases and natural calamities. Male deities like Aiyyanar, Munı¯svaran, Madurai Veeran, Muniandy and Karuppanca¯mi defined as guardian deities, security guards, bodyguards and attendants to female goddesses also arrived and were literally grounded in the local religious landscape. All the names used here are pseudonyms unless explicitly stated otherwise in the text. In recent years, the street light up has extended to Race Course Road as well as some of the smaller, side roads off the main Serangoon Road. http://www.mnd.gov.sg/newsroom/Speeches/speeches_2007_M_12102007. htm (accessed 12 January 2010). The term ‘Deepavali,’ the more common description in southern parts of India or ‘Diwali,’ its northern Indian counterpart, meaning literally ‘row of lamps’ and translated as the ‘festival of lights’ are embedded in different mythological traditions. In North India, the festival is associated with the story of Rama’s triumphant return to Ayodhya after destroying Ravana, whereas in South India, the festival is marked by Krishna’s slaying of the demon Narakasura and thus the victory of good over evil. The festival is further distinguished by regional variants in Bengal, where the goddess Kali is honoured and amongst business communities such as Sindhis and Gujeratis, this is approached as an occasion to venerate Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. In this brochure LI, together with Kampong Glam and Chinatown, is listed as one of three local sites where visitors can absorb the festive spirit of the island’s rich ethnic and religious tradition. Pon.kal continues to be prominently observed in diasporic locations where members of the Tamil community have settled. This includes Mauritius,


66


(where Pon.kalis observed as a national event and declared a public holiday), the Seychelles, in parts of Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa and Fiji. 28 By tradition, Pon.kal festivities are observed over a period of four days: the first day, Bhogi Pon.kal, sees new beginnings in the discarding of old things, the second day, Surya Pon.kal, is when fresh milk and rice are cooked in clay pots and allowed to ‘boil over,’ the third day, Mattu Pon.kal, is an occasion for honouring cattle (cows and buffaloes) and the final day, Kaanum Pon.kal, is dedicated to Surya, the sun god, and a day for visiting family and paying homage to elders. While each family cooks the pon.kal individually, there is also an emphasis on sharing of pon.kal with a wider circle of friends and extended family members. 29 The enhanced visibility of the festival is evident in the fact that Pon.kal is also marked in other spaces across the island through the initiative of grass-roots organizations and residents’ groups in the various HDB neighbourhoods. One example comes from Tampines Central, an account of the festival is carried in an articles ‘Reaping A Delicious Harvest with the Pongal’ in its newsletter: The Tampines Central Indian Activity Executive Committee (IAEC) and residents gathered to celebrate the Pongal Harvest festival on 22 January 2006. On this day, colourful flowers, leaves and kolam adorned the stage area of Tampines Central Park while ladies of all ethnicities helped to prepare the pon.kal (made of rice, milk and red sugar) using decorated clay pots placed on bricks and charcoal. One of the highlights of the event was the placing of a garland on a cow and a calf by Mr Sin Boon Ann, Member of Parliament for Tampines GRC and Adviser to Tampines Central GROs. After Mr Sin gave away the prizes to winners of the various contests, everyone sat down to a feast of Pongal and drinks. (http://www.tampinescentral.org.sg/newsletter/pdf/TCN6.pdf, accessed 12 January 2010) 30 A range of cultural shows and events are organised in connection with the festival by various organisations such as Angle Arts, Bharathaa Arts, Manimaran Creations, PA Narpani Pearavai, Tamil Representative Council and Singai Tamil Sangam. Temples also participate by way of sponsoring distribution of pon.kal to members of the public, e.g., by Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple and Sri SivaDurga Temple, Prayers Honouring the Cattle by Viknesh Dairy Farm, ‘Mass Pongal’ by PA Narpani Pearavai & Association of Chetti Melaka Singapore, ‘50 Pongal pots cooking simultaneously,’ and colouring contest for children. 31 In 2007, the Guest of Honour, Mr Mah Bow Tan, the Minister for National Development, in his speech at the festival made the following observations: In a multi-ethnic nation like ours, it is critical that we make every effort to promote good racial relations and an understanding and appreciation of our cultural diversity. One way of doing this is to encourage participation in ethnic celebrations such as Pongal. In Singapore, Pongal has developed from a humble harvest festival into a multi-cultural community celebration. It is in this spirit of fostering cross-cultural understanding and appreciation that the Little India Shopkeepers and Heritage Association (LISHA) organized this event. I am pleased to note that several ethnic groups have been involved in the conduct of today’s event. My commendations go to LISHA for this initiative. (http://www.mnd.gov.sg/newsroom/Speeches/speeches_2007_M_ 06012007.htm, accessed 12 January 2010)


‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects 67 32 This is a painting of the eight-armed goddess Ma¯riyamman, fair-skinned and with refined features, seated atop a tiger, with a halo of flames and a fiveheaded cobra in the background. She dons a simple yellow sari, ornamented with tasteful, elegant jewellery, together with a garland of green limes around her neck. In her hands she holds weaponry and religious icons, for example, agni catti, a trident, a rosary, a sugarcane, kun.kumam, shankha, damroo, This is a striking representation and a calm rendition of the goddess. 33 Given the brief of the present project, this discussion is necessarily brief. The subject is immensely complex and deserves autonomous, fuller and comprehensive treatment, something that I intend to undertake in a separate piece. 34 The celebration of Tai pu¯cam centers on the worship of Murukan, a deity popular with the Tamil community. It is observed in the Tamil month of Tai (January-February), on the day when the Pusam (the star of nakshatra) is descendant, generally coinciding with the full moon day of the month. The mythology surrounding the bearing of a ka¯vat. i has as its central theme the submission of Murukan’s most devout bhakta, It. umpan, to the deity, on a hill in Palani in Tamil Nadu, South India. The carrying of ka¯vat. i to this hilltop in Palani is viewed to be a re-enactment of It. umpan’s primordial example (Clothey 1978: 120). 35 The participants and their supporters (friends and family) gather at the Perumal temple grounds and the adjacent Kalyana Mandapam premises, marking out a ‘private’ space using chalk, string, tape and newspapers, etc. for performing the puja before assembling their ka¯vat. i(s) and putting them on. All the equipment used in the festival is brought by the devotees themselves. This includes everything from the ka¯vat. i to the milk, fruits (apples, oranges, limes, bananas, and coconuts), flowers and garlands, joss-sticks, oil lamps, rice, banana leaf, puffed rice, milk and milk pots. 36 The Tamil word ‘alaku’ refers to long needles (Biardeau 1989: 21). 37 Madeline Biardeau lists three types of ka¯vat. i in her research on festivals dedicated to Mariyamman and Aiyanar in South India: alaku-ka¯vat.i, pa¯lka¯vat.i and ter-ka¯vat. i (1989: 21). 38 This type of ka¯vat. i is known as the ‘arikanti ka¯vat. i’ (Krishnan, 4) and was innovated in Singapore. 39 This was described to me by Singapore Hindus as a ‘mouth piece.’ 40 There is also a demand for renting ka¯vat. i(s), either from individuals (friends, colleagues or others) who are not participating in the festival that year and own their own ka¯vat. i(s) or from businesses. The rental varies from a few hundred up to a thousand Singapore dollars. A ka¯vat. i may even be rented from a participant who had used it earlier in the day and after it has been dismantled, cleaned and transported back to the starting point. This is especially the case with those who only wish to carry it for a year or two or those who cannot afford to buy or manufacture their own ka¯vat. i(s). 41 My Singapore respondents remarked that making a pa¯lka¯vat. i from scratch was a straightforward affair and many had made it for their own use or that of friends and relatives. Even those who had never made one could easily describe how they would make it, including where they could secure the needed raw materials for its construction. Indeed this is not surprising as the prototype for a pa¯lka¯vat. i already exists and the structure is a fairly simple one to construct. Creative input in the decoration and ornamentation of the basic wooden structure renders the piece distinctive or exceptional. A ready-made pa¯lka¯vat. i can cost from between S$90 to S$600. 42 I heard repeatedly of a famous ka¯vat. i carried in Singapore’s Tai Pu¯cam procession in 2009 that allegedly cost S$15,000—a figure that most of my respondents found ‘ridiculous.’ Many said that spending up to S$4–5,000 on a

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43 44 45


46

‘Mapping’ Spaces and Objects ka¯vat. i was ‘okay and reasonable,’ but anything exceeding this was ‘silly and crazy.’ ‘Kuna’s’ and ‘Shakti Sangeetha’ are two businesses that have expertise amongst their own employee pool to make these ka¯vat. i(s). Respondents use this expression to refer to the construction of ka¯vat. i(s). My spelling of Tai pu¯cam is different from Lawrence Babb’s and others who spell it as ‘Thaipusam.’ I follow the conventional Tamil spelling and pronunciation as in the works of Clothey (1978) and Diehl (1956). Interestingly, I came across the sale of a ‘1955 Pongal Greeting Card to India’ on e-bay for US $15 (http://cgi.ebay.com/SINGAPORE—1955-PONGALGREETING-CARD-to-INDIA_W, accessed 12 January 2010).

3

Homes for Gods


Prayer Altars for Family Shrines

Preamble This chapter provides ethnographic data to elucidate the processes and logic through which Hindus in Singapore mark and recognise spaces within the home as ‘sacred.’ The emphasis is on revealing how various features of the physical landscape are organised and transformed materially and symbolically in recognising this revered space. The arrangement and orchestration of objects and artefacts within this sanctified realm facilitate not only the housing of Hindu gods and goddesses in these constructed places of/for worship but also enable the enactment and performance of rituals therein. I attend to the social organisation of this site and highlight the religious ideas that shape and transform a profane landscape, endowing it eventually with sacrality. I argue that the material organisation of a prayer altar and the ritual behaviour therein serve to socially produce and reproduce the idea of the sacred. Relying on individual narratives, I try to convey a sense of how altars are made, approached and how devotees relate to these physical entities that also connote scarality. However, it is instructive to turn briefly to the manner in which Hindu sacred spaces are composed and ‘made’ in the public domain, in structures denoted as ‘temples,’ and ‘shrines’ as well as the historical emergence of bhakti and puja and their manifestation through domestic Hindu spaces and practices. These offer crucial grounding for the discussion on prayer altars in Singaporean homes that follows.

Marking ‘Sacred’ Spaces in Hinduism Students of Hinduism have provided us with archaeological, textual and ethnographic evidence about the centrality of ‘sacred space’ in the religious lives of Hindus, both historically and contemporaneously (Bhardwaj 1973; Morinis 1984). In Hinduism specific characteristics of the natural landscape are often endowed with efficacious qualities and are believed to be embodied by sacred powers. For evidence, one need look no further than the bewildering variety of rivers, hills, mountains, trees, groves,

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rocks and as well as constructed edifices that are recognised as ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ locales all over India, and, increasingly, in the Diaspora. These spaces derive their power through association with legends and mythologies involving Hindu gods and goddesses, and the complicated events and actions that characterise their lives. Visiting these holy places or coming into contact with others who have been there (or with objects and symbols from there) are acts which bestow divine blessing and grace. According to Friedland and Hecht (1998: 115): Hinduism is a particularly geographic religion, organised not only around pilgrimage to the sacred river, the Ganges, but to its four pilgrimage centres, or Dham—Badrinath, Puri, Rameshwaram and Dwarka—located in the four quadrants of modern India, as well as a multiplicity of shrines sacred to different sects and orders. In practice, one encounters a staggering variety of locales which are endowed with sacred properties and thus sites and/or objects of worship for Hindus. Some of these are ‘naturally’ sacred through a set of recognised, inherent features that render them religiously efficacious while others are sacralised, i.e., ‘made sacred’ through specific rituals. At an everyday life level, Hindus house their deities in explicitly circumscribed public and private spaces and these may be simple or ostentatious, formally or informally organised. The demarcation of ‘sacred’ space in the public sphere is reflected in the founding of ‘temples’ and ‘shrine.’ In the domestic realm, such sites are recognised in ‘family shrines’ through the establishment of a man.t.apam . or ‘altar’ which, space permitting, may be sited within a separate puja room in the home. These modes of marking sacred space have been observed both in different parts of India as well as Hindu communities that have settled outside India. The three sites1 which I have identified represent varied modes of delineating and organising sacred space within a Hindu context and correspond to Stephen Huyler’s listing of shrines in three different environments in which Hindus perform pujas—in the home, outside on the street or in conjunction with an element of nature, and within larger temple structures (2003: 547).

Gods in the Public Realm: ‘Temples’ and ‘Shrines’ In ancient Indian literature such Sanskrit words as devalaya, devayatna and devagrihya are translated as ‘house of gods’ (Monier-Williams 1976) and have been interpreted to refer to temples, which at a symbolic level connote far more, being a microcosmic mapping of the entire universe. Thus understood, the abode of gods may be literally objectified as a physical building modelled after human living spaces, particularly that of royalty (Bhattacharya 1963: 276–77). A variety of terms and descriptions in the various Indian languages are in popular use when it comes to denoting


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these places of worship. For example, the Tamil word kovil is used to imply a temple and literally translates to ‘king’s house’; In Hindi the word for temples and shrines is mandir meaning a ‘waiting place’; in Bengali the word, for temple is deula, derived from the Sanskrit devalya, but the popular denotation is mondir. Clearly, the English words ‘temple’ and ‘shrine’ do not offer accurate and meaningful translations of these indigenous terms and thus need to be conceptualised on their own terms. There has been considerable discussion in the literature on Hindu temples about their architecture, symbolism and history, as well as the regional distribution of temples in India, which has led to a classification of temples into ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ Indian styles (Fabri 1963; Fergusson 1972; Kramrisch 1950). Empirical examples reveal tremendous variety in terms of how temples are conceptualised, designed and constructed in practice, although there are clear rules and regulations that dictate the building of temples. Canons of Indian art outline elaborate procedures2 from the choice of a site to the detailed internal and external construction of a place of worship. An examination of literary records from South India and especially from Tamil Nadu reveals that the details of temple rituals were systematised in a series of texts known as the Agama(s). The latter, dated to about eighth century ad, provide instructions for the worship of Puranic and cult Hindu deities and can be divided into three categories— Saiva Agama, which acknowledge Siva as the main deity; Sakta Agama, which hold the mother goddess to be primary; and the Pancaratra Agama, which consider Visnu as the core deity. The three manuals are in agreement over the broad outlines of worship but their allegiance to different deities does lend some distinguishing features to the style and content of worshipping deities in the temple. Today, it is these texts, together with the Purana(s) and the Tantra(s) that are considered authoritative with regard to temple-building procedures as well as performance of temple rituals. According to these texts, before a deity can be installed and worshipped in an Agamic temple, a crucial kumpa¯pis.e¯kam (consecration) ceremony must be performed to invite and invoke the deity to inhabit its icon, image or just the kumpam (pot, or vessel). In fact, the image of the deity is said to derive its power through this ceremony, two necessary components of which are the pranapratishta (establishment of life breath) and the nayanunmilana (giving of eyes to the deity) ceremonies (Bhattacharya 1963: 416). The actual puja of the deities can only begin after these ceremonies and consecration of deities also necessitates the regular performance of certain rituals for them within the temple. An example is the daily rituals, or nittya pucai, prescribed in the Saiva Agama. It is significant that according to textual prescriptions Brahmin priests are obliged to perform these daily rituals entirely for the benefit of the gods and on behalf of the community they represent. The priest does not express his personal devotion during these ceremonies; instead he is performing para¯rtta pu¯cai, i.e., prayer for the sake of others


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(Diehl 1956). During these routinised daily temple rituals, especially if the deity has been ‘invited’ into the temple, texts prescribe that it has to be treated appropriately. This translates to the fact that the deity has to be ceremoniously awakened from sleep, bathed, clothed and decorated, fed, entertained, married, taken on rides and processions and put to bed at night.3 Failing this, the deity might be angered and then ‘leave the temple,’ taking away his/her divine powers as well. In addition, it is further not essential for any congregation of devotees to be present at the time of these daily temple rituals. Only the priest and his assistants are required. In fact the individuals do not gain anything by being present at the time of the rituals, except for the benefit of darsan (literally ‘catching sight’) of the deity. However, one means whereby individual devotees can approach and supplicate deities in the temple is through the ritual of arccanai, which refers to private worship arranged on request and upon payment of a fee to the temple. Even here the priest makes the offering on behalf of the worshipper to whom he returns the prasad (literally ‘leftovers of the gods’) as blessing. This is yet another example of the critical importance of a mediating priesthood in Hinduism. In comparison to the formal building of Agamic temples and the enactment of rituals in accordance with textual prescriptions, the wayside, outdoor shrines are not only not formally organised and built, but also practice a ritual complex that is not bound by/guided by any scripture or led by Brahmin religious functionaries. The polymorphic character of ‘Singaporean Hinduism’ discussed earlier finds expression in the diversity across the range of Hindu temples on the island. Singapore law requires the formal registration of places of worship before they can function legitimately in the local context. Currently, the 24 Hindu temples in Singapore are registered under the Societies Act as ‘temple societies’4and are consecrated temples many of which began their existence as small, informal shrines dedicated to deities of the folk Hindu tradition. Apart from the registered, Agamic temples on the island, the contemporary religious landscape reveals a desire for a more informal mode of organising sacred space and sustaining religious styles within. My fieldwork in Singapore suggests that the English words ‘temple’ and ‘shrine’ are in fact used by Hindus to describe the range of Hindu religious structures scattered across the island. The Tamil expression cinna ko¯vil (Tamil, literally ‘small temple’) is used to denote the ideas carried in the word ‘shrine.’ Scholars have noted that in specific regional contexts, there is also a clear conceptual distinction made between a formal temple and a wayside shrine for a deity. The relationship of these two sites is hierarchical, often signalling the superiority of the Sanskritic or the ‘Great Tradition’ in comparison to the non- Sanskritic or the ‘Little/Folk Tradition’ in Hinduism. Practitioners have very clear notions of the differences between formally constructed and consecrated temples and informal, roadside shrines. The former are viewed as ‘proper’ and legitimate temples with Brahmin priests as religious specialists, while the latter are defined by


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a contrasting style of religiosity. Shrines in Singapore are unregistered and are not captured in the official list of Hindu temples, thus remaining ‘invisible’ in more ways than one. Many of the shrines and temples I had documented in fieldwork in the late 1980s have either disappeared and merged with other temples, or shifted to new locations as a result of urban renewal programs and initiatives. This phenomenon of disappearing, moving and merging places of worship has significantly altered both the physical and religious landscape of the island, as well as styles of Hindu religiosity currently in practice (Sinha 2003). In contrast to the ‘proper’ Agamic temples, the cluster of existing Hindu shrines (something I have described in my recent work as ‘jungle temples’) operate and function according to a different body of rules. For a start, these shrines are often founded on sites which belong to others or are classified as ‘state land.’ Additionally, this domain is constituted by a high degree of religious diversity and its boundaries are porous (Sinha 2005). Representations of folk Hindu deities, Sanskritic Hindu tradition and divinity from ‘non-Hindu’5 religious traditions are present here and venerated, prominently deities of the Taoist pantheon. Interestingly, the lay, non-Brahmin ritual specialists at these temples function as experts in the veneration of non-Hindu (largely Taoist) representations as well, sometimes using Hindu religious gestures and, at others, emulating the religious styles gleaned from observations of ‘Chinese’ religious practices. In these spaces it was not uncommon to meet Chinese individuals who acted as ritual specialists, sometimes serving as assistants to the religious specialists and at other times acting as an independent spirit-medium, oracle or faith healer. It is striking that the arrangement of ‘jungle temples’ as sacred space is (both in terms of constructing the places of worship and practising a ritual complex within) not circumscribed by any textual prescriptions but is highly individualistic, thus lending tremendous diversity within. The complexities of ‘making’ places sacred both in the context of Agamic temples and ‘jungle temples’ allows useful comparisons with the organisation of sacred space within the home. Attempts to chart the sacred Hindu geography on the island must begin with the recognition of these three sites where Hindu devotionalism is manifested. This brings into focus the critical points of convergence and divergence6 amongst them. The ‘altarshrine-temple’ distinction can be placed on a spectrum/continuum and the variation therein mirror the polymorphic nature of local Hinduism, ranging from the very private domain (the home altar) to the institutional, public domain (the Agamic temple and to a lesser degree the jungle temple).

Family Shrines in Homes The notion of ‘scared space’ has been identified in Indian religion from the earliest times. If the idea of sacred space has been a constant, what has


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varied is the organisation of that sacred space. The evidence for the existence of image worship in the Indus Valley civilisation as well as amongst the indigenous peoples of the Indian subcontinent is well attested to (Higham 2004; Klostermaier 1989). However, the Vedic gods, although possessing some human attributes, were not stylised or represented anthropomorphically in imagistic or iconic forms. The theism and the anthropomorphic representations of gods and goddesses that subsequently became associated with ‘Hinduism’ have their roots outside Vedic religion. Furthermore, temple-building and image worship are not known to have been part of Vedic religion, rather the focal point of sacrifices and worship was the vedi, or the sacrificial altar, which according to Klostermaier (1989: 292): . . . for the time of the sacrifice became the place where deva and pitrs shared with humans the gifts offered for sacrifice. In addition, Vedic Indians maintained a fire at home which was ‘considered to be a divine presence’ (ibid. 292). Bhattacharya (1963: 415) is of the view that the ritual of sacrifice at the domestic fire altar was gradually replaced by the worship of images of deities in the home. These religious rituals in the domestic domain have been described in texts known as Grhya Sutras (600 bc), which are treatises that deal with rituals designed to confer blessings on the householder. However, it is notable that the rules for domestic worship have not been formalised and codified in the same way for all practitioners as the procedures for temple worship have been in the Agamas. In practice, this has allowed for a great deal of variation and diversity in styles of puja conducted before the gods at the family altar. Archaeological evidence from around the end of the Mauryan period reveals that the first surviving stone images of Indian deities appear around second century bc; these are the yaksa and yaksi, the local earth and fertility divinities.7 By the first century ad, Buddha and Boddhisattavas images as well as those of other divinities, including images of Visnu, Siva, Varaha and Devi are found. The emphasis on iconic representations of deities parallels the growing popularity of the various cults between the first and fourth centuries ad.8 However, it is mainly the Buddhist images that occupy the various schools at this time. It is only from the fifth century ad onwards that remains of “Hindu” divinities begin to be found in abundance. One suggested reason is that the earlier icons may have been modelled in wood instead of stone and metal and hence not durable. But when and why did an image become a symbolic representation of divinity, commanding respect, awe and devotion? Many scholars trace the beginnings of such an attitude to the rise of bhakti,9 or devotional stance in Indian religion. Banerjea (1956: 72) notes that the word bhakti has been mentioned in at least one of the Upanisads (as early as 500 bc), and is taken to mean:

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primarily the loving adoration of some persons by others, but secondarily the deep affectionate and mystic devotion for some personal deity who is the object of worship. The mention of bhakti in the Svetasvatara Upanisad marks the start of conceptualising god in personal terms instead of the impersonal Brahman of the earlier Upanisadic writings. Thus begins the notion of cult-deities around whom a group of bhakta(s) or devotees organised themselves. These earliest movements formed around historical figures like Vasudeva Krsna, Sivabhagvata, Sakymuni Gautama and Mahavira. Although devotional theism in Hinduism did not flourish until the fifth-sixth centuries of the Christian era, evidence suggests that the seeds of the bhakti movement pre-date the Christian era, although bhakti, as in devotion to a personal deity, is absent in the early Vedic literature. The preponderance of images, the increasing popularity of cult-deities and the rise of bhakti devotionalism in Hinduism, with a view to giving gods and goddesses more or less permanent abodes and making them accessible to the lay devotee, heralded not only a novel set of attitudes towards divinity but also new conceptions of sacred space and modes of worship. Whereas Vedic religion centred around the ritual of sacrifice or yajna, the ritual of post-Vedic religion was carried in the word puja, often translated roughly, but not satisfactorily, as ‘prayer, homage or worship.’ The earliest devotional movements began as protests against Brahmanical dominance and the caste system, highlighting instead personal devotion to a chosen deity as a route to attaining moksa. They also presented themselves as universal, in being inclusive of all, regardless of caste, gender or rank. The bhakti element further led to the de-prioritising of text-based knowledge or the need for expensive and elaborate rituals performed in temples and austere ascetic practices, over personal love and affection towards divinity. The household has increasingly assumed an important status and an additional realm where individuals express personal devotion to their ista-devata,10 the cherished, chosen, preferred, personal deity, who is sited at the family altar. Together with the favourite deity, the kula devata (Tamil, kula teyvam)—family, clan, household or lineage deity) is another primary occupant of the family shrine. Hindu families recognise a deity whose worship has been transmitted across generations and who is a patron deity, offering protection and guidance to household members. Many families also build public temples in honour of their household deity, who is at the same time firmly placed at the family shrine and given due reverence. Worship within the home is today a legitimate strand within theistic and devotional Hinduism, with the family shrine approached as the spiritual core of family life. Discussions of ‘domestic Hinduism’ have inevitably highlighted the presence of family shrines in Hindu homes11 which have been reported both in India (Hancock 1999) and amongst Hindu

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families in the Caribbean (Khan 2003: 151), in the United States (Fenton 1988; Lee-Ellen 2003: 156; Mazumdar & Mazumdar 2003), in the UK (Hall 2003: 58; Knott 1986), in Malaysia (Mearns 1995) and in Singapore (Chua 1988; Nadarajan 1990). Within Hindu households it is typical to have a designated space demarcated and set apart as ‘sacred’ from other secular, profane spaces. According to Huyler (2003: 547): The heart of every Hindu home is its shrine room: the sacred space delineated for honouring and worshipping the gods. The pujas that take place in the household shrine are the foundation of all family actions and decisions. Everything begins and ends here . . . As in a temple, the energy of the deity is invoked to enter the image. During the puja, the god or goddess is fully present, incarnate, within the home. The presence is believed to protect the family and to engender a positive future. Some typical patterns can be discerned amongst these empirical instances, but the forms family shrines assume in practice display enormous variation. As far as I have been able to establish, the norms for designing and building family shrines are not codified. Certainly no textual prescriptions appear to guide their construction in practice. They range from fairly simple, unadorned shelves, to cabinet-like altars to separate dedicated puja rooms. Typically, for the latter two, the structural form altars take within the home mimics/imitates some architectural feature or detail of the temple itself, for example, the carvings of gods and goddesses on doors, the ko¯puram, the bells on the doors, the kumbha, etc. In the words of one of my Hindu respondents, some effort must be made to ‘make the altar look like a temple—then only the gods will want to stay there.’ Some of these altars are ‘self-made’ especially when the expertise for their construction is not available or when ready-made options do not exist. In other cases, individuals have chosen to make their own altars due to their desire for creating something unique and individualised. Theoretically, there are clear notions about which specific spaces in the home are appropriate for placing divinity to avoid defilement and pollution (Mazumdar & Mazumdar 2003: 147). The designated space must be shielded from a host of profane activities that necessarily have to be performed in homes. Altars are not located near bathrooms, kitchen sinks, bedrooms, utility areas, rubbish bins or in a part of the house where human traffic is heavy (for example along corridors or in the middle of a living or dining room), but are tucked away in the corner of rooms or in neutral living spaces—such as the study or family room. However, it is important to recognise that many of these norms and given prescriptions are translated into practice with difficulty and at times are impossible. Ethnographic work in different socio-cultural contexts (Chua 1988; Mazumdar & Mazumdar 2003) reveals that a variety of adaptations,

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adjustments and compromises are often the order of the day in the face of practical constraints as given principles of ritual purity and pollution cannot always be maintained to the letter.


Prayer Altars in Singaporean Hindus Homes Accounts of Hinduism in Singapore and Malaysia have focused overwhelmingly on expressions of Hindu religiosity in the public domain. In sum, this material has documented the preponderance of temples, shrines (Mialaret 1969; Ramanathan 1995), observance of public festivals, such as Tai pu¯cam, Navaratri and Tı¯miti (Arasaratnam 1970; Puru Shotam 1977), as well as an attachment to socio-religious movements (Ampalavanar 1969; Nair 1972; Rajoo 1975) in the everyday religious lives of Hindus. This emphasis on religious institutions and public, communal rituals and festivals are, to a large extent, justified given their centrality in the religious lives of migrant Hindus in Singapore and Malaysia. Yet, by and large, these descriptions carry little information about those aspects of Hindu ceremonies and rituals that take place regularly and routinely within Hindu households. Unfortunately, ethnographic descriptions of ‘domestic worship’ for the early Hindu migrants are not available to students of Hinduism. For the 1960s, there is some mention in the literature of the home as a space where specific Hindu festivals are observed, in particular Taippon·kal (Arasaratnam 1966: 7–8; Manson 1965: 51) and the Hindu New Year (Arasaratnam 1966: 26–27). Arasaratnam offers a rare description of rituals associated with the ‘shrine room’ in a Malayan Hindu household on New Year day: On New Year day the householders get up very early in the morning and must set their eyes on auspicious objects. For this purpose, the lady of the house would have got up before the others and laid out the shrine room for worship. A lamp is lit in front of a picture of the family-deity and a religious text is kept open near it. Fruits, cucumber, flowers and a split coconut are also laid there in offering. The members of the family, as soon as they are up, without opening their eyes are led to this shrine before which they must open their eyes for the first time and worship there. (ibid. 26) Speaking of patterns of worship amongst members of the Tamil community in West Malaysia in the mid-1970s, R. Rajoo (1975: 76) confirms the significance of domestic worship thus: Worship at home is considered an important factor to all devotees of Tamil-Hindus. The vast majority may not feel important to participate in the weekly temple prayer, but prayer at home either daily or weekly

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is at least thought to be an integral part of religious life. In most homes of the Hindus of Tamil origin one often comes across lithographic representations of the Hindu scriptural deities, both at the entrance and inside homes . . . These deities are represented according to one’s family tradition as well as one’s personal choice of the deities. Lawrence Babb’s work on Hinduism in Singapore of the mid-1970s presents us with firm evidence of the centrality of the Hindu household in the ritual life of Singaporean Hindus (1976: 192–97). Babb’s account not only provides ethnographic evidence about the incidence of family shrines in Singaporean Hindu homes during this period but also reaffirms the household as an important structural unit that organises ceremonial and ritual life within the Hindu community on the island, something that has been noted in the Indian context as well as other diasporic settings. For Singapore, through the 1980s and onwards, we have marginally more data about the practice of demarcating sacred space within residential locations. Students of religious and urban life in Singapore (Chua 1988; Nadarajan 1990; Sinha 1988, 2005) have observed that Singaporean Hindus continue to operate with the idea that representations of divinity have a legitimate and indispensable space in households. For this reason, some segment of the living space in Hindu homes is set apart and designated ‘sacred.’ Expectedly, the latter is conceptualised in different modes and translated variously. In practice, one encounters a variety of structural forms that house gods and goddesses in households. Babb’s (1976: 193–94) research had noted the significance of a Hindu home in sustaining religious life of the family: As a result the home itself becomes, to an increasing degree, the only environment in which a traditional Hindu life can be maintained . . . In many homes the family shrine has become the sole remaining area which is protected from pollution in conformity with traditional rules. Babb further argued that the ‘Singapore environment has in various ways had a constraining influence on the degree to which a fully traditional ceremonial life is possible’ (ibid. 201). This argument about the restriction of ceremonial life in the public, non-Hindu, urban and modern context of Singapore has found some support amongst students of Hinduism (Chua 1988; Nadarajan 1990). I turn to my data from Singaporean Hindu homes to register strong continuities with Babb’s research about the role of prayer altars in sustaining domestic Hinduism in contemporary Singapore. Given the inescapable fact of dense, urban living in high-rise apartments on the island city-state of Singapore, how do Hindu families make space for deities and prayer altars in their homes? A good place to begin is with the question: How are the ideas and notions of a ‘prayer altar’ and


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a ‘family shrine’ actualised in concrete, material terms in Singaporean Hindu homes? Not unexpectedly, the field is defined by tremendous ethnographic diversity. This is confirmed through my visits to homes where I encountered an infinite variety of forms that a prayer altar assumes and certainly through a survey of the options that are commercially available to consumers, both in the local retail market as well as outside of Singapore. In my inquiries, I was interested specifically in the processes of conceiving, designing and manufacturing a prayer altar deemed to be suitable for a family’s religious needs. An additional accent addresses how these altars are ritually approached, ‘used’ and ‘managed’ by household members, being led by the view that even as material entities they connote multifaceted meanings and users have interactive relationships with them. I also argue that the sites represented by the prayer altars and the parameters of a puja room are conceived by individuals as functioning and dynamic spaces which are energised through the engagement, commitment and participation of users who are devotees. The focus on prayer altars and family shrines is guided by my interest in detailing expressions of devotional Hinduism at an everyday life level within the domestic realm, an area that has received far less scholarly attention in comparison to studies which focus on expressions of organised, institutionalised and formal Hindu religiosity in the public domain. I share Mazumdar and Mazumdar’s (2003: 153) observation that: . . . home shrines and home worship can be complex, detailed and multi-layered and ought to form a focus of scholarly inquiry in their own right. A related concern thus is to document the organisation of altars as revered spaces within the broader secular context of the household, through relationships that are established with an assortment of objects, materials and insignia located therein and which signify and radiate complex value and appeal. I make the further argument that this sacred space and the material objects they encircle enable the sustenance and reproduction of individual and familial devotional ritual practices12 within the home. It is relatively common for Singaporean Hindus to set aside space in the household for a prayer room or minimally a prayer altar which may be simple wooden shelf. This forms a locus for religious practice within the household (Nadarjan 1990; Sinha 1987). In many HDB apartments, the designated storage area is often used as a prayer room (Chua 1988). In other households, separate rooms are specially designed and allocated for this purpose. Practically every Hindu home I visited in the course of my research had marked some space in the household as ‘sacred.’ This was carefully demarcated in distinct ways—physically, structurally, symbolically and ritually—from areas that were meant for profane activities. It was in these sites identified as sacred that the prayer altars were located


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and which carried representations of divinity and other objects of veneration. Assembling representations of favourite deities (Hindu and nonHindu)13 and collectively placing them on a prayer altar defines a majority of Hindu households I visited. The actual physical location of the ‘prayer altar’ varied. It was either placed in a dining or living room, a study, a store room, in a recess underneath a staircase or in a separate space cordoned off as a ‘puja room.’ Some living areas are also deemed unsuitable for locating a prayer altar, for example, the bedroom of a married couple or rooms occupied by young girls who had reached puberty, given concerns about ritual pollution through the acts of sexual intercourse and menstruation. Interestingly, I did not observe the custom of locating prayer altars in a kitchen, a practice that has been observed in other locations. Part of this has to do with the fact of non-vegetarianism amongst a majority of my Singaporean Hindu respondents, even though the kitchen is considered a different kind of revered space given that the act of cooking occurs here. However, anxieties about defilement from the cooking of meat and fish items in the kitchen and the fact that used dishes are washed here renders this an inappropriate space for situating Hindu divinity, which are defined as ‘Saivam’ (vegetarian). The latter, the Sanskritic deities are approached only with milk, sweets and fruits and ‘non-vegetarian’ deities which are placed at the main altar are offered the same fare. Even in homes where ‘non-vegetarian’ deities (such as Munı¯svaran, Itumban and Muniya¯n.t.i) are present, they are not located in the kitchen. My recent research has highlighted that it is not uncommon for Singaporean Tamil Hindus to place guardian deities (kaaval deivam) in their homes, sometimes at the entrance of the home and at other times at the prayer altar itself together with Sanskritic deities. I did, however, hear some concerns from Hindus about bringing boundary deities (which are meant to be located typically on the margins of residential spaces) into the home itself for fear that this would lead to difficulties for family members. This co-location of nonSanskritic and Sanskritic deities in the same space makes it impossible to site the prayer altar in a kitchen where a non-vegetarian diet is regularly prepared. However, even in vegetarian Hindu households in Singapore, there does not seem to be a preference for housing prayer altars in cooking spaces which is an important contrast with other socio-cultural contexts where altars are placed in kitchens (Mazumdar & Mazumdar 2003: 149; Huyler 2003: 547). Expectedly, the physical structures that constitute a prayer altar vary and indeed no two altars I observed were identical, although the fact of their mass, commercial production and availability in the market does produce some degree of resemblance and similitude across the field I surveyed.14 Yet, the variability in the conceptualisation, design, ordering and organisation of prayer altars in Singaporean Hindu homes is quite marked. The altars vary not only in size, form and complexity of the structure but also in the choice of statues and pictures of deities to be placed there, as


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well as the associated complex of rituals through which the assembled symbols are ritually approached. The simplest conceptions of domestic sacred space are a handful of framed photographs of Hindu gods and goddesses hung on a wall before which devotees stand in a gesture of adoration and worship; slightly more elaborate renditions carry pictures and statues of deities, together with an oil lamp or an implement for holding lighted joss-sticks, on a wooden shelf that has been mounted on a suitable wall within the household. Other models designate a bookshelf or a multi-shelf cabinet filled a large repertoire of religious symbolism as the family shrine. I observed highly elaborate and intricate physical structures, especially designed and constructed for this purpose, holding a compendium of pictures and statues of Hindu deities and saints (and sometimes of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Buddha, Tua Peh Kong and Kuan Yin) as well as appropriate religious paraphernalia. At the other end of the spectrum I came across entire rooms within the home (other than the store room) that had been converted into a ‘puja room.’ For a majority of my respondents who live in Housing and Development Board (HDB)15 high-rise apartments, the latter was located in a ‘bomb shelter.’16 In land-starved, highly urban Singapore, space for human habitation is already scarce. As such, it is less common to encounter homes where entire rooms (that could be used as a bed room or a study) are turned over for use as a prayer room. Where this does happen, such space can obviously be spared and is further associated with socio-economic indicators as well as family size. Many young married couples devote a room in their four or five room HDB flats to a puja room, a condition that changes when the family grows, for example, and the space can no longer be allocated exclusively for the purpose of prayer. Under such circumstances, altars move into cupboards, cabinets or alcoves that are especially constructed for housing divinity. Whatever the size, complexity or design, prayer altars as distinct sanctified locales, are ubiquitous in the realm of domestic Singaporean Hinduism. In addition to figuring prominently in the sphere of private, familial religiosity, most crucially the altars and all their religious insignia and symbolism are used by Singaporean Hindus in specific ways allowing this mode of religiosity to be sustained and reproduced, a discussion I turn to in the closing section of this chapter. In addition to the sacred space within the home being a focus of private, familial religiosity, there is evidence that residential spaces in Singapore are being increasingly used to serve communal needs of Hindus as well. For example, a trend I have noted in Singapore is the founding of ‘temples’ within homes of individuals, which gradually becomes the focal point of a broader community of devotees. My fieldwork suggests that increasingly, the domestic domain has provided a suitable and much-needed substitute for the continuation of village-based Hindu religiosity, typically found in the ‘jungle temples’ scattered discreetly all over the island (Sinha 2005). Devotees have turned to private residential spaces as an alternative site for


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housing their deities. Some have moved temples into their homes while others have leased residential units specifically for this purpose. This has also interestingly led to the ‘de-domestication’ of the home in many instances. For instance, a ‘temple’ for Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman now exists in the living room of the twelfth storey apartment of the Tamil Hindu family in the western part of Singapore. In this case, a panchalogam statue of Sri Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman is enshrined in this home, after being consecrated and ritually installed there under the direction of Brahmin priests. In this case, the entire living room is devoted to housing the deity and the space is organised to resemble the inner sanctum of a Hindu temple. In another instance, the Marathadi Munı¯svaran temple that was demolished in 2004 amidst some public controversy has ‘moved’ into the HDB home of the family who founded the temple some 48 years ago. Here, statues of deities from the temple could not be moved into the home as they were demolished, but the ritual complex (trances sessions and other rituals) is now reproduced in the living room of the family’s second-storey apartment. In the second case, the home is transformed into a site for arul.va¯kku. sessions17 which are held regularly in the home. In both these instances, moving deities and a ritual complex into the home have not created too many challenges. But the involved parties are fully aware that this arrangement could lead to practical difficulties and are thus careful to ensure that the crowds visiting the home temples are not large, the noise levels are kept down so that the neighbours are not disturbed and thus complaints not registered with the relevant authorities.18 On these occasions the sacred space within the home continues to be viewed as a family shrine but at the same time transcends its circumscribed function with the communal role it serves. In these two cases the actual physical structure housing the various deities is enhanced and elaborate and typically occupies a larger space. Even as homes provide something of a refuge, this move again puts devotees on an eventual collision course with the authorities given that according to Singapore laws, it is not permissible to use residential spaces as public places of worship. This partly explains the secrecy and anxiety surrounding this domain of ‘home temples’ I encountered during fieldwork. But homes do allow some invisibility and protection from authorities, if only temporarily. Over time some of these domestic sites become focal points for the worship of folk Hindu deities such as Munı¯svaran, Karuppan ca¯mi and Madurai Veeran, and they further assume a public character as devotees flock to seek darsan of these deities. In the Singapore context, devotees also continue to approach spirit mediums during trance sessions that are regularly held within these homes for assistance with a variety of everyday, pragmatic problems. The various slices of ethnographic data I have offered reveal the realm of domestic Hinduism in Singapore to be vibrant and dynamic and the ‘prayer altar’ embedded in a sacred space in households to be the focal point for sustaining a style of theistic, devotional Hindu religiosity on a day-to-day basis. It makes sense, therefore, to

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concentrate next on the very conception, design and construction of these ‘prayer altars,’ the channels and the market where these are procured.


Customised Prayer Altars and the Market As we have seen, having gods in the home is the norm rather than the exception for Singaporean Hindus. In my current research in Singaporean Hindu domains the reconstitution of segments of residential units into sacred space is particularly striking in the trend towards larger and more elaborate prayer altars. Presently, there is certainly an active wholesale and retail market that offers to Hindus a wide assortment of ready-made prayer altar styles to choose from. As far as the Singapore retail market is concerned, names like ‘Gokulam,’ ‘Celebration of Arts,’ ‘Kuna’s,’ ‘Sakthi Sangeetha’ and ‘Jothis’ (all located in Singapore’s LI) come to mind immediately. These are indeed the names I regularly heard as I spoke to local Hindus about where prayer altars could be secured in Singapore. Although interestingly these retailers are perceived to specialise in exclusive and highend designs and thus seen to be catering largely to ‘well off’ Hindus. As I moved amongst varied networks of Hindus, including especially the more affluent sectors of the Hindu community, the list of those who patronised the big retailers grew dramatically. Many others from a middle class background did report that they found the merchandise in these shops somewhat costly. My query also generated a list of smaller local retailers who trade in ‘puja items,’ including prayer altars, but with the caveat that many of them were unable to match the range (in terms of quality, workmanship and design) offered by the ‘big players’ in the market. I visited many households in which the prayer altars had been bought from the latter but I came across as many families that had turned to the smaller local shops to pick up a mass-produced altar, or travelled to Jahore Bahru (JB) to buy one off the shelf and, in rare cases, had themselves ‘hand-carried’ an altar that had been purchased in Chennai or Madurai. Apart from ‘ready-made’ altars that are increasingly mass produced in India and stocked by retailers locally and in JB, I have observed a growing trend amongst Singaporean Hindus who favour ‘tailor-made’ altars. My data suggest that it is commonplace for Hindu families in Singapore to customise a prayer altar according to specific personal preferences and requirements (including constraints relating to space and design of living quarters and the size of the pocket) leading to the phenomenon of ‘made to order’ altars, which is by new means a recent or novel trend. I learnt in my conversations with Singaporean Hindus that, even as recently as about a decade or so ago, altars had to be custom made as they were not readily (and cheaply) available in Singapore retail stores. In fact the practice of commissioning a carpenter or building contractor to build an altar (often literally constructing it into living spaces) was then the norm, conditioned by necessity, given the lack of ready-made alternatives. These altars were


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made either out of wood or, when built into the walls, brick and cement, rendering the latter type immobile. In the course of this research I was indeed fortunate to have had an opportunity to interview Mr Gokulam, the owner and founder of the well-known shop ‘Gokulam’ in LI. His narrative was of tremendous value in trying to piece together not only the marketing of prayer altars specifically but also the more general emerging trend of trading in puja items in Singapore. Mr Gokulam, who built his primary career in an engineering firm as a technical advisor on heavy machinery and mechanical parts, was retrenched in the mid-1970s as his company closed down. He then turned his passion for teaching arts and crafts into a second career, establishing in 1991 a business venture dealing with Indian handicrafts. He further notes that he became increasingly active in the local temple scene and soon developed a talent (and reputation) for the aesthetic decorations he undertook in temple,19 skills he learnt and acquired from visiting priests and stapathis(s) (sculptors) from India. By this time he was also well-embedded in the network of contacts with sculptors, artists, priests, craftsmen and local traders in Tamil Nadu, liaisons that held him in good stead in his newly-launched career. He began modestly with just a small shop selling statues and this soon expanded to include small altars. Mr Gokulam recounts those early days thus: I thought since I had lots of knowledge in temple-building, why don’t I start building small temples in homes. In the beginning I started out with cement. Small altars in cement. There was a lot of demand for this, at that time. But then things changed. Even now, people like to buy a flat stay in it for 5 years or 10 years. Then they sell it and move go to another house. They have to break the altar. Even a Hindu buyer will not like the idea. So they have to break down. So I thought why do that/ Why not build a permanent thing? Which can be moveable? Then I started doing altars in wood. When I started in 1991, I was the only one doing this. Then everybody started doing it. Thus the idea of permanent but mobile prayer altars was born. However, my conversations with Hindus suggest that when families move homes, the altar may not necessarily be taken to the new living premises. In fact this becomes an occasion for securing a new altar to mark fresh beginnings. Sometimes practical factors determine if the old altar can fit the space allocated to it in the new home. But the point to note is that the potentially mobile altars entered the market and eventually became available for purchase not just at ‘Gokulam’ but other retailers in LI, a situation that continues to this day but with the marked difference that the customer now has plenty of choice. For example, often individual owners of businesses make trips to different parts of India to personally view products and hand select specific items and vet these for quality and their appeal for local Hindus. It is not uncommon for these businessmen to also accept


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Plate 12 Ready-made wooden, prayer altars on sale at Gokulam in Singapore. The cost of these fairly small-sized altars begins from a couple of hundred Singapore dollars.

requests for individual orders from customers with very specific requirements and to personally go to India to source artisans and manufacturers to get the job done. In the latter cases, the desire for quality and customer satisfaction means higher costs as well, something retailers argue is inevitable if ‘good quality work’ is desired. What is notable in the present is that the practice of commissioning prayer altars continues despite the overwhelming availability of off-therack options available both in Singapore as well as in JB20 and sometimes also in different parts of India. Another pattern I observed is that Singaporean Hindus also rely on building contractors who renovate and redesign their homes to construct their prayer altars; thus the altars are not necessarily made by Indian or Hindu craftsmen skilled in traditional Indian designs and expertise. The local building industry is dominated by members of the local ethnic Chinese community and it is common for non-Chinese families to engage Chinese contractors to build and renovate their homes, including the carpentry work that is entailed in constructing cabinets, cupboards and shelves. In fact Chinese carpenters are highly regarded in the community for their fine workmanship, efficiency and professionalism. The building of an altar is subcontracted to a carpenter who is

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Plate 13 A custom-made prayer altar housed in the store-room of a 5-room HDB apartment of a Tamil Hindu household in Singapore.

furnished with a design, which he then translates into practice. My fieldwork is replete with instances that confirm the reliance on building contractors for the construction of prayer altars in Hindu households. I offer some illustrative examples. Mrs Mala who lives in a 3-room21 HDB

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apartment had her storeroom converted into a prayer room which was fitted with a customised prayer altar, complete with a ko¯puram. She narrates the story behind its construction thus:


Our contractor did the altar for us. He is Muslim. My husband drew out a picture for him. So he just made it accordingly. We gave him all the details, like the size, wood colour. We also showed him some examples. In LI there are some shops right? Handicrafts and all those prayer things. We brought him to show what we wanted. Similarly Mr Vijay, a 22-year-old second generation Singaporean whose family has been living in a 4-room HDB flat for the last five years relates a similar story about the household’s prayer altar: Yes we made it. We got it made to measure to fit our storeroom. We left our cabinet behind in the old house since it was built into the walls. We came here and made it again. The contractor was a Chinese man, but of course we told him that it was a prayer room and we gave him all the measurements and he just made it accordingly. I heard the same narrative in the field repeatedly. Mr Kuna, a 24-year-old gentleman whose family has lived in the same 5-room HDB apartment for the last 19 years, admits that he cannot recall specific details about the altar in his previous one-room rented apartment, but does remember that it was small wooden shelf in the corner with pictures of just two deities. In his new, much larger home, it was yet again the store-room that had been transformed into a prayer room and thus the site for the prayer altar, which had also been tailor-made to fit the entire space. Mr Kuna says of the altar with a ko¯puram: We built it when we moved here, when we came into the house. When we got the house that was the store room. So we just made the shelf and then made the ko¯puram shape at the top, into the wall. Our contractor did that. Other than the ko¯puram, and shelf, which are made to measure, I don’t think we have ever had anything custom-made for the prayer room. Finally, Mrs Rejini’s story brings this discussion full circle. She lives with her family in a 5-room HDB flat, owned by the family which has occupied the apartment for the last 13 years. Mrs Rejini explained the family’s decision to locate the altar in the store room: It is the bomb shelter I think . . . oh no no this is not the bomb shelter. It is the store-room actually. Yes. But we don’t like to keep junk things, so we didn’t need it. We wanted a prayer room so we called


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Homes for Gods the aiyer (priest) to come and see it we can make it here or not. I am okay with it being in the store-room even though it is facing the entrance. We got a Chinese contractor to come and do it for us. He made the shape, that ko¯puram shape above the altar. It was not difficult to explain what we wanted. Because he brought us to some of the houses he has done before, yes, contractors will do that. So we went and saw what he had done and we realised that there were other ways we could make our prayer room. So we got some ideas. Then I gave him the design. I didn’t want it to be too elaborate so I just gave him instructions: I want three steps, a curved shape at the top and then at the bottom some cabinets to keep all the prayer things. So that is how it is now.

In these conversations and numerous others like them, it was hard to miss the strong desire for made-to measure prayer altars, partly because of the need to place them in the store room or the bomb shelter of HDB living units and partly due to individualistic preferences for specific aesthetic and practical requirements. It is also striking that many of the altars had been constructed as part of the ‘home renovations’ and by Chinese and nonHindu building contractors. The latter seemed to be the norm rather than the exception amongst the cluster of Hindus I interacted with. Further, it was a non-issue for my respondents that a prayer altar in a Hindu household had been constructed by non-Hindus. In any case, in all cases the design and conception of the altar were determined by Hindus themselves, and the contractors simply materialised the blueprint according to given specifications. In fact, I discerned a high comfort level with the work that had been performed, the professionalism, and the ability to follow instructions carefully, not to mention the reduced cost of building the altar through this mode. Similarly, the Chinese, non-Hindu contractors I spoke to confirmed that their own religious identity did not affect their decision to take on jobs and contracts involving building structures for worship in religious tradition. In contrast, it is hard to miss the trend that Singaporean Hindus who live in ‘private property’ (especially landed property)—which may not necessarily be bigger—tended to allocate a separate prayer room for the altar and bought or ordered the latter and the teakwood doors from the prominent retailers in the market, such as ‘Gokulam’ or ‘Celebration of Arts.’ The reasons for preferring tailor-made altars rested primarily on the desire for something unique and unusual rather than the standardised mass-produced ones as well as a liking for a design that reflected the personality of the individual or the household. Many also stated that they found the ready-made options either of poor quality or too gaudy for their simple taste, or too small for their needs. Expectedly, cost and pricing surfaced as crucial determining factors but it is impossible to generalise if ready-made altars are more or less expensive than tailor-made ones and vice versa. In both categories, I have encountered families that


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have spent up to SGD 20,000 on an altar while others have spent just a few hundred Singapore dollars. That there is a strong demand for made-to-measure altars in contemporary Singapore is evident from the numerous conversations I had with Singaporean Hindus. The retailers are themselves fully aware of this and have responded to the needs of consumers by offering this service, often for a substantial sum of money. All the established local retailers that deal with prayer items provide ‘custom made prayer altars.’ Here is a self-description from the ‘Gokulam Jewel and Crafts’ website about the products and services they offer to customers: Gokulam Jewels and Crafts, in business since 1991, is one of the largest Indian handicraft stores in Singapore. We have a wide variety of gold–plated jewellery, statues, gold-plated puja items, silver puja items and utensils and brassware. We also design and manufacture prayer altars, wooden doors, swings and home décor items using quality raw materials and hand crafted according to traditional Indian design and concept. We are also pioneers in Singapore in the manufacturing of Indian hand-carved teakwood prayer altars and doors. We manufacture our prayer altars in India and Singapore. We have skilled craftsmen steeped in the traditions of Indian art and design to manufacture custom-made orders as well. We manufacture Hindu, Christian and Sikh prayer altars. For our customers based in Singapore, we offer a free design service and quote. We have customers from all over the world, the UK, Canada, USA, Norway, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, to name a few. We have experience in shipping worldwide by air or sea parcel post and sea freight depending on the size and weight of the goods. (http://gokulamcrafts.com/aboutus.php) (accessed 4 October 2009) ‘Gokulam’ presents itself as a pioneer and leader in the manufacture of prayer altars and doors, based in Singapore but with a strong presence in the international market and with global customers. It further claims access to different kinds of resources and assets, expertise and connections to deliver hand-carved, traditional quality products to customers. A huge selling point is the association of the prayer altars with India as well Indian designs, skills and tradition—something that is important in marketing objects linked to Hinduism. The website also catalogues visuals of such items as ‘prayer altars,’ ‘puja items,’ ‘statues,’ ‘wooden doors’ and ‘jewellery.’ For example the index of prayer altars carries photographs with descriptions like these: ‘Teakwood single-drawer altar, 36"×18"× 60")’ ‘Teakwood single-drawer altar with door. Door and ko¯puram fully handcarved, 36"×18"×60") and ‘Teakwood fully hand-carved te¯r design altar with cabinet, 32"×32"×92") (http://gokulamcrafts.com/alters.php).

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Plate 14 A view of the entrance to the bomb shelter that has been converted to a puja room of a Tamil Hindu family in Singapore.

Interestingly, no prices are listed. Instead potential customers are instructed to ‘make inquiry’ if they are interested in a particular product. My conversations with other local retailers provide further supporting evidence about the heightened demand for customised prayer altars, the market’s willingness to accept these as legitimate consumer demands and

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the various steps taken by retailers to deliver these. Many of the retailers I spoke to confirmed that in their experience, custom-made orders for altars and statues have become more popular in recent years. One of the owners of ‘Celebration of Arts,’ Mr Rishi, explains their popularity and the willingness of customers to pay the required cost of building something unique and distinct: Because a lot of them want to do something unique to their own homes. So they have wood designs, they want some special kinds of designs. So we try to incorporate what they want with also, what is sensible. Because maybe they want some heavy marble top, but the wood might not be able to take the weight. So we have to let them know what, how things are done. You’d be very surprised, even the guy earning $1,000 would spend $10,000 on his prayer altar. It all depends on what they believe. So you know, special design, like sometimes the whole room, we’ll make it into an altar. Some people specially want only Kariakudi22 style. Kariakudi style is a different kind of style of carving. It comes only from Karaikudi. And the wood they use is also different, they only use Burmese teak wood. It comes from the border of India and Myanmar. So it has to be procured from there first. I mean, it is more or less freely available but only that particular wood has to be used for this style. So we must make sure that’s the one. It all depends on what the customer wants. Special orders are becoming very common. The sentiment that ‘customer is king’ was a typical expression I heard throughout my fieldwork in Singapore and Malaysia, not just with reference to personal needs and requirements for prayer altars but also for statues of Hindu deities. Despite this trend towards individualised altars, there is still a market for the ready-made options. Many Hindus I spoke to prefer to purchase an altar off the shelf. These items are secured either from a retailer based in Singapore or in parts of Malaysia (particularly JB) and sometimes in Tamil Nadu, although the latter option is much more expensive taking into account the cost of transportation and shipping. Yet, I met many Singaporean Hindus who had pursued this last route. Many others had just crossed over to JB, amongst whom is Ms Thana’s family who moved into their brand new HDB maisonette in March 2008 and who bought their altar off the shelf, as it was from this Malaysian city. For this family, cost was clearly an issue and the members had done their research and compared prices before settling on the JB option. Here is a segment from Ms Thana’s candid and forthright narrative: We spent 1,300 ringgit23 for the altar. Yes. I remember because I went to Gokulam to check and they were selling it for SGD 1,800. Yes they


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Plate 15 A craftsman with his tools, working on ‘finishing’ a custom-made prayer altar at a prominent shop in Singapore’s Little India.

charged us 100 ringgit for transport, so the total came to 1,400 ringgit. The shop itself arranged for the altar to be brought to Singapore. They deliver it to Singapore very frequently it seems. So everything they handled for us. We went to certain shops in Serangoon Road actually. Like Gokulam, then we went to Jothi Flower shop, upstairs. But everything was above SGD1,000. And there was another shop. You know that row where Jothi Music Centre is? Opposite Jothi Flower Shop, yes Celebration of Arts. Yes that whole lane, we went to see all the shops there. Everything was like SGD 1,800, SGD 2,500, 2,700. What we wanted was the altar that was low, on the floor almost right? Those were all made of teak wood and so expensive. Of course established retailers like Gokulam are quite aware that potential customers deem their products to be too expensive. Gokulam’s owner explains the higher prices of his goods compared to say the Malaysian costs: It was only after me, most of them started thinking ‘why not’? Then the Malaysians also started doing this in Malaysia. There the labour is cheap, materials cheap . . . that’s why they can supply to you at a better price than us. However, the workmanship is not there. They don’t

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care about that. Those who are not worried about the workmanship, the design, I mean it is a place of worship, so will anything do? But I still maintain my standards. Of course people think ‘Gokulam very expensive.’ But the same people keep coming back to us: ‘Hey I need a piece from you! I tried this, tried that but they are not as good as you.’ ‘If you are willing to pay, I am willing to do it,’ I tell them. Noting a downturn in his business since 2002, Mr Gokulam observed that increasingly, the market for prayer items (including altars) is driven largely by the price of goods and that the ‘cheaper option’ is deemed more viable with the emergence of Malaysia and India as additional markets from which Singaporean Hindus do source and secure goods. But he ended by highlighting what the Singapore option offered as compared to its Malaysian and Indian counterparts: But now you see business is a bit down for two reasons. One, the currency dropped so people like to look for bargains in Malaysia. In JB there are shops, not very big, but small shops. But consumers think they are cheaper. Secondly, lots of Singaporeans are going to India. They buy lots of things from there. They even buy things that they don’t need because they think they are cheap. Here, what they buy has a back-up service. So if anything has a problem, they can bring it back. If you buy something from India, are you going to carry it back and tell them the problem? Before we had a lot of orders for fine altars, but now people go for the cheaper version. As long as they have altars, okay they are fine. Even the Malaysian ones can last up to 5–6 years but if they are made from fiber board—MF 50—they don’t last long and have to be changed. While India strongly remains the site from which materials, expertise and labour are secured for all ‘things Hindu’ and preferred by local retailers and consumers alike, other locales (primarily Malaysia and depending on the item, Indonesia, Thailand and China) and the products they offer have emerged as robust competitors. As we have seen, the marketing strategies of retailers who trade in ‘puja items’ rest on reinforcing the ‘Indian connection’ and they draw tremendous mileage from the fact that their products have been designed, fashioned and crafted by individuals skilled in traditional forms of Indian art and sculpture. The fact of having secured altars from this source adds a significant quotient of symbolic value to the item in question and is often a successful selling point. But it is a little known fact (and this seems irrelevant to consumers) that a great deal of work that goes into ‘readying’ the product for sale is actually performed locally. This is certainly true of prayer altars, especially the larger ones which are typically assembled in Singapore. Mr Raja, the proprietor of ‘Celebration of Arts’ observed that this practice is dictated largely by practical considerations:

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Most of the items are fixed up here. They come here individually packed: one, two, three, four parts. Then we assemble it here. Small products you don’t need to, but the big pieces you have to assemble it here. Like the altars, the four pillars come separately, the top is divided into two pieces, and the bottom is taken out. That will save you space, with flat packing, then we put it together. It also prevents damage. In this case, the materials and skilled craftsmen are of Indian origin. In contrast, other retailers like Gokulam say that their altars are ‘75 per cent made in Singapore, 25 per cent in India.’ In this case, the building of altars brings together materials, labour, expertise, capital and space for construction from different countries and links different individuals and parties across a number of national boundaries.24 The materials (such as hard plywood and teak) are secured in Singapore, but imported from Indonesia and Malaysia. The cutting of the wood pieces is done in Singapore as is the manufacturing and assembling of the component parts. The hand carving on the altars is done by two Indian craftsmen from India who are employed in Singapore on a special work permit and operate out of a workshop on the island, while the design and the capital are supplied by a Singaporean businessman. Another noteworthy trend25 is that prayer altars have become more elaborate and ostentatious over the years in terms of size, architectural features as well as structural details. Clearly, several factors have worked in tandem to produce this eventuality. First, this is clearly associated with enhanced socio-economic status and the availability of disposable income for expending on religious items. A second feature that has contributed to a demand for more sophisticated prayer altars has to do with the innovative efforts of retailers who have also created new needs and thus a novel market for their products. One strand in my conversations with Singaporean Hindus led us to jointly jog our memories and we tried to recall what we remembered26 of altars as children in our homes. There was consensus on one important point in these trips down memory lane—we all recalled that altars of the ‘old days’ were simpler—‘just shelves,’ ‘a small, wooden shelf mounted on a wall,’ ‘a collection of pictures hung on a wall,’ or ‘two or three statues resting in a corner.’ Another point of convergence was our sense and experience that these ‘simple altars’ had gradually been replaced by more elaborate alternatives—a set of shelves, or a cabinet, or a special alcove permanently built into the wall, or an especially constructed, customised altar or one bought off the shelf and then finally a separate puja room to house divinity. Here are some narratives that demonstrate the transition from ‘a shelf to a cabinet to a puja room,’ in the lived experience of individuals and the varying logic that accompanied these transformations: We stayed in one bedroom flat, a rental flat. That flat had one room and a hall. The altar was in the hall. It was just a shelf, and we couldn’t


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do much there. Last time most of the house altars were just shelves. From the shelf we had a wooden cabinet and now He has a room of his own, where He can sit by himself (Mrs Roja who now lives in a HDB Maisonette). In the old house we had an altar. It was a small area, a small corner in the room, on the floor. In the new house we were very particular about where we placed the altar. It had to be in a separate room. My husband is very devoted to this. He doesn’t want anybody to touch the pictures when they are not clean, the ladies especially. So the altar was placed in a separate room altogether (Mrs Mala). It was not like what we have here, not like a house type. It was made of wood, we made it ourselves. And we just kept pictures, no statues. Only pictures. It was on the wall. We drilled it in. It was made of wood right? We asked someone to make it for us and we mounted it on the wall in the boys’ room. It was a very small one. Here we can sit and pray, we can have a radio in there and play devotional songs. There, it was an open space, and the children’s beds were there. There was no privacy there. It was not private. Here we have a deity and He is alone by Himself. No one disturbs him now. And we can quietly worship him without any interference. That is the difference here (Mrs Rejini). It seems apparent that ‘simple altars’ are a thing of the past in Singaporean Hindu homes, barring the very poorest sectors of the community, for example those who live in one-room rental HDB flats and have no source of income. In my experience, the homes I visited, including the two and three-room HDB flats, showcase altars which are fairly elaborate and have moved beyond the ‘shelf mounted on the wall’ option. Retailers I spoke to confirmed that their customer base from a working class and lower middle class background are nonetheless willing to place an order for an expensive altar. Having thus been placed in homes, what is the status of altars and the spaces in which they are embedded within the household and how are they approached and used by members of the household? It is helpful to try and tease out the logic through which they enclose within their fold various insignia which have an obvious materiality but which at the same time are imbued with sacrality. This focus enables a grounded discussion about how ‘objects, materials, things’ acquire sacred qualities and inspire an attitude of reverence on the part of devotees, in the act of puja.

Using/Approaching Altars as ‘Sacred’ Space The majority of Hindus I encountered in my fieldwork in Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Chennai articulated the need for divine presence in their homes in some form or another. A striking pattern that

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emerged from conversations about altars was that they were held in high regard by their owners who spoke effortlessly about them and from a position of knowledge, familiarity and a sense of pride. Owners shared with me details of the altar’s construction and its incorporation within their homes as well as the value they command in their religious lives. In addition, each item on the altar was known by name and identity, while stories about how each one was acquired and placed on the altar, were readily narrated. In response to my question about the ‘residents’ of her altar, Mrs Mala and Mrs Rejini identified them thus: Okay, let me have a look. Okay, this is Murugan, Valli and Devayani. This is Pillaiyar, Saraswathi and Lakshmi. The Pillaiyar is from Ceylon Road temple–from their Kumbaabhishekham—they gave us the statue. This is Thandayuthabani and this is Vengadachalapathy. This picture is Astalakshmi, from Madras. We bought it from Chennai in a temple along the beach. This is a picture of Moogambikai, also from a temple. That platinum chakra is from the Ma¯riyamman temple right here. The small, small Vinayagars—those were all bought in India. The pictures on the sides are all bought in Singapore . . . the statues are all from Jothis. The small statues and Amman statues are from India and on the rice there is a small Amman—she is Annalakshmi. My sister gave that to me as a gift, from India. Hindus I spoke to stated with confidence when and where they had acquired specific pictures, statues or other religious icons and why they had been placed at the altar. It was obvious that the collections at the altars had grown over a period of time as new inhabitants were included and occasionally older ones removed.27 In this sense the altar was continuously in a state of flux as items were added or discarded. The modes through which devotees approached this space of/for worship varied over time as well. Above all, this site is viewed by devotees as an active, energised space and the locus of personal, familial devotion. Hindus I spoke to were aware that the space within their home, where representations of divinity were eventually housed, had been quite ordinary prior to the location of the altar therein. It was obvious to all parties concerned that puja rooms and prayer altars were rendered sacred through a series of moves and strategies which involved the input, engagement, participation and effort of devotees. Clearly, secular spaces within homes were ‘made sacred’ by the latter and only thereafter treated with due reverence. In fact, the primary acts of identifying and marking a specific site within a home already imbued the space and the altar which would be placed therein with elements of sacrality. It then followed that they would be approached with the requisite attitude of veneration. These territories did not in any sense pre-exist as sacred and were certainly not approached


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as such. They were sanctified first and foremost through the act of their segregation from other locales as well as other profane, mundane activities within the home. Specific practices such as praying, meditating and singing religious songs were permissible within these sacred premises, while others such as eating of all kinds (in particular consuming meat), drinking (especially alcohol), smoking, playing non-devotional music, allowing pets in, playing games, laughing and joking, wearing shoes were all expressly prohibited. Importantly, I found that these rules were observed in practice, and were not simply normative procedures that were not acted upon. I have found David de Leon’s work on the history of a spice rack highly insightful in speaking to the various connotations of prayer altars within the everyday religious lives of Singaporean Hindus. In his research de Leon (2006: 127) narrates the history and the present use of a spice rack over a period of three decades, arguing that: . . . the cognitive congeniality of an environment is as much a function of an agent’s particular use of that environment as it is a function of the environment itself. It is the particular ways in which things are used that permits them to contribute in cognitively beneficial ways. Cognitive congeniality is a relational property, and cognitive biographies must include both the changing forms and shifting uses of things [emphasis in the original]. Recent scholarship in the field of material culture has emphasised that objects have life histories and social lives (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986) and have stories to tell (Festa 2006: 111). These studies have further highlighted the need to ‘retrace sequences of relations between people and things’ (ibid. 128). This is a position I agree with, especially in view of my data vis-a-vis prayer altars in Singaporean Hindu homes. I argue that empty spaces (like puja rooms and altars) are literally ‘filled’ with religious connotations, symbolism and value as an array of objects are strategically situated within them. Some of these items are perceived to embody intrinsic sacred properties, while others acquire the same sometimes through simply being placed on the altar in proximity to other sacred items and within the confines of the puja room. Expectedly, before any visual representation of a deity was placed at the altar, most Hindus I spoke to had taken steps to ‘ready’ it for worship within the home. This entailed either requesting a Brahmin28 priest to perform special prayers to ‘invite’ the deity to inhabit a picture or a statue or take these to a temple to have them ‘blessed’ by the resident priests. Occasionally, I also heard of cases both in Singapore and Malaysia where shops which sell these items offer the additional service of preparing them ritually for use during puja. The pervasive view is that these preliminary steps are deemed to be essential for spiritually energising material objects like pictures and statues which otherwise would be no different from the ones located as decorated items


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in other parts of the home or as commodities in shops. My respondents acknowledged that there are crucial differences between representations of deities in home-altars and in temples. The former are not typically consecrated and the pranapratista (establishment of life-breath) ceremony not performed for them. Before moving into a new home most Hindus also hold a ‘housewarming’ ceremony. During this ceremony the officiating priest sanctifies the house for occupation by the family. At this time the gods are also officially invited into the house and accorded a rightful place at the altar. By and large, customary practices, family traditions, individual preferences and the tenor of personal devotion determine choices and decisions about what is placed on the altar, including representations of divinity. Altars bear marks of personal devotion, family history and individual biography and are, consequently, highly individualised. As mentioned previously, is.t.a teyvam and kula devata are commonly found at the home prayer altar of Singaporean Hindus. Many Hindus hold the view that the deity within the home is meant entirely for worship by the family and household members and not for wider public consumption or benefit. Mrs Rejini’s emphatic viewpoint is one that I heard routinely during my research: The priest says in the temple, the home altar is not a temple. This is a house and the god that we have here is for us. We have him here so that we can worship him and show our devotion. He is here to protect us and bless us. That is all. This rationale also determines Mrs Rejini’s approach to her ‘house god’ and her choice of rituals that are performed before the altar and indeed how the statues and pictures of divinity are managed. Mrs Rejini explains her attitude to how deities at home should be handled: Some people, they do abishegam every Friday for their deities. We are not prepared to learn all that. We don’t know the mantras. No one in our household is a priest. So we don’t want to be bringing the statues into the bathroom and pouring turmeric water, rosewater, flowers and all that over them. When you do something like that you need to chant some mantras and we just don’t know what they are. Just because others do it without chanting doesn’t mean we can just think it is okay and just follow them. If you want to do these things, you must do it the right way. Since we don’t know fully what should be done we don’t do it all. What feels right to you, that is all you should do. So I don’t do any of that abis.e¯kam or chanting. Indeed the Brahmin priests I spoke to confirmed that the deities at the home altar need not be treated like deities that have been consecrated and


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installed in a temple and that the two sets of deities serve rather different functions. But I did come across many Hindus who think of their home altar as a temple and attend to statues therein as temple deities would be treated, including performing elaborate abis.e¯kam and aarti, etc. on a daily basis. Of course these devotees do acknowledge that there are obvious limits to such efforts at replication but still find it a meaningful exercise. In the absence of formalised and codified rules for home worship, I encountered wide currency of the view that ‘one should do what feels right’ and indeed this is translated into practice. While some scriptures do state generally that individuals should perform prayers at home, there is no specific body of religious writing that dictates rules that must be observed in domestic worship. However, even in the absence of such prescriptions, Hindus are aware that specific normative guidelines circulate in the community both about practices that are appropriate and those which are deemed improper. Another varying feature of domestic worship in Hinduism is the set of rules that govern which deities can be placed and worshipped at the home altar. These rules, as with all cases, are not universally observed by all Hindus in Singapore. For instance, one such norm relates to the fact that kaaval deivam should not be placed within residences or if they are to be placed within the home, then certainly they should not be placed at the main prayer altar. Generally, there is a prohibition on keeping any representation of It.umpan, Munı¯svaran, Madurai Veeran who are guardians or protectors of village boundaries at home. They are seen to manifest rather fierce appearances and are said to be “unclean” gods in that meat, blood and alcohol are supposedly necessary to propitiate them. However, in practice I encountered numerous Hindu homes where this rule is contravened and duly rationalised. Guardian deities and a host of folk mothergoddesses are not only found within Hindu homes but also given a central space at the prayer altar are driven by the personal devotion of individuals (Sinha 2005). I also met many Hindus who have chosen a guardian deity as a favoured deity, thus legitimating the decision to situate their presence in homes on these grounds. These decisions do generate tensions and disagreements amongst different family members and have to be carefully negotiated. Other deities such as Periyachee Aman, Ma¯riyamman, Ka¯li.yamman and Durga may also not be placed on the home altar because they are believed to be too “powerful” like the village gods. Following the same rationale, placing the Siva Lingam and the Naga-Devata (snake god) at the home altar is also prohibited. The Navgraha(s), ‘nine planets,’ which are perceived to be extremely powerful (with potentially negative and destructive effects) and are invoked especially at personal crisis points in the lives of Hindus, are never found on the home altar. The movements of the nine planets are said to determine temporal events and have profound effects on the fate of individuals. If the Navagraha(s) are not properly cared for within the home, there is a sense that inauspicious configurations of the planets may have a drastic effect on householders. There are also


100 Homes for Gods attendant rules about whether deities should be placed singly or together with other—for example, Lord Murukan is only to be placed with his two consorts Valli and Devayani, Siva and Sakti are to be placed together and Sita (Rama’s consort) is never placed at the altar on her own. This is because the deities in groups or pairs are said to derive their power and energy as units. For example, Siva or Sakti on their own are not considered as powerful as when they are paired. In my field experience, by and large, these rules seem to be observed in practice, albeit with room for some degree of variation. Another interesting feature is the level of religious syncretism and integration through the inclusion of deities and representations from other religious traditions. In my fieldwork, I have found it quite commonplace to also find these icons co-existing on altars in Hindu homes: a range of Hindu deities, a picture of Jesus Christ, a statue of Mother Mary, a cross, Kuan Yin (the goddess of Mercy), the laughing Buddha, Tua Peh Kong, and the Chinese monkey god, among others. The point to note is that as Hindus, the individuals concerned did not think it surprising or inappropriate to include representations from non-Hindu religious traditions in their homes (Sinha 2008). Apart from iconic visualisations of divinity, aniconic representations abound. Yantra(s)29 dedicated to different deities, are a popular item in this connection. Hindus purchase yantras to keep them in their homes and perform what is known as yantra puja. Many of the homes I visited had Munı¯svaran and Madurai Veeran yantra, placed either at the main puja altar or in a small shelf at the entrance to the home. Items like aruva¯.l, ca¯t.t.ai, tiricu¯lam—all associated primarily with guardian deities who are increasingly popular with a cluster of Singaporean Tamil Hindus—also occupy space on altars. In effect, the latter not only carry objects of worship but also functional implements, tools and utensils used during puja. For example, an oil lamp, a joss-stick holder, a small tray and cup for placing food and water offerings, a bell, a conch shell, flowers, fruits, wicks, a match-box,30 just to mention some of the required apparatus. Altars also become repositories for anything and everything that household members deem to have sacred connotations and symbolism. The latter include little gifts of statues or laminated pictures of deities and kun·kumam and vibhuti packets secured from temples, especially during consecration ceremonies as well as icons and insignia obtained from a visiting guru or spiritual leader. As would be expected, altars tend to be rather crowded spaces and packed with a host of items. Apart from representations of divinity, photographs of ancestors are commonly featured on prayer altars. Framed black and white or colour photographs of deceased parents and grand-parents featured prominently in practically all of the altars I surveyed. Their placement at the altar suggests that they are accorded tremendous respect but it was clarified to me they are not worshipped as deities. There are also norms that govern their physical location at the altar. First, typically, photographs of the deceased


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are only to be placed at the altar five years after their death; second, they are normally placed below the pictures and statues of deities to signify their relative position vis-a-vis divinity; third, if their placement is aligned with representations of divinity, to accord them equal status, they are not placed at the front of the altar facing the devotee, but always placed to the left or right side of the altar. In trying to establish the religious meanings that material forms carry for practitioners, I also found it instructive to ask what items would not be placed at altars and why. The responses I received reiterated the view that not all objects that draw on religious symbolism are treated, in practice, as being endowed with sacred connotations and thus appropriate for worship. Hindus highlighted to me, for instance, that not all Ganesh statues are ‘for praying.’ They argued that it should be obvious that some of these are kept in Hindu homes for decorative and aesthetic reasons and then not at the altar or in the puja room. Mrs R. explained the difference: We don’t do puja for the statues in the bedroom or living room. We don’t wash them, put pot.t.u for them or put ca¯mpira¯n.i for them. We will show ca¯mpira¯n.i all over the house, in general but we don’t specifically show to those statues. Because we have only kept them there for aesthetic purposes, for decoration, we did not keep them there to pray to them. Statues for souvenir and decoration we should keep in a display cabinet—they are not for praying. I explore more fully these themes of disentangling deity from material form and from commodity in the next chapter. For now, I note first, that the location of material forms of deity (with due ritual attention) at the altar render them suitable for worship. Second, this explains the differential attitudes that Hindus express towards two items that may appear to observers to be the one and the ‘same thing’ but in fact for believers are rather distinct. In most homes I visited the altar was the responsibility of the women31 (largely mothers and wives) of the household, particularly if they were fulltime homemakers. Women who worked outside the home had far fewer responsibilities vis-a-vis care of the prayer altars. In some homes, the care of the altar is assumed by men, either because of personal interest in religious issues or because they were retired from full-time employment and could thus dedicate time and attention to this task. The care of the altar included the setting up of the altar, i.e., the physical arrangement of pictures and statues, securing and cleaning the utensils and tools for prayers, readying it for puja and finally performing the daily required prayers. As it was related to me by my respondents, daily puja at the home altar assumes a fairly simple form compared to the elaborate worship in temples. In the former, the devotee approaches the deity directly and without mediation and can potentially perform all the activities that a priest is charged with

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in a temple. The form that prayer takes in domestic worship is described by practitioners themselves as ‘short’ and ‘fast,’ the lack of time and religious knowledge as two critical, contributory factors. Daily prayers have become ‘reduced’ to a token lighting of an oil lamp or ‘switching on’ of an electric lamp, waving of joss-sticks and standing with hands folded before the altar. According to Mr Guru: Once a day, either my mother or my father will light the lamp in the altar room. That is done daily once. Then if we are at home my parents will call us to pray together. If we are at home and we have showered we will go. In the absence of codified, pre-existing knowledge about details of domestic worship, and thus rules about how many times puja must be performed in the home,32 individuals have worked out for themselves a schedule and routine that is convenient for them. Mrs Tuli’s response to my question about how puja is performed at the altar tallies with a majority of replies I recorded during fieldwork: We don’t have a standard or particular way of doing things in my altar. Because both my families . . . I only know that my mom’s side are Thevars, we don’t know what caste my father’s side belongs to. Maybe if we knew, we would have followed that caste’s tradition. But here we don’t know so we don’t follow caste traditions or anything like that. So whatever we like, whatever comes to our minds, we do. That’s it. We don’t follow any particular custom. The exceptions in this regard were Brahmin families I interviewed, amongst whom there was a greater degree of attachment to prescribed caste practices and even textual prescriptions about the details of domestic worship. For others, the dictum of doing ‘whatever comes to our minds’ was articulated and even positively embraced as lending a degree of uniqueness and exceptionalism to their practices. Yet, a bird’s eye view of the landscape of local Hindu domestic worship revealed obvious patterns in this ritual domain. Apart from the daily care of the altar, all my respondents mentioned Tuesdays and Fridays as ritually significant days, when rather more elaborate prayers are performed at the altar. The following descriptions detail the ritual practices undertaken on these two days: Normally, I always light up the lamp, everyday. I’ll put a small pot of fresh water at the altar every day. On Fridays, I’ll decorate the room with flowers and place some fruits at the altar. I’ll put bananas and milk also. On Tuesdays and Fridays I’ll put ca¯mpira¯n.i also. (Mrs Rejini) Sometimes, every Friday we will have . . . we put milk and fruits at the altar. Every Friday we will also light the oil lamp, and light some

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camphor and pray. Other normal days we just light the lamp alone. Only on Fridays we have special prayers with camphor and all that. (Mr Kuna) So every Thursday, what she does is she will take all the lamps and pictures and all that and clean them. So on Thursday morning, we will go and buy all the flowers and all that. Friday will be a grander prayer, with flowers and special offering—like pa¯ya¯cam—and we all try and pray together. (Mr Vijay) The choice of Tuesday and Friday as special ritual days attests to the immense popularity of the mother-goddess in the religious lives of Singaporean Hindus. Tuesday (mangalvar) is dedicated to Ganesha, Durga, Goddess Kali and Lord Hanuman whereas Friday is devoted to the worship of shakti, including Mahalakshmi, Santoshi Mata, Annapuraneshwari and Durga. In addition, Tuesday is also a special day in honour of Hanuman and in South India, Murugan or Kartikeya. It is also a day to appease Mangal (Mars) who is supreme on this day and his powers can be destructive. Friday (Shukravar) is also committed to Shukra (Venus), who is believed to provide material wealth and happiness. The presence of Shukra in one’s horoscope is deemed highly auspicious. Singaporean Hindus I spoke to were aware that each day of the week is dedicated to a specific Hindu god or goddess in addition to being important astrologically and they rationalise and explain their decision to mark these days in a unique manner on the basis of such wisdom. Whether it is an entire puja room or a single shelf that is dedicated to housing divinity, household members tend to this space carefully, tenderly and most crucially, regularly. In so doing, members relate to the space and the material forms it encapsulates in a repetitive, routinised mode. The altar is not treated as a piece of furniture or a storage space that is occasionally utilised. Members attend to and maintain the altar on a daily basis, even if it is in an abbreviated33 mode, and follow more elaborate procedures of worship at least a few times a week. This is the site where family members may worship individually or collectively. The rituals of daily cleaning, care and ritual attention to the altar and the representations of divinity within signal their centrality within the everyday religious lives of Hindus. This space does not recede into the background but is kept sharply in focus as members’ ties with it are renewed regularly. Household religious life is centred at the altar as family members approach it in the morning before they leave the house for school or work and in the evening upon returning and sometimes, before going to bed. The offering of a lighted lamp, incense, flowers and food connect devotee and deity—an association that is revitalised daily. Devotees seek blessings and protection from their ‘house gods’ on such special occasions as birthdays and wedding anniversaries, before embarking on any important task (first day of school or work, going for an exam or a job interview) and travelling. They may offer thanks by


104 Homes for Gods placing evidence of their achievement at the altar: for example, I have seen letters of promotion, examination result slips, first salaries, prizes and awards won, all deposited (however briefly and temporarily) at the altar. Hindus explained that this was their method of ‘sharing’ their accomplishment with the gods, and offering to them the concrete signs of their success. It is important to recognise that the home is only one location where altars are found. In Singapore, there are several other sites where they are established and maintained: amongst them, offices, restaurants, jewellery stores (shops selling gold jewellery, owned and operated by ethnic Chinese), textile shops and grocery stores. The underlying logic seems to be that divine presence should pervade all landscapes inhabited by humans. My respondents argued that gods should not be ‘locked up’ in temples but be accessible to humans and in the lived human environments landscapes. Several reasons are articulated for this viewpoint—establishing divinity in the midst of profane activities serves as a reminder of god’s existence and this awareness keeps him/her in one’s vision and consciousness. It is also symbolic orientation to divinity not to mention that devotees derive benefit from divine presence in the form of blessings, protection and grace. As sacred sites, altars connect this world to the next but they are not ontologically set apart from other spaces and thus not deemed to be sacred for all time. Within an imminent Hindu tradition, altars signal powerfully that divinity is accessible as a material presence within the human world and the representation of the divine in a variety of material forms is neither prohibited nor problematic in Hinduism. The next chapter turns to a fuller discussion of these themes.

Notes 1 It is important to recognise that these are not the only locales where Hindus site their gods and goddesses. It is quiet commonplace to see altars with a range of Hindu deities in establishments owned or operated by Hindus. These include among others, office spaces, restaurants, and a variety of retails stores selling books, garments, jewellry, saris, provisions and groceries, flowers. I have seen this practice in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Chennai and London. 2 These rules are spelt out in texts known as Vastusastra(s), (one of which is the Silpasastras), the canons of science of architecture. The origins of these can be traced to the earliest Rig Vedic periods. In subsequent ages this science developed further and had attained a certain authority by the time of the Buddha (Bhattacharya 1963). 3 A trained group of temple staff are essential for fulfilling these tasks. These include: Brahmin priests, musicians, singers, dancers, cooks and pan.t. a¯ram. 4 All religious groups are required under the Societies Act to be a ‘registered society’ before they can operate as a religious or spiritual group and engage in particular activities. All registered societies are expected to adhere to a body of rules and regulations, as specified in this act, which states that the mission and objectives of religious societies should not work against national interests and disturb public peace in any way. Should the latter be perceived to be the case,

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8

9 10

11 12

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the society in question can de-registered. Indeed several groups in Singapore have either been refused registration or de-registered on these grounds. Representations include symbols and insignia from Roman Catholicism and graves of Malay/Muslim saints. One crucial difference amongst these sacred spaces relates to the question of access to deities that is possible to the lay devotee. In an Agamic temple, devotees have limited direct access. In fact some deities cannot be approached directly at all. For example, the garbha griha (translated as ‘sanctum sanctorum’) which houses the presiding deity of the temple is out of bounds to lay devotees. This is absent in a ‘jungle temple’ where devotees do have direct access to deities and may even be able to touch them physically and offer personal prayers. At the home altar there is direct physical contact with the deities although notions of ritual purity and pollution temporarily prevent some categories of devotees from approaching the altar or the puja room. The Gudimallam lingam (from Tamil Nadu) of the first or second century bc represents one of the earliest representations of Siva in human from. Apart from the lingam and yoni and the yaksa/yaksi figurines, numerous stone figures of the Buddha have also survived from as early as the first century ad (Gray 1981: 37). The schools of Gandhara (Indo-Greek) at the ancient city of Taxila in northwest India, Kushan at Mathura and Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh contributed tremendously to the development of Indian art, architecture and sculpture. According to Organ, the term bhakti is derived from the Sanskrit root word ‘bhaj’ which means ‘to partake of,’ ‘to be attached to’ or ‘to resort to’ (1974: 175). The development of the notion of is.t.a teyvam (Sanskrit, ista-devata) marks an emphasis on the need for a personal god, as an ‘aid’ or ‘guide’ to assist the worshipper to attain his spiritual goals, as against the impersonal Brahman of the Upanisads. Family shrines and home worship are central not just for Hindus in the Diaspora but have also been reported for the Sikh community in the Diaspora (Mann 2000). The question of how and through what mechanisms representations of divinity are secured for the purpose of temple worship in Singaporean Hindu domains constitutes a separate study in itself, something this book is not equipped to address comprehensively. However, it is nonetheless possible to state here that this is a complex process that requires simultaneous attention to a series of administrative, bureaucratic, pragmatic, logistical and above all ritualistic and ceremonial considerations. Together with visual representations (iconic and an-iconic) of Hindu and nonHindu divinity it is also commonplace to find photographs of family ancestors placed at the prayer altar. In fact, after a sustained period of being in the field I could recognize prayer altars that had been procured from well-known retail shops in Singapore’s LI as well as household names such as ‘Jothi,’ ‘Gokulam’ or ‘Celebration of Arts.’ It is a further testimony to the claim by the proprietors of these stores that they do indeed market unique forms of a range of commodities, and certainly the latter carry a distinct identity through obviously recognizable features. The HDB was formed in 1960 to plan and build homes for Singaporeans. The public housing scheme receives strong political and financial support from the Singapore Government. Over the last 50 years the HDB has offered subsidized housing (of varying sizes) either for rental or for purchase to Singaporeans. According to the HDB InfoWEB, ‘Today, about 84% of

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17 18

19

20

21 22

23

Singapore’s population live in HDB flats as compared with only 9% in1960 when the HDB was first established’ (www.hdb.gov.sg) (accessed 3 February 2010). The ‘bomb shelter’ is the everyday description for the Civil Defence shelters in HDB apartments. These have been required by law since 1994 and are essentially store-rooms that have been strengthened to function as bomb shelters during periods of war. During peace times, residents may use them for their own private needs but they must be vacated when necessary in crisis moments and used by the family for shelter. The SMS notices I receive about these sessions are phrased as ‘we are seeing ayya this Saturday’ and are viewed by devotees as occasions for meeting and talking to the deity. In 2002, a Hindu man, identified in a newspaper article as Mr Samy, who was running a temple out of a home in Seletar Hills Estate, found himself on the wrong side of his neighbours who were unhappy with proceedings in their estate. Mr Samy, a devotee of Sri Maha Munı¯svaran, was a spirit medium who held trance sessions in his rented home. Neighbours had complained that they were disturbed by the ringing of bells between 9 p.m. and midnight and inconvenienced by visitors who parked along the street. Mr Samy previously held these sessions in his apartment in Ang Mo Kio but had to move out to a bigger space when the crowds seeking his assistance became too large. Interestingly, the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s response was that no action could be taken if the prayers were for ‘personal worship.’ The police response was that so long as ‘no nuisance’ had been created they could not step in either (Streats, November 27, 2002, p. 2). Eventually, Mr Samy had to stop these sessions on the grounds that the sessions were not ‘private’ but in fact had assumed a public character and that a residential space could not be used for pubic worship. In 1990, he was invited to sit on a committee to plan the Indian Cultural Month and also organised the first Indian Cultural Village at the site currently occupied by ‘The Verge’ on Serangoon Road. Mr G also created an elephant float, which was entered as the first ever Indian float in the Chingay Parade that year. The Malaysian city of JB has become a popular site for Singaporean Hindus as they source a variety of objects that are required for sustaining devotional Hinduism—especially within the home. This includes fresh flowers, fruits, visual representations of Hindu gods and goddesses (statues, photographs) as well as prayer altars. Sometimes religious specialists are also invited from JB to officiate at Hindu functions in Singapore. The fact that JB is connected to the island by road and is accessible by a variety of transportation modes, including by foot, have opened up its markets to Singaporeans. It is notable that Singaporeans flock to JB for a variety of goods and services, including fresh produce and other groceries, cooked food, golf and other recreational activities, and until very recently, petrol as well. The biggest draw, however, is the strength of the Singapore dollar vis-à-vis Malaysian currency, a foreign exchange advantage that makes ‘shopping in JB very cheap,’ a statement articulated openly by many a Singaporean. The total size of a ‘3-room HDB flat’ is between 60–65 sq. metres, while a 4room flat is about 90 sq. metres and a 5-room flat is 110 sq. metres. Karaikudi is the capital city of the Chettinad region, in the Sivagangai district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the home of the Nattukottai Chettiars, a prominent business and banking community with large numbers in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Malaysia. Ringgit refers to Malaysian currency. The exchange rate with respect to the Singapore dollar in February 2010 was 2.43.


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24 A similar story emerges when one looks at the trade in flowers. See Chapter 5. 25 This comparative statement is grounded in my observations of Singaporean Hindu domains over the last two decades. As a master’s student I had surveyed the incidence of home altars in my thesis of 1988. Being based in Singapore for a significant period of time and being a member of the local Hindu community, I have had the opportunity to revisit many of my respondents’ homes over the years and, most recently in relation to ethnographic research I was conducting for this book. Of course, many families I had interviewed in the mid- to late1980s have shifted into new (and often bigger) homes, some having moved household several times. Consequently, their family altars have changed in tandem with their larger living spaces, newer house designs, enhanced socioeconomic statuses as well as greater choice in the local retail market vis-a-vis options for housing deities at home. 26 I was fortunate in this exercise to have had the benefit of previous research stints in Singaporean Hindu domains from the middle to the end of the 1980s and to specifically recall the altars I had seen in specific households. I also had the privilege of returning to some of the same families I had interviewed back then and to see the transformations that had taken place of sacred space within the home. 27 How ‘old’ pictures and statues are dealt with is critical issue and one that I deal with more fully in the next chapter. While pictures of deities are removed and discarded with some regularity, the same is not true of statues, which are typically kept within the family over longer periods of time, sometimes with the express purpose of passing them to the next generation. Pictures are also less durable as compared to statues. Some Hindu priests I spoke to are critical of the Singaporean Hindu habit of discarding old/used pictures of deities in temples. 28 A Singaporean Brahmin priest told me that in the last 15 years of his practice as a priest in a local temple, he had received about 10,000 invitations to homes for the purpose of performing a¯va¯kannam (requesting/invitation) ceremonies for deities. Many of these were conducted within the context of Grhya pravesham (entering the household) rituals performed when individuals moved into new homes. 29 A yantra is a flat metal piece of varying sizes with an inscribed pattern of geometrical designs and writings in Tamil and Sanskrit, and associated with different deities, embodying the bija mantra and moola mantra of the deity in question. The metals that are most commonly used in making yantra include silver, gold, copper and pañcalo¯kam (an alloy of five metals). Yantra are important in temple kumpa¯pis.e¯ kam ceremonies as they are installed beneath statues of temple deities, whose power is said to derive from them. 30 The supply of such items as oil, wicks, match boxes, joss-sticks, ca¯mpira¯n.i, devotional song books, etc.—required for worship is placed in storage spaces often built into the altars. These compartments carry all ‘the religious and devotional stuff’ that is required for worship. 31 Menstruating women however are prohibited from approaching the altar and handling any religious object located therein. At these times, male members of the household or other women temporarily assume charge. Although such a custom is still adhered to in many Singaporean Hindu homes, I also encountered individuals (male and female) who not only objected to this practice as being discriminatory but told me that they themselves neither held these beliefs nor practiced them. 32 In some Hindu families, the schedule of worshipping deities 5–6 times a day, observed in Hindu temples is emulated. This effort, however, is only possible in a minority of cases where there is manpower, resources and most crucially time available for this routine. Other Hindus I spoke to were critical of this desire

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to treat the home temple like a ‘real temple’; for this cluster there were obvious differences between the two, a distinction that should be reflected in the ritual behavior in these two sites. 33 One Brahmin priest I spoke to lamented and cheekily described the method of prayer adopted by Singaporean Hindus at home as ‘punch card prayers’: ‘fold hands, wave lamp, light agarbati, say please protect me, that’s it.’ He was referring to the practice of ‘short cut’ prayers adopted by Hindus for practical reasons.

4

Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity


Disentangling ‘Material’ from ‘Deity’ from ‘Commodity’

Preamble This chapter documents visual representations of Hindu divinity that are available to devotees in Singapore and seeks to establish their source as well as the channels through which they travel before being accessible as commodities to Hindus in the Diaspora. A primary focus is on itemising the varied material forms through which these images are concretised and to capture regnant debates and practices about the suitability of some forms over others for the purpose of home worship. One such discussion relates to the comparative value of statues over framed prints and sees the community of devotees and religious specialists divided. A related query is grounded in modes through which deities are conceptualised, i.e., ‘expert’ or ‘lay’ renditions of Hindu images—an issue that assumes specific significance in Singaporean Hindu domains given the centrality non-Sanskritic deities at an everyday life level in the persistence of the ritual complex of folk Hindu religiosity. Conceptualisations, typically of non-Sanskritic, folk deities, are initiated by non-Brahmin devotees and have produced original physical interpretations for consumption by the Hindu market. The focus on producers, distributors and retailers enables me to demonstrate how notions of ‘commodity,’ ‘deity’ and ‘material’ are simultaneously implicated and intermingled, often in the same physical object—in this case, visual images of divinity and to attempt to disentangle them for analytical clarification, even if such unscrambling is futile in practice. Given the emphasis here on how objects are used and related to in everyday Hindu religiosity, I attend to the multitude of ways in which these material forms of divinity are consumed by devotees within the home, as well as the attitudes and mindset with which retailers and traders relate to commodities that they know will eventually embody ritual connotations. This focus facilitates reflections about how notions of ‘visuality,’ ‘materiality’ and ‘ritual practice’ intersect and interact, with a view to articulating the varied meanings embodied in material representations of divinity, as they rest on shelves of shops and then on prayer altars.

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Visualising Divinity: Statues, Paintings and Photographs Religious imagery and symbolism are profoundly important for sustaining theistic and devotional Hinduism in Hindu homes and temples. The visualisation of deities is essential for individual expression of devotion and functions primarily to concentrate devotees’ attention on divinity. The visual representation of a deity is known by a variety of Sanskrit terms,1 prime amongst them, murti. This has been translated variously as ‘form, likeness, image of a deity’ (Fuller 1992) or ‘the embodied god’ (Klostermaier 1989) and its presence deemed to be central (although not mandatory) in the act of puja, acting as a focal point, concentrating the attention of the devotee on the abstract formless universal Brahman. It is important to recognise that the painted and sculpted images of Hindu gods and goddesses (in multifarious forms) are perceived to genuinely embody divinity. What Webb Keane (2007: 21–23) calls ‘materiality’ of religion does not pose a dilemma within the logic of theistic Hinduism; neither is such objectification devalued or reviled. As such, representations of the abstract, formless Brahman in a variety of material forms, is neither prohibited nor problematic. The granting of concrete form to divinity renders this accessible to devotees as a material presence in the human world within the logic of an immanent mode of coherence.2 Visual images of Hindu divinity are thus woven effortlessly into the fabric of everyday, devotional Hinduism and they (literally) sit comfortably in a variety of physical sites in the human world, including within the domestic domain. The very imagination and construction of a deity (including the physical manifestations, size, dimension, colour as well as the materials to be used) are governed by a detailed body of knowledge, principles and procedure, carried in a body of texts, known as the Silpa Sastra, mastered by a category of experts—the silpi or sthapati, who translate these conceptualisations into practice. This adherence to a codified grammar applies strictly to the production of Sanskritic deities, whose images are carefully produced according to principles meticulously detailed in these texts. Non-Sanskritic, folk deities, on the other hand, are not bound by any such received codes and their visualisation has routinely seen a free expression of devotees’ imagination. Although interestingly and expectedly, there are beginnings of codification3 in the sphere of folk Hindu religiosity as well. The retail market in Singapore is flooded with an astonishing array of visual images of Hindu divinity, in the form of painted and sculpted statues ~calo¤ kam), paintings, pictures, (in stone, clay, brass, marble, bronze, pan chromolithographs and photographs as well as other symbols associated with them. Iconic and non-iconic representations of Sanskritic deities and folk variants are accessible to Hindus in the Diaspora essentially as massproduced commodities and also as custom-made, personalised items. These are imported into Singapore (both through formal and informal mechanisms), or ordered, mainly from different parts of Tamil Nadu in


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 111 South India. Although devotees remain attached to the idea of India as the core site for securing all things ‘Hindu,’ in reality, specific items used in worship are sourced from several other locales. It is thus notable that parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and, most recently China, have emerged as important players in these trading, marketing and distribution networks of items used in Hindu worship, including visual images4 of deities. In addition to pictorial and iconic depictions, shelves in retail stores are further lined with religious insignia that are connected to specific deities, such as yantras,5 aruva¯l. (knife), cattai (whip made of rope), thirusulam (trident), tan.t.am (staff), rudraksha ma¯lai and cankili (metal chains). These find their way to domestic prayer altars, together with iconic images of deities, and are treated as objects of worship as well. Interestingly, Hindu symbolism and imagery are now also embossed and imprinted on a variety of everyday secular objects such as wallets, lockets, pendants, key chains, tshirts, notebooks, bags, pens, hand-phone covers, lunch-boxes, car decals, stickers, etc. which are not necessarily rendered ‘sacred’ because of these divine associations. In fact the items in this category remain functional and are valued perhaps for their decorative and aesthetic value rather than as ritual objects central in worship. The representational field of Hindu deities in the local market reveals two conceptualisations: one, a tradition of expertise (grounded in Indian authoritative sources) applied to Sanskritic deities, and the other, in amateur foundations demonstrating the creativity, imagination and artistry of lay devotees, relevant for folk deities. The end-products of both efforts are marketed in local retail stores. A marked difference between expert and lay modes of conceiving deities¤ lies in the very material used in their construction: ~calokam are used in the former rather than cement, granite, bronze or pan clay or brick as is the case for the latter.6 In addition, deities are refined and assume more symmetrical and measured proportions in the hands of trained craftsmen, thereby departing from a lay style that produces comparatively rough, irregular, bumpy and uneven figurines. In professional hands, everything related to Sanskritic deities—the design, fabric, appearance, posture and adornment—is dictated by a codified, formalised “grammar” for materializing divinity. In contrast, no pre-articulated formula exist for imagining non-Sanskritic deities such as Muni¯ svaran, Karuppanswamy, It.umpan, Aiyyanar, Ma¯riyamman and Periyachee Amman, rendering every image unique. A good illustration is offered in visual images of the folk deity Muni¯ svaran, who in lay conceptions appears stout, muscular and human-like, whereas in expert renditions, approximates more closely the shapely, comely and feminised (some note even effeminate) figure of a Vedic deity. The very absence of standardised, codified blueprint for the deity’s representation facilitates tremendous innovation and creativity on the part of his Singaporean devotees, who have conjured up his images through their personal encounters with him in dreams, visions, sightings,


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Plate 16 Different size statues of the Laughing Buddha, together with pictures of Lord Subramaniam and the Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganesh at a shop in Mylapore, Chennai.

meditative reflections and artistic endeavours, flexing both their artistic and spiritual muscles. Devotees’ conceptualisations culminate in artistic and spiritual creations, imaginings of Muni¯ svaran, which are translated into drawings, paintings or statues. Nowadays, local retail shops accept orders for any kind of Muni¯ svaran statue—sitting, standing, fierce or calm, with weapons or without, small or life-size, whether in granite, bronze or ~calo¤ kam, the prevailing sentiment being that ‘the customer is king.’ My pan data from fieldwork in Singapore and Malaysia suggest that these individual conceptions of the deity have become legitimate amongst devotees, not to mention also preferred, and are even privileged. An analysis of their ‘work’ reveals the presence of creative, imaginative energies amongst forms of Hindu consciousness in the Diaspora.

Points of Origin: Where Do These Items Come From? The history of Indian and Hindu arrival to the Malayan Peninsula can be dated to the early decades of the nineteenth century and the local Indian community can claim to have been on the island of Singapore since the earliest days of its establishment as a trading post. A large number of Hindu


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 113 families I interviewed in the course of my research define themselves as fifth and sixth generation Singaporeans, and can name ancestors who had arrived here in the 1890s and who still maintain kinship and other links in India. With families that have a shorter history in Singapore, and in the case of more recent arrivals to the island, these links may not be surprising. But I learnt that even after being in Singapore for the last 100 years or so, these families had maintained their Indian connection in some form or another. Much of this, no doubt, had to do with the close proximity of Malaya to South India and the greater possibility of moving back and forth these regions.7 Over the decades, some of these contacts had been sustained through familial, kinship, commercial and business ties, while others had been kept alive through allegiance to the ancestral village, the household deity located in the family temple within the village or town. I know of scores of Singaporeans, who even today, support their family temples (located in Tamil Nadu villages), financially and in other ways and make regular trips to be present at important ritual ceremonies therein. The notice of these long-standing links with India assumes specific significance in the present discussion about where images of Hindu divinity that are available in the local market come from. A mapping of the physical spaces from which statues and photographs are obtained reveals India to be a dominant player in this but not the sole site from which ‘prayer things’ are secured. This is true both for retailers and devotees alike. My conversations with both these groups confirmed the strong preference for sourcing visual images of Hindu divinity from India and not from such places as Bali, Thailand or China. India is seen to be the ‘natural and logical’ place from which statues of Hindu gods and goddesses (in fact all items used in Hindu worship) should be secured. Hindus I spoke to expressed a strong preference for turning to India. Some explained this leaning in terms of superior quality and workmanship, others noted expertise, skills and cultural knowledge about Hinduism, some mentioned cost as a factor while many others did not feel the need to explain this partiality and stated matter-of-factly ‘India and Hinduism go together right, what is there to explain why I prefer India?’ One concern in this research has been to chart the channels and networks through which ‘prayer items’ are obtained by Hindus in the Diaspora. My survey of the field points to the presence of entrepreneurs (some based in Singapore and others in India) who trade in these objects importing them into Singapore. However, many Hindus bypass these routes and secure the items they need on their own. Many of the families I spoke to had picked up statues, pictures, yantras, oil lamps, bells, silver accessories for puja, etc. from Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Trichy or Swamimalai, when they had travelled there to attend a family wedding or visited family, for tourism or when on temple tours. They displayed familiarity not only with particular spaces which were renowned for specific items but could also name retail stores in Mylapore or Madurai where they had purchased statues


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for example. Devotees seemed quite familiar with places in India and their expertise, reputation and reliability for manufacturing particular items. For example, many could easily rattle off the following information about places that are renowned for different types of statues—Mahabalipuram, for stone, Mysore, for teakwood, rosewood and sandalwood, Muradabad, ~calo¤ kam statues. Additionally, Hindus for brass and Swamimalai for pan could also name specific shops or streets say ‘Giri Trading Agency’ in Kovil Street, Mylapore or ‘S.N. Shankar Puja Items and General Stores’ in Rajaji Nagar, Bangalore, where they had bought a statue or a brass oil lamp. Important sacred sites such as ‘Meenakshi Amman Temple’ in Madurai and the ‘Kapaleeshwar Temple’ in Mylapore and ‘Arulmigu Swaminatha Swami Temple’ in Swamimalai are popular for securing puja items. Not only are these temple complexes bordered by rows upon rows of stores that deal with puja accessories, but numerous similar stalls are found within the temples themselves. As I talked to my Singapore-based respondents about their prayer altars, I heard stories about how special an Amman statue or a Murugan yantra that had been obtained from these sacred sites was, and thus rendered especially efficacious through this association. India remains central in the Hindu imagination and consciousness as the most legitimate and preferred site for all things Hindu. This sentiment, expressed firmly by devotees, is something that is acted upon by entrepreneurs for the fundamental reason that it makes good business sense to stock and market ‘prayer items’ from India. Not surprisingly, merchants also turn to the same sites as lay devotees for securing statues and photographs, with the important exception that they go directly to wholesalers, distributors and even to the manufacturers themselves (including sometimes the individual sculptor located in a particular village), rather than purchase it from retail outlets in large Indian cities. Many Singapore-based businesses have also set up offices in Chennai, Bangalore or Trichy and are dependent on local knowledge and contacts for running a successful business. These local organisations perform many important functions, not least amongst them the task of sourcing of good quality, unique designs for puja items and at competitive prices. With respect to visual representations of deities, retailers are further mindful that the ‘look should be right’ and efforts are made to ensure this. Often experts are consulted and their approval sought before the green light for production is given to manufacturers; at other times, retailers, on their travels to different parts of India, personally source images that connote beauty, grace and are auspicious-looking. Increasingly, the Internet has emerged as an additional tool for locating existing prints which are then tracked down by individuals appointed for this task. Mr Jayan, a LI trader uses the last of these methods quite successfully: So, I will look at the Internet, I will pick a picture if I’m happy with the picture, I will print that out. Then I’ll ask the kuruvi to come and

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I’ll ask him to go and search this for me. So that fellow will come one month once, then he’ll call me and say “Anna, I’ve already found the picture. Do you want it or not?” I ask, “Is it exactly the same?” if he say yes, it is exactly the same then I’ll say bring it over. I’ll scrutinise a bit. If it is the same, okay, he brings it over. If I’m happy with it okay, I’ll order. That is one way of doing it. With regard to statues, local retailers establish contact with a pool of sculptors in different parts of Tamil Nadu, for example in Mahabalipuram. Mr Jayan related the story of a photograph that became the basis for constructing a statue: I will send an email to certain agents who will get in touch with this Mahabalipuram fellow. So that fellow sees my¤photograph . . . see ~calokam that is created that Shivan statue down there? That is pan from a photograph. So I will try to get this agent to take a picture of the mould, how they start to do it. So all these photos are important . . . because say what you like, people like to see pictures more than your words. So show them more pictures. That is so much for how I get the statues. Like other retailers in the local market, Mr Jayan is willing to ‘create what the customer wants’ as many customers do walk in with their own drawings and designs of a statue they would like to see constructed. Bearing in mind what customers want is an important consideration in this trade. Mr Karim, a Muslim businessman who manages ‘Tushiv’ a shop that sells ‘religious art’ in Serangoon Road is aware that when customers look at a sculpture, they want a ‘beautiful, calm, serene and smiling face.’ He tries to capture this expression in his sculptures but also argues that it is impossible to satisfy all parties as expectations differ about what Jesus or Mary actually look like. So long as the image has been verified and vetted by some expert, he goes ahead with the design: Of course, there are comments always. Like for example, this sculpture of Jesus. They will say this is not Jesus, this is not Mary. Different people have their own ideas. But then again, who knows whether this is the actual face or not? These are all the imaginations of people, of artists. So we tell these people that we got the image from others. Like this Jesus, Novena Church gave the image to us. So if they are wrong, we are wrong. So whatever sculptures we do, we get the actual photograph from the temple, from the priest. So like his Tirupathi Balaji, we got it from there. Tirupathi itself. So when we make it, we send one there for them to approve. My boss went to Tirupathi to give the finished piece to the priest and the committee there. And they said it was good. They accepted it. Like Sai Baba also. We sent it to Bangalore, on

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Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity his Seventy-ninth or eightieth birthday I think, and he approved of it. There’s one in his house, there’s one in his museum. So all these, we get the approval from the actual temple.


Only after approval and verification of the design is the artist instructed to make a mould for the sculpture. Even then the process is not completed without a second round of approval, underscoring the need to get the design ‘right’: Yes. And after the sculpture is done, we’ll still get the approval from the priest. Yes, once again we’ll send it for a second approval, this time from the priest. And only if he says okay, nothing is wrong, go ahead, and then we’ll start processing it. If not, we’ll do it all over again. Thus the evidence presented indicates that by and large, visual images of Hindu deities continue to be secured from different parts of India, and other spaces are not deemed to be plausible alternatives. It was striking that this attitude was articulated especially in my conversations with retailers about the recent popularity of ‘Made in China’ statues of Hindu gods and goddesses. Mr Anwar, a Muslim trader who has inherited a picture framing business from his father, notes that he does not carry items manufactured in China or Thailand because customers prefer objects from India. He further alludes to the embedded, ‘authentic,’ cultural knowledge required to produce images that are able to capture notions of ‘auspicious beauty’ that would be acceptable to local Indians (read Hindus).8 It is impossible to miss the explicit ‘racializing’ of the discourse in the idea that phenotypical features of different ethnic groups are transposed on divinities as well: So far, I have no such items in my shop. No. Customers generally would want paintings and pictures of Hindu deities or Indian art pieces from India. We once brought in paintings from Thailand but there were not so popular. They didn’t have that auspicious beauty that we see with the normal paintings. Anyway, these paintings are created more as decorative items rather than to be used for worship. The artists in Thailand don’t know much about how to draw the deities. Previously, some Indonesians were employed to do copper tooling and the faces of the statues they sculpted would not look Indian. The faces will have very Chinese features. The nose will not be sharp and the cheeks and eyes will look very different. Because of that, these kinds of pictures and sculptures were never very popular. But the artists are Malays, not Indians, so they sculpt and paint the works according to their cultural knowledge, not ours. Because the people in Singapore are ‘pure’ Indians, they find it difficult to accept these works from Thailand. They are used to the paintings from India. Even paintings of Buddha

Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 117 vary depending on the artist. Indian, Chinese and Thai artists all draw Buddha differently.


This view was echoed by numerous others who justified not importing China-made statues. Mr Mani, the owner of an established business in prayer items, explains this decision both through his reading of these statues as lacking authenticity9 and legitimacy as well as by customers’ preference for Indian made statues: But we don’t bring in statues of Hindu deities that are made in China. I’ve seen some of these statues and the work is not of as good a quality as statues that are made in India. India-made statues are of a finer quality and most importantly, the features of the deity’s face are more pronounced and look nicer. That is the most important thing customers look for when they choose a statue to buy. It must look beautiful. The workmanship must be good; the features of the face must be fine and detailed. And the deity must have a benign smile. This is what a lot of customers ask for. But these China-made statues, I don’t think they have reached that level of workmanship. Our Hindu deities are not well sculpted by Chinese craftsmen. Maybe because they don’t know what they are sculpting, unlike the sculptors in India. So I don’t carry such statues in my shop. And more importantly, our customers prefer statues made in India. So even if we carried such statues, I don’t think they will sell well. In this context, the ‘3 for $10’ shops which carry these statues and which have sprouted all over the island, particularly in areas frequented by tourists including LI, came in for a fair bit of criticism from all the traders I conversed with. Another businessman, Mr Thiru who specialises in the sale of gold-plated statues has a different set of reasons for avoiding Chinese statues, and does not seem to be concerned by their rising popularity. He says: Yes, they are making them, copying from us. But it is not as good. I’ve seen such statues, two of the shops along this row are selling them— those ‘3 for $10’ shops. When they started their shops, a lot of people thought we were finished. A lot of the other shop owners who were selling statues were worried, and came to us to ask us what to do. They were very worried because of the cheap prices of China-made statues. But I was not too worried. Their shops are not the same as ours. And also, the statues that we have are much more finely detailed. The eyes, the way the statue looks, the workmanship is far superior. Mr Thiru’s description of these items as ‘copies’ is notable; he also took issue with the way that specific deities were represented in terms of their

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physical features and demeanour, arguing that the statues made by Chinese artists failed to capture the postures and iconographic details that would be acceptable to Hindus because of their unfamiliarity with ‘our culture and traditions’: They also have Lakshmi and Vinayagar statues, true, but they are not so detailed. You can notice that when you see the statues. I heard they were selling a statue of Vinayagar with a large sword and staring fiercely. Have you ever seen Vinayagar in such a pose? They don’t know what they are doing, that is why they come up with such designs. Someone would have given him a picture and they would just blindly make the statue. There is no attention to detail and accuracy and they don’t know our culture and traditions. There are some statues of Lakshmi looking angry. What is that? Lakshmi has to look peaceful and smiling, only then will She come to your house. There are many such faults in their designs, so no matter how low their prices are, their statues won’t sell so well. In the end, people will still come to us and ask us to choose a nice piece for them. So many Chinese and Indian people, traders, have come to show us pieces made in China. Sometimes we do buy a few pieces from them because we examine them and think that they will sell. But mostly, we turn them down because we don’t think the standard of their work is as high as that of pieces that come from India. It’s a waste buying them. You see, those statues, those are from China. Their detail and work is not so good. But the issue for Mr Thiru is not just lack of attention to detail and poor quality due to the fact of mass production. His narrative is embedded in the assumption that the capacity to even conceptualise visual depictions of Hindu divinity, using appropriate language and grammar, is culturally unavailable to artisans in China. Thus for him the end-products lack authenticity and are not legitimate representations of Hindu divinity. Reiterating the need for cultural skills and knowledge as the basis for producing genuine visual religious imagery, Mr Thiru admitted that the Chinese factories ‘can do some pieces very well,’ citing ‘their Laughing Buddha and Kuan Yin statues’ as examples. But he added: But if you ask them to carve out a Vinayagar statue, their work is hardly up to mark as compared to Indian craftsmen. The trunk of the Vinayagar would end up looking like a scorpion’s tail rather than a graceful trunk. Their Vinayagars won’t have a large tummy either, He’d look very slim. The poor quality and workmanship of Hindu statues manufactured in China also surfaced in conversations with Mr Raja. He acknowledges that in about 2004, he did experiment with some of these items, by displaying



them in his Singapore shop. However, Mr Raja is now sceptical about the viability of importing these items in view of the various complaints he has received from customers about poor workmanship: But, trust me, the quality is not good. World factory, so they massproduce. If you don’t want to pay for quality, you want cheap, then it’s okay. They do frames, you know, the gold border frames, with a picture of a deity framed in, and a clock mechanism fixed inside. It is all gimmicky. But it will not last. After three, four months, people will come and say to you “What, it is not working anymore. Why?” What can we say? What do we do? You pay peanuts, you get peanuts. Sometimes they get offended. They ask how come, after six months of buying it, it stops working. Nonetheless, my survey reveals that statues of Hindu deities and decorative items with Hindu religious imagery (in fountains, clocks, etc) that are made in China, are readily available at highly competitive prices in the local market. However, I also encountered a handful of stores that offer more exclusive and superior quality items made in China. Retailers also observe that these items, which often display/exhibit Hindu images in unconventional poses and postures (such as baby Ganesha in bath-tub

Plate 17 Made in China statues of Hindu deities on sale at the ‘Deepavali Festival Village’ in Singapore. In the foreground, note the statue of Ganesh in a tub of water.


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or sleeping in a cradle), are popular, particularly amongst tourists, both Indian and non-Indian. Yet they observe that these items are approached as decorative items rather than as objects of/for worship, including by Hindus themselves. I did observe ‘Made in China’ statues and religious art being displayed in ‘prayer item’ shops in the Mylapore district of Chennai in 2004 and 2006. But these were being marketed as ‘fancy items’ which is a peculiarly Indian description for a range of products that are promoted for their novelty factor—for being unique and out of the ordinary. It has also been reported that these items were popular in Delhi and Mumbai during Deepavali season and described as a fashion trend. Furthermore, retailers note that when these items first appeared on the market, they were indeed popular but that in their assessment consumer interest has waned and that the moment has now passed. Apart from China, the Malaysian connection is notable, for example, in securing frames for religious photographs and prints which are sold in a retail store in Singapore’s LI. Mr Anwar explains that Malaysia is important as a supplier of cheap, superior quality raw materials, like wood, and while the frames are physically secured from Johore Bahru, the factories which manufacture them rely on foreign investment from Europe and Australia: Our frames mostly come from Malaysia. About 50 per cent of our frames come from there, and mostly from Johore Bahru. They also come from Spain, Italy, Belgium and Australia. A lot of these factories are in Malaysia. But there are all foreign-owned; they are not Malaysian factories. These Italian and Belgium businesses set up factories in Malaysia and manufacture the frames there. You can get very good quality of wood in Malaysia so a lot of foreigners open up factories there. It is perhaps not surprising that retailers who are physically located in Singapore are sought after by Malaysian and Singaporean suppliers, and can potentially choose a range of options in securing contacts and placing orders. According to Mr Anwar: Some of the suppliers come here from Malaysia. They come here to take orders. Other than that, there are about 7 to 8 suppliers here in Singapore. We do buy from these local suppliers and also import directly from Malaysia. They come searching for us, we don’t have to go and look for them. They come directly to the shop, knowing that we are in the frame business. This is a limited trade and simply by looking through the Yellow Pages, they can find out how many frame dealers there are in Singapore and where they are located. These suppliers then come to our shops and ask us if we are interested in purchasing materials from them and take our orders.



However, it is further striking that the trade in these items also sees a great deal of movement of business personnel between Singapore, India and Malaysia. For example, practically every Singapore-based retailer I spoke to has by now established contacts and ties with wholesalers and suppliers based in different Indian cities. All the retailers I spoke to emphasised the importance of personally sourcing materials, products and expertise from different places in India, something that involves a great deal of effort, resourcefulness and energy. Mr Rishi of ‘Celebration of Arts’ explains: You have to travel around. I am leaving the day after tomorrow, you easily will hit 3,000, 4,000 kilometres in one trip. You go South, then we go North, travel up to Rajasthan. Then you got to go to the East. All these places you got to cover. There is no such thing as after fifteen years, you get to stay here and then you get people to do the work for you. It will never happen. You have to go there, still source for new products. You got to talk to them, refine what you want. If you just wait for them to send to you then you are in for big trouble. Because once these things are here you can’t do much. You can’t send it back, it is not cost effective. But the travels do not take place in a vacuum. This local business has a shop in Chennai as well as buying agents and partners, not to mention a manufacturing facility in Mysore. Apart from this, Mr Rishi also buys directly from the market, together with the collaborative effort of other buyers to enable wholesale purchasing. He highlights that successful business rests on establishing rapport and sound relationships over time: All this has been established through the years, this relationship. The guy, the first guy they met and bought from 14 years ago, he is still with us. So you have to establish the relationship. The relationship has grown so strong that we can call them and say send us 3, 4 containers, without payment. But they will do it. This is trust, you need that. Entrepreneurs like Mr Thiru make regular trips to Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Swamimalai, Kumbakonam, Trichy, Madurai, Delhi and Agra to source raw materials and experts, to place orders for statues, to seek interesting visual drawings of gods and goddesses and to survey the market for the latest items being transacted. Here is Mr Anwar again, explaining the source of religious artwork and statues in his shop: We have to go to India and order those. We need to order them and arrange for them to be delivered here. We go personally to India to order them. Generally, you can get everything from Madras, Chennai. The art shops there carry these paintings and artworks. There also

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Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity have frame and glass shops like this in Madras. We order some paintings from them too. We try to go to India once a year and visit their wholesalers.


On the basis of this survey, it is obvious that most of the ‘prayer items’ that are used in Hindu worship within the home, are secured from outside of Singapore, which is perceived to have neither the resources nor the expertise to deliver on this front, not to mention the high labour cost and poor quality. Mr Thiru expresses the sentiment that I heard repeatedly: No, we don’t have anything from Singapore. Everything comes from abroad. Singapore just doesn’t have the manufacturing plants or moulding factories that these items need to be produced. When I needed to make that ring, I had to trawl the island to find someone to do it. It was quite a simple design and yet it was so difficult to find someone to do it. Yes, we eventually would have found someone, but they would charge $50 for one ring. Just imagine. It would cost over $2000 for 40 rings! That’s why we don’t get anything from Singapore. There neither is the skill or technology needed to produce these items at competitive prices and quality. There are some exceptions to this general trend, as is evident through my discussion of items needed for sustaining ‘festival Hinduism, especially ¤ Tai pucam and visual depictions of folk Hindu deities. The local context also assumes significance as a site for assembling and readying objects for sale and adding the finishing touches to items before they are made available to consumers. A good example in the finishing of framed pictures demonstrates how capital, labour and site of production are linked across transnational boundaries. The printed image is brought from India, the frame is manufactured in Malaysia (through, say, Belgian investment) but the actual framing, i.e., the inserting of the glass and wooden frames and supports is undertaken by local or foreign labour in a workshop in Singapore. In addition to statues and prints of deities that have been produced on a mass-scale, the desire for custom-made statues amongst Singaporean Hindus is strong as with prayer altars. It is not uncommon for customers to walk in to shops with photographs or drawings they have sourced from the Internet or a calendar or an image they have drawn and ask for a statue to be reproduced in this likeness. Such requirements are accompanied with further requests for statues of specific dimensions, in set postures (seated, standing) and the desired material for their construction. Most in the business community are willing to accept these orders, with the caveat that the cost of producing unique designs is expectedly high.



Object, Commodity and Deity: Intermingled Entities The question of what constitutes the conceptual parameters of a commodity is central to this project, given my concern with detailing the life history of ritual objects, many of which are increasingly mass-produced. How do retailers and consumers approach statues and pictures of deities which are priced, sold and bought in a marketplace? This is an intriguing question given the complex and nuanced ways in which materialisation and objectification of divinity are understood within the logic of theistic Hinduism. The ethnographic data I present in the remainder of this chapter strongly reiterate the notion that physicality, sacredness and monetary value are all concurrently read into a material object such as a visual depiction of divinity. Accounts and interpretations from retailers who deal with this category of objects are particularly illuminating. Mr Jayan, describes the Civalin.kam that sits in his shop in these terms: I call him a¯tta¯. He is more than 250 years old. Perhaps the oldest Civalin.kam in Singapore is here. It is this. When you say he is a¯tta¯, you have to take care of him. He is not a decorative product at all. It is not a thing. It is a formless form, a form that is formless. It is something that I cannot explain. In this instance, the entrepreneur is attempting to demarcate the boundaries of materiality, and spirituality of the Civalin.kam, while asserting that it is not a ‘decorative product.’ Other retailers who trade in these items also operate with the idea that objects may be used either for worship or for decoration. What is the status of the spaces where these items are traded? Are they perceived as commercial spaces or are they deemed to themselves have been transformed because of their association with religious objects? Here is an account from Mr Jayan who firmly believes that his shop is spiritually charged because of the presence of a Civalin.kam seated there: The people who accidentally, or by destiny, who step into the shop, happen to purchase something, attracted to the shop, they come back. They have this kind of reward. They are so happy and blessed. Some of them come into the shop, stand there for hours, not purchasing anything. I, as a businessman, I don’t like it. But on the other side of it, I can see that they feel the energy. Another retailer, Mr Thiru, relates how customers respond to the energies they perceive in his ‘shop’: Everybody says that when they come into our shop, as soon as they walk in, they get a feeling. The devotional songs are played all day.

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What we sell here, what we do, is not for business or for the aim of making large profits. People, when they walk in, they have tears in their eyes. They get a feeling of peacefulness when they enter. They will ask if they could just stand here for a while. People tell me that the peace they get from being in this place was so profound. My discussion with Mr Karim conveys both the complexity of the issue as well as the straightforward resolution that he has adopted as a business practice. Here is his response to the question of whether he sees his Muslim identity to be problematic in handling and trading Hindu and Christian religious art: Why should there be? After all, I’m only selling art pieces here. Yes, some of the Muslim people have talked to me, have told me that what I’m doing is wrong. But I say look, I am not doing anything to them, I’m not praying to them. I’m just selling them, I’m working here. I’m earning an honest living. I’ll tell them, if you give me the same salary, I’ll work for you. People, you see, humans are like that. They are clever to criticise. But if you ask them for the solution, they won’t have anything to say. So forget it. One ear in, one ear out. This view is reiterated by another businessman, Mr Anwar, whose father founded a long-standing business that deals primarily with framing of pictures, including those of Hindu, Christian and Buddhist divinity.10 Despite dealing with religious imagery from a range of different religious traditions, Mr Anwar explained the predominance of Hindu imagery given the location of the business in an ‘Indian’ area: No, it’s not just Hindu pictures. We have Christian paintings and Arabic writings as well. Yes, there are a lot of pictures of Hindu deities but that’s only because Hindus are the ones who mostly use pictures and statues for worship. Christians do use them a little and Muslims only put up pictures as decorative items. Because Hindus use pictures for worship and because this is an area where a lot of Indians come, we display a lot of those pictures of Hindu deities. They are the ones that will sell well. Mr Anwar noted that although the shop deals primarily with ‘Indian prayer things,’ this was not a problem for him given that Muslims relate to pictures only as ‘decorative items.’ He also made the further point that he did not treat the items in his shop in any special way because they may be considered by customers to be religious objects. For him, objects are just that, nothing more and his decision to trade in them is driven by purely pragmatic and instrumental reasons:


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 125 No there is no such thing; we consider these pictures just as objects. We do not say that we can only sell pictures of this deity but not that deity. We sell what our customers want. There is no such regard for these pictures as anything more. We treat them as any other item we sell. If we were located in Chinatown, we would be selling Chinese products and statues of Chinese gods. In that way, because this is an Indian area, even when we sell paintings, we sell Indian types of paintings only. We had introduced modern art pieces and some Chinese calligraphy pieces previously but nobody wanted to buy them. When tourists come to Little India, they generally want to buy Indian items and not other things. When they come to this place, they look for Indian art. So what meanings do these items carry for retailers who store them on their shelves for sale as commodities and for devotees who browse the shelves as potential buyers? It is evident that for the most part, for retailers a ‘prayer thing’ has been typically approached in terms of its utility, functionality, use value and exchange value. It carries a monetary value, a price tag, which may or may not be negotiable and circulates in the marketplace as any other commodity to be bought and sold. There is a clear awareness that these are first and foremost commodities and thus treated as such. Yet, these players are also cognizant of the fact that although ‘prayer items’ exist as commodities and goods and are by-products of cycles of production and distribution in a capitalist marketplace, they are further consumed and appropriated as ritual objects by devotees in their religious lives. It would be fair to say that all retailers, regardless of their personal religious identity, are aware that they are dealing with a different, unique category of commodities and treat them with due respect. Retailers and wholesalers I spoke to admitted that even though for them these are ultimately just ‘things’ to be transacted, they do potentially embody a non-monetary value, often expressed by devotees as spiritual power and efficacy—a fact they felt could not be overlooked even when by those who approach them merely as objects. Mr Ramesh, a Hindu trader whose family runs a business which is a major player on the local scene in terms of Indian handicrafts, acknowledges that ‘prayer items’ must be approached with reverence and that it makes good business to do so: Yes, we try to do our best to treat them with respect. I always tell my workers to be careful, that these items are for religious purposes. You see, most of the religious items, they are not placed on the floor. We put it up. See, we have to give it the respect. Because if a person comes, and he sees it on the floor, he will say “What are you doing? This is for praying, why are you keeping it like this, down here?” So you have to, regardless of whether you believe it or not. You have to give it that respect. Or else don’t do the business. Because the customer won’t buy

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it from you also, if you don’t give it the respect. So you have to give it . . . it can’t be treated like a furniture. I always tell my boys, when you use the cloth, pieces of rags or whatever to clean the statues, don’t use the one you were using for the floor. Use a different piece of cloth to clean the statues. So yes, special treatment must be given. Have to have to, everybody does it. Traders like Mr Jayan are quite aware that even though objects used in religious ritual are produced as commodities, once they enter the sphere of worship they acquire specific sets of meanings that make sense within the given theology, liturgy and worldview of a particular religious tradition. Both as a businessman and a Hindu, he recognises the value of knowing about Hinduism: You need to know about Hinduism to do business. So certain things are not supposed to be on the floor, means they are not supposed to be placed on the floor—simple as that. You do not put Sivan’s photo on the floor. You do not put Rudraksha on ca¯mi’s paadam. You know that Nataraja has to be on top and Aiyappaan does not sit on the floor—he sits on top of 18 steps. All this you have to follow. First it is wrong and then customers also won’t buy from you. ‘Prayer’ items come to signify symbolism and evoke religious significance within the context of the ritual in question, in fact becoming ‘animated’ through usage but which are accorded due respect even as commodities— when their potential as ‘sacred objects’ is acknowledged and constitutes part of the implicit, background knowledge that traders work with.

Transaction of Religious Objects However, the fact remains that ‘prayer items’ are available for transaction in the marketplace. Most of the traders I interviewed see themselves primarily as businessmen, even if they were motivated into starting this trade for personal, meaningful, spiritual reasons. Of course, many of them reported that customers viewed them as having some expertise of the products and their use in rituals, as well as being knowledgeable about Hinduism in general. But even Hindu owners of these businesses see their chosen occupation first and foremost as a way of making a living and were not uncomfortable with the idea of trading in ‘prayer items.’ They admitted frankly that they were running a business and were naturally concerned about breaking even and making money, but denied that they were driven exclusively by profiteering motives. They did not see a problem with the fact that ‘puja items’ were bought and sold, but qualified that resorting to unethical practices had no place in this line of work. My respondents concurred that trading in religious objects made good business sense in Singapore


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 127 and that importing items from the neighbouring countries resulted in significant economic gains from the difference in currency exchange rates. Not only are they are priced for sale but they are bought, with an element of bargaining and negotiation on the part of customers in an effort to get value for money. What is the nature of transaction when we are examining the trade in religious objects? How is one to make sense of the interaction between retailers and consumers in the marketplace when at one level, it is obvious that these items are changing hands for money? Is this a purely business deal? I am led to ask these questions after spending many hours in shops in LI, observing retailers interacting with customers in an effort to ‘sell’ puja items. The nature of interaction I witnessed often seemed somewhat prolonged and involved animated discussions about the object to be purchased, with questions, answers and counter-questions moving in both directions. Of course there were as many moments when customers walked in knowing exactly what they wanted and the entire deal was achieved in minutes. But on numerous other occasions, it was impossible to miss that the business transaction was accompanied by other kinds of exchanges as well. Many of the retailers I have interviewed and observed in Singapore’s LI district are perceived by their customers to embody religious and spiritual knowledge about the items they sell. I have confirmed this both through independent conversations with lay Hindus who were quick to name individual, local retailers from whom they would readily purchase prayer items, given their expertise and because they ‘knew deeply’ about the things they sold, as well as from my observations during fieldwork, where I was privileged enough to listen in on many conversations during buying and selling, and from my interviews with retailers. The latter shared that they were indeed consulted about the spiritual aspects of items they were selling. This being as true for tourists as for devotees. Mr Anwar, whose shop is patronised by a fair number of tourists, relates his experiences thus: The tourists are mostly Europeans, and we have some Japanese who visit the shop as well. They like buying pictures and statues of Ganesh and Lakshmi. Some of them will ask us for information about the various deities but some of them do have some knowledge about the deities and they themselves can name the deities. I don’t think they buy these pictures for worship, but some do ask the meaning behind each deity. They want to know why people pray to them and what they are known for. Some of them will ask us to explain more about Saraswathi, Lakshmi or Ganesh. We’ll explain that Lakshmi is prayed to because she’s the goddess of wealth and Saraswathi is the goddess of arts and knowledge. Simple things like that. It is interesting that it is during a commercial transaction that information about gods, their functions and powers is being relayed, in this case to

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non-Hindus. It is the salespersons who interface with customers but the flow of information goes both ways. Very often, retailers on the front line pick up basic data about deities and their ritual significance from customers who are devotees as well, and circulate this to other buyers. Mr Karim, who deals with religious art, notes that in dealing with foreigners, he can only offer simple explanations, given his basic knowledge of Hinduism as a Muslim, details he has in fact learned ‘on the job’ from other customers: But I do explain a little, what I know. To tourists especially. Like I know, my own version like, when they ask me who is Krishna. I told them, to me, Krishna is the Romeo. Haha . . . And Kali Ma, she is the destroyer of evil. Simple, simple things I can explain to them. Nonetheless, being in the field for some time also enables Mr Karim to occasionally dispense advise to Hindus as well about sculptures they are buying, but it is a not a role he plays willingly and enthusiastically: For Hindus, they will know what they want when they come to the shop. But I do advise them sometimes. Like the Krishna. Some Indians believe that you shouldn’t have a Krishna who is blowing on the flute—that it will bring bad luck. I don’t know why, but some believe in it. So when people buy, I’ll ask them if they are sure, they must be careful. Because some people think that if He has the flute then it’s like he’s blowing away your luck or life or something like that. Only in these kinds of occasions I’ll advice them. When customers purchase his sculptures for worship, Mr Karim goes a step further, something he sees as part of his ‘service’: When they want to use it for prayers they will tell me. So what I do is, for example, for Ganesh, I’ll bring it to Ceylon Road (temple) and get the priest to bless it. It’s part of the service, delivery. Yes, I will bring it there, get the priest to bless it and bring it to the house. And then my job is finished. We do the fixing for them as well, we’ll hang it up. Of course the customer talks to the priest. I don’t talk at all. I only tell the priest not to touch the sculpture with water. But if they want to put that powder on Ganesh’s forehead, that sandalwood and all, okay. But I’ll tell them, if you want to put it there, it’ll be there forever. In other instances, I have seen salesmen advising customers about the¤rules ~calokam that must be followed when a rudraksha is worn, about how a pan statue is to be worshipped and cared for or why a statue of baby Ganesh in a bathtub is not appropriate ‘for prayer.’ I am prompted towards the conclusion that what I have observed in shops is not entirely a ‘commercial’


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 129 deal. Other interactions are clearly at work as well. Commodities are being exchanged for money but additionally, advice is being sought and given, of both a practical and a religious nature, about what direction a prayer altar should face in a home, what it means to pray with devotion, how statues of deities are to be treated during worship or about which specific rudraksha bead is relevant for a particular problem faced by the devotee/ customer. These exchanges suggest that there are other more subtle and implicit dimensions to the otherwise overt and explicit business transaction, which is inevitably transformed by the former. Another related observation is that I also encountered retailers who declined to sell specific items to customers. On these occasions, individual entrepreneurs seemed to be interrogating potential customers about why they wanted to purchase something and what they intended to do with it. A concrete example comes from a request to buy rudraksha seeds, which for Hindus are seen to carry enormous potency and can be put to a variety of uses—both good and bad. In this particular instance, a retailer refused to sell the beads to a couple because he was convinced that they dabbled in ‘black magic’ and he did not want to support such destructive, negative activities. In another instance, Mr Jayan also declined to sell the rudraksha bead to a person he felt was not fit to own it, at the risk of alienating customers and affecting his business negatively: I have, I have a couple of people who are unhappy about not getting the bead they wanted. A fellow came down here, he was drunk. He wanted to buy a Ganesh Murthi for his friend. He was drunk. He said show me the seed. My salesman said ‘No.’ He said ‘Show me the seed, I’m a customer.’ You’re a customer and all that, that is your own problem. When it comes to rudraskham, you must be a pure person first. Business is one thing. But if you want to touch the seed, you better be a ready. If not you don’t touch the seed. Because there is one more thing about rudraskham, it chooses the owner. A fellow walks past, if the rudraskham feels the owner, he will come in. That is how it works. I found this ‘refusal’ to sell to an ‘inappropriate’ customer quite intriguing. The maxim often heard in the marketplace that, the ‘customer is king’ did not seem to be at work here. In another example, a retailer admitted that he was quite put off by the current trend towards depicting Hindu deities in unconventional and profane postures. He clarifies his position thus: I’ll ask him for his purpose. If it is just for display and all that, to make money, I wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t mind. Because it is not anything wrong. But I definitely wouldn’t tell him, ‘You take this baby, and go and do this and that prayers.’ That is wrong. I mean, if it is decorative, because people sometimes want statues just for decoration in the house and all, like art pieces, it is okay.

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Similarly Mr Jayan argues that he would feel uncomfortable selling a Civalin.kam to someone who was going to display it in his bathroom, signalling that he as the retailer can sometimes be choosy about customers, something that does not make sense within the logic of capitalist relations where the ability to pay for a commodity is a primary feature: I find it not right to sell . . . an example of a white man walking into X shop. He sees this very nice Civalin.kam. He says, ‘Oh, what a piece of art, I want this.’ So the boss asks him, ‘Oh, you really want it? Okay, where do you want to place it?’ ‘Oh, I want to place it near my bathtub.’ Because to him, it is just a form. ‘Oh I see, okay, okay, okay.’ And then you just pack and give it to him. If he were to tell me that I wouldn’t sell it to him. But for the other guy—that is art, he will sell. So that is the difference here. I am quite careful about who is the buyer. While these were not universal views I encountered in the field, they were not isolated instances either. On occasions, customers approach salesmen with orders for specific items such as a ‘Muni¯ svaran stick,’ an aru(i)va¯l., aani paadam, or request a statue of Muni¯ svaran or Karuppanswamy in a specific pose or posture. One retailer, who is highly critical of the current popularity of these named male deities and their attraction for particularly young, teenage boys, tried to counsel them away from a mode of religiosity that is centred solely on participation in such festivals as Tai Pu¯cam and Ti¯ miti. Mr Thiru clarifies that he has nothing against the proper observance of these festivals, which for him are very much a part of Hinduism. What he objects to is the way in which young men use these occasions to ‘show of their possessions.’ In his assessment, the boys need to be counselled and led away from what he sees as the ‘wrong path.’ This is something he strives to when he encounters them as potential customers in his shop, while being aware that he is not acting rationally from the business point of view and stands to lose money: Some of them, you can’t talk to because they are so insistent of buying these things. I talk to some of them, those who look like they may listen. I’ll ask them what they are doing, why they are doing these things. I can talk a little freely with people who I interact with closely, who are almost friends. I’ll tell them that this is unnecessary, tell them not to spoil their lives like this. Some of them will still want to buy sickles and swords, they’ll say that they want to just use these for worship at home. Actually, the only reason why they want all this is to show their possessions off during festivals like Tai pu¯cam. That is their aim, their ambition. Yearly, they must have the biggest, most elaborate ka¯vat. i or ratham at Tai pu¯cam. I will lose their business but I cannot make money from something that is wrong.


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 131 Others in the business community take a less judgmental view (and thus feel less responsibility) about, say the growing popularity of Muni¯ svaran worship amongst young men in Singapore. It is interesting also that these shopkeepers sometimes double up as ‘experts’ of sorts by advising followers on issues such as the type of statue to be ordered for the home, the proper procedure for caring for a statue, and the direction toward which the statue should face in the house. Shopkeepers claim that devotees seek their advice because the many customers who purchase these items are unaware of such details, and may even be largely ‘ignorant’ about Muni¯ svaran himself. Many amongst this cluster, even if they are critical of the brand of religiosity11 the attraction to kaaval deivam has engendered, do not feel compelled to discourage it. It is not that they encourage specific religious practices overtly and directly, but do nonetheless declare that such religious enthusiasm is profitable for their business. Such material has nudged me towards the view that the nature of transaction that involves buying and selling of prayer items is multi-dimensional and multilayered, certainly involving the exchange and circulation of money and goods but also dialogue about spiritual/religious knowledge, a complexity that is teased out and enunciated through the specific slices of data I have presented.

Pricing, Bargaining and Making a Sale Putting a price tag on an object immediately brings to the forefront its properties as a commodity and the fact of its inevitable commercialisation. I was curious to find out if retailers took into account any special consideration in deciding on the price of a ‘prayer items.’ More than any other discussion, the exchanges I had with businessmen on this issue confirm that ‘prayer items’ are treated like any other commodity, as I encountered talk about rental, wages, cost price, profit, etc. Mr Thiru explains how he prices prayer items in his shop, taking into account his profit margin but also being realistic about the price that can actually be secured: We have to include all our expenditure when we price something. Say something costs $5 to produce, we’ll sell it for $10. Half of that will go to expenditure; the remainder will be our profit. $2.50 will be the profit, the other $2.50 will be used for expenditure like rental and wages. But then again, if we say $10, people won’t buy for that amount. They will ask us to see again and tell them; they’ll ask to reduce the price, saying that they are regular customers. They’ll bargain to $8. And we too can’t talk too much and demand that they pay the full price. We’ll just reduce our profit margin and give it to them for $8. In response to my query, Mr Anwar clarified that he uses the classic formula of supply and demand to decide on pricing, before adding that the

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price is further dependent on the kinds of materials used, the finishing of the final products and the workmanship:


We’ll see. If an item moves fast and is very popular we’ll sell it at a slightly lower cost. But if the item is such that only a small number of people would want to buy it, if its customer base is very small, we’ll charge a higher price for it. We’ll only bring in a few pieces, maybe one or two because the demand is low and so we need to charge a higher price to make a profit. Despite these obvious factors that are taken into account when deciding on the cost of an item, the retailers I spoke to nonetheless admitted that pricing any commodity item was difficult. Mr Raja related that shops like his face criticism for overpricing items that are ‘cheaper’ in India. He also notes that he is in the business to make money, even if he is dealing with ‘prayer items’ and so has to be concerned about generating profits. His explanation also conveys succinctly and accurately the different steps and challenges that are entailed in importing things into Singapore: Basically we do, like we buy it for . . . actually, it is very difficult to price it lah. You can’t do like, okay, I buy it for $10 so I’m going to sell it for $20. It all depends on demand and supply. Some people they come and see the items here and say in India it is very cheap. Very cheap, but have you thought of the travelling, the way of bringing in the item? Say, a huge item like that, the cost of bringing that itself will be about $1,000. So you can’t say in India they are selling it for $1000 why are you selling for $2000 plus? The cost of bringing it is going to be expensive. And it is done in one village. From the village it has to come to Chennai. From Chennai it has to be repacked and put in the container. From Chennai it has to come to Singapore. Then from Singapore you got to clear it in the cargo, the freight and then you bring it to your shop. Then in your shop, you open it. So many things involved. Then what about your workers, your rent? Everything you have to see. So it has to be . . . nobody does business for . . . I mean, it is a service, but you have to earn something from it. So we have to see what is our profit margin. Usually we try to have a profit margin of 30 to 40 per cent. You have to. If not you can’t run the business. The pricing also clearly depends on the quality of the materials used, the expertise of the artisans and the workmanship. Retailers argue that ‘if you want quality products you have to be willing to pay the price’ Here is Mr Raja again: See the pieces from Tamil Nadu are much nicer. If you go to Andhra [Andhra Pradesh], you can get it for much cheaper but the finishing is



not there, the features will be very sharp, not smooth. So people will ask ‘Hey, how come in that shop they are selling something the same size as this but at half the price? Why are you selling for so much?’ Then you have to explain to them, ‘Madam, you look at the face, look at the finishing. Look at how the piece is done, it is carved from one piece of wood. Maybe the cheaper one is made from two pieces of wood.’ You must explain all this to them. Despite such assurances and caveats, bargaining and negotiations over prices do exist in the sale of ‘prayer items,’ as they do in the marketing of other commodities. Practically every retailer I spoke to noted that customers like to bargain, and highlighted local Singaporeans as being fond of ‘haggling.’ Nonetheless, they also observed that many willingly paid the stated price, saying, ‘It’s a prayer item, so I don’t wish to argue over the price and haggle over it. Just give it to me.’ One businessman, Mr Thiru, who is driven by ethical principles as well as the desire to run a successful business, says that he does feel awkward about being money-minded when dealing with religious things. He elaborates that he does feel compelled to reduce his price for a prayer item if the customer seems genuinely devoted and cannot afford to pay the full price: Because when it comes to prayer items and religious things, we can’t be too calculative about money. That’s my belief. I mean, if we don’t sell it to the customer, they won’t get to bring that item home and use it for their prayers. They come in here and they admire the item. They sometimes are transfixed by it. It’s not a cinema poster, some poster of Nagma or Aishwarya Rai that they are in awe over.12 It is something to do with God. We do what we can to help. So we let them take it at a price that they find is affordable. When people come here, filled with admiration and devotion for something they’ve seen . . . you can see it in their faces itself. They’ll be talking about the statue, they’ll start explaining the different ways they wish to worship it and all. But they won’t have enough money. Sometimes, I just close one eye, pack the item and give it to them for whatever amount they can afford. While making a profit is not deemed to be a problem in this instance, neither is it viewed as the ultimate aim of running the business. I also need to emphasise that this was a minority view and a rare instance; most businesses I encountered state openly that they are not ‘doing charity’ and so cannot be giving things away ‘for free’ without ruining their enterprise. Many are annoyed at the suggestion that they should adopt different business ethics just because they deal with ‘prayer items.’ Those who are themselves religious do, however, operate with the caution that outright cheating and profiteering ‘in this line’ will be met with spiritual censure and condemnation.


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In closing this discussion, I present my discussions with three Singaporean Indian women who have recently established a business in prayer items in Singapore’s LI. These conversations generated interesting thoughts on the question of selling religious things which stand out in the field I surveyed. The three women in question offered a literalist reading of statues ‘as god’ and expressed a great deal of anxiety about their business, including the pricing of statues. Interestingly, they have also devised an innovative strategy for dealing with this unease and to ‘make amends’ for the work they have to do. Ms Sumathi, spoke for the group of three, in explaining this rationale for ‘giving something back to god’: Sometimes it is hard to put a price on it. It’s a little painful to the heart. For example, statues of deities, it feels like we’re putting a price on God. But my sisters and I, we have a policy. Whatever prayer item we sell, whether it is pictures of deities or statues or anything, we take 1 per cent of the sales and put it in the temple donation box (undial). So it’s something like we’re asking for forgiveness for what we are doing lah. Because we have no right to sell God but what we can do, is give a percentage back to God. Every day, after we close our sales, we’ll calculate how much we made, even if it was $100, we’ll take 1 per cent of it and put it in the undial. That is money that will reach Him. So anyway, instead of saying that this shop has only three owners, you can say that there are four owners actually. Tiruppathi also has a share in it. Haha . . . So yes, because of that, I don’t find it difficult to price my prayer items. I feel comfortable because even if I sell a statue of a deity for $2, I’ll put 10 cents in the undial for Him. It is a business, I have no choice. I tell that to Him too. It is business, so you must not take offence. But of course, when we put a price, we always say sorry lah. There is the feeling that we’re placing a price on God. They elaborated that they only felt this discomfort about selling statues, not ‘normal’ stuff like camphor or incense sticks. Her partner Ms Thangam explained: But when it comes to selling statues of deities, it is much more. You see here, I have a statue on an altar, to which I pray to everyday. Every day I do a puja for this deity and beneath Him there are so many statues. There are statues all over the shop and when I do my puja, although it is only for one deity, life is breathed into all these other statues as well. The God will start to talk. And when we sell Him or Her to someone else, He or She will get very angry. So that is the problem. I learnt that they had been advised by a local priest to donate part of their earnings to the temple to ‘clear any sin we would have otherwise accumulated by the sale (of statues).’ The sisters agreed with the priest that:



. . . to put a price on God and selling [sic] Him is a big thing, it’s a very bad thing. Because of that our families, our children and future generations can suffer and experience a lot of bad things. Like, something bad will happen to make you realize. Doing a puja and making an offering to God is like asking for forgiveness for what you are about to do in this business. You’re asking a very big pardon from God for what you’re doing. We are telling him that it is a business, that’s why we have to do it. Apart from the daily donations that the sisters make to the temple as compensation for ‘selling god,’ upon the advice of their spiritual advisor, they also perform a special puja to seek forgiveness from god for not being able to protect them from being handled in the shop by all and sundry: And when it comes to statues, everybody will handle them. Good people, people who are menstruating, tourists even. We have to ask for forgiveness for all this. We also didn’t know all this until he told us to do this puja once the statues are in the shop. It won’t cost us much but it’s good for us. As I have demonstrated, for a majority of the traders, the approach to statues is primarily as objects and materials, with the recognition that they have the potential to be treated as sacred by devotees and should thus be given the due respect. However, in every other sense they are treated like any other product, subject to the same sorts of treatment.

Visuality, Materiality and ‘Ritual Practice’ Ritual practices in the domain of everyday Hindu religiosity reveal the complex intersection of visual and material dimensions of accessories used in the act of worship. As we have seen, visual representations of Hindu divinity—both iconic and non-iconic—are available to Hindus in the Diaspora in the form of mass-produced commodities as well as personalised, custom-made entities. This section takes up two thematics that have emerged from my ethnographic focus on the use of visual imagery as aids to worship: one that renders objects used in Hindu worship ‘sacred’ and two, what are the prospects of disentangling the convoluted modes in which facets of ‘material,’ ‘divinity’ and ‘commodity’ are simultaneously implicated and ‘mixed up’ in objects such as a statue, a painting or a photograph? My data reveal that materiality and visuality are not only central, but intertwined in the realm of devotional Hindu practices, which have historically been defined by oral and performative elements as well. A related body of work from which I draw inspiration is the scholarship on visual features of Hinduism and the emphasis on the materiality of this religious tradition at the level of practice. Rachel Dwyer (2001: 2) notes


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the ‘vivid materiality of popular visual culture’ as does Christopher Pinney (2003: 8), in approaching ‘visual culture as a key arena for the thinking out of politics and religion in modern India.’ In my work visual manifestations (such as images and other ritual paraphernalia) have emerged as one possible mode of ‘reading’ everyday Hindu religiosity, even as I agree with Pinney that the realm of visual culture ‘is an experimental zone where new possibilities and new identities are forged’ (ibid. 8) and should be approached as an autonomous field of study. Concretely, I explore the role of visuality in the realm of devotional Hindu practices, which have historically been defined and dominated by oral and performative elements, through my ethnographic data on visual representations of Hindu gods and goddesses and the trade in flowers— both of which are central in the act of puja, both in homes and temples. I agree with Lawrence Babb’s (1995: 6) observation that: mechanical reproduction of pictures of deities (and other sacred entities) has become one of the most ubiquitous manifestations of modern religion in South Asia. However, I would extend the noted geographical parameters to more than South Asia. In my focus on visual images of divinity, particularly in an age dominated by mass-produced printed images, I am further inspired by the analytical framework available in the works of such scholars as H. Daniel Smith (1995) and Stephen Inglis (1995). Collectively, their work, especially on the history of the ‘god poster’ industry and its phenomenal growth in twentieth century India, have been path-breaking in, amongst other things, drawing attention to a sphere that has remained somewhat un-documented by students of Hinduism. Daniel Smith’s work confirms that ‘chromolithographic technology’13 was instrumental in facilitating ‘the social and spatial mobility of iconic symbols in South Asia’ (Babb 1995: 6). My own theoretical leanings resonate with the emphases in Smith’s work about the attention to how printed pictorial images of divinity are received and consumed by Hindus at the level of practice. The treatment of these objects and the attitudes towards them at the various sites of reception complements the focus on their production as commodities. Continuing this focus on ‘doing,’ Smith (1995: 36) argues that the preponderance of ‘god posters,’ their easy availability, dissemination and mobility have engendered ‘new forms of ritual response to images,’ captured in a term he coins ‘omnipraxy.’ Speaking to the theme of mobility of these religious artefacts, Inglis (1995: 67) notes that these printed images have travelled well, not just within India but also beyond—a development that is particularly germane given my interest in Diaspora Hinduism: Visualizing the deities through popular depictions links not only virtually all markets, temples and pilgrimage places in India, but also



Hindu residences, workplaces, shops and places of worship throughout the world. Evidence from Hindu diasporic locations confirms the worldwide distribution of the printed images and chromolithographs generated in parts of India. This has been seminal, in part, in enabling devotional Hindu religiosity (especially within the home) to persist in such places as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, New York, London and Durban. Statues and framed photographs of Rama, Ganesh, Hindu divinity, adorn prayer altars in Singaporean Hindu homes. My survey reveals the overwhelming popularity of framed prints rather than statues as objects of worship. The widespread preference for prints over statues has also generated interesting debates in the local Hindu community about the relative value of these two categories of images. The generation of mass-produced prints and chromolithographs of deities has revolutionised the domain of Hindu worship in making visual depictions of divinity accessible and affordable to a clusters of Hindus for whom this was previously either impossible or difficult . Devotees seem partial to framed prints largely for pragmatic reasons—they are easy to secure and manage, not to mention easily movable should the need for this arise. Furthermore, their ritual maintenance is straightforward, which is crucial in view of reduced time for worship within the home. However, another reason that devotees avoid keeping too many statues at the home altar has to do with the perception of the ritual attention that must be regularly paid to them. Statues are typically found in temples, consecrated according to Agamic procedures, thus necessitating religious specialists to properly care for them. Statues that are kept at home are not similarly consecrated and thus do not require the same level of ritual notice as temple statues. Yet, amongst the Hindus I conversed with, the idea that a threedimensional statue must be cared for differently and ‘properly’ as compared to a photograph is a strong one. This view is embedded in the further reasoning that a statue is, in the words of many a respondent, ‘more powerful’ than a framed picture. The statue is in fact deemed to be spiritually more energised, but its efficacy can be positive or negative. Countless devotees expressed the view that should there be any lapses (for instance lack of ritual attention, improper worship, contact with pollution, etc.) in the care of divinity embodied in a statue, the family and household would have to face the wrath and anger of the deity. Some expressly stated that they would be ‘afraid’ of touching the deities directly, an anxiety they explained as located in the ritual separation of devotees from deity in temples. Religious specialists I spoke to confirm the current leaning towards framed pictures, and some are openly critical of this trend. Mr Sundarajaj, the resident Brahmin priest at the Kampong Bahru Muni¯ svaran Temple, believes in ‘promoting statues’:


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Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity You see, normally everybody wants to put photographs at home. These photographs can last for 5 years, 10 years. Indian have this bad habit, every house they change, they throw old photos and buy new photos. The commitment to your god is like cut short. That’s what I feel. New photographs are coming, every day you are seeing the same god and suddenly a new god comes in. It’s just like renewing your passport; your old passport has so many endorsements. If you have a new passport, no pages have been chopped lah. It does not have proof where you have gone, where you stayed. What I promote is metal statue. I don’t believe in cement statue. I believe in metal statues. These metal statues you can keep at home.

In response to the general concern that Hindus are afraid to touch statues, his rejoinder is, ‘Why can’t you touch your own god? What is wrong with that?’ He is also of the view that framed pictures do not last long, given the wear and tear they are subject to: pictures fade, look old, the glass may break or the frame corrodes, compelling devotees to replace them with new ones. While he is critical of indiscriminate disposal of old pictures of deities, he agrees that the idea of aesthetics is an important component in the act of worship—the object of worship should be aesthetically pleasing and remain beautiful. Mr Sundaraj’s argument is that statues are immune to such damage, last much longer, are more durable and most crucially can be passed down to future generations. He adds that praying to statues over long periods renders them spiritually powerful as they are energised and thus are more efficacious through the accumulated concentration of devotees’ attention. Mr Sundaraj is critical of the tendency amongst Hindus to ‘change’ the pictures of gods periodically, coinciding with the move to a new home, and throwing away ‘old’ ones. For this reason too, he wants to encourage Hindus to switch to using statues rather than rely on prints which do age and deteriorate, compelling devotees to throw them away. Yet, Mr Sundaraj is not in favour of large statues of divinity being kept at home or being consecrated at the domestic altar. The idea that statues are ‘more alive’ was also expressed by a businessman, Mr Jayan, who sees a ‘real difference’ between a statue, which for him is a ‘living god,’ compared to a photograph or a picture in a frame, where the deity is ‘trapped’ and unable to exercise its power: Back in the olden, ancient days, where deities were alive, a lot of caretaking had to be done. And then mankind moved towards civilisation . . . So the statue became a picture, where you need less maintenance. Over time, it has become a picture. Then people started to discourage you from worshipping statues as you do not have the commitment to take care of it. As stupid as that sounds, it is not supposed to be that way. If you don’t take care of your own statue, if you don’t take care of your own god, who will? When people pray, they are actually paying



a lot of attention to a frame. They do what they can. But they should actually be doing it to a statue. There is some degree of consensus amongst my respondents that praying to statues is far more effective and that in this form the deity ‘would readily give you what you want.’ A great deal of this has to do with the recognition that the energy and power of a deity emanates from the eyes,14 something that is more easily discerned in a three-dimensional statue but not in a flat pictorial image. Others disagreed, arguing that the visual form of the deity is unimportant, the crucial factor being devotion, which if perceived by god would lead to one’s prayers being answered. At the same time, retailers noted the rising demand for statues of particular deities within the home, especially amongst younger Hindus. They also noted this as a recently emerging trend, comparing it with ‘in those days.’ Ms Suma, who runs a LI shop, noted not just the popularity of statues in general, but also increasing demand for representations of ‘unconventional’ Hindu deities as well: You know, in those days, we won’t pray to statues at home. We believed that you must be very clean to do that. You need to do abis. ¤ ekam and all. But now, a lot of people, teenagers especially, are looking for statues to put in their home altars. Kali statues . . . and the kinds of deities they ask for, they are all very “peaceful” Gods! Haha . . . Kali, Muni¯ svaran, Badrakali, Karuppar! This observation resonates with the persistence and ‘return’ to forms of folk religiosity in Singaporean Hindu domains. Elsewhere, I have mapped the current field of ‘folk Hinduism’ in Singapore and Malaysia and demonstrated the continued tenacity of its ritual components in the religious lives of fifth and sixth generation Hindus (Sinha 2005, 2006). One consequence of this attachment to, and preference for, ‘folk’ Hindu elements amongst urban-based, educated individuals is the demands created for a range of ritual paraphernalia and materials (including statues) required for sustaining this approach to religiosity. Requests for statues of Muni¯ svaran, Karuppanca¯mi and other kaaval deivam as well as Kali and Periya¯cciamman and religious insignia associated with their veneration, are reported to be on the rise by traders who deal with this customer/devotee base. They have to be interpreted within the frame of a tenacious Hindu folk realm in Singapore and Malaysia. This notice also reveals how particular styles of religiosity actually drive the marker for particular commodities. While some retailers are critical of this bent towards what middle class Hindus perceive to be ‘backward, superstitious and irrational’ rituals, I encountered many more businessmen who are willing to satisfy these customer needs and thereby run a successful business.


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The relationship between the image and what it ultimately represents is acknowledged to be a complex one in Indian texts that deal with the construction of images and their consecration before being used in worship. Eck (1981: 38) notes that the murti, often inaccurately translated as ‘likeness,’ is rather ‘the deity itself taken form’ and that the image is an ‘embodiment of the divine’ serving to focus attention of the devotee (ibid. 45), a point noted by other scholars including Heather Elgood (1999: 14–15), who observes that the sculpted image must be both ‘beautiful’ and ‘unblemished’ in order to be fit for the deity. Painted, sculpted or printed images of gods and goddesses are seen by devotees to carry the divine being’s presence and are indeed treated as if they were divinity. My respondents have no illusions about the relationship between an image and its physical representation nor any confusion about what the latter connotes or its express function. Mr Sundaraj explained the dialectical relationship between divinity and its imagery quite succinctly, and his elucidation would be grasped quite easily by lay Hindus as well: Yes the statue or picture is a resemblance of the main god. So it also is a god, but it is only a resemblance. It is like this: if you see my face in the mirror, it is still me, but it’s also not exactly me, so it is the same with the statue, it is still god, but also not the same. A recent collection, From Material to Deity: Indian Rituals of Consecration (2005) edited by Shingo Einoo and Jun Takashima, is impressive in presenting the work of Japanese scholars who identify and analyse a range of Indian texts which deal with consecration rituals. The challenging task of unravelling the various meanings of the term pratistha—the well-known ritual ceremony—which has been translated as ‘infusing of life breath’ is undertaken in Hiromichi Hikita’s contribution to this volume. He makes the important point that while we typically hear of consecration ceremonies for images and temples, ‘objects, buildings, images and implements need to be consecrated in order to be used for religious purposes’ (Hikita 2005: 143). Citing Jan Gonda’s work on the subject, Hikita identifies two meanings of ‘pratistha’: one, to place a definite power in an object, to endow an object with divine faculties and two, to enable the worshipper to realise the presence of the divine power, god’s presence, in the image so that it becomes an effectual means of contact between the divinity and the worshipper (Gonda 1975, cited in Hikita 2005: 143). Finally, I find Hikita’s conclusion especially relevant in the context of my own interest in teasing out the relationship between ‘religious objects’ and ‘commodities’ and the concomitant meanings they connote for producers and consumers: By going through this process of ‘consecration’ the nature of the image changes. They are no longer materials but become endowed with life and supernatural powers. (ibid. 143)


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 141 Certainly for the writers and compilers of texts which detail consecration ceremonies, there was no ambiguity that there is a difference between the obvious ‘materiality’ of an object and the spiritual, divine energy it eventually carries, bestowed upon it through the proper performance of ceremonies, i.e., through human intervention. Lay Hindus too are quite clear that material objects embody divine power and energy only after due ritual attention by religious experts during consecration ceremonies. Thus my respondents noted that statues, for example, are spiritually ‘empty’ unless they are ceremonially galvanised. Once thus triggered, the regular performance of ceremonies ensures that the deities remain ‘enlivened.’ Even within the home, before statues and pictures are placed at the altar and approached as objects of/for worship, they are either ‘blessed’ (by being taken to a temple) or properly ‘seated’ (through an invitation or invocation ritual by a priest), acquiring spiritual energy thereafter. I found Mr Sundaraj’s interpretation of the difference between material and deity quite illuminating: Okay. This stone is, this cement is supposed to be the same cement which made the Saneeswaran, but we don’t pray to cement, we pray to the statue of Saneeswaran. This metal is same metal which made a statue of Murugan, but we don’t pray to the metal. Why? Without the invitation for the god to come in, the metal and cement do not have power. It is simple. We must do the ritualistic thing to invite the god to come and sit inside. Of course these consecration ceremonies are not necessary for the worship of a category of objects that are deemed to be ‘inherently sacred’ such as the svayambhu or ‘self born images’ (Eck 1981: 55), which may be ‘discovered in situ in the middle of the field or under a tree’ (ibid. 55). Eck cites these following examples: the salagrama stone, believed to be a natural form of the deity Visnu found in the Gandki River in Nepal, the stones of Mount Govardhan in Vraj, the svarupa form of the Hindu god Krishna and the bana linga, a natural form of the deity Siva found in the Narmada River. These objects are infused with sacredness indefinitely and are also deemed to be highly efficacious. This important distinction between objects that have intrinsic sacredness and those to which sacredness is attributed through human action is highly relevant to the questions I am asking about the symbolism of ritual objects and how individuals relate to them on the basis of assigned meanings. Collectively, the noted discussions are insightful in directing attention to how the idea of ‘sacredness’ is understood and acted upon by Hindus once a ritual object is deemed to be sacred, whether inherently or through appropriate ritual attention. My data confirm that statues and framed pictures that have been invited and seated at the domestic altar are deemed to have spiritual efficacy and are approached by devotees as such.


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But what actually happens during those moments when devotees interact with their ‘home gods’? Diana Eck’s famous work, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (1981), serves to focus attention on the notion of darsan and the two-way interaction between devotee and deity in the act of puja. Lawrence Babb’s (1981) detailed analysis of ‘glancing’ as a mode of visual interaction in Hinduism adds to scholarly works which highlight the contact with the deity and the possibility of communicating with divinity. Eck translates the idea of ‘darsan’ as ‘seeing,’ ‘religious seeing’ or ‘auspicious sight of the divine,’ (1981: 7) and as central in Hindu worship, both public and private. As a testament to the broader appeal of this notion of ‘seeing,’ darsan has been borrowed and extended to analyses of other socio-cultural and political domains in Indian society, such as the world of Hindi films, the Indian political scene (Dwyer & Patel 2002) and the field of consumption and public culture in India (Frietag 2001). Drawing on Eck’s original formulation, Dwyer and Patel (2002: 33) offer their interpretation of darsan: [the] term is used for a structuration of spectation found in Hindu religious practice (and also in some social and political practices), in which the image authorizes the look (rather than merely being its object), thereby benefiting the beholder. In other words, darshan is a two-way look, the beholder takes darshan (darshan lena) and the object gives darshan (darshan dena), in which the image rather than the person looking has power. The elements of reciprocity and exchange of vision have been further noted and a recognition that the act of darsan cannot be reduced to ‘our commonsense understandings of vision as a passive reception of images on the retina’ (Mines 2008: 140). There is certainly an exchange at work here, and not just visual, mediated by devotional gestures and material objects, something that devotees are implicitly aware of even though it may not be overtly articulated. In view of my ethnographic data, I find that the question of who has ‘more power’ in this interaction to be more complex and nuanced. Narratives from my Hindu respondents suggest that while the image is certainly deemed to be powerful, its spiritual energy remains implicit and ‘contained’ unless it is activated by appropriate and authentic ritual attention from the devotee, hence complicating the power relationship between divinity and devotee considerably. The practice of darsan in the act of worship rests on the specific meanings that an image carries for devotees. My respondents further shared that the spiritual energy of the ‘home gods’ is triggered when devotees ‘pray’ before it, otherwise it remains latent. Devotees request the deity to come and settle in the statue or picture for the duration of the prayer. There is also the view that temple deities are comparatively more powerful, given that they have received the


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 143 collective attention of many individuals over long periods, and that they have been properly consecrated. My queries about how devotees relate to visual images are grounded in the awareness that the consumption of ‘ritual objects’ reveals a trajectory and life cycle. In this context, my data direct attention to what I call the ‘pre-consumption’ and ‘post-consumption’ moments of an object. Thus I was specifically interested to generate discussions about the kind of symbolism objects are seen to embody before use in worship, during the act itself and, in particular, what happens to them once they are seen to have served their purpose. Like numerous other objects used in Hindu worship, the consumption of visual representations of divinity in various instances, involves a series of moves, which I characterise as follows: from ‘material’ to ‘commodity’ to ‘deity’ and perhaps back to ‘material’ at the end of the consumption cycle, processes that I elucidate through specific slices of ethnographic data. With respect to the use of murti(s), Elgood (1999: 27) observes: For the Hindu, the image is an instrument of purpose, significant only in its role as a vessel fit to contain the deity with little consideration as to its intrinsic value. Images are discarded once they have served their spiritual purpose. Scholars have also noted a place in Hinduism of ‘impermanent images’ (Huyler 2003: 549) which are only intended for temporary usage for a set period, after which they may be disposed off legitimately. From this standpoint, places, images, indeed practically anything can be ‘made sacred’ and spiritually energised by human input through appropriate mantra and prayers just for the duration of a ritual. The following reflections are thus necessary from the point of view of consumption of religious objects: What happens to the sacredness of objects after the end of the ritual? Do they lose their sacred quality? Apart from leading me to problematise the category ‘sacred’ and highlight the processual dimension in registering the potentiality of sacredness of an object/commodity, my data suggest further questions: Can we speak of ‘degrees’ of sacredness of ritual objects? If the efficacy of objects is perceived to be acquired as well as temporary, can it also be ‘neutralised’? Do institutionalised procedures exist for ‘deactivating’ or ‘defusing’ the sacredness of objects and when do this occur? Do lay Hindus have access to this knowledge about how ‘used’ sacred objects are to be treated? To what extent is this knowledge acted upon and with what constraints, especially in the Hindu Diaspora? These thematic foci further reflect my effort to document the body of practices (religious or otherwise) that are deemed to be appropriate for approaching a ‘puja item’ at different moments of its life cycle—whether as ‘material,’ ‘deity’ or ‘commodity’—the aim ultimately being to make sense of how ritual objects are consumed in everyday Hindu religiosity.


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What do Hindus do with ‘old’ statues and pictures of deities? I have already noted that Hindus in Singapore regularly ‘change’ their collection of visual images over time with the complete awareness that it is a ‘sin’ to throw away statues and photographs of gods. In the local context, questions about what to do with old visual images pose numerous challenges. Normatively speaking, depending on the nature of the object, used religious objects are to be discarded in places that would allow them to be returned to nature—either in running water or under a tree, but never to be thrown away like rubbish. I have observed that while framed pictures are discarded with greater ease, devotees do not part easily with statues, which do tend to remain in the family across generations. The former are typically placed in temples, under trees, in running water, in a forested area or by the seaside, while there is greater reluctance to abandon statues. Those in stone or clay can be immersed in a body of water but certainly not metal statues. On rare occasions statues are abandoned when there are no takers for them and they cannot be recycled. Hindus are aware of the injunctions against picking up ‘someone else’s’ statue as they have already been ‘prayed to.’ Furthermore, it is argued that the rejection of a statue has probably incurred the wrath and anger of the deity, something that will be directed at the new owner. The dynamics of living in a highly urban space means that there are few options for easily accessing streams, lakes, rivers, etc., for the purpose of legitimately discarding ‘used’ religious objects. Another practical complication is that dumping is illegal in Singapore, including in the sea. Yet, I heard many stories of how clay statues, flowers, rice, fruits, etc., had been placed in sea waters around Singapore or in canals, at the end of a prayer ceremony. Some Hindus I interviewed are against this practice of environmental grounds. For instance Mrs Alka, a North India Hindu woman in her forties, says that she has been performing Deepavali prayers with the same Lakshmi statue for the last 15 years and does not believe in ‘visarjan,’15 i.e., immersion of statues in water. Despite these practices, devotees also expressed discomfort and anxiety about throwing prayer things away and worried if this constituted a sinful act. There seems to be strong preference for leaving statues and pictures within temple premises, given its reading as a ‘sacred’ site and a place where gods ‘naturally’ belong. But my respondents agreed that this was only a partial solution and that were simply transferring the problem to another party. Some temples discourage this practice, purely for pragmatic reasons: what would temple authorities do with discarded, ‘orphaned’ visual images of divinity? One Brahmin priest I spoke to was extremely candid in expressing his annoyance at the practice of dumping statues within temples, ‘quietly, in the middle of the night.’ He sees this as a nuisance and admits that at the end of the day he simply throws everything away in a rubbish bin, something that he does not do willingly or with pleasure. Just as there are ceremonies enshrining a deity in a visual, material form, Hinduism also provides procedural guidance for their de-consecration.

Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 145 This applies primarily to temple deities but in theory could be applied to domestic deities as well:


By a reverse ceremony the image can be deconsecrated and if such an image happened to fall into the hands of non-believers it would be less offensive to believers if this was to happen to a consecrated one. (Mishra: 1999: 219) I do know of instances locally when deities of a temple have been de-consecrated (with the assistance of Brahmin priests)16 when the temple is being renovated, or moved to another site or demolished altogether. As far as I know, Hindus do not perform any ritual before they part with statues and photographs and it does not constitute common sense wisdom about how to deal with ‘used’ religious objects. This discussion allows me to extend my narrative into the ‘post-consumption’ stage of religious objects which is theoretically significant for addressing questions about what the status of objects is during the history of their use, how ‘sacredness’ is conceptualised within Hinduism and the cross-cultural, comparative value of such insights. Such ethnographic foci allow me to revisit conceptual deliberations about the life history of objects and the relationship of humans to objects at various points in the trajectory of their use. I continue this discussion in the next chapter, shifting the focus to the status and significance of flowers in domestic Hindu worship, paying particular attention to their ‘sacredness’ at different points of usage during a ritual cycle and especially in the ‘post-consumption’ moment.

Notes 1 Other Sanskrit terms like arca, bera, vigraha, have been translated as image or icon. The term icon (from Greek eikon) means a ‘figure representing a deity, saint, in painting, mosaic, sculpture which is especially meant for worship or which is in some way or another associated with the rituals connected with the worship of different divinities (Banerjea 1956: 1). 2 Geoffrey Benjamin (1987: 10–11) defines ‘coherence’ thus: Coherence-the antithesis (or absence of alienation)-is generated through imaginative acts of positive mental appropriation in which we each lend structure to our world (including the cultures in it) by a process of ordered filtering in which some phenomena are for the moment focused on, while other phenomena recede into the background. As I interpret coherence, it provides a means of making sense of the world in which one is embedded by lending order and structure to the otherwise necessarily fragmented world of lived experiences. Benjamin offers four idealtypical modes of coherence, with classic examples of three of the four cases: transcendental (normal in monotheistic civilisations, Theravada Buddhist polities, and the worldview associated with modernism, immanent (normal in, among others, some of the classical East Asian civilisations, such as Java and


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3

4

5

6 7

8 9

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China), dialectical (normal in many, but not all, tribal cultures as well as in much of Hindu culture) and Zen. While Benjamin considers Chinese religion as typified by an ‘immanent’ mode of coherence and ‘Hinduism’ by the ‘dialectical’ one, on the basis of data from the domain of everyday religiosity, I argue that folk varieties of Hinduism fall within the ‘immanent’ mode of orientation. Here the emphasis is on ritual participation and enactment, the religious style is highly diffused and fluid, operating with an informality that is disconcerting to the authorities, with a disregard for uniform and standardised rules and procedures. They display a loose structure, are more or less unbounded and the boundaries (if they exist) are flexible and permeable. This is to be expected in a style of religiosity that is as unconcerned with marking religious boundaries as it is with policing them. It also articulates a mode of social interaction that is non-interfering, almost to the point of being indifferent about another individual’s state of spirituality. This is in sharp contrast to transcendental modes of coherence, which are by definition, ‘fundamentally interfering mode . . ., and a continuous attention by ego to other people’s actions’ (Benjamin 1987: 12). I have cited evidence for this process in the visualization of the deity Muni¯ svaran in Singapore and Malaysia, where his devotees have produced a series of images in which specific iconic features and physical attributes appear routinely and repetitively. The terminology used to denote these picturisations of divinity is ethnographically meaningful. Respondents used descriptions in English like ‘god statue,’ ‘god picture/poster,’ which seem to translations of Tamil labels ca¯mi cilai (god statues) and ca¯mi patam (god pictures). The piece does not bear any visual images of deities but is engraved with specific shapes such as a circle, triangle, or Star of David. Apart from this usage, I notice that Hindus purchase yantras to keep them in their homes to regularly perform what is known as yantra puja. Many of the homes I visited had Muni¯ svaran and Madurai Veeran yantra placed either at the main puja altar or in a small shelf at the entrance to the home. According to the Sastras, these three materials are preferred for deities installed in temples. In comparison, one encounters a very different scenario amongst the Indian community in South Africa. I had an opportunity to meet briefly with some sectors of the Hindu community in Durban in July 2006. Many in this community can also trace 6 to 7 generations that have been in South Africa but interestingly, many families have lost total contact with their ancestral origins back in India and cited the physical distance between South Africa and India, as a contributory factor. But others also noted that the opportunities for keeping connections with their Indian heritage alive just did not exist in South Africa. In Singapore, the discourse on identities sees a conflation of ethnic and religious markers such that in everyday discourse, ‘Indian’ is equated to ‘Hindu,’ while ‘Muslim’ and ‘Malay’ are used synonymously. There is a presumption in this discourse that statues made in India are necessarily rooted in appropriate cultural knowledge, even though in India too, the mass production of statues means that the craft has moved out of the hands of the individual, skilled craftsman and into factories where they are manufactured in more uniform, standardised and routinised modes. But the discourse is a powerful one and denies that Chinese craftsmen possess the knowledge and skills required to produce authentic, legitimate representations of Hindu divinity; instead their efforts culminate in producing only ‘copies’ and ‘fakes.’ God is perfect and thus must be rendered so even in likeness and resemblance. Interestingly, the shop’s signboard makes a distinction between ‘Indian prayer pictures’ and ‘art pictures.’


Visual Representations of Hindu Divinity 147 11 I have elsewhere characterised this mode of religiosity as ‘folk’ or ‘popular’ and it is defined by the following features: ritualistic animal sacrifices, ecstatic ceremonies, ritualistic healing practices and self-mortification practices, manifested as cattaiadi, agni catti, arul. va¯kku (Sinha 2005). 12 Nagma and Asihwarya Rai are popular Bollywood actresses. 13 This was essentially technology that allowed coloured pictures to be reproduced (Babb 1995: 6) as reprints. The first chromolithographic press was established by Raja Ravi Varma in Bombay in 1891 (Inglis 1995: 58). 14 In fact, in Hinduism, a deity’s vision is believed to be immensely powerful with the further view that it is not entirely safe for humans to be constantly and consistently exposed to gaze of the divine image. Devotees are also advised to protect themselves from constant exposure to a deity’s gaze and hence its energy. 15 Visarjan is typically performed for Ganesh on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi and also for Lakshmi during Lakshmi Puja. Many of my respondents speak in favour of producing eco-friendly statues in clay painted in natural dyes, rather than plaster of Paris statues with toxic and polluting substances like gypsum, sulphur, phosphorus, magnesium and chemical paints. Others preferred to practice the ‘symbolic’ immersion of permanent statues and recycling them year after year. 16 Brahmin priests I know of prefer not to perform de-consecration ceremonies particularly if this is in connection with the demolition of temples.

5

Flowers for Worship, Flowers for Sale


Straddling the ‘Sacred’ and the ‘Secular’

Preamble One core area of this research is focused on the place of flowers in Hindu worship. In the words of one of my respondents ‘Hindus need flowers for birth, death and everything else in between.’ Thus I was inspired to narrate the story of fresh flowers, their presence in Singapore and their status and relevance in everyday Hindu religiosity. A comprehensive account would require detailed attention to the production, distribution and consumption patterns of fresh flowers. Within the scope of this chapter, I begin with evidence of the meaning of flowers in everyday Hindu worship and locate my enquiries within the realm of consumption. I then ask where these flowers come from and how they are made accessible to consumers in Singapore. These questions directed me to uncover mechanisms of regional and global distribution of flowers and the routes they travelled through such intermediaries as wholesalers, exporters, importers and retailers before coming to rest with consumers. Working backwards from the realm of consumption, I ask these apparently simple questions: Are there home grown blooms in Singapore? If not, where do flowers come from and how do they get to Singapore? Who brings them in and through what channels? Whose labour and efforts transform loose, fresh jasmines, marigolds, roses into floral strings and garlands ready for sale in the five-foot way shops on a daily basis, and their eventual use in homes and temples? It was clear that answers to these questions would reveal the key mechanisms and processes through which flowers (often travelling long distances) are secured and the networks through which they are distributed and thus accessible to consumers. Given, the symbolism of flowers in Hindu worship they are deemed to be central even in the simplest act of puja. But how are these to be accessed in an urban, diasporic locale of Singapore? Additionally, these discussions about flowers and their place in Hindu worship make it possible to reflect on the category ‘sacred’ as applied to objects of worship.


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Situating Flowers in Hindu Worship


Fresh flowers are utilised at different moments in the everyday life of Hindus, and by no means confined to ‘religious’ events. Conversations with Hindus confirm this as did my encounters with flower shop operators in Singapore’s LI district. According to one such vendor, Mr Mani, whose customers include individuals, families and temples, noted the centrality of flowers in Indian and Hindu ceremonial life, both everyday and periodic: Weddings are a large part of our customer base. We also do all kinds of functions like weddings, engagements, ROMs, puberty ceremonies, funerals and betrothal ceremonies. Then we have our walk-in customers, those who come to our shop everyday and buy garlands and prayer items from us. We also have regular customers who order from us once or twice a week. We do have a few temples that we provide flowers to. Sometimes, the temples also call us to provide small gifts and flowers for their ubayams.1 A fellow retailer agreed, adding that the work performed by those in the flower trade was unlike any other job and had to be approached with a degree of gravity and reverence: At the same time, we need to understand the importance of what we do, its significance to the lives of our people. We cannot take this lightly. When someone gets a new home, attains puberty, gets married or even when they pass away, we are called upon to provide flowers for the ceremony. We are so important to the function because without flowers, it cannot go on. So we must realise how important our work is and do it full-heartedly. We need to give respect to what we are doing. It is not just any other job. This is a particularly intriguing section of the research project for me driven by these two observations: first, the centrality of flowers during crucial moments in an individual’s life trajectory as well as in the simplest of pujas and second, the practical challenge of securing them fresh on a regular, almost daily basis, this itself conditioned by the ritual value accorded to unblemished, immaculate, faultless and thus pure and auspicious blooms and garlands. The paucity of sociological and anthropological literature on the subject was an additional motivating factor that propelled me towards such a focus. My survey of the field pointed only to a couple of crucial signposts, separated by some 15 years: Jack Goody’s The Culture of Flowers (1993) and Catherine Ziegler’s Favoured Flowers: Culture and Economy in a Global System (2007).2 Goody’s work, which has become a classic in the field, offers a historical account of the role that flowers play in ritualistic life in different cultures and hence the multitude


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of meanings they connote. Ziegler’s book explores the worldwide production and distribution of flowers and their consumption in the New York Metropolitan Area. Both of these books have provided important theoretical insights in my efforts to record the use of flowers in everyday Hindu domains. Scholars of Hinduism have noted the spiritual significance and the centrality of fresh flowers in the act of puja, yet to my knowledge no comprehensive account of the use of flowers in the ritualistic and ceremonial life of Hindus has thus far been undertaken. The following discussion addresses this vacuum in a modest mode. As a part of the natural landscape, trees, fruits, flowers, leaves, grains, herbs, etc. are not alien to Hinduism. Interestingly, many respondents cited this as evidence that this religious tradition is environment-friendly. While trees, fruits and flowers are deemed to be enriched with medicinal and nutritional value, they also carry sacred overtones and are central in the act of devotion and find mention in mythology and legends associated with divinity. Scholars and laypersons alike have observed that Hindus are passionate and particular about their flowers. Not only are flowers integral to the act of puja (both in homes and temples), but are further associated with important life cycle rituals, including birth, puberty, marriage and death. It is rare to encounter a puja or a samskara rite, stripped of floral presence. It is highly irregular for an image of the deity in temple or at home to be without a garland of flowers or leaves, no matter how rudimentary. Apart from being an essential mode of adornment for the deity, flowers are an offering during puja. The perception of flowers in Hindu ethos can be easily established through a scrutiny of specific Hindu texts (such as the Agamas and the Puranas) that carry details of temple and domestic worship and the manner in which devotion should be expressed to divinity. Perhaps the best known amongst these are the following lines attributed to Lord Krishna in the Srimad Bhagvad Gita: patram puspham phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati tad aham bhakty-upahritam asnami prayatatmanah3 (Sri Krishna, Srimad Bhagvad Gita, Chapter 9, verse 26) Indeed as I spoke to priests and lay Hindus, these emerged as the mostcited verses—offered in proof of the centrality of flowers and their spiritual status and value in Hindu religion. Brahmin priests guided me towards Puranic scriptures which detail the types of flowers that can be used for puja, their method of use as well as a list of flowers that must not be offered to divinity. Texts like the Mastya Purana and the Brhatsamhita were highlighted to me amongst scriptures which detail the meaning of flowers and their method of use in Hindu ceremonial life. The Puranas also state that each Hindu deity has its own preferred flowers and leaves and devotees are instructed to use these in their veneration. I learnt from these experts that these texts detail the merits4 and demerits of each and



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every flower, with commentaries on colour, fragrance (kantam), shape and origin, and their suitability as offering to specific deities. Flowers that are considered auspicious are prescribed for a specific act of worship or to be used whilst venerating a particular aspect of divinity. Others which are deemed not to be propitious are not offered in worship. Here are the normatively given ground rules that were articulated to me by respondents. Generally, flowers with strong odour are not used, while those without fragrance are avoided. Buds are not favoured over fully blossomed blooms. Mutilated, wilted varieties are not appropriate for divine offerings, neither are flowers that have been received in alms, or consumed by insects or animals. Fallen flowers, infected flowers or those that have been ‘used’ by humans (as hair decorations or garlands) are also out of bounds. It was ironic in the Singapore context that Mr Sundaraj, a priest explained that an orchid is not really a flower, since it lacks fragrance, and thus should not be used in Hindu worship: Orchid you are not supposed to use it at all. Because orchid is not a flower, because it doesn’t have a smell. In Hinduism we believe that flowers must have their own smell. Without that we are not supposed to use lah. But in Singapore we don’t have any choice. We go to Serangoon, we ask for loose flowers. They pack everything for you and we just pick it up. But you are not supposed to use the flower if it doesn’t smell. Mr Sundaraj highlighted that adorning gods with fresh flowers was required ‘by law’ although he acknowledged that this was not possible in places where these are not readily available and that sometimes practical decisions had to be made: We feel that god is naked without a flower. Without a garland, I feel the statue is very empty. With the flower it looks auspicious. By law, you are supposed to put flowers. In India, every house has a flower tree; everyday they do prayer, they pluck flowers and put for the god— fresh flowers daily. Nowadays, it’s not practical. In the books, they say you must use fresh flower. You are not supposed to use anything else. And your fresh flower must have smell. In addition to fresh flowers, it is permissible within Hindu logic to use those made of silver and gold even if they do not have a fragrance. Mr Sundaraj explains the distinct ‘quality’ of these metals which render them permanent and enduring: But it is silver. Silver has a quality by itself. Gold has a quality by itself. No smell, but it has a quality. And you want to do ta¯marai, for 108 ta¯marai, you buy in Serangoon Road, 108 ta¯marai can cost you

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Flowers for Worship, Flowers for Sale 108 dollar. You buy 300 dollar of silver, you can keep it for lifetime. Ta¯marai is expensive. It’s not practical to buy it here.


He argues that texts prescribe that it is alright to improvise and adapt a practice to suit one’s circumstances and sees nothing wrong with compromises as long as there is devotion to god: That’s why I am saying that religion must be improvised—in a very good way, not in a wrong way. This is what I believe. If you take the flower thing issue, although the book says no, to me it is ok to use plastic flowers. For practical reason. Why? At least, there is something on god. At least you have devotion to do that. Rather than to keep it empty. I really like the person who do this way. Of course, don’t do it for ever; Tuesday, Friday, make sure you go to Serangoon Road take initiative and get some fresh flowers. The various textual prescriptions are not just theoretical knowledge but are clearly largely acted upon in practice. Given my theoretical interests, I was less interested in abstracting textual/scriptural knowledge about the value of flowers and more focused on the everyday knowledge about flowers that lay Hindus ‘possessed’ and which they worked with in accomplishing a ceremonial life through reliance on materials such as flowers and leaves. I was quite impressed with the catalogue of practical knowledge that Hindus operate with, in possessing information about flowers and their association with specific deities that is essential for the ‘successful’ enactment of rituals. My conversations attempted to explicate the condensed, implicit everyday working knowledge that both consumers and sellers of flowers carry in their heads and which ground their practices. For consumers, this knowledge base has been built through informal mechanisms, learnt by word of mouth from religious specialists, family members, garland makers and flower sellers themselves. For example, the awareness about which flowers are suitable for specific deities is not gleaned directly from texts. Yet, Hindus I spoke to could easily rattle off these statements: ‘Durva grass5 is for Ganesh, red is his favourite colour but you cannot use tul.aci leaves or flowers for him’; ‘Lotus is for beauty, prosperity and fertility—we use it for Lakshmi’; ‘tul.aci is the most important leaf and flower used for Krishna but you can’t use hibiscus for him’; ‘for Amman, we need to make the neem garland’; ‘for Siva, use the Vilva leaves, he likes that.’ Apart from lay Hindus, those who in the flower trade are also experts of sorts. They are often consulted by customers who seek their input before placing an order or making a purchase. I encountered countless retailers who could as easily recite the floral preferences and needs of various deities. Here are just two examples: For Vinayagar, we put arukampul (carpet grass) garland, for Amman is ve¯ppilai (neem) garland, where we mix the ve¯ppilai with roses and



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yellow marigolds. For Sivan, we put the Vilva garland. Like that each god has different types of garlands that can be put for them. For Amman we can also put Arali flower garlands. For Vengadachalapathy, we tie tulsi garlands. For Vinaayagar, we tie carpet grass garlands. We tie rose garlands for Lakshmi. For Murugan, we tie jasmine garlands. Like this, we will do for the different deities. The customers themselves will ask us to tie the garlands for them, some tell us to tie rose garlands, others will ask for jasmine. And for Shiva, we tie Vilva garlands. The Vilva leaves come from Malaysia. If it is for Amman, we’ll tie ve¯ppilai garlands and give. Even the ve¯ppilai comes from Malaysia. My ethnography suggests that as compared to altars and statues, the approach to fresh flowers within Hindu discourse complicates the discussion about sacrality of materials. On the basis of my data I argue that the specific materiality of an object is crucial in determining its treatment during the cycle of consumption. In the case of flowers, I suggest that particular physical and material properties (e.g. colour and fragrance) predispose their use as auspicious objects and in a sense already render their utilisation in ritual life permissible and legitimate according to Hindu ethos and worldview. Specifically, I was keen to establish the space that fresh flowers occupy in Hindu worship. Flowers, both fresh and artificial, are found in Hindu homes and temples, not to mention other spaces that carry altars and representations of Hindu divinity (such as restaurants, offices, textile, jewellery and grocery stores, cars, etc.). While, artificial flowers (those made of plastic or fabric) adorned photographs of ancestors and sometimes deities as well, there was a clear preference amongst my respondents for using ‘real’ (meaning fresh) flowers. To begin with, loose flowers are offered at the feet of the deity, or showered on the deity during puja or a framed image or statue of the deity may be garlanded all of which signify a devotee’s faith, submission and surrender to divinity. It is of enormous significance that the word puja, a core ritual practice within homes and temples, is derived from the Dravidian pu meaning flowers, thus renders the very act of puja ‘worship with flowers’ (Nath 2001: 140).6 In Sanskrit, several terms exist for the word ‘flower,’ the most common being, pushpam, from which the word puja is also believed to be derived. The ritual of puja, formally recognised in the Agamas and Puranas, was conceptualised as a ‘series of offerings to or services for the deity which are usually performed before its image’ (Nath 2001: 140). In addition to nive¯ttiyam (offering of food), fresh flowers constitute an essential component of these offerings. Not only are flowers aesthetically pleasing, they also appeal to the sense of smell hence the requirement that any flower placed before gods must have a pleasant fragrance. In this act of devotional worship, the image of a deity is honoured and revered through a careful arrangement of ritual gestures, actions and movements with reliance on a range of ritual objects, and the

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entire experience is highly sensorial. For example, bells are rung, music is played, prayers are chanted, food, water and fragrant flowers are offered, incense is burnt and the image is bathed and adorned. So where do flowers that are used in Singaporean Hindu homes come from?


Commercial Flowers for Ceremonial Consumption The trade in fresh, cut flowers assumed the parameters of a global industry only post-1970 (Ziegler 2007: 229), heralding dramatic changes in their production, distribution and consumption patterns. At the same time, innovations in transportation, shipping and technology facilitate the global trading of a highly fragile commodity through enhancements in cold storage, cargo handling and air freight facilities. Over time, these developments have normalised the exporting and importing of fresh flowers across long distances. Today, it is hardly surprising that flowers grown in India, Israel, China and Singapore are readily available, in all their freshness, to consumers in the USA, Japan and the Netherlands. Evidence from a number of sources7 confirms that at present there is indeed a global market for the consumption of fresh flowers, with the potential to grow further exponentially. In many countries, flowers have been grown for commercial reasons largely for domestic use but increasingly a world market for consumption has emerged, pushing producers towards greater productivity, innovation and quality control in the horticultural and floricultural industries. While the USA, Japan, India and China produce mainly for a domestic market, Germany relies on imports to satisfy the demand for local consumption and the Netherlands has a huge home market but also a large volume of exports. Increasingly, trade in fresh flowers has taken on an international, global character. The imperative of moving flowers across large distances in a short period of time poses a multitude of challenges to producers, shippers, handlers, wholesalers and retailers. Traditionally, global commercial floriculture has been dominated by European countries, a situation that has continued into the present.8 But this dominance has gradually been challenged by new players on the scene, such as Israel, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ecuador, which by now have an established global presence. However, Asian countries have also made a bid to enter the arena and added to the fierce competition that now defines the field, namely, China, India, Republic of Korea, Thailand and notably Malaysia. The ‘time-to-market’ is crucial in the trade in cut flower industry. As noted by van Liemt: Flowers are very sensitive to the treatment they receive once they have been cut. Strict control of humidity, temperature and air quality are essential for delivering an attractive product to the market. Growers rely heavily on an efficient post-harvest chain of handlers, storage and transport. Indeed, in the absence of a ‘cold-chain’ it is practically


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impossible for even the most efficient producers to sell their produce on the main ‘northern’ markets.9


At a seminar organised by the ‘Asian Productivity Organization’ held in India in May 2000, its Secretary-General, Takashi Tajima, noted: The floriculture industry is currently one of the fastest growing subsectors of agriculture, particularly in terms of exports. It is estimated that the global market for floriculture products has been growing at 15–17 per cent per annum in the last six years. It is getting increasingly competitive as more countries enter the market and expand their production.10 Seminar participants from the Asia-Pacific region included Bangladesh, Republic of China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Malaysia’s and Philippines’ absence in these discussions is surprising but not Singapore’s. The latter is not a big player (certainly not as a producer, or exporter) even in the regional trade in cut flower industry, with the exception of its production of a variety of orchids11 for export globally.12 Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand do export cut flowers to Japan which is a major consumer of flowers and potted plants regionally, while also being the largest producer (ibid.1). Singapore is listed as a trader of flowers and plants only after Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.13 The same report notes that ‘Singapore’s floriculture domestic exports have risen by 8.96 per cent in 1995 to reach S$50.8 million, compared to 1994’14 (ibid. 37) even though it continues to import orchid flowers and plants from such places as Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.15 The agricultural industry in Singapore has in the past not been developed as comprehensively as other sectors, especially post-independence. However, there has been some activity in this domain. This sector has seen the production of vegetables, pigs, poultry, eggs and fish even though in the 1980s only about one-sixth of the island’s total land area was cultivated (Dunphy 1981: 107). Singapore is not self-sufficient in terms of its vegetable and fruit production and relies heavily on imports of these produces regionally and internationally, to cater to the consumption demands of the local market. In fact the local scene has been dominated even in the 1970s by the production of orchids, accounting ‘for 25% of all horticultural production’ (Dunphy 1981: 148). The Singapore government and other interested bodies have been actively involved in supporting the development of the nursery and cult flower industries. Locally, orchids are the major exports but also chrysanthemums and roses in smaller numbers. The major market for cut flowers is Europe, Japan, USA and Australia. In terms of imports, Singapore relies heavily on the Southeast region for its supply of cut flowers. Specifically, in 1978–79, chrysanthemums were


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imported from Malaysia and Taiwan and roses from Taiwan (Dunphy 1981: 152). Despite limited land for agricultural cultivation in Singapore, some efforts have been made to harness technological expertise for enhancing farming techniques. To this end the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has recently moved ‘towards agrotechnology, which is the application of modern technology and life sciences to intensive farming systems’ (www:ava.gov.sg) and set up 6 agro-technology parks across the island.16 The AVA website records that a total land area of 107 hectares is dedicated to horticultural activities shared between 122 farms of which 53 cultivate vegetables and 69 are devoted to ‘Orchid/Ornamentals’ etc. Despite the small land plot dedicated to horticulture (including floriculture), we learn that there was ‘a 23.6% increase in annual export of floriculture products in 2004 ($55.85 mil) over 2003 ($45.17 mil).’17 The bulk of this export revenue came from the export of fresh orchids, orchid plants and cuttings to Japan, Australia and the USA (ibid. 1). In terms of production, home-grown blooms clearly do not cater to the demand for local consumption, not necessarily in terms of amount of production but the need for specific kinds of flowers and plants for ceremonial use. There is clearly a market for cut flowers in Singapore and this need has been met by importing the needed supplies from the region.18 Importing flowers into Singapore is currently the norm and the demand for some flowers is seasonal, coinciding with the observance of various festivals, not to mention such occasions as weddings, funerals, births and festivals, all of which require the use of flowers as well as regular demand from restaurants and hospitals. Festivals like the Lunar New Year and Qing Ming have been observed to be associated with rising requirement for cut flowers and plants. Another obvious market for fresh flowers is provided by their ceremonial and ritualistic use, within the context of ethnic and religious observances. Here, my focus is on the everyday demand for fresh flowers by members of the Hindu community on the island, but my fieldwork also reveals their importance in the religious lives of Buddhists, Taoists and Muslims on the island.

Importing Flowers into Singapore: Distribution Networks With this very general introduction to the presence of the floral industry in Singapore I want to turn now to a precise consideration of sites from which fresh flowers are secured and their mechanisms and networks of distribution, for use especially by Singapore’s Hindus. Overall information about total numbers of fresh flower importers, wholesalers and suppliers in the Singapore market is not readily available. A search with the online version of Singapore’s Yellow Pages generated a list of 21 wholesale nurseries, many of which I knew by name through my fieldwork as suppliers of fresh flowers to flower shops in LI and elsewhere on the island. According



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to this source, these farms are located in places like Lim Chu Kang, Yishun, Bedok, Seletar, Hougang/Sengkang, Sembawang and Woodlands, which are relatively more ‘rural,’ with less urban development and thus more land available for farming than in the rest of the island. It is critical to mention here that while statistics and trade figures about importing floricultural products are useful, they do not necessarily capture the movement of all flowers into Singapore, i.e., those that come through informal (but legal) routes, hand-carried by individuals through the immigration checkpoint at Johore Bahru or at Changi Airport and not through wholesalers and importers. As such they are not counted and accounted for in any formally-generated figures, yet they have a presence and are crucial to sustaining Hindu religious life on the island. Today flowers for the domestic market are largely imported into Singapore but some respondents who have long been involved in the local flower trade recall when these could be secured in Singapore itself. An oldtimer who started his flower shop, first in LI and then moved to the north of the island, in Sembawang in the 1970s recalls: In those days, flowers came from Singapore itself. In Sembawang there was huge farm where they grew flowers. In the Changi area, there were big farms as well. There were a many areas in Singapore where people would grow flowers. Chinese farmers owned these farms. Some flowers also came from Malaysia, even in those days. There were large farms in Johore Bahru and we would get some flowers from them. Numerous respondents talked about the time when it was possible to obtain fresh flowers from orchards and plantations on the island. Mention was made of such local districts as Thomson, Braddell and Lim Chu Kang (see Map 2)19 as places where flower orchards and plantations existed even into the 1980s. Mr Pannir who operates a flower shop in LI reminisced: In those days, about 30 years ago, they had flower farms in Singapore. When they had their own small farms here, they would supply us with flowers. Every day, they will come give us a little bit of flowers, likes roses, jasmine. Then as time went on, those places were taken away one by one. And the suppliers found other places overseas to get their supplies of flowers. Other businessmen also joined the business as importers of flowers from places like Bangkok because there aren’t flower farms here anymore. They get jasmine flowers from Indonesia, places like that. Today these named flower orchards no longer exist, although some plantations do exist in areas such as Seletar, Lim Chu Kang, Yishun, etc. and are still functioning. In contrast to these early days, today a majority of


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flowers are secured from outside Singapore. My fieldwork strongly suggests that as far as the Indian and Hindu community is concerned, today there is an overwhelming reliance on the Malaysian20 and Indian markets for securing the floral requirements of the local Hindu community, in the form of loose, fresh flowers as well as garlands, although Thailand and Indonesia also supply some specific blooms. Interestingly, a majority of the flower suppliers to the flower shops in LI are members of the ethnic Chinese community (who have been historically associated with ‘farming’ on the island—including horticulture and floriculture), who import flowers from the Southeast Asian region and act as suppliers to retail florists and nurseries scattered across the island. My fieldwork confirmed this fact and in fact a vast majority of suppliers of fresh flowers to the retail businesses in Singapore are local Chinese businessmen, supplying flowers for daily vending in the flower shops in the LI district. Interestingly, this trade in fresh flowers connects local retailers with wholesale importers and suppliers who are non-Hindu and non-Indian, which I learnt is a non-issue in this line of work. I was able to determine that there are 4 to 5 ‘big players’ recognised and acknowledged in the market. They enjoy a monopoly, having been in the field for a considerable period and thus have built up their credentials and reputation. In addition, they also have access to various kinds of contacts, expertise and resources—both locally and regionally—that have allowed them to enjoy success in this business. My inquiries reveal that it is the suppliers who do all important and essential background work that is entailed in importing flowers into the country and assuring their distribution and delivery into the hands of retailers. It is their responsibility to take orders from the retailers, secure the relevant flowers from their regional contacts, obtain the import-export licenses and other port clearances, arrange and handle freight issues, take care of transportation and all the costs incurred in these processes, and also to deliver fresh flowers daily, sometimes twice or thrice a day, to the door-step of flower shops in LI. As such the latter are not involved with the administrative, bureaucratic and practical concerns entailed in importing flowers. Their job, literally, is to place orders for fresh flowers (in their loose form, or as balls of strung flower or garlands) with the suppliers and make them available to customers. Given the ease with which flowers appear, almost magically, in these retail arrangements, I repeatedly heard that setting up a flower shop was very ‘easy’ and hassle-free, with no ‘government headaches.’ This was also cited as the prime reason for the increasing pace at which flower shops were being established in LI. Mr Viknesh explains the mechanisms by which he secures his supplies from the region and the work that he does not have to do in the process: As I told you, most of the suppliers are already based here in Singapore. So there is no need for me to contact people in Thailand or Indonesia


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for my flowers. I don’t have to travel anywhere to secure my stock either. I just look up the Internet or telephone directory for wholesalers and call them to enquire about their supplies. Now that I have regular suppliers, if I need anything, I just call them a day before and the next morning they bring what I need. Even for flowers from India, I do not deal with any shipping issues. My suppliers bring the flowers and they deal with all these issues. The price that they quote already includes all these shipping costs so I do not have to deal with anything separately. The local ‘suppliers,’ who are also in fact representatives of flower exporters and suppliers based in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India, are the most important players in the distribution network that links floral wholesalers, retailers and consumers regionally. Given the nature of the item being traded, the business is one that needs vendors and suppliers alike to pay close, continual attention to issues of demand and supply, to gauge the needs of the market and requires commitment of time, resources and energy on a daily basis. According to Mr Mani, orders are placed and delivered daily, sometimes more than once a day: For flowers, our suppliers are in Singapore. We order from them daily and they deliver the flowers to us every day. We have to tell them one day in advance the amount of flowers we need. They deliver loose flowers to us daily. Although we already have a set of suppliers, there still are new suppliers who approach us at the shop to tell us what they have. If we are interested in their stocks we can always order from them. Some suppliers also call us to ask if we are interested in ordering from them. There seems to be no dearth of suppliers, all of whom personally make the rounds in LI, looking out for new businesses in an effort to secure more clients. Even for Malaysian and Indonesian suppliers, the local distributors do all the work of promoting items for sale, taking orders and delivering supplies on a daily basis. A vast majority of these transactions are performed on the telephone, although there is evidence of reliance on e-mails and faxes as well, especially for large, regular orders. But the day-to-day retail needs of the flower shop vendors do not require a large volume of supplies and since the demand tends to be seasonal and varied, it requires vendors to moderate and adjust the supply of goods daily. One vendor reiterates this point: They (suppliers) import from Thailand, Indonesia in bulk and they supply all the shops here. They are located in Yishun, Ang Mo Kio. They are importers of flowers, they import in wholesale and they sell to all the shops here. They will ask you daily what you want. They’ll


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Plate 18 Flower vendors displaying their wares at the wholesale ‘Kamraj Flower Market’ in Koyambedu, outside Chennai.

call and ask today what you want, tomorrow what you want. Day by day basis. This following example illustrates the typical pattern by which flowers are made available for consumption: roses, marigolds and orchids are flown into Singapore from Bangkok, are picked up by the local distributors and delivered by them to flower shops in LI. It is significant that there is no need for any interaction, direct link or transaction between the retailers in Singapore and the exporters of flowers in Bangkok. Fresh flowers are imported from a number of different countries, each with its own speciality. A vendor (Orchid FS) itemises the variety of spaces from which specific flowers are obtained: Our flowers come from many places in the region. We get a lot of special flowers from India, like mul..lan.ki, mullai and semangi flowers. Roses and balsam flowers come from Malaysia. Our jasmine stocks come from Indonesia, Malaysia and sometimes Thailand. Orchid flowers come from the nurseries and farms in Singapore. And from those ‘kampong’ areas in Singapore, we get our supply of Arakampul (carpet grass) and ve¯ppilai (neem leaves).


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Both loose fresh flowers and ‘tied’ flowers are imported into Singapore. Jasmine garlands, which are extremely popular with Hindus and Buddhists alike, in particular, are ‘pre-tied’ in Malaysia and the same is true of balls of strung jasmine flowers. Mr Viknesh explains that this has to do with manpower shortage in Singapore and also because of the delicate nature of jasmine buds, they have to be tied soon after they have been plucked, before they bloom fully: Here, most of the time, we have very little manpower. We don’t have many people here. In Singapore, to get workers from India is very difficult. And there are not many people for this trade here. The jasmine garlands come tied—because they can fade very fast-all we do is attach the centre piece of roses, marigolds or orchids to the garlands. Vendors use this example to argue that at best, Singapore can be a place where products can be ‘assembled’ but not produced from scratch. This is not true, however, of flowers from India or the neem leaves and carpet grass obtained from Singapore itself. Garlands made from the latter are produced locally: We get all these flowers and leaves in boxes and everything is assembled right here in the shop. We tie the garlands from scratch, getting the coconut leaf cord or coloured string, to string the flowers with. Flower shop operators I spoke to report that there is a strong demand for fresh flowers from India, both for ceremonial use and personal use, arguing that there is in fact a preference from Indian blooms. According to Mr Gopi who owns a successful floral trade in LI: Yes, people do prefer the flowers from India. They have begun to buy more of it. Because it smells good, it has a very strong fragrance. And the flowers are tied very close to one another, the strands are thick with flowers. In Singapore, the public really like flowers from India. They don’t even ask for this jasmine anymore. They like the flowers from Tamil Nadu. It looks nice when you drape it around the deities, it is very thick. And it lasts for 2 to 3 days. They tie the flowers close to one another and customers like that. Hindus I spoke to confirm this preference for Indian flowers, stating that they were indeed ‘different’ in terms of their fragrance and sweet smell, aesthetic appeal as well as the skilled manner in which garlands are woven. Mr Viknesh says that this reading of the local market has led him to even specialise in selling flowers from India: We specialise in flowers from India which are very popular. Our mullai flowers and semangi flowers sell very well. You see this semangi

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garland, can you see the bees buzzing around it? This is the only flower that is so sweet smelling that it attracts the bees to it. We get the semangi flowers daily from India and we tie it into garlands ourselves. The mullai flowers from India are also very popular, especially with newly married couples. The ladies will buy the flowers to wear on their hair21 and every weekend, there will be many couples who specially come to this shop to buy flowers and garlands before they go to the temple. India has a thriving floricultural industry with its export sector projected to grow to Rs 700 crore22 by the end of 2010, which still gives it only a miniscule share—0.3 per cent of the global market,23 compared to the majority 70 per cent share enjoyed by the Netherlands, 12 per cent by Columbia and 6 per cent by Israel. Although the Indian government has identified agri-export zones in Sikkim, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal, Karnataka and Maharashtra, and also allocated some resources in promoting this industry, experts agreed that much more needs to be done in terms of infrastructural support and greater government input to actualise the full potential of the Indian floriculture exports, especially in view of strong, emergent competition from new production centres that are vying for a share of the global floral trade. Some key developments include the need to set up cold storage and cargo handling facilities at ports and airports and government subsidies for air freights of floral exports. The major flowers exported by India include roses, jasmines, tuberose, carnation, gerbera, crossandra, anthurium, marigold, chrysanthemum, gladiolus, orchids and lily, with about 75 per cent of the floral production coming from the state of Karnataka. The major export markets for Indian flowers (for ceremonial and ornamental purposes) include Japan, USA, Germany, UK, Australia and the Netherlands, but, overall, India exports cut flowers to some 54 countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, where jasmine flowers are imported in large numbers. Flowers which are grown in these agri-zones find their way to wholesale floral markets such as the one in ‘Parry’s Corner,’ located off NSC Bose Road in Chennai and the ‘Kamraj Malar Angadi’ in Koyembedu, before being picked up by retail and wholesale florists for domestic and global consumption. I visited both these places in February 2006. The market in Chennai’s ‘Parry’s Corner’ is constituted of hundreds of small shops, closely packed into a single, narrow lane. Here one sees mainly the trade in loose flowers like roses, marigolds, kasturi, kanaka¯param, carpet grass, vilva, jasmines (buds and fully bloomed), betel and mango leaves, sold at highly competitive prices by weight. The ‘Kamraj Flower Market,’ in Koyembedu, about 15 km from Chennai, presented a different but equally spectacular sight. Here is an entry from my field notes of 23 February 2006: I saw literally thousands of traders dealing with the sale of flowers. Loose, colourful flowers displayed in mountains and mounds, sold



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Plate 19 A typical ‘flower shop’ set-up in Singapore’s Buffalo Road, with a freezer box for storing flowers and the Styrofoam boxes in which flowers are delivered by local suppliers.

by the weight—Rs 30 for 1 kg of marigolds. Flower merchants, both men and women, haggling loudly and good-naturedly over prices. Prominently displayed signboards—announcing wholesalers, exporters, distributors, and suppliers of flowers for all occasions—temple use, home use, for prayers, personal use, birthdays, weddings, and funerals—for local and global market. I did not notice differentiation between merchants on the basis of flowers sold for religious or secular use. Saw a huge dump at the back of the market—unsold, faded flowers are discarded here. Flowers arrive at these wholesale markets from such places as Dindigul, Mannarkudi and Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu and even as far away as Hosur, Devanahalli and Chickaballapur in Karnataka. Retailers and distributors from Chennai and the surrounding towns and cities pick up supplies at cost price before dispatching them to domestic retail outlets or to overseas markets. In Singapore, the mechanisms for securing jasmines, marigold and other ‘Indian’ flowers follow the general pattern noted earlier for the Southeast Asian region, but with some important variations. Vendors identify ‘regular fixed representatives’ of flower wholesalers and exporters in Chennai,

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who are either based in Singapore or visit the island on regular intervals throughout the year. Singapore flower shop operators prefer to use these intermediaries and find this method to be a viable one, preferring to deal with smaller, manageable orders through a variety of suppliers rather than have fixed, permanent contacts with Indian suppliers. Mr Viknesh explains why he prefers to keep the agreement flexible, rather than be tied down to any permanent agreement or go through the trouble of sourcing suppliers directly in India: If it’s a big order, we will get a fixed contract. We ourselves will call them, give our orders and then send men to go collect the orders once they are here. But with smaller orders, we don’t do that because there is the same amount of risk involved and it’s not worth the extra work we have to do. Whether we get the flowers ourselves or buy from these sellers who come down every day, the profit we get is the same. If we were to do it ourselves, we have to go to India, get the flowers from the various farms there, have about ten people to tie the flowers, then we have to pack it, send it to the airport and load it up onto the plane. Then once it’s here, we also have to go and collect it. With the informal suppliers, we don’t have any of these risks. So if you see it like that, either way we get only about one or two dollars profit, and if we let them come to us, we actually have less work to do as well. Mr Pannir concurs with this view and notes the ease with which flowers from India can be secured these days: The suppliers bring the flowers straight to us from the airport. We don’t have to call anyone in India to order these flowers. There are suppliers who arrange everything and when the flowers reach Singapore, they pick them up from the airport and come and ask us how much we want. If they are good flowers we’ll buy from them. But local businessmen also note the presence of large numbers of ‘informal suppliers’ who have a more irregular and intermittent presence in the market but who literally carry the flowers with them as personal luggage on a flight from Chennai, and walk the lanes trying to sell their wares to individual flower shops. But they cannot be relied on to provide supplies regularly. Mr Viknesh elaborates: Yes, those types of suppliers mainly deal with India flowers (urru poo). They pay the GST at the airport and then bring it down to this place. But this is not permanent. They come during certain seasons and sometimes they just stop coming. Given the increased number of flights between Singapore and Chennai, air traffic between the two places is brisk. Couriers who carry flowers arrive


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on the morning Indian Airlines or Singapore Airlines flight, head straight to LI to dispose their merchandise and sometimes even leave for Chennai on the evening flight. Indian flowers come to Singapore through Chennai airport, being the gateway for goods leaving South India. Yet, local vendors know exactly where in India particular flowers are grown: Flowers come to Madras from all parts of Tamil Nadu. Dindigul, Madurai, Tanjavur—they’ll come from all these places. So our suppliers in Madras will buy all these flowers and send them here. Like for example, Sammangi flowers come from Dindigul, also a flower called Javanthi. Mullai flowers come from Mannarkudi. They come from various parts of Tamil Nadu and everything goes to Madras. In Madras, they then buy the flowers, tie it into garlands and send it over. In contrast to the reliance on these distributors, one established flower shop in LI has taken a rather different route, bypassing the suppliers altogether. This is a business with a long, stable history of being in Singapore, and has today cornered about 60 per cent of the flower market on the island. It enjoys not only a monopoly but also has a solid reputation in

Plate 20 A Styrofoam box with flowers that have been packed in ice and flown into Singapore from Bangkok on Thai Airways.


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the community, not to mention the capital to invest in this very different project, which I now describe. Instead of relying on suppliers like the other flower businesses, this family-run business has literally decided to start from scratch. This flower shop which is physically based in Singapore started a practice some 10–15 years ago, which allows it to run its operations from the town of Senai, in the Malaysian state of Johore—located about 80 km north of Singapore. In Senai, this business ‘rents’ about 6 acres of land from its Malaysian Chinese landlord, and this is used to grow jasmines, carpet grass, Thai limes and tul.aci (holy basil). The landowner employs Indonesian and Thai workers (some of them, perhaps, illegal workers in Malaysia) to plant the seeds, nurture the plants and hand-pick the flowers. The premises also house about 20 workers from Tamil Nadu, India, whose job is to ‘tie flowers.’ These workers are ‘technically’ employed by the Chinese landlord who owns the orchards, secures their work permits and attends to other bureaucratic formalities relating to the hiring of foreign worker. In reality, however, they are employed (and paid) by the Singapore-run flower shop which looks after all their financial and other needs. This novel arrangement was explained to me thus: since it is difficult to employ such workers (whose skill lies in tying flowers) in Singapore, it made sense to move the business operations to Malaysian soil, but sustained with Singapore-based capital. Thus this large business has basically moved its production operations to Malaysia to overcome the problem of securing relevant manpower to sustain its flower trade. Twice daily, the garlands that have been tied in Malaysia are transported by road into Singapore to be sold in the retail outlet in LI or delivered to homes and temples. Sometimes, special flowers that have been air-flown into Singapore from Chennai (Indian jasmines and marigolds), Jakarta and Bangkok (roses and orchids) are driven to the Senai-based workshop to be used in the garlands and then brought back to Singapore by the evening, to be sold in the flower shop. The transnational character of this business model is obvious and seems to benefit all involved parties: the capital is furnished by a business based in Singapore; input from Thai and Indonesian workers allows seeds to be planted and blooms to be harvested; the expert labour of Indian workers transforms loose flowers (some of which are secured from India into Singapore but are driven to Senai before being transformed and brought back as finished products into Singapore) into garlands; the infrastructure for production is offered by a Chinese Malaysian landowner; and Singaporean workers physically move the finished products across the Causeway. Given the logic of my research inquiries, I want to highlight an important local site where imported fresh flowers are made available for everyday consumption before turning to the locales from which these are secured and the mechanisms and networks through which they are distributed in the marketplace. I thus draw attention to the colourful constellation of ‘flower shops,’ located primarily in the LI district, which are low priced,


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retail outlets where Hindus (and others) can access fresh flowers (amongst other items) for their ritual needs.


‘Flower Shops’ in ‘Little India’ Despite the fact that Singapore is not a major producer of cut flowers, as we have seen, accessing fresh flowers for Singaporeans today is hardly a problem. A huge variety of fresh flowers is available in Singapore through the efforts of flower importers who make these available to local wholesalers and suppliers who have distribution channels that can deliver them fresh daily to the large number of retail florists scattered around the island. One such retail outlet for flowers, which is the focus of discussion here is the large (and growing) number of ‘flower shops’ located in the LI district of Singapore. Here, I provide an ethnographic account of these sites which make fresh flowers from the Southeast Asian region and increasingly from India easily available to customers. I first ask what the phrase ‘flower shop’ connotes in concrete terms, the items it carries and its structural details, followed by a discussion of their physical placement by mapping their actual location across various spaces on the island. Next, I address the identity of individuals who operate these shops as merchants and entrepreneurs. This discussion generated two further themes which I present here—the question of the nationality of individuals who own these shops and those employed to ‘tie’ flowers into garlands, and the issue of whether ‘tying flowers’ is a skill—a question that assumes immense significance in Singapore. Finally, I provide details of the clientele/customer base that sustains these outlets and thus say something about the local market for fresh flowers. In February 2006, as I travelled from Chennai to Trichy and back, I stopped at numerous temples, starting with the Kapaleeshwar Temple in Mylapore, the Sri Karuma¯riyamman Alayam in Thiruverakadu, the Siruvachoor Mathurakaliamman Kovil and the Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman Temple near Trichy. In all these sacred sites, I observed an obvious pattern: vendors of all varieties (offering puja articles and flowers) were present at the entrance gates or in the immediate vicinity outside the temples and sometimes within temple grounds as well.24 Individual men, women and children holding baskets of fresh loose jasmines and roses or garlands made of these and other flowers stood behind a stall or sat on the ground, beseeching devotees to buy their wares before entering the temple. Other more permanent units, organised in a formal, structured manner had established what were recognisable to me as ‘shops’ or ‘retail outlets’ where a greater volume and variety of blooms awaited the devotee and stood in keen competition with their extemporised counterparts for customers’ attention. In contrast, a visitor to any of the 24 Hindu temples on the island of Singapore would not witness the scene I have just depicted. With some exceptions,25 temple sites in Singapore do not typically have commercial activities (in the

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marketing of puja articles) embedded within their premises. Many retailers I interviewed expressed the strong view that they saw temples exclusively as places of worship that should not morph into commercial spaces and temple management committees should not be involved with the sale of ritual objects, including the sale of flowers within these locales. Mr Jayan who runs a popular and successful business in ‘prayer things’ in the heart of Singapore’s LI, expressed this view most forcefully: Temples and all having shops, which is wrong. I really feel that temples should not . . . people should not . . . it is not an area to sell things. It shouldn’t be like that. But things have evolved. Temples also have become supermarkets. This affects the business in Serangoon Road. So if I were to start doing what temples do—‘Okay come in, one arccanai–50cents,’ that would be unfair to them. Temples are for praying not selling and making money. However, some temples do sell flowers and other offerings for use during arccanai but devotees can also bring their own offerings. Typically, the latter are secured from one of the about 25–3026 flower shops located in the Indian district of the island. Today Buffalo Road in Singapore’s LI is synonymous with small flowers shops packed together along crowded corridors. It is listed on a heritage trail under the auspices of the National Heritage Board and popular with tourists and locals alike. My inquiries about where fresh flowers could be bought in Singapore pointed overwhelmingly to this street which was historically associated with cattle rearing, hence its name. Today it is a row of pre-World War II buildings that house a host of businesses dealing with Indian goods and services, including amongst them, flowers shops. This site can thus be added to its famous counterparts in India for example, the R S Puram flower market in Coimbatore and the shops outside the Kapaleeshwar temple in Mylapore. The idea that flower shops must continue to flourish in this Indian/Hindu area in Singapore is a given for numerous interested parties, such as customers, merchants, tourists, LISHA, STB, for obviously varied interests. The end-result of such collective support is that flower shops are today an embedded feature in LI and mark the region in distinct ways. The ‘five foot way’ and ‘pavements’ of LI are not merely used as walkways. A great deal of activity takes place along these stretches, which are crowded, vibrant, colourful spaces, enfolding within them a hub of casual and informal commercial interaction and activity, with a variety of vendors-trading in a multitude of goods and services—palm reading and fortune telling, sale of yoghurt, imitation jewellery, coconut water, fruits, vegetables and flowers—packed with vendors and customers. These are not covert activities but occur in full public view with the knowledge of the relevant authorities. But there seems to be some implicit agreement that allows these authorities to ‘close an eye’ and adopt an unseeing posture,27


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to enable a traditional, colourful atmosphere to be sustained in the area, both for local consumption and certainly to cultivate and encourage touristic interest in the area. Retailers like Mr Jayan agree with this logic, seen in his decision to not ‘refrigerate’ flowers but opt for a ‘real’ flower shop: If you want to have that kind of Indian atmosphere, you have to let this happen. If not it will defeat the entire purpose. It won’t look like Serangoon Road anymore. You have to have colourful flowers at the roadside, you have to have the bees attracted to the flowers. That’s where you will see tourists taking pictures of it. If you want to wipe that out and put that (flowers) in a fridge down here, it is not going to work. It is not the way. Because initially I was thinking that also, why don’t I put the fridge inside with the flowers? But I didn’t want to do that. It is not the same. Mr Rajkumar, Chairman of LISHA agreed that it was important to preserve customary practices such as garland-making and flower shops in the pavements in order to maintain a particular image and identity of Serangoon Road and the ambience associated with it: Yeah, yeah I suppose so and also that (flower shop) adds colour okay that adds colour to the whole area. The messiness is actually what Little India is. It’s what tourists want to see. Indeed, a majority of the flower shops I have mapped are situated along these narrow corridors, the ‘five foot way’ which are technically deemed to be state land and meant to be free from all objects and activity to allow easy and clear passageway for human traffic. The flower shops I have seen are literally located in the strips of space bordering the main shops, and operate out of a very small physical space, sometimes no larger than the size of a table top. The proprietors rent these spaces from the main tenants who sublet their shop front for some profit. In addition to these small enterprises, many of the more established stores that trade in a larger pool of puja items have also established flower shops as part of their business. They are dominant players in the market and expectedly exercise some degree of monopoly therein. Several such stores which previously lacked these stores have recently decided to ‘ride the tide’ and move into the floral industry, with the view that this is an attractive addition to their business, literally as the flower stalls ‘front’ the bigger shops and are conspicuously sited to attract customers. Ms Suma who first established a business dealing with puja items and added the floral component subsequently explains her decision thus: Well, we already were selling Hindu prayer items for puja and all. Having a flower shop seemed logical because people who are buying

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things for pujas can buy everything they need for their prayers in one go, including flowers. They don’t have to go to separate shops to buy their prayer items and flowers. And not only that. Flowers are very auspicious and when customers walk past and see a flower shop, they will be impressed and think that this is a good shop with many things to buy and they will come in. Many of the vendors I spoke to hold the view that a flower shop is associated with tradition, custom and Hindu religiosity and that its image had to be handled carefully. The presentation of the self, including the dress code, was seen to be an important component of such management. According to Ms Suma, this stance is crucial from a pragmatic, business point of view as well: Especially when we have a flower shop, we can’t dress up in a sexy manner. When customers come here, they’ll wonder why this girl is dressing so sexily and may decide not to buy flowers from the shop. So we end up having to dress up very traditionally and wear flowers in our hair every day. All this plays a big part in sales as well. It depends on how you look at it also. If I were working at a hotel, and dressed up in modern clothes, everyone would, for sure, comment that I look very nice. If I were to wear the same outfit here, people would comment why I dressed up like that. There are many differences in that sense. Other vendors said that while the site of the flower shop was not viewed as a ‘sacred’ space, it was nonetheless inappropriate for salespersons to engage in such activities as eating, drinking and smoking therein. A prominent and experienced player in the field and the owner of a flower shop in LI, Mr Sukumar recalls that in the 1960s there were about 4 to 6 flower shops only in this area, located along Selegie Road and Serangoon Road. These numbers have grown exponentially, particularly in the last 10–15 years or so. However, it is important to highlight that this is only one of the sites on the island where ‘flower shops’ are located. I had the opportunity to venture beyond LI into what are known in the local landscape as the ‘HDB heartlands’28 such as Serangoon Central, Yishun, Clementi, Woodlands and Sembawang and encountered flower shops in these areas as well. Historically, this is by no means a recent development. In addition to stalls offering fresh fruits, vegetables and meat, the ‘wet markets’29 which have been a feature in these housing estates, also had stalls that sold fresh flowers as well, for ornamental, decorative and ceremonial use. With the gradual disappearance of wet markets, these stalls have moved into ‘shop houses’30 that were constructed specifically for businesses in the neighbourhoods. Typically, the stalls in these public housing estates combine the sale of ‘Indian’ goods (such as groceries and foodstuff) with that of fresh flowers and prayer things. Vendors argue that survival


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is a key issue and as it is not possible for them to manage on the sale of flowers alone. They have had to expand and diversify their businesses to sustain themselves. One such stall holder, Mr Murali who has been in the flower business since 1965 and who is now located in Yishun explains: In the beginning I only sold flowers. Then I included prayer items. Outhupatthi (incense sticks), ca¯mpiran.i, cut.am (camphor), vettilai (betel nut leaves), prayer oil. I have other kinds of prayer items. Now I have also started selling rice and lentils. And some other provision items. I used to sell cigarettes as well. But now I have stopped. I just concentrate on prayer items, flowers and provision items. Because it is difficult to do business with just one product. We must diversify and sell different kinds of things if we want to run a successful business. The flower business is seasonally profitable. We see good returns only during festival periods. During these times, business is good and we can earn quite a bit. To tide us over at other times, we need to look into other areas we can do business in. One important change Mr Murali noted was the greater number of flower shops in these neighbourhoods. In the 1970s and 1980s, he recalls there were just a few flower shops but today the landscape is quite different, with numerous such stalls concentrated in these locales, competing for customers further reinforcing the need for expanding the business into other domains. Flower shops in LI vary in terms of their scale and scope of operation, some have a giant share of the market while others are ‘small players.’ In crucial ways the descriptor ‘flower shop’ is a misnomer. What does this connote in empirical terms? My data suggest that a ‘flower shop’ is a metaphoric reference to a commercial site that makes available to customers a range of items required for worship, i.e., ‘prayer things’ such as loose flowers (jasmine, roses, orchids, marigold), garlands, decorative items (such as door hangings), wicks for oil lamps, oil, coconuts, lime, mango, banana and margosa leaves, in addition to offering packages for ‘wedding services’ and ‘religious events.’ In my experience, they conceptualise and present themselves as a ‘one stop shop,’ where practically everything for worship can be secured. Mr Mani, shared the inventory of items sold in his flower shop: Anything that you need for prayer can be found here actually. Outside, we have our flower shop. You can buy all kinds of garlands and flowers there, and things like ve¯ppilai, tulsi, betel-nut leaves, Vilva and carpet grass. Inside, we sell all kinds of incense, camphor, sambaraani, prayer oils, silks, bangles, pot.t.u, turmeric, kungumam and sandalwood. We also sell statues, pictures of deities, plastic garlands, silk cloth for deities and jewellery for statues. We have lamps, bells, trays, all kinds of puja items actually.

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This was corroborated in numerous conversations I had with flower traders. Mr Viknesh provides an almost identical list of items his shop sells:


Mostly we sell flowers. We have all kinds of flowers: jasmine, marigolds, balsam, roses, orchids, flowers from India like mullai and semangi. We also sell leaves used for prayers like neem (ve¯ppilai), carpet grass (arukampul), holy basil (tulsi) and betel nut leaf (vetillai). We tie garlands using all these flowers and leaves. And we also have prayers oils, lamps, joss sticks. But the trade in fresh flowers itself requires some degree of specialisation. Mr Pannir’s flower shop is renowned for the range and variety of Indian flowers it carries: But we have up to seven varieties of loose flowers. We have senbagam, in two colours, red and white. Orchid, vaadaamalli, cemparutti, then this red flower, piccip pu¯. This is cevvarali, this pink one. Then we have the normal jasmine, kanakaambaram and mullai, which come every morning. This is cevanti flower, in white and yellow. Mano¯rañcitam that is a green colour flower. Then we have vilva, tul.aci, arukampul (carpet grass) and ve¯ppilai. These four will always be available at our shop. In terms of patronage, the neighbourhood flower shops report a multiethnic and multi-religious customer base as do their LI counterparts. Mr Viknesh and Mr Pannir, with businesses located in LI, highlight the same trend: Everyone comes to buy flowers from us. We cannot pinpoint any one group of people who come to us. Every day I see individuals, families, Hindus, Malays and Chinese people buying from me. Some people buy for the altars in their houses. Some come here before going to the temple to buy garlands to offer to the deities. Others buy flowers just to put in their hair. Chinese people, they buy jasmine garlands to put for their Buddha statues. Malay people seem to like to buy betel nut leaves. They chew on it like how we Indians chew on it to freshen our breath. This business is not for any particular ethnic or religious group. And cheroots, they buy a lot of that. Malay people buy marigolds, and loose jasmine flowers.31 Although flower shops carry an assortment of puja-related articles, the primary commodity they trade in is fresh flowers—in the form of petals, buds, whole blooms as well as flower garlands that have been ‘tied.’ One crucial strand of my conversations with these vendors revolved around



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the skill of ‘tying flowers,’ an expression I encountered routinely and repeatedly during fieldwork. Conventionally, within a Hindu worldview, non-Brahmin service castes that are engaged in a range of activities with the requisite skills and proficiency that are critical for supporting worship in homes and temples are highly regarded. For instance, I heard from my Hindu informants that for communities that have been engaged with the construction of statues or ‘tying garlands’ are not merely performing ‘work’ but that for them the rendering of these services carries strong spiritual overtones. Many Hindus argued that ideally, the tying of flowers into garlands requires both internal and external purity, it is an act of devotion and must be accompanied with the chanting of appropriate mantras and while meditating on god. However, many also admitted that this situation could not be achieved in reality, especially outside India, given that the skill has by now been disconnected from traditional caste communities and passed into other hands. Yet, my queries about whether the trade in flowers was caste-based (especially in Singapore)32 were vehemently denied by each and every vendor I spoke to. I was met with the egalitarian view that this skill, in service of divinity, could be learnt by anyone and was thus open to all without discrimination. Indeed, my survey confirms that the skill of tying flowers has been learnt even by younger generations of Singaporean Hindus, especially young men of non-Brahmin caste backgrounds. This skill has been taught informally by those with experience of the trade and their students have gone on to establish their own independent flower shops; others reported that they had simply ‘picked it up’ by observing others at work or were self-taught. Apart from caste, the question of gender also surfaced during my discussions. In LI, I observed that several flower shops are ‘fronted’ by women, who do not just sell the flowers but also tie them either into a long string or a garland. My data confirm that this domain is by no means an all-male preserve, as women too have entered the field and have learnt to ‘tie flowers’ and run successful businesses. However, I met few young women in this trade; most women whom I met in this line of work were older, married women. The gender question in this context is vital, given Hindu notions of ritual purity and pollution, and the view that the sacred realm should be guarded from all sources of contamination. Yet, in practice, both men and women I encountered argued forcefully that gender was unimportant in this trade, reiterating the principle of equality for all before god. For example, I met a Tamil, Hindu man who runs a successful floral business in LI and whose 21-yearold daughter is a dynamic young woman and emerging as a prominent player in the local market, with her father’s blessing. She sits in the store front, tying flowers and selling merchandise to customers. Neither she nor her father sees anything wrong with a woman playing a leading role in this line of work. None of the women entrepreneurs I interviewed considered it improper for them to be involved in this trade, but this does not necessarily suggest that they operate with alternative or reformulated notions of ritual


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purity and pollution. Expectedly, they added that they do exercise caution and are careful to avoid ‘sitting at the shop and tying flowers’ when they are ‘not clean’33 since the flowers are meant as offering to the gods. On the part of customers I discussed this issue with, at least at an articulated level, there seemed to be little or no hesitation in buying flowers from women, although they too admitted that old fashioned Hindus might find this objectionable. Discussions about the skill of ‘tying flowers’ led to talk about Singaporean versus foreign presence in this trade. I had noted that a majority of the flower shops I had visited were operated by Indian nationals who had acquired permanent residency status in Singapore, and were either married to Singaporean women or had moved here with their families on the basis of other skills and qualifications they possessed. Only a minority of these floral initiatives are located in the hands of Singaporeans and this was repeatedly pointed out to me, as was the ‘foreign’ presence in this industry. The few local retailers who are in this trade shared the difficulties they faced in trying to run a viable business, citing the lack of locally qualified workers as a major obstacle. The problem is compounded by a number of structural constraints as well. Vendors reported that in their interaction with representatives of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the message they receive is that ‘garland making’ and ‘tying flowers’ are not recognised as skills. Also, the dynamics of securing the needed workers from India is embroiled in bureaucratic formalities and difficulties. Employers in Singapore can hire foreign workers on work permits for a range of business activities. These have been categorised as follows: Construction sector, Services Sector, Manufacturing sector, Services sector (for performing artiste—public entertainment) and the Marine sector.34 In addition, the countries35 from which labour for each of these sectors can be secured have also been stipulated by the MOM. Based on this categorisation, businesses that want to recruit garland makers from India are told that they cannot do so as Indian labour can only be secured for the Construction and Marine sectors, not the Services sector, which includes the commercial retail and wholesale trade—where the flower trade would technically be placed. Thus the Indian route for securing the requisite expertise from India is not available to these retailers in the flower industry. One local businessman noted ironically that even the STB had recognised garland making as a skill, because of its value for attracting tourists but not the MOM, something he finds puzzling: If they do recognise it as a skill, I would be able to get a work permit for an Indian national to work in my shop. But I don’t know why Indians from India can’t be employed to sell flowers under a work permit. According to MOM, Indian nationals are only allowed to work in marine and construction industries. The government keeps on saying upgrade skills but when I talk about this skill, the government asks me,


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‘What skill is this?’So this discourages me and others from doing this. You look at Little India, there are about 20–25 flower shops and 90 per cent are being run by Indian nationals. While many of the flowers shops are operated by Indian nationals, those who are manning these stalls are Malaysian males who are here on a work permit or Indians who have come into Singapore on an ‘S pass.’36 It would not be entirely accurate to speak of tensions between ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ players in this trade, but I did not hear complimentary tones in statements like ‘Oh the flower shops are not run by us they are run by our brother from India–where are the locals?’ Thus several observations are simultaneously made: one, that locals are not interested in learning these skills and two, that of dependence on external labour (Indian or Malaysian) to sustain this industry and three, the bureaucratic hassles and indeed the impossibility of securing Indian workers for ‘tying flowers.’ Retailers also noted the lack of support from Indian politicians and bureaucrats in helping them to sort out the immigration issues. One astute Singaporean businessman noted that as far as the flower trade is concerned, there is little interest in the question of production of garlands,. Embedded in this is a comment about the how Singaporeans are focused on consumption and not production, even at the highest levels: Because in Singapore the concept is that someone somewhere out there is producing, I just hang it in my shop and sell and I make money. The government will say ‘Upgrade your skill, upgrade your skill, upgrade your skill.’ If I go and talk to them about tying flowers, they say ‘Sorry sir, this is not in our data.’ But they will wear the garlands during election time. The 81 MPs all wear garlands. But they don’t bother (to ask) who produced or what. They are not interested. They don’t bother! Because it is . . . it doesn’t contribute to your GDP. Not even one, not even 0.1 per cent also. So they don’t bother. Like Telecom, yes that contributes so do, mobile. This industry, they don’t bother whether you survive or not. Retailers I spoke to note government apathy in sustaining this industry, especially the small flower shops which are low-price retail outlets with fairly low turnover rates. They observe, however, that the orchid industry enjoys government support because it adds value to import and export figures and contributes to a healthy growth of the economy. Proprietors of a number of flower shops highlight ‘manpower’ to be a major obstacle to expanding the trade in flowers locally; it is next to impossible to get workers, I was told. A few had even taken their concern to the highest authority in the local MOM but were told that these ‘traditional crafts’ are difficult to support given the present shape of the Singapore economy. In fact they were told to think of ways to ‘automate’ the

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business, a suggestion that was received with both amusement and despair. One of my respondents who moved his business to Malaysia, explained: How to automate? You can’t just put in a bunch of flowers at one end of the machine and programme the machine to create a garland at the other end. It is just not possible . . . but they don’t understand this is a traditional, hand-based skill. I have no choice I have to move to Malaysia. There it is easier to get work permits and all that. It is not really that much cheaper, maybe a little bit . . . but the headache, the monitoring . . . that is the real problem. Yet, despite these obstacles, flower shops are blooming in Singapore. The start-up cost is low, there is increased demand37 for flowers (from individuals and temples) and my respondents revealed that there is certainly money to be made, despite the stiff but healthy competition, with the distinct possibility of a high profit margin. Mr Viknesh recounts how he started this business, which did require initial effort for a newcomer but was something he could do relying on his own initiatives: Once I decided that I was going to do this, I first went online to look up local flower suppliers. I went to an online search portal and typed ‘Singapore flowers.’ This gave me a list of local flower suppliers. I called them to discuss arrangements. I also approached the suppliers of other flower shops as they did their deliveries and introduced myself. I told them I had a flower shop as well and got their contact numbers and business cards. I was very proactive in securing suppliers for my shop. I contacted suppliers to help me get flowers from India. Even this steel table and frame that I use to display my garlands and flowers were designed by me. I knew a man in the steel business and approached him to help me build this table and frame. I gave him the design and he built it as per my specifications. You see, there are hooks here to hang many garlands, a table top to display baskets of loose flowers and underneath the table are big cabinets where I can store any extra stocks when I close the shop. I paid only S$1000 for this. Flower shop operators like Mr Viknesh reasoned that the affordable initial investment is attractive for those just starting out in business. Vendors shared the formula with me. One needs to secure a place (just a table top— 3 by 4 feet) for rental, some start-up capital (rent can be 3–4,000 Singapore dollars a month), a cold-box or refrigerator to store unsold flowers some initial supplies, contact with suppliers, and manpower, especially as a salesperson who may not even need to be skilled in the art of ‘tying flowers.’ Mr Viknesh agreed that this has been a good business venture for him, with the acknowledgment of the risk involved:


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Selling flowers, this is a good business to do. There are so many other businesses that one can do, but I chose this one. It is one where there is a small start-up cost and yet there is potential for large profits. However, as with any business there are risks, especially when you are dealing with live stock like flowers. Because our flowers have to be sold within the day, there is a slightly higher risk in this business. I order my stocks very carefully to ensure that there is minimal wastage at the end of the day. A fellow retailer concurred that this was a precarious trade, but cited customer preferences as determined by ritualistic prescriptions as additional contributing factors: The flower business is also risky-flowers need to be pampered and Hindus are fussy about their flowers. If they look brown, faded or old or if the jasmine is fully open—they don’t want it. There is also a lot of wastage. A related rising trend noted by retailers who trade in statues as well as fresh flowers and who encounter customers/devotees first hand, is the increased incidence of larger, more elaborate domestic prayer altars as well as the practice of establishing home temples, including in HDB apartments. Mr Sukumar explains the greater amounts spent by his customers on flower purchases thus: Those who spend S$30, S$40, they usually have temples at home. These people will usually buy our large and small jasmine garlands, about 6 of those, then $5 of loose flowers, 2 balls of jasmine flowers, 2 balls of mixed flowers. They use all this to decorate their altar at home. Last time, there was no such thing. Not at all. Maybe one out of a hundred people would have these kinds of temples at home or buy this much from us. Now, there are so many. There are altars in everyone’s house, a lot of people have very grand prayers at home. A lot of people are buying flowers in large quantities to do prayers at home. A further consideration emanates from the nature of the commodity itself. Flowers are live and organic, but with the potential to fade and decay, and have a short shelf life. As such, their survival cannot be guaranteed over a period of a couple of days, sometimes not even overnight. Hence, the obvious fact that flowers will wilt and wither over time, affects their saleability and renders returns from the business unpredictable and volatile. In fact, what is to be done with flowers if they are not sold in a timely manner is factored into the business itself, including the preparedness to suffer losses. According to one vendor:

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Because we deal with live stock, we cannot keep our flowers overnight. Sometimes if there really is [sic] too many unsold flowers or garlands at the end of the day, we’ll sell it at slightly lower prices or we’ll give the garlands to the temples. In fact, retailers have to prioritise customers’ needs for unsullied, unblemished, fresh flowers for highly pragmatic reasons to ensure that the business cannot only be sustained but is also profitable. Mr Sukumar argues that what customers want has to be a primary consideration, adding that in his experience consumers are far more discerning and demanding today, largely because they have a greater choice in the marketplace: Customers all want everything to be fresh and beautiful. They don’t want old flowers. Even if it was only yesterday’s flowers, even if it is wilted only a little, they still would not want to buy it. In the past, it was not like that. Whatever it is, customers will buy. His account carries an interesting comparative dimension of how the trade was different ‘last time’ in contrast to the present: We would order enough and we used to be able to sell everything within the day. What we got from our suppliers we would finish selling by the day. There was nothing left. And even if there was any remainder it would only be the balsam petals. And last time, we didn’t have boxes like this or even fridges to store the flowers overnight. Sometimes what we would do is sprinkle some water on the remaining flowers, cover them and leave them. But almost always, when we come back the next day, they would have wilted. So we used to get very small amounts of flowers and all the stocks would finish by the end of the day. Everything will get sold. Those that did not sell on some days, we’ll put them . . . we had a wooden box in those days. We’ll put the flowers in that box, sprinkle some water over them and cover the box. Vendors noted yet another dimension of the risk in this line of work. The dependence on imports for sustaining the business is clearly an issue. Given the nature of the produce, the fact that their availability is dependent on natural, climatic factors renders the business uncertain. They noted that heavy rains in Malaysia, for example, affect the ready supplies of flowers and hence the business: Yes, we were affected very badly by the rains. We didn’t get a lot of flowers, the cord we use to tie the flowers also did not come. The price of everything increased. It was difficult to meet the orders that came in at that time. However, we put the customers first and continued to sell at our normal prices. We did not increase prices.


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Another vendor observed how the flower trade was affected by such factors as heavy rains and lack of sunlight, which affect supplies from the region, and also lead to price fluctuations: Yes, business was very tight because of the rain. Flowers did not come and even when they did, they did not look nice. We had to use other flowers from Indonesia and somehow managed. We went through a lot of hardship because there were not that many flowers. When we tied wedding garlands, it wasn’t that nice because we didn’t get good flowers. It was very difficult at that time. And even now, it is a bit difficult because for the past week, there hasn’t been much sunlight. Next week, we have about 5 wedding garland orders and I’m wondering how we shall manage it. Do we make the garlands in a different design? Or should we just use the same design? We are wondering how we should go about this. There was a firm sense that the floral trade was ultimately a business and there was no ambiguity or discomfort about pricing commodities for sale. The same pragmatic calculations that I have reported for the selling of statues were made here. Mr P’s rationale for how flowers and garlands are priced echoes the accounts we heard in the last chapter about putting a price tag on representations of divinity: Okay, see, we have to first buy the flowers. Then to tie it, we need to buy the banana tree husk, to tie it we need to employ someone, then we have to include rental, the transport cost of getting the flowers here. All these things we have to include in our calculation. Then only we can decide and say, ‘Okay for this I’m going to charge $1, for example.’ In any case, the items for sale in the flower shops are affordable: a six-inch jasmine garland, for example, is sold for about S$2, although the price varies a little during the festive seasons or when supply of flowers has been affected. Prices for flowers and garlands seems to be standardised across Serangoon Road and my queries did not show much price variation for basic items. It was difficult to obtain figures from flower shop operators about what their daily collection was. To begin, sales vary through the days of the week: on some days (Mondays and Thursdays) and during the festival period (Taippon.kal., Tai pu¯cam, Deepavali, etc.) shops report brisk business, while on other days (Wednesdays) things move slowly. Some vendors were forthcoming about sales figures and admitted that on good days, their sales climb into thousands of Singapore dollars. Even with stiff competition in the LI district, flower shops are thriving and vendors report increased demands for flowers and garlands. However, in contrast to the earlier discussions about the overlap between materiality and sacrality of an object, the discourse on flowers was rather

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distinct and unique. Mr Ganesh, with an established flower business in LI, highlighted the need to understand the ‘language of flowers.’ He made explicit comparisons between the trade in flowers for worship and other goods and stressed the attention to details: Unlike cooking or whatever, where you can buy frozen chicken or what, store it and produce it when needed. Flowers, you can’t do that. Maybe even normal florists can do that. You can make the arrangements ahead and store them in the fridge for three or four days. But that’s because those are different kinds of flowers. As I said, you must understand the language of these flowers. This jasmine will bloom quickly and once it blooms, people don’t really like to buy it. So this is the toughest challenge. You see, like these flowers, you see, if it doesn’t have the stem, it’ll bloom very fast. When you have the stem there, it won’t bloom very fast because it stops the air from reaching the flower. If you don’t have the stem, the air will go in and it’ll bloom very fast. I’m not holding a PhD on flowers. These are the small, small things that not everyone can understand. There was also a much stronger judgment that the task of tying flowers was not like any other job and in fact carried important sacred connotations. Here is Mr Viknesh’s interpretation of what it means to trade in flowers and puja items: The job we do is a sacred and important. What we do touches God, literally. The garlands we make with our hands go on to be placed on the deity, touching Her or Him. And the things we sell, like turmeric and kungumam, are used in prayer daily. We must always remember how sacred our job is. And when it comes to flowers, it is one of the places the goddess Mahalakshmi is said to reside. Being the goddess of wealth, she is said to reside in all things prosperous and auspicious. She can be found in money, flowers, coconuts, cows, young unmarried girls. Being that the flowers we deal with each have the goddess in them, we have to do this work with a lot of seriousness and devotion. Not only is this trade blessed by god, it gives me a chance to directly contribute to His worship. As such, it is indeed an honour to do this and I don’t think any other job can give you the same satisfaction. I documented similar accounts and interpretations from numerous retailers about the distinct character of trading in religious goods. Amongst these, Mr Pannir argues that dealing with puja items obliges the vendor to accord respect to the commodities being sold and avoid a frivolous and half-hearted attitude. He says: Amongst all the business there are, this flower business is the one you need to give the most respect to. You have to work with as much


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devotion as you can. Because even without us physically going to the temple, we get to do something where we make garlands with our own hands and that gets offered to the gods at the temple. To the extent that the priest stands there at the temple to service the deities, we stand here at the shop, making these garlands for the gods. Those who are in the flower trade are also highly conscious of the fact that the commodity they deal with is ‘for god,’ ‘goes to god’ and ‘touches god directly,’ which perhaps account for the heightened awareness about the need to exercise diligence and assiduousness in the tasks they perform. Here, the prior recognition and knowledge that flowers and garlands will be used in religious rituals and ceremonies, determines the reverent attitude and orientation to these items. Apart from this, however, I also heard the unambiguous stance that this business is no different from any other: This flower is for God. Given that it goes to God, that we are offering it to God, we must do a good job. We must make sure our work is beautiful. Other than that, we don’t think any differently of it. It is for God so we make sure we do our work properly. That is it. Another vendor reiterated that he does not treat religious commodities in a distinct mode simply because of their potential for use in the religious domain. But he admits to observing a sense of decorum and adhering to specific norms given the awareness that these will be offered to divinity, adding that this propriety is in any case, good for business: No, no. It’s just a business. I have to treat it as a business. If I start to look at things differently just because it is for prayers, then how am I going to survive here? But yes of course, there are certain things you must be careful about la. Like, if this flower falls to the ground while I tie the garlands, I won’t pick up the flower from the ground and use it again. That is quite bad and disrespectful. I always keep in mind that these garlands are for the deities so I try to be as clean as possible when I’m working. And also, I always do this. When I am free I will go to the temple and see how the garlands look on the deity. Then I will see how I can improve myself. That is the business you see? You must want to improve. I always try to see how I can make my work look better. Despite this articulated stance, my data from this field add to and complicate the earlier discussions about the character and quality of transactions that take place between sellers and buyers of statues and altars. As I ‘hung out’ around flower shops and observed these interactions, it was clear that the exchange of cash for commodities was prefaced by, and embedded in, and followed by substantive discussions about the items being traded as well their functionality. For example, when customers requested

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specific garlands, vendors would ask them which deity the garland was for or which ritual or ceremony it would be used for. In response to my question about why and how such information was deemed to be necessary for this commercial exchange, I received this response: Yes. We must ask. We must ask them if the garland is for the temple, for a death or if it is for a very large statue. Say it is for a large deity, then if we give a $5 garland, they will make noise that we gave them the wrong size. They’ll say that even though they asked for it, we should have advised them, we should know. So we are expected to tell them what is appropriate. What garland to put, who to put it for. In the mornings, people come to buy garlands for funerals, some come to buy for temples, some come to buy for the deities in their home. If we ask them what they need it for, then we can make and give the appropriate garland. Vendors also revealed that in their experience customers expect them to know what the relevant issues are and ask the right questions and in fact to highlight the various factors they need to consider before deciding on a purchase.

Flowers ‘Post-Consumption’: Sacred No More? Despite obviously being commoditised, flowers and garlands, once they are bought, are by no means considered soiled through this economic exchange. They are in fact valued even before they are used in the act of puja, which is why proprietors are aware that they have to observe the greatest care in treating the flowers with the respect worthy of being offered to god. They have to be ‘pampered’ and respected–to show customers that as vendors they too appreciate the religious value of flowers but not least because it makes good business sense to do so. The consumption of flowers within a Hindu context is a complex subject. It is certainly of profound ritualistic value but also used by individuals for adornment. But the latter use extends to divinity as well: flowers are used as adornment and decoration for gods for the simple reason that they are aesthetically pleasing38 and their beauty and fragrance are believed to gratify divinity. We have also seen that flowers are approached as an ‘offering’ in an act of devotion and connote submission and surrender to divinity. At different moments in the life cycle of their consumption, flowers therefore carry varied significance for deity and devotee. Fresh flowers have a certain ritual potency and distinction, but because they are also obviously ‘natural’ living things and subject to the vagaries of time they are impermanent, they can rot and decay and indeed their physicality is transformed through the cycle of consumption. They move from being fresh, colourful, beautiful and fragrant to being stale, dry, faded, colourless and odourless. As they



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change materially, it is important to ask if their ritual status and meanings accorded to them also shift accordingly. At the point when flowers are to be used, to some extent, their sacredness is inherent in the objective, essential property of the flowers themselves, for example when references are made to colour, fragrance, bloom, species, etc. The life cycle of flowers reveals that they move between different and alternating phases of ‘sacredness.’ Most importantly, the sacred status of a flower varies with its treatment at different points in the life-cycle of a ritual. They are potentially sacred before being used in worship. After worship their divinity is enhanced. But what happens to this sacredness after the end of the ritual or ceremony? Do they lose their sacred quality? Just to finish the story, because flowers are organic, they do decay and rot. So what happens to them thereafter? When flowers fade, dry and wither they lose their beauty and scent, are no longer deemed appropriate as an offering to divinity and are removed from statues and pictures. In homes, garlands and flowers are changed twice a week, but in established shops and restaurants that have altars, this is a daily occurrence. Aesthetic and visual appeal being a paramount factor, the logic is that only the best, perfect offerings are suitable for god. Hence faded, dull, discoloured flowers do not make the grade as appropriate offerings for divinity. For devotees however, the status of sanctified flowers, even when they have dried out and lost their splendour conveyed different overtones. After being offered to god, flowers are venerated as having been consecrated through divine contact, embodying divine grace and blessing. The physical contact with divinity imbues these material objects with divine energy which can be passed on to the devotee as well. With fruits like bananas and coconut, the solution of what to do with them is straightforward-they are simply consumed. With betel leaves, areca nuts and flowers, it is less obvious how they should be related to and what should be done with them. It is common for young girls and women of all age groups to use ‘blessed’ flowers, which are returned to them as part of the prasad package, as hair accessory. Garlands that have been offered to the deity in the temples are brought home and placed at the domestic prayer altar but may also be sometimes adorned by devotees in their hair. These flowers, when dry, faded and wilted, are still deemed to carry spiritual energy and are thus not thrown away in rubbish bins or garbage dumps. Devotees continue to approach these as if they were still energised and are hesitant to discard them as if they were an ordinary, normal entity. In Hindu households, I have seen flowers that have been received as blessing, sit for days at various locations within the home, or get shifted from the kitchen table to the fruit basket to the book shelf, before they are completely wilted, after which they are either placed on the window sill or placed in flower pots to be ‘returned to nature.’ Sometimes, they are wrapped in newspapers or tied up in plastic bags before being disposed, or scattered in the garden or placed under a tree. Ideally, they should be disposed in running water or


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in a garden or at the root of a tree—a practice that Hindus are fully aware of. Yet, they reason that in urban places this is not always possible and alternative strategies and compromises that are workable in practice have to be conceptualised. Hindus admitted to me that the disposal of ‘used’ flowers did pose a dilemma for them but also noted ironically, and took comfort from their observation, that flowers and garlands that have been used in temple ceremonies do end up in garbage bins, as if absolving them of the guilt too. These ethnographic observations raise questions about the meanings of flowers in Hindu discourse which we have seen is multilayered. At which point do devotees approach flowers as embodying sacred properties and when, if at all, do they display profane characteristics? As I have argued, to some extent, sacrality is inherent in the objective, essential property of the flowers themselves, and it is also certainly carried in the attitudes with which they are approached by devotees. The discussion of flowers and their place in Hindu worship make it possible to reflect on the category ‘sacred’ as applied to objects of worship. The life cycle of flowers reveals that they move across different and alternating phases of ‘sacredness.’ They are potentially sacred before being used in worship. After being part of a religious ritual their divine energy is actualised. But how long does this sacredness endure and do flowers lose it ultimately? Drawing inspiration from the idea that there is a trajectory to the use of everyday objects and hence the value accorded to them, my argument has been that the status of a flower varies with its treatment at different points in the life-cycle of its usage. Most critically, there does come a point when all ‘functionality’ and ritual value has been extracted from flowers and little discomfort or trauma is felt in then discarding it. This collective focus on prayer altars, visual representations of Hindu divinity and flowers have allowed me to demonstrate the need for material objects in sustaining devotional Hinduism within the domestic domain. My focus has been on detailing the modes in which these three named objects are utilised and how individuals relate to them both as ‘commodities’ and as ‘ritual objects.’ In particular, I have examined how users denote their ritual value in the enactment of everyday Hindu religiosity within the home and if their ‘once upon a time’ status as commodities shapes thinking about these issues. At the same time, I have also attended to the various mechanisms through which these items are secured (mostly from outside of Singapore) and the channels and parties through which these are distributed to retailers before being accessible for consumption to laypersons.39 A notable observation in this arrangement is that services provided by local retailers are not imperative for consumers who want to access puja items. In fact, a parallel trend is for consumers to obtain the needed material directly from suppliers (wholesalers and retailers) based in different parts of Malaysia or India. The story is further complicated in that there is also a trend towards self-sufficiency in the notice that several of the objects and


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implements used in rituals are made for personal use by individuals—a practice that serves to circumvent the world of markets and the relations therein altogether—a not insignificant trend for diasporic Hindu communities. The next chapter comes full circle to rest on the theoretical insights carried in the ethnography that has been presented.


Notes 1 Ubayams are rituals and festivals in a temple that are supported and sponsored by individuals or families. The person sponsoring the event is known as the Ubayakarar and this support brings merit and blessings to the sponsoring individual or the family. 2 See also Alex Hughes ‘Retailers, Knowledges and Changing Commodity Networks: The Case of Cut Flower Trade’ (2000) and Tanya Korovin ‘Cutflower Exports, Female Labor and Community Participation in Highland Ecuador’ (2003). 3 The English translation of this verse is, ‘Whoever with loving devotion offers unto Me a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water, I affectionately accept that devotional offering from that pure-hearted being.’ 4 Each plant or flower denotes particular attributes—for example, prosperity (banana), longevity (mango) and happiness (sugar cane), etc. 5 This is known as ‘Bermuda’ or ‘Bahama Grass’ in English and arukampul in Tamil. 6 The word comes from the root ‘puj’ which means ‘to honour, worship, revere, respect, regard.’ Thus puja means reverence to or homage to superiors or adoration of the gods. The word which is not found in any Indo-European language outside India and Sri Lanka appears to be of Dravidian origin. 7 See Gijsbert van Liemt (2000) ‘The world cut flower industry: Trends and Prospects,’ Working Paper, International Labour Office (http://www.ilo. org/public/english/dialogue/sector/papers/ctflower/index.htm) (accessed 5 February 2010). 8 Heidi C. Wernett, ‘Potential of Commercial Floriculture in Asia: Opportunities for Cut Flower Development.’ (http://www:fao.org/DOCREP/005/AC452E/ ac452e0c.htm) (accessed 5 February 2010). 9 See Gijsbert van Liemt. 10 Asian Productivity Organization, Strategies for Development of Commercial Floriculture in Asia and the Pacific, 2001, Foreword. 11 ‘Singapore is a major exporter of cut orchids, and has a 15 per cent share of the world market. Its orchids are renowned for their exquisite quality and for their longer vase-life (for cut-orchids). In 2004, the orchid and ornamental plant industry exported some S$56 million worth of cut orchids and ornamental plants (including aquatic plants). Farms cultivating orchid and ornamental plants in the Agrotechnology Parks export their products to over 30 countries worldwide such as Japan (which is the main market accounting for some S$18 million (63 per cent) of total exports) and other countries such as Australia, USA, Greece and Canada.’ (http://www.ava.gov.sg/AgricultureFisheriesSector /FarmingInSingapore/Horticulture/) (accessed 5 February 2010). 12 Singapore has made inroads into the world orchid industry and its trade in orchids has expanded over the years. Between 1991 and 1995, its exports in orchids rose from S$24,426,000 to S$27,517,000 (STDB 1996: 38). 13 STDB, 1996 (Industry Research report-China Floriculture Industry), p. 36.


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14 In 1978–79, the export of cut orchid flowers was at S$15.5 million (Dunphy 2003, 150). 15 According to John Elliot’s Orchid Hybrids of Singapore, 1893–2003, ‘Today, Singapore has roughly a 15% share of the world market in orchids. In 2002, it exported approximately US$16.5 million worth of cut flowers and potted plants, the great majority of which comprised cut flowers’ (2005: 33). 16 These parks are located in Mandai, Sungei Tengah, Lim Chu Kang, Nee Soon and Loyang. According to the AVA, ‘These parks occupy a total land area of 1,465 ha and nearly 700 ha have been allocated to over 200 farms for the production of livestock, eggs, milk, aquarium and food fish, vegetables, fruits, orchids, ornamental and aquatic plants, as well as for the breeding of birds and dogs. The modern farms in the Agrotechnology Parks develop, adapt and showcase advanced technologies and techniques for intensive farming systems, and for export of high value and quality products and services to other tropical countries in the region’(http://www.ava.gov.sg/AgricultureFisheriesSector/ FarmingInSingapore/AgroTechParks/, accessed 5 February 2010). 17 Plant Bulletin, A Publication of Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore, Volume 1, June 2005, p 1. 18 According to Dunphy, ‘Singapore imports virtually all its requirements of cut flowers . . . In 1979, imports of cut flowers into Singapore totaled S$2.4 million’ (1981: 172). 19 In the 1830s, Singapore’s Orchard Road, which today is the epitome of modern lifestyle with shopping and commercial spaces, was marked by nutmeg plantations, fruit orchards and pepper farms, hence its name. 20 Given its physical proximity to Singapore, Malaysia has historically been a natural and logical place for securing fresh produce, in the form of fruits, vegetables and flowers. My respondents recall that in the 1980s and 1990s, flowers from Cameron Highlands, wrapped in newspapers, used to be trucked daily into nurseries along Bukit Timah Road, before being distributed to retailers in Serangoon Road. 21 Jasmine flowers from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are very popular because of their distinct scent, making them popular as loose flowers as well as in garlands and as hair accessory by women. 22 Crore is a unit of measurement derived from a traditional numerical system used in India. One crore refers to 10 million. 23 ‘Rs 300 Cr fall likely in floriculture exports by 2010,’ 20 August 2007, (www. livemint.com/Articles), accessed on 17 November 2009. 24 I found a similar pattern in the Hindu temples I visited in JB, for example outside the Arulmigu Raja Mariamman Temple and the famous ‘Glass Temple’ where I saw a good number of flower shops and ‘prayer items’ shops outside the temples. 25 Some local temples (for example the Holy Tree Balasubramaniam Temple, the Sri Mariamman Temple) do have counters that offer ‘prayer things’ within their premises. These items are for sale to devotees for specific rituals and puja(s). 26 The exact numbers of flower shops on the island are difficult to determine categorically. Many old ones have disappeared while new ones appear on the scene, sometimes within the span of a few months. 27 I learnt that this was possible with input from prominent members of the local Indian community. 28 More than 80 per cent of Singaporeans live in public housing built by the HDB, a statutory board that started the task of clearing up slums and squatters starting in the 1960s. The reference, ‘HDB heartlands’ refers to the neighbourhood estates which house a majority of the island’s urban population.



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29 ‘Wet markets’ have been a significant feature of local neighbourhoods in Singapore. Functioning primarily in the mornings, these are locations where fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and flowers can be bought and offer a stark contrast to the air-conditioned supermarkets. 30 A ‘shop house’ in the local context combines commercial space with residential quarters in pre-war, low-rise buildings. 31 The lotus is important in Buddhism. It is often a throne pun which the Buddha sits and is symbolised as self-regenerating and independence. Chinese Buddhists also buy jasmine garlands as offering for the deities of Chinese religion. Members of the Muslim community (both Malay and Indian Muslim) buy a variety of fresh flowers for offering to keramat which are ‘graves of venerated Muslim saints.’ 32 Respondents admitted that traditionally, in the ‘old days’ in India, caste may have been a factor in allocating tasks to individuals and communities, but that this was absent in the context of Singapore. 33 According to Hindu logic, individuals are deemed to be in a state of pollution in relation to a number of life-cycle events. Specifically, women’s ‘cleanliness’ has to do with a number of factors—their menstrual cycle, pregnancy or childbirth. 34 http//:www.mom.gov.sg (accessed 5 February 2010) 35 The MOM recognises three regions from which foreign labour can be secured: a) NAS: North Asian Sources—Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan b) NTS; Non-traditional Sources—India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines and Pakistan c) PRC: People’s Republic of China. 36 Some businesses have been able to hire Indian workers to work in flower shops on an ‘S pass’ but told me that, in their experience, this is not straightforward and also more prohibitive in terms of cost as those on this pass have to be paid higher salaries. Here is how the MOM website explains what the S Pass is and its eligibility requirements: The S Pass is for mid-level skilled foreigners who earn a fixed monthly salary of at least $1,800. S Pass applicants will be assessed on a points system, taking into account multiple criteria including salary, education qualifications, skills, job type and work experience. (www.mom.gov.sg) Furthermore for the Manufacturing, Services, Marine and Construction industries there is a quota of 25 per cent from the total Work Permit quota. I met few Indian employees in these flower shops who were on an S Pass and a majority of those ‘tying flowers’ were Malaysian males. 37 The enhanced demand for flowers has been attributed to enhanced religiosity and financial standing of local Hindus as well as the inflow of large numbers of ‘Indian Hindus’ into Singapore. 38 A ritual where the mother goddess is showered with flowers has been reported as ‘Poochoriyal’ or ‘Poochorithal’ in the literature. This is an annual ceremony observed at the Samayapuram Temple in Tamil Nadu and occurs in March or April. It entails the continuous 24-hour showering of the deity with fresh flowers brought to her by scores of devotees who throng the temple on this occasion. The festival of ‘Poochorital’ is also observed by devotees of Samayapuram Ma¯riyamman in Singapore on the same day as in Samayapuram but in an abbreviated mode rather than the full 24 hours. 39 The emphasis has thus been on consumption and distribution patterns of these material objects. An equal accent is needed on the production side of the

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equation as well, something that has not been possible in this project, except to identify spatial locations where these items are manufactured and whether these are mass-produced or custom-made commodities. The question of whose labour is drawn on for the actual production of such items as altars and statues is missing here, given the compass of the present project.

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What Are the Possibilities for Enchantment?

Sustaining Diasporic Hinduism The reproduction of a ritual complex and a style of religiosity within the context of devotional Hinduism clearly requires the reliance upon, and usage, of a variety of objects and materials. As we have seen, for diasporic Hindu communities, this poses an additional, but not intractable, challenge. There is by now a thriving business industry that manufactures, supplies, distributes and markets ‘puja items’ across widely scattered geographical locales, thus making it possible to speak of a ‘marketplace’ that transcends local boundaries. Even as individuals and entrepreneurs are grounded concretely in particular places making and producing these goods, neither their merchandising nor their market1 is confined to these sites. Instead, business practices and marketing strategies connect dispersed groups of makers, sellers and buyers into a much wider network and ‘local’ businesses are firmly plugged into a global network. The primary data presented here demonstrate the existence of market relations within the context of consumer culture between buyers and sellers of ‘puja items’—across Singapore and parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and India,2 particularly Tamil Nadu. These multi-facetted links have been necessarily reconfigured in view of the contemporary demands of the market. Furthermore the availability and mobilisation of novel technologies and their input in merchandising and delivering products to customers to meet these needs more efficiently are crucial additional developments. Drawing on specific slices of ethnographic data, and using fresh flowers, prayer altars and visual representations as illustrative cases, this research has highlighted how these ‘puja things’ as commodities traverse various routes and circulate within networks created across transnational boundaries. This has been possible by articulating the locations where these items are created and manufactured and the points where they commence their journey. I have tried to track the paths they take, attending to the various parties and agents involved in these movements and transactions. This has also included an emphasis on where these things ultimately end up and their ‘conversion’ from commodities to ritual objects and their move


190 Religion and Commodification out of the ‘commodity phase’ (Appadurai 1986) towards the actualisation of other identities through their specific consumption within religious domains. My data highlight the tremendous value of the global traffic of commodities along these specified paths for sustaining particular styles of religiosity in the Hindu Diaspora. Ultimately, the aim in this book has been to use particular streams of fieldwork data to speak to larger issues in theorising the complex and multidimensional relations between the process of commodification and the religious domain. As is evident, I have not at the outset approached entrepreneurship in the fields of religion and spirituality as if it was substantively different from other sorts of commercial engagements. By now much has been written about marketing of faiths, the burgeoning ‘spiritual marketplace’ and the ‘selling’ of religion, and the notice of tremendous diversity and choice of religiosities that are packaged, marketed and offered to individuals (Einstein 2007; Lee 1993; Moore 1994; Park & Baker 2007; Roof 1999; Twitchell 2004, 2007). According to Einstein (2007: 19): Thus a robust market for religion exists when religion does not act as a monopoly. Further there is a diversity of options for practitioners and more of these practitioners should be able to find a faith that suits their needs. She highlights the role of product branding in the marketing of religions themselves and the value this has for their success and popularity in the religious marketplace. This particular interpretation of the encounter between the religious and the commercial realms in American society, seen in the packaging of ‘religion as a product’ (Einstein 2007: 21), a consumable, something to ‘select through purchase and creation’ (ibid. 22), has not framed the contours of this book. Rather, my efforts have been directed at exploring the intersections of the ‘religious’ domain and ‘market forces’ in the merchandising of ‘things’ that have at least a dual identity as ‘commodities’ and as ‘ritual objects.’ While I agree with Kitiarsa that the concept of ‘religious commodification’ is a ‘rising conceptual and methodological orientation’ (2010, forthcoming) and a viable field for sociological reflection, my interest here has been less on the making of religion itself into a commodity and more on how objects that are rendered and approached as ‘sacred’ straddle the worlds of religion and commerce. My argument is that ‘religious’ and ‘market’ forces are indeed brought into close proximity in the process of commodification and consumption of specific objects. The challenge is to theorise the effects of this encounter through embedded ethnographic data. Cross-cultural, historical evidence from diverse religious traditions attest to the fact that the religious and commercial spheres have never been strange bedfellows. Instead, the two domains have responded to and engaged each other



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actively (Giggie 2003; Long 2001). At times religious fervour has stimulated entrepreneurial activity, while on other occasions the latter has shaped the market for particular religious products and thus ultimately religious practices themselves. The shift from small-scale, handmade, limited production of artefacts by traditional, religious, craft communities to the manufacturing of mass produced goods in the hands of entrepreneurs and ‘non-believers’ as ‘mere work,’ has been a gradual historical process and no doubt consequential on a number of levels. For one, the large-scale mass production of goods has led to the standardisation of products and compromised quality with poor craftsmanship—features that consumers have been critical of. However, there has been a corollary trend that has offered choices to consumers, in terms of quality and pricing, not to mention making things available to populations who may not have had access3 to them otherwise. Across religious traditions, an expanded market for religious goods exists and this has spawned a thriving industry with global reach. In any case, mass commoditisation has found easy co-existence with the offer of a more individualised ‘custommade’ option, for which there is an obvious growing market as well. Needless to say, entrepreneurship in the field of ‘prayer things,’ in the mass production of symbols and artefacts of Hindu religious tradition, has led to particular forms of consumption amongst a specialist Hindu clientele as well as a more general category of non-Hindu patrons. In this concluding chapter, I use the ethnography presented to address two key problematics that have surfaced in the course of this research: first, a conceptual discussion of ‘religious objects’ and ‘commodities’ enables me to problematise the category ‘sacred’ as well as the boundaries that are seen to divide this from the ‘secular/profane’; and second, through attention to the process of commodification and consumerism, I call for rethinking the notion of consumption in the religious domain.

‘Commodities,’ ‘Religious Objects’ and ‘Puja Items’: Problematizing the Category ‘Sacred’ Specific slices of ethnographic material have prompted me towards a discussion of the categories—‘commodities’ and ‘religious objects’ and to ask what their conceptual boundaries may be. This move is conditioned by the observation that everyday religious objects used by Hindus in homes and temples were at one time available in the market as commodities and accessible to customers for a price. Any discussion of a commodity begins necessarily with reference to Karl Marx’s definition carried in Capital where he tries to come to terms with what he calls the ‘mystical character of commodities.’ According to Marx, a commodity is something that organises both material life and social relations in a capitalist society. He defines it as the basic unit of social relations in capitalism. Marx’s (1867: 45) definition of a commodity is a useful starting point for this discussion:

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A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside of us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies those wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production. An understanding of a commodity, for Marx, is without doubt the outcome of human labour, which for him is by definition a creative act. An act of creation for the self does not end in the production of a commodity; only if a created object circulates in the marketplace to be exchanged and transacted is a commodity produced. Once thus produced for sale, Marx argues, these commodities take on an independent identity, life and power; they in fact come to dominate the very producers whose labour created them. Ironically, from a consumer’s perspective the human labour that constitutes an object as a commodity remains invisible and indeed is not taken into account in the future appropriation, consumption or relationship to the commodity. Because this contribution of human labour in the production of a commodity is veiled from consumers they approach it purely as an object per se, devoid of any human, social input. Under a capitalist system of production and consumption, Marx further distinguishes between the use value and exchange value of commodities: the first referring to the usefulness of an object, and second the value of the object in the marketplace. Marx made the further critique that the ‘exchange value’ of commodities is privileged over their ‘use value.’ The objects of human production appear anonymously and without agency to potential consumers as commodities in the marketplace and are approached and transacted in terms of their monetary value alone. Such an act of production alienates humans from their own social activity as well as from other human beings, and the by-products of their labour are imbued with an independent power which stands apart from them and also overwhelms them in the marketplace with an exchange value. This Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’ and indeed some religious merchandise such as talismans and sacred relics can be approached using this language (Yee 1986). A commodity then has been typically approached in terms of its utility, functionality, use value and exchange value. It carries a monetary value, a price tag, which may be negotiable (or not), circulates in the marketplace and can be exchanged and transacted. This understanding of commodity is a useful point of entry and key to the following discussion with respect to the status of ‘puja items.’ The question of what constitutes the conceptual parameters of a commodity is central to this project, given the recognition that objects have social biographies and life histories. How does one approach ‘commodities’ which are also ritual objects? What is the conceptual relationship of these two categories? Indeed, what is the appropriate terminology for



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denoting ritual objects? Does it even make sense to refer to them as commodities? At which point does a ‘commodity’ become a ‘prayer thing’ and what accounts for this shift in perception and attitudinal change? What is the effect, if any, of this altered status for religious beliefs and practices? In speaking of the materiality of Hinduism, I have identified what practitioners consider to be a range of objects central to the act of worship itself. ‘Prayer things’ or ‘puja items’ which exist in the market as mass-produced commodities are acquired by Hindus as consumers for use in worship and subsequently infused with sacred connotations. ‘Puja things’ certainly share some degree of similarity with other commodities in being priced, bought and sold in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs who deal with this category of goods rely upon pricing, marketing, advertising and profit-making strategies that are similar to those used by retailers of other more obviously ‘secular’ commodities. In addition, they carry other attributes encapsulated in a complex of meanings, symbolisms and resonances that impart sacrality to them, thus reconfiguring their status. Starrett, together with others who work in this field, asks this important question: ‘what is a religious commodity’ (1995: 53)? Noting the complexity of an entity that is simultaneously a ‘religious object’ and a commodity, and inspired by Appadurai’s and Kopytoff’s analysis, Starrett’s (1995: 59) response is helpful: Religious commodities are only religious once they cease being commodities, once they have passed out of the commodity phase into the consumption phase of their social life (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986). Ideally, their position in the commodity state is temporary, and they exist in that state only in order to be removed from it . . . They are activated as religious objects only when taken out of the shop. I like the idea of commodities being ‘activated’ as religious objects once they have been ‘taken out of the shop,’ although my data also suggest that even within commercial spheres, objects that are known to have the potential for ritualistic use are approached by entrepreneurs with a certain degree of reverence. I would further add that more than the act of being bought and removed from a place of commerce, these items are galvanized into a spiritual state via the meanings that are bestowed on to them through conscious, human action, in the utilisation of things in particular socio-religious contexts. My own contribution to this discussion is to suggest that the meaning-making of a ‘religious object’ has less to do with its exchange value but rooted rather in the attitude with which it is approached in its ritualistic use. Also, my data suggest that for Hindus religious objects acquire the status of being non-exchangeable after being used, are not recyclable, and thus cannot circulate again in the marketplace. There is no market for second hand ‘puja items’ at reduced process, even those in very good


194 Religion and Commodification condition. But this is not because they are devoid of actual monetary value but because there are specific normative religious injunctions about what happens to them ‘after use’ and how they should be subsequently handled. A market for ‘recycling’ ‘prayer things’ is absent because the act of their first consumption is seen to either have ‘expended’ their religious efficacy (as in the case of fresh flowers) or to carry a unique sort of potency (e.g. being too strong or powerful as with statues) which may not be appropriate for other users and may even be detrimental for them. My data show that ritual objects are not ‘tainted’ by the profanity of the capitalist system in the course of entrepreneurial transactions. As practitioners incorporate ‘puja items’ into religious practices, they are able to easily ‘bracket’ their ‘commodity feature’ and move on. Even in this latter state, they command reverence both from religionists and entrepreneurs and certainly more so when they enter the religious domain, charged with sacred connotations. Ironically, if anything, ‘puja items,’ once they have been through the consumption phase ritually, are ‘marked’ by this association and thus cannot re-enter the sphere of the market, even as second-hand commodities. The query about what makes a ‘puja item’ a commodity is my method of also asking what the labelling of a thing as ‘sacred’ signifies. This connects to one central theoretical concern in this book, i.e., the problematization of the ‘sacred–profane’ dichotomy. Defining the ‘sacred’ and demarcating its conceptual boundaries from the realm of the ‘profane’ are key themes in studies of religion and continue to be debated vigorously. Bryan Wilson has argued that the basis for this dualism can be traced to the ancient Roman distinction between ‘sacer’ and ‘profanus’ which in the first instance was linked to locations and approached primarily as spatial categories (Wilson 1987). The word ‘sacred’ comes to us from the Latin words sacrum, sacer and sanctum: sacer referred to anything that was walled off or otherwise set apart from the surrounding space available, profanus. According to Talal Asad (2003: 30): In the Latin Roman Republic, the word sacer referred to anything that was owned by a deity, having been “taken out of the region of the profane by the action of the state, and passed into the sacrum”. Durkheim’s famous dictum of the ‘sacred’ as the realm of human experience that is clearly and unambiguously ‘set apart’ from the world of secular, everyday routine activities and inspires awe and reverence (Durkheim 1912) continues to be invoked in contemporary attempts to define religion. This interpretation of the sacred as ‘set apart’ extended beyond the world of gods, spirits and supernatural beings. Durkheim argued that anything, including dimensions of the material world, could be sacred, this being governed by a set of attitudes rather than essential properties inherent in objects. This recognition is vital for this project, but the insight that



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the sacred is an attribute that emanates from it being ‘set apart’ from the field of profane activities does not necessarily resonate with notions of the sacred in Hinduism. One of my interests in this project has been to query what happens to ‘puja items’ at the sites of reception and to comprehend what individuals actually do with them in using them. In particular I have been keen to explore how ‘once upon a time’ commodities enter the religious domain as ritual objects (and are thus ‘doubly’ consumed) and the concomitant nuances of sacrality or profanity they carry along their journey. Due to their embeddedness in the ritual life of Hindus, ‘puja items’ (apart from being traded as goods) also exist in a parallel universe of relevancies and carry specific connotations. In fact, the physicality and materiality of these objects (such as the colour and fragrance of flowers and the use of pañcalo¯kam for the construction of statues), enhance their ritualistic value, rather than taint them. Following the focus on consumption cycle of ‘puja items,’ I was led to ask what happens to their sacrality and symbolism at the end of a ceremonial observance. Do objects retain their sacredness throughout the cycle of use or does this vary? But there is a much bigger theoretical question embedded here: how is ‘sacredness’ itself conceptualised in Hinduism and how distinct and unique is such a conception? Within a Hindu context, two possibilities about the sacredness of any entity are recognised: one, that objects are deemed to be inherently, intrinsically sacred (divinely given), thus sacredness is carried in their very essential properties and thus permanent; and two, that sacredness is attributed or assigned to objects through external (including human action) mechanisms, and thus temporary and transient. Lamb (2008: 341) contrasts Abrahamic and Hindu approaches to the notion of the sacred: In seeking to comprehend the concept of the sacred in Hinduism, the narrow definitional parameters that confine it in the Western tradition must be dropped. Though these traditions envision the sacred as separate, static, dualistic and under the interpretative domain of religious authorities, most Hindus view it as ubiquitous, amorphous, contextual existing on a graded continuum, and not under the exclusive authority of anyone [emphasis added]. This insight is helpful and certainly resonates with my primary ethnographic material which confirms that sacrality attributed to objects is not a fixed property they carry but is something that shifts over time through different contexts and patterns of use. Through my data on the utilisation of fresh flowers, prayer altars and visual depictions of divinity, I propose that it makes sense to speak of phases of sacredness of ritual objects. My data suggest that the consumption of ‘puja items’ reveals that entities slip in and out of moments of sacrality and profanity, i.e., from being ‘profane’ to ‘sacred’ and then back to being rendered ‘profane’ at the end


196 Religion and Commodification of the cycle of use. In the case of statues of gods and goddesses there is a corollary shift from ‘material’ to ‘commodity’ to ‘deity’ and perhaps back to ‘material’ at the end of the consumption cycle, depending on the trajectory of its use. The life cycle of flowers reveals that they move through different and alternating phases of ‘sacredness’. While they are potentially sacred prior to use, their divinity is actualised and enhanced as they are used ritualistically. My research on the use of flowers in Hindu worship reveals that their status vacillates across a range of possibilities at different moments of a ritual cycle: from ‘profane’ to ‘potentially sacred’ to ‘sacred’ and then back to ‘profane’ again at the culmination of the ritual. Normative notions about the treatment of religious objects exist within Hinduism and to some extent the manner of approaching pictures and statues of gods and flowers during worship and after is inscribed and even prescribed by custom and tradition. Collectively these observations have led me to problematise the category ‘sacred’ within the Hindu context and highlight the processual and historical dimension in registering the potentiality of sacredness of an object/commodity. Thus I do not approach ‘puja items’ as representing a unique category of objects that are essentially and substantively different from other kinds of objects. Neither do I hold the view that they will be blemished or stigmatised by the processes of commercialisation or commodification, and thus need to be ‘shielded’ from them. My endeavour has instead been to focus on users and to document ‘how they introduce their consumer goods into their lives’ (Agnew 2003: 15). Furthermore, as I have demonstrated, the ‘materialisation’ of religion is not a problem in Hindu consciousness. Indeed the ‘thing-ness’ of a religious object does not diminish or trivialise its ritual value but in fact often enhances it.

Consumption and Possibilities for Enchantment In theorising everyday patterns of consumption of ‘puja items’, it does not make sense to begin with the premise that individuals are driven to consume these goods for the satisfaction of temporary, superficial, restless and worldly appetites. Within the context of my research, what does the consumption of religious articles actually signify for practitioners? Do they see a qualitative, substantive difference between consumption of material objects as ‘commodities’ and as ‘puja items’? Discussions of consumption as a social practice entail exploring the points of contact between consumer culture and consumption—an association that has been assumed in the scholarship. A ‘consumer society’ is defined as one where everyday life has been dominated by a concern with the need to utilise and possess material goods and services which are acquired in the marketplace. The notion of consumption is used negatively and critically in such a discourse. According to John Benson in The Rise of Consumer Society (1994, in Turner 2006: 88), consumer societies are those:


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in which choice and credit are readily available, in which social value is defined in terms of purchasing power and material possessions, and in which there is desire, above all, for that which is new, modern, exciting and fashionable. The concept of ‘consumption’ has commanded scholarly engagement from social scientists in the ‘classical’ and ‘modern’ periods, an interest that has persisted in reconstituted modes into the present. Amongst others, Daniel Miller (1995) has historicized the field of consumption studies in sociology and anthropology and highlighted the contribution of such luminaries as Mauss, Levi-Strauss, Baudrillard, Barthes, de Certeau, Douglas and Bourdieu, rounding off the list with the decisive input from Appadurai, Miller and McCracken in accounts of materiality, consumer culture and social relations. This list encapsulates a wide range of perspectives on the complex relationships amongst commodity, consumer culture and consumption. More recently, Juliet B. Schor (2007) has surveyed twentieth century debates on consumption with a call for revisiting consumer critique carried in the classical writings of Veblen, Adorno, Horkheimer, Galbraith and Baudrillard, as a much-needed corrective to subsequent micro-level, interpretive studies of consumption that are devoid of a critical edge and lack of attention to macro forces. The field continues to be vibrant and it has rightly been noted that while ‘consumption’ is ‘a somewhat nebulous concept’ (Warde 2006: 88–89) it is nonetheless a dominant social practice of our times (Lefebvre 1971; D. Miller 2005) and worthy of sociological analysis. It has been associated with the complex process of industrialcapitalist development starting in the seventeenth century, but seen to have intensified especially in the highly consumer oriented society of the twentieth century. Assuming a historical perspective, Warde notes two dominant strains in interpreting consumption: the first carries negative and pejorative connotations, conjuring images of destruction and wastefulness, of taking things in and devouring them; the second, a more impartial usage, views consumption as one of the processes of an emergent capitalist society in the eighteenth century (cited in Turner 2006: 88). He argues that the former tendency was twinned with an explicit critique of capitalism and of consumer society in general, and had emerged from a focus on the ‘instrumental aspects of consumption’ (ibid. 89). In contrast, from the 1970s onwards, sociological and anthropological research turned increasingly to the complex process of consumption in cultural realms, highlighting instead its ‘symbolic dimensions’ (ibid. 89). We see the shift thus from ‘use value’ to ‘sign value’ of a commodity, a phrase devised and popularized by J. Baudrillard (ibid. 89) who argues that in specific contexts ‘commodities are given meanings through a logic of signs’ (ibid. 88). Agnew (2003: 12) presents the scholarly tensions in the field of commodification studies as follows:



Should we look at the rise of modern market culture, as some historians encourage us to do, as a colonizing, not to say, disciplinary regime? Or should we rather see it as a liberatory resource for the reenchantment of the world . . .? Or shall we say that it is not so much a matter of interpretive choice as of historical necessity? From the 1980s onwards, other shifts included the following: the ideas that consumption is not about hedonistic self-indulgence and narcissism or that consumers stand passively at the receiving end of market forces over which they have no control. In contrast, a more positive assessment of consumption is found in de Certeau’s (1984) writings in the notice of its emancipatory potential and also as a form of resistance. These alternative formulations suggest that consumption could be an imaginative and creative process, involving the participation of active agents—the consumers—who appropriate goods and commodities for their own specific, meaningful purposes. My data highlight that devotees are indeed in possession of knowledge about what the ‘puja items’/goods they use signify and are also able to see their identities beyond their status as commodities. Avoiding economistic conceptions of consumption, I concur with Hefner that ‘Consumption, then, is not the economist’s inscrutable act of shapeless desire. On the contrary, consumption is implicated in identity and is socially communicative as well as technical or material’ (Hefner 1998a: 25). This allows us to disconnect the idea of the inevitability of linking the functional utility of things from the process of consumption, and to approach the latter using a different conceptual terminology and motivation. The critique of consumer culture and capitalism appears especially in studies of religion, in the idea that consumption practices invade, intrude and threaten the sentiment of the religious domain leading to its debasement, and subjection to the crass banality of market forces and reckless, avid consumerism (Miller, V. 2005; Ward 2003). A critical portrayal of consumption is premised on the view that consumer culture negatively changes one’s relationship to religious beliefs and practices. According to V. Miller (2005: 3) ‘As consumer capitalism has expanded, corporate production has encompassed cultural goods as well as material ones,’ arguing that commodification in the religious domain has led to the ‘abstraction and fragmentation of religious traditions’ (ibid. 10). He elaborates thus: We can offer a basic definition of consumer culture as a situation in which elements of culture are readily commodified. Cultural commodities, like literal products, are characterized by abstraction and reification; they are abstracted from their conditions of production, presented as objects valuable in themselves, shorn of their interrelations with the other symbols, beliefs and practices that determine their meanings and function in their traditional contexts. (ibid. 72)



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While I agree with V. Miller that the context in which objects are used is crucial, I do not share his articulations about the negative impact of commodification in this societal sphere. If for example, religious symbols are de-contextualised and transposed to an unrelated context, there is indeed the potential for their misappropriation and abuse. Recent examples involving Hindu symbols come readily to mind: Italian designer Roberto Cavalli’s depiction of the deity Rama on designer bikinis, French shoe manufacturer Minelli’s shoes with the image of Rama, Lacey’s Footwear featuring the OM sign on shoes, just to list a few prominent examples. Expectedly all of these have provoked animated but divided responses from specific clusters of Hindus everywhere. However, examples like these are also readily available in India, as Hindu imagery and symbolism have been made exotic, glamorous, and embraced by popular culture in the fashion houses of Mumbai and Delhi. Hindu icons and emblems appear on tote bags, t-shirts, lunch-boxes and as tattoos on human bodies. It is important to note that the consumers of such objects are both Hindus and nonHindus. For the former these items are not viewed as religious symbols and are thus unproblematic. Yet, these products do draw criticism from some clusters of Hindus who object to the meaningless appropriation of Hindu icons and symbols and their representation in what are considered inappropriate media and contexts. But how does the fact of merchandising of ‘religious objects’ affect, (if at all) the modes in which they are consumed? I start with the recognition that these ‘puja items’ are not ‘trapped’ in a commodity state forever. In fact they have a limited ‘shelf life’ and eventually have the potential to move out from the marketplace into a ritual domain, thus activating their other ‘non-commodity’ attributes. So what does ‘consumption’ of ‘puja things’ signify for practitioners? As previously clarified, this expression denotes a category of items which may be objects of worship, objects used in worship or simply objects which are revered and have sacred connotations. Conversely these may be approached as having no spiritual content whatsoever but are appreciated on ‘purely aesthetic grounds’ (Bowman 1994: 150). In the everyday consumption of this set of objects, it is possible to identify at least two dimensions: one, is what I denote ‘aesthetic consumption’ both by ‘self’ and ‘other’ (including tourists) and two, what I label ‘ceremonial, symbolic consumption.’ The former suggests that individuals are attracted to merchandise that carry religious insignia and symbolism not because of its religious or spiritual value but because of its appeal to one’s sense of aesthetics, artistic and visual appreciation. Interestingly, this is the case with clusters of my Hindu respondents in Singapore who, for example, purchase a statue of a Hindu deity manufactured in China because of its artistic value and not for the purpose of performing prayers before it. Such objects are secured for display, decoration and ornamentation and thus do not find space in the puja room or the altar. A similar rationale applies to non-Hindus who gravitate towards goods with religious signs and motifs, who may well


200 Religion and Commodification be fervent admirers of religious and cultural traditions and the associated craftsmanship. In framing this mode of consumption, questions can be raised about individualistic consumerism, the politics of cultural appropriation and the exoticization of the ‘other’ as additional factors. On the other hand, my data suggest that procuring objects (including through purchase) for the express purpose of worship, devotion and other expressions of religiosity sees their usage integrated into the everyday fabric of Hindu religious tradition. The idea that consumption leads to debasement of religion cannot be sustained in view of my data precisely from this realm of ceremonial utilisation of objects. Drawing from her work on the ‘commodification of the Celt,’ Bowman’s observation certainly applies to my survey of Singaporean and Malaysian Hindu domains: However, alongside and within the general market, there is a specialist clientele, for whom the commodification of the Celt is not simply commercial or aesthetic but spiritual. The worship ethos of New Age and Pagan Religiosity open up a whole new era of consumerism, in which ingenuity knows no bounds. Whether this aspect of the marketing of tradition is producing spiritual empowerment or simply Celtic kitsch is for the individual to decide. (1994: 151–52) Certainly, commodification makes possible opportunities for mechanical consumerist behaviour but my data highlight that this also enables creativity on the part of consumers, who often use objects in ways unintended by producers and fashion them to their own needs, and who by no means receive them passively and relate to them in frivolous and vacuous modes. Instead, they participate actively in this realm and often create the need for new religious products and services through novel approaches to religiosity. In this sense the market may said to be consumer-driven. In an edited volume, Commodifying Everything (2003), Strasser asks if there are limits to commodification and if everything is necessarily and inevitably commoditised ultimately. Part of the answer is carried in this collection itself as it includes evidence of commodification of medical services, healthcare, coffins, human hair jewellery, pet business, gifts, Chinese nationalism, etc., suggesting that it would not be inaccurate to state that potentially ‘everything is for sale’ (Agnew 2003: 12). The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of commodification has constituted the starting point for numerous scholarly inquiries (Kitiarsa 2007) on this topic and indeed for Strasser’s volume as well (2003: 3). I include it here in the same spirit: . . . the action of turning something into, or treating something as, a (mere) commodity; commercialization of an activity, etc., that is not by nature commercial.



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There is an explicit recognition in this articulation that it is possible to identify a category of acts and things that are by nature ‘not commercial’ and the rendering of these into commodities is problematic and detrimental. ‘Religious objects’ is one such category that has been identified as singularly distinct and exceptional with the caution that its commercialisation ‘can get a culture into trouble’ (ibid. 3). Certainly from the historical and contemporary evidence before us, the religious domain is not immune to the workings of market forces, before or after the advent of capitalism; the intersections of these domains demonstrate a long history. The preponderance of such items (and their concomitant use as religious signs or their abuse) in the market, together with their popularity and the fashion trends they engender, lend further weight to the critics of consumption who speak of its encroachment into the religious domain, in the commercial exploitation of religious symbols and the degradation of religion. Much of this criticism emanates from the logic that the worlds of religion and commerce are not only separate and incommensurate, but should continue to be detached. This is another way of insisting on the separation of the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane/secular’ domains of society. Unfortunately, neither historical nor contemporary data support this position. Numerous examples can be cited to demonstrate the intimate links between the religious spheres and the commercial, worldly concerns through history, across numerous religious traditions. The commodification and commercialisation of which I speak here are neither recent phenomena nor unique to Hinduism, having been observed in a range of religious traditions such as Roman Catholicism (Geary 1986; Kaufman 2004; McDannell 1995), Islam (D’Alisera 2001; Starrett 1995),4 Buddhism (Kitiarsa 2007; Yee 1986) and New Age Religiosity (Bowman 1994; Zaidman 2003). But to continue with the example of Hinduism, we know that in medieval India, Hindu temple complexes were integrated with a system of trade and commerce, something that was essential for their perpetuation (Rudner 1987). Historical data attest to the presence of artisans, craftsmen and traders who created and produced various objects that were required for worship in the temples. Thus commercial activity is not by any means alien to the functioning of temples and worship within Hinduism and it was certainly not introduced by an industrial capitalist system of production and consumption. Cross-cultural, comparative examples can be cited across religious traditions to demonstrate that the spiritual and material do not represent ideological polarities but have been historically tangled in complex ways (Geary 1986; McDannell 1995; Weller 2000). An excellent example comes from Kaufman’s discussion of the Catholic tradition, where the ‘spiritual and material have always been entwined at sites of pilgrimage’ (2005: 1). Grazia et al. (cited in Festa 2006: 116) suggest that: Commodification is thus not the vanishing point of the subject into the commodified object but also of the object into pure exchangeability.



I propose that this does not necessarily happen with commodities that subsequently enter a field of Hindu religious activity as they acquire alternative identities. Although some ‘prayer things’ (such as metal statues) may be passed down to one’s children, by and large, they cannot be recycled, exchanged or re-sold. Speaking to the ‘sentimentality’ of objects, Festa (2006: 118) notes: The tales told by things transform commodities from repositories of economic value to objective correlatives of interior emotions and personal experiences. The sentimental becomes the means of revaluing commercial objects: things are coveted not because of their economic value but because of the personal bond felt between the owner and object. Extrapolating from this insight, I am moved to say that in the world of theistic Hindu religiosity ‘once upon a time’ commodities have a legitimacy and are appreciated and cherished because of their ritual value and are not doomed to be assessed exclusively in terms of their exchange value; neither are they rejected or de-valued because of their association and contact with the profane world of commerce and entrepreneurship. Within the framework of this research, my position is that the merchandising of ‘puja things’ does not lead to mindless, individualistic consumerism; neither is it a threat to Hindu religious and cultural sensibilities. In making these arguments, I am aware of both the pitfalls of romanticising consumption practices and the limitations of overstating the case for seeing meaning and value of participating in consumer culture. However, I speak with confidence of the field of religious practices I have mapped, having contextualised objects within and determined their value for users. My data have demanded that I acknowledge the embeddedness of ritual objects as commodities in the marketplace, a location that must be theorised. But I am also alerted that practitioners easily transcend this attribute of objects and how this characteristic is easily forgotten, and becomes irrelevant as the focus shifts instead to how materials enable and facilitate a style of religiosity. Indeed, Hindus I encountered were appreciative that ‘things’ which they saw as indispensable for their religious activities could be bought at all. The merchandising of such objects and materials for them was seen as enabling and not as debilitating. Following the Maussian model, James Carrier (1991: 133) states: We cannot separate the objects from the people who transact them and the social relationships in which they are transacted, just as we cannot separate the relationship from the people who are in it, the objects they transact, and the ways they transact them. And this is as true of the personal and enduring relationships of the family as it is of the impersonal and transient relationships of the supermarket and the factory.


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This sentiment resonates with my own approach as evident in the emphasis on the transaction of ‘puja items’ in the marketplace as well as their consumption in a ritual domain, despite the avowed dominance of commodity relations in the contemporary context. Drawing inspiration from a close reading of Marx (which is perhaps rather ironic in the present context), Graham Ward’s observations about the effects of ‘marketing of religious resources’ for religiosity itself, resonate strongly with the analytical frames I have adopted in this book. It seems appropriate to bring this discussion to a close on this note: I predict, on the basis of my examination of Marx, that the reenchantment in contemporary Western culture that takes place in and through the marketing of the resources of religion (its artefacts, myths, symbols, vocabularies, cosmologies, beliefs, and technologies) will only develop further. We are entering a profoundly post-secular age. (Ward 2003: 63) In the language that Morris Berman (1981) would use, Ward sees possibilities for the ‘reenchantment of the world.’ I stand with literary and cultural studies scholars cited by Agnew for whom ‘the expansive, mercurial and aleatory aspects of a modern consumer market are sources of radical hope, not despair’ (2003: 18) and take issue with the ‘romantic, republican and moralizing strains of the critique of consumption’ (ibid. 18). Within the sphere of ‘puja items’, my argument has been that the coterie of objects produced, circulated and exchanged through a thriving manufacturing industry and purchased by devotees/consumers do not contaminate, diminish or degrade the sacred domain. Rather they enhance the spiritual domain as these objects are actively utilised in the sustenance of everyday religiosity by practitioners. By now, the following observations are self-evident to students of contemporary religiosity, and they merit reiteration in the context of the present discussion. Despite the death knell sounded by secularisation theorists of the 1960s and 1970s, expressions of religiosity have clearly not been laid to rest with the threat of rational, modernist tendencies. The world of markets and consumer culture and their dominance has not necessarily had sanitary and sterilising effects on religious practices. Finally, devotees as consumers and customers are neither available for easy manipulation nor passively led to develop tastes and desires for commercialised culture. Instead, the dominant culture of consumption (including in the religious sphere) that defines a post-industrial context is mediated through a range of socially and culturally-specific motifs and resonances. For me this recognition implies that the processes of commoditisation and consumption within the religious domain have to be interpreted alternatively, i.e., outside a theoretical logic framed by a moral, righteous critique of consumption and the fear of its pernicious and toxic effects on cultural practices. Presently, the encounter of the spiritual


204 Religion and Commodification and commercial realms does persist globally, especially in novel, reconfigured modes through the emergence of new technological modes and media. But this is far from a ‘troubled encounter’ even as I agree with Strasser that the commodification process can be ‘conflicting and contradictory’ (2003a: 7). It is clear that religious institutions and practitioners respond to, and appropriate, the logic of the market for their own ends rather than necessarily be subjugated to it. I argue that despite the obvious and inevitable commodification and commercialisation of ‘puja items’, and perhaps even because of these eventualities, the religious domain is vigorously sustained. My data confirm that these processes lead to the persistence of an enchanted worldview rather than one which is devoid of meaning and substantive rationality. Apart from perpetuating the field of religious activity, the very commodification of religious objects also introduces tremendous scope for its possible reconfiguration through creative impulses, embodied by lay individuals who are consumers and devotees concurrently. The concern with generating profits and expansion of a market share do not sit uncomfortably with the potentially and ostensibly ‘religious’/’sacred’ nature of the commodities being traded, a view that is sometimes expressed in the scholarship. The latter is embedded in the sharp distinction that is made between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ realms (and extended to apply to commodities) and the assumption of diametrically opposed values associated with these two spheres. My ethnographic data have led me to challenge this presumption and offer an alternative reading. I propose that despite the commodification of religious objects, perhaps indeed because of it, goods and commodities as they feed back into the realm of religious practices with charged meanings, in effect support enchanted (by which I mean a religious, mystical, other-worldly) field of practices rather than produce mindless consumerism or a disenchanted consciousness.

Notes 1 For example, Singapore’s ‘Celebration of Arts’ has done projects for clients in Malaysia, Paris and Moscow. The business has secured an order for the construction of a large statue of a Hindu deity for a French Hindu temple for a cluster of the Sri Lankan community based in Paris. Members of the group visited Singapore and surveyed the local market before approaching this shop and placing a large order. The temple committee provided the shop with an image of the deity it wanted to construct, with a special requirement that the torso to resemble that of a bodybuilder’s. 2 For example, ‘Giri Trading Agency’ founded first in Mumbai in 1951 and then in Mylapore 1976 is an established trading company that exports and supplies puja items, temple accessories, books on Hinduism, religious music on CDs and Indian handicrafts, to different parts of India and an overseas market. In an interview with ‘chennaionline,’ Mr Subramanian, the Manager of Giri Trading noted the global reach of the family-run company and its reputation in Singapore, Malaysia and the USA, as well as the role of the Internet in securing business:


205


Yes. It is true. We export a number of items to temples abroad, items for consecration, items for various temple rituals, panchaloka idols, silver armours and many more. In addition, through Internet, we get a number of orders, from customers all round the world. So many from US, Germany, etc. whom we have never seen, buy a number of books and cassettes. ‘Giri Trading’ is an important item in the itinerary of a number of tourists. (http://archives.chennaionline.com/cityfeature/giritradingagency.asp.) (accessed 2 February 2010) 3 Historically, the emergence of chromolithographs (and subsequently the ‘god poster’ industry) has been crucial for low caste Hindu communities and untouchable populations, in enabling their access to representations of divinity which were enshrined in non-Agamic places of worship and in domestics spaces (Smith 1995). 4 Ramdas Lamb observes that ‘Protestants, Jews and Muslims typically reject the concept of sacred objects, although in everyday actuality, many members of these traditions do hold material things in reverence’ (2008: 340), contrasting this position with that of Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations and Hinduism, where the association of the divine with materiality is not a problem theologically. He further notes that ‘the Muslim concept of shirk (literally, association) specifically prohibits its followers from identifying anything created with the transcendent glory of Allah’ (ibid. 341). Nonetheless, he highlights that in practice, Muslim denominations do hold objects, texts, buildings, etc. in reverence, a point confirmed through concrete ethnographic data by Starrett’s (1995) work on religious commodities in Cairo.


Glossary

Tamil words aani paadam nail slippers abis.e¯kam Consecration by sprinkling water or ritual bathing; refers to the ceremonial lustration of sacred image using water, honey, milk, curds or saffron. agni catti pot of fire aiyar Brahmin priest. alaku ka¯vat.i This refers to a type of ka¯vat.i carried by devotees during festivals related to Murukan worship. a¯lan.karumpu A type of sugarcane. a¯n.ippa¯tam Literally ‘nail shoes/slippers’, worn by devotees during arccanai Worship. This is a specific mode of worship where the focus is on the arca (image or icon) and the deity it inhabits. The homage is addressed to the deity for a particular purpose via a priest within a temple. arukampul Cynodon dactylon, Bermuda grass, couch grass or dogis tooth grass. arul.va¯kku Scared sayings of the possessing deity. a¯tta¯ Mother sometimes denoting Goddess. a¯va¯kannam Invocation of the deity with appropriate mantras. ayya Father, used to refer to make guardian deities, typically Munı¯svaran, Muniya¯n.t.i, etc. ca¯mi A word for ‘God/Lord.’ ca¯mi cilai Literally ‘God statue.’ ca¯mipatam Literally ‘God pictures.’ ca¯mpira¯n.i waving of incense cankili Chains capati Sculptors, temple artisans. cattai adi the practice of ritual whipping cin _n _akarumpu Small sugarcane. cin _n _a ko¯vil Small temple, shrine. civalin.kam sivalingam


Glossary

207

curut.t.u Cigar kantam Fragrance, especially with reference to flowers. kolam Decorative drawings etched in front of homes by women of the household. ko¯puram Gateway, the entrance to a Southern Indian style temple. ko¯vil Literally translates as “king’s house” and is the common Tamil word for temple. kula teyvam Household or lineage deity. kumpam Pot kun.kumam Vermillion powder. kumpa¯pis.e¯kam: Dedication and installation of deities during a temple consecration ceremony. kuruvi Pigeon, also used to refer to couriers. man.t.apam A hall, or a covered platform or enclosure me¯l.am Percussion instrument. nittiya pu¯cai Daily prayers nive¯ttiyam Offerings of fruit, cooked rice, betel leaves, coconut or flowers to the gods. pa¯lkut.am Milk pot, a type of offering carried in honour of the deity Murukan. pañcalo¯kam An alloy of five metals, considered auspicious for constructing statues of deities. pan.t.a¯ram According to the Tamil Lexicon, multiple meanings include a religious mendicant, a Saivite Monk or a set of non-Brahmin Saivites who sell garlands of flowers. The word refers to a caste as well as a profession. pat.aiyal Offering. pa¯ya¯cam A dessert, made of milk, vermicelli and dried fruits. piraca¯tam (prasadam) Divine grace, symbolised by a small amount of consecrated food given to the worshipper in return for the offering that has been made to the deity. Offerings, including food, are distributed to devotees as ‘leftovers of the gods.’ ponkal Literally a mixture of rice, dhal, milk and sugar cooked together in a pot and symbolic of abundance and prosperity. pot.t.u A dot placed on the centre of the forehead by women. pu¯ Flowers rudraksha The seeds of a tree of the species, Elaeocarpus, used as prayer beads in Hinduism. Used in meditation and deemed to be very efficacious. rudraksha malai Garland, rosary made of rudraksha beads. sakti Divine ‘power/energy’; also the feminine aspect of divinity. sattai A rope whip. ta¯marai lotus flower te¯r Chariot. thevars A caste grouping


208 Glossary tiricu¯lam Trident tiruvila¯ Annual temple anniversary celebrations. to¯cai Indian pancake made of rice and lentils. to¯ran.am Decorations for entrance to doorways ucci ka¯vat.i The topmost section of an alakuk ka¯vat.i, that holds a representation of the deity. un.t.iyal Donation box. upayam Special prayers dedicated to a deity on a religious occasion but sponsored by groups, families or individuals. urumi Percussion instrument. urru pu Flowers from India. utikai Percussion instrument. u¯tupatti Joss sticks vat.ai A doughnut-shaped savoury snack made of lentils. ve¯l spear, associated with Murukan andVisnu. ve¯ppilai Margosa or Neem leaves. ve¯t.t.i A piece of cloth worn by men around the waist. vettilai Betel leaves. vilva Aegale Marmelos Correa vipu¯ti Sacred ash.

Sanskrit words aarti Waving of lighted camphor before a deity (Tamil: tipam, tiparatanai). arca An image or icon. When sanctified by special rites the deity represented by it is said to take up abode in it and thus becomes a proper object of worship. bhajan A song of devotional love, from a root related to the word bhakta. It is sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments on traditional themes and may be chanted in homes, temples or in public gatherings. bhakta Devotee, describes a person engaged in honouring, worshipping or serving a person or a deity. bhakti Derived from the root bhaj, ‘to love, worship or adore’; signifies attachment, devotion, fondness for, homage, worship, piety and faith. bija mantra Literally ‘seed word.’ A syllable used as a mantra or meditation phrase to be recited. darsan View, sight, vision. The act of ‘catching sight’ of a deity through which blessings are bestowed on the devotee. deva God, particularly the gods of the Vedic sacrifice, the inhabitants of heaven (swarga). devalya ‘House of God’ and a name for temple. guru Spiritual teacher, master.


Glossary

209

ja¯ti Birth or social status based on lineage. mukti/moksa ‘Release’, derived from the root moka ‘to free one’s self’, ‘to shake off.’ Navagraha The nine planets which are worshipped as part of the Hindu mythology. pranapratista Performance of any ceremony of solemn act, consecration or dedication of a monument or of an idol or of a temple. The word Pranapratistha comes from “pran” which means ‘the breath of life’ or ‘spirit’ and the root ‘stha’ which means ‘to establish in or bestow or confer upon.’ Thus the word refers to a ceremony in which ‘life-breath is established in an image or icon’, rendering it worthy of worship. pitr Ancestors. prartta puja Prayers performed by religious specialists on behalf of, and benefit, of others. puja ‘Worship.’ A puja takes many forms according to the religious affiliation of the worshipper, her community, and the occasion. It takes place in homes and temples and may range from a simple offering of fruit, flowers, leaves, and occasionally sweets or sugar, water to an elaborate ceremony involving a number of participants and offerings of various sorts. pushpam Flower yagya/yajna A ritual of sacrifice performed to please the gods, especially popular in the Vedic times. yantra Literally ‘instrument’ or ‘machine.’

Hindi words agarbati Joss sticks bindi Traditionally a red dot applied by married Hindu women at the centre of the forehead. biryani/biriani A rice dish cooked with spices and condiments, together with meat or vegetables. Char dham Refers to the four pilgrimage sites in Hinduism. darsan dena Literally ‘to give a sight/viewing.’ darsan lena Literally ‘to take a sight/viewing.’ dudhwallah A milk vendor gramadevata Village deities, minor powers or tutelary gods of villages. ista devata Chosen, preferred deity of the worshipper. kurta A loose-fitting tunic of varying lengths worn by men. paanwallah A vendor who sells betel leaves and related condiments. puja ghar Literally ‘prayer-house,’ refers to sacred space within the home. puja ka saamaan Literally ‘things required for puja.’ rath Chariot


210 Glossary sari/saree A piece of unstitched cloth, ranging from four to nine yards, worn by women in India. thali A large plate for serving a meal. toran A toran literally means ‘A gateway, commonly of wood, but sometimes of stone, consisting of two upright pillars carrying one to three transverse lintels. It is often minutely carved with symbolic sculpture, and serves as a monumental approach to a Buddhist temple.’(http:// www.thefreedictionary.com/Toran) tulasi Holy basil, Ocimum sanctum, used in Hindu rituals and ceremonies. visarjan Immersion ceremony, during which a deity is submerged in water at the end of a festival or ritual.


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Index

Adi-Dravida communities 33 Agamic temples 29, 49, 71–3, 105 altars 14, 20, 23, 69–70, 74, 76, 79–81, 83–5, 87–9, 91–8, 100–5, 107, 134, 141, 153, 177 Arasaratnam 33, 77 artefacts 12, 69, 191, 203 artists 41, 56–7, 84, 115–17 Asia 12, 185 Asian Productivity Organization 155, 185 authorities 31, 38, 54, 82, 104, 146, 168 Babb 78, 136, 147 Bangalore 14, 114–15 Bangladesh 155, 187 Baudrillard 197 Baumann 22, 25, 27 Benjamin 145–6 blessings 12, 72, 74, 103–4, 183, 185 boxes 161, 178 Britain 28 businesses 6–7, 13, 15–16, 30, 33, 37–8, 41, 43, 45, 49–50, 124–6, 129–35, 157–9, 165–6, 168–74, 176–81; retail 11, 14, 35–6, 49, 114, 158, 166–7; Singaporebased 114 camphor 39, 65, 103, 134, 171 capitalism 11–12, 191, 197–8, 201 cement 84, 111, 141 ceremonies 42, 71, 98, 107, 141, 144, 149, 181–3 Chennai 3, 5, 7–8, 11, 30, 41, 57, 83, 96, 104, 113–14, 121, 132, 162–7 China 34, 38, 50, 93, 111, 113, 116–20, 146, 154, 199

Chinese 73, 87–8 civalin.kam 123, 130 cloth 53, 126 coherence 110, 145–6 commercialisation 2, 6, 10, 12, 196, 201, 204 commodification 12–13, 196, 198, 200–1, 204 commodities 2–3, 6, 16–19, 21–2, 36, 55, 109, 125–6, 129–31, 135–6, 143, 181, 189–94, 196–8, 200–2, 204; mass-produced 41, 110, 135, 193 conceptualisations 80, 109–12 consecration 71, 140, 205 consecration ceremonies 100, 140–1 consumers 5, 7–8, 10, 12, 14–18, 24, 47, 64, 79, 93, 148, 152, 184, 191–3, 196–200, 202–4 consumption 4, 7–8, 13, 17–22, 34, 47, 49, 54–5, 63, 142–3, 148, 153–4, 182, 190–2, 195–201, 203 consumption cycle 17, 143, 148, 153–4, 182, 193–6 consumption of material objects 3, 17, 196 consumption of religious objects 2–3, 17–18, 143, 196 contractors 87–8 couriers 16–17, 51, 53, 62, 164 culture 23, 118, 145, 149, 198 customers 8, 15, 23–4, 30, 37, 42–4, 54, 59–60, 84–5, 89–92, 115–17, 122–31, 133, 167–71, 177–8, 181–2 darsan 72, 82, 142 Deepavali 28, 45–8, 65, 179 deities 5–6, 39, 57–9, 64–5, 70–6, 78, 81–2, 97–101, 105–7, 109–12,


Index 116–17, 127–9, 134, 136–46, 150–3, 180–3; favourite 75, 80; folk 109–11; guardian 41, 57, 65, 80, 99–100; Indian 74; lineage 75; male 65, 130; non-vegetarian 80; personal 75; pictures of 80, 107, 123, 134, 136, 144, 171; pictures of Hindu 116, 124; Sanskritic 80, 110–11; temple 99, 107, 142, 145; village 28–9, 32; worshipping 71, 107 designs 19, 55, 59, 61, 80–1, 83, 86, 88–9, 91, 93–4, 111, 115–16, 118, 122, 176, 179 devotees 6, 21–2, 40–1, 43, 55–9, 72, 81–2, 95–6, 103–6, 109–14, 125, 127–9, 137–8, 140–4, 182–4, 186–7; Singaporean 111 devotion 41, 56, 71, 74–5, 98–9, 110, 129, 133, 139, 150, 152, 173, 180–2, 200 Dindigul 163, 165 distributors 6, 10–11, 13–14, 16–17, 50–1, 109, 114, 163, 165 diversity 63, 72–4, 190 divinity 1, 20–1, 55, 57, 73–6, 98, 100–1, 104–5, 109–10, 123, 135–7, 140, 142, 145–6, 150–1, 181–3; representations of 78, 96, 100–1, 103, 179, 205 Eck 140–2 Einstein 190 entrepreneurs 2, 4, 14–16, 22, 30, 38–9, 43, 51, 55, 113–14, 121, 123, 167, 189, 191, 193–4 ethnography 8, 19, 21, 24, 153, 185, 191 exchanges 7, 9, 127, 129, 131, 142, 181 expenditure 16, 50, 131 expertise 2–4, 43, 50, 59, 61–2, 68, 73, 76, 85, 89, 93–4, 109–11, 114–15, 121–2, 126–7, 131–2 exports 41, 154–6, 159–60, 185–6, 204–5 factories 61, 120, 146, 202 families 40–1, 47–9, 66–7, 75–9, 81–3, 87, 91, 98, 102, 106–7, 113, 125, 135, 137, 144, 185 farms 156–7, 160, 164, 185–6 festivals 1, 14, 22, 26, 28, 30, 32, 39–40, 42–5, 47–9, 63, 65–7, 77, 130, 156, 185

223

Fiji 27–8, 155 flower industry 154–5, 174, 185 flower nurseries 155–6, 158, 160, 186 flower sellers 152 flower shop operators, Singapore 164 flower shops 14, 38–9, 45, 49, 149, 156–8, 160–1, 164–76, 179, 181, 186–7 flower suppliers 156, 158, 163, 176 flower trade 45, 149, 152, 161–2, 166, 168, 171, 174–5, 177, 179–81 flowers 1, 3, 5, 17, 19–21, 34, 39, 45, 49–50, 57, 63–5, 102–4, 106–7, 144–5, 148–87, 194–6; centrality of 21, 149–50; importing 156–9, 167; mullai 161–2, 165; special 160, 166; tying 166–7, 173–6, 180, 187 forgiveness 134–5 fragrance 151, 153, 161, 182–3, 195 frames 7, 119–20, 122, 138–9, 176 Fridays 98, 102–3, 152 fruits 34, 50, 67, 77, 80, 100, 102, 106, 144, 150, 168, 183, 185–7 function 16–17, 24–5, 27, 32, 36, 47, 49–50, 53, 72–3, 97, 99, 106, 110, 127, 140, 149 garland makers 2, 32–3, 35, 38, 152 garlands 1, 33–4, 39, 49, 66–7, 148–53, 157–8, 161–2, 165–7, 171–84, 186–7 generations 25–6, 49, 61, 75, 107, 135, 137–8, 144, 146 globalisation 11–13 gods 17, 21, 35, 63, 70–1, 74–6, 83, 98, 104, 121, 127, 133–5, 138, 144, 180–2, 196 Gokulam 83–4, 88–9, 91–4, 105 goods 2, 6, 14, 16–17, 22, 24, 28, 31, 35–7, 39, 47–8, 50–1, 53–5, 92–3, 195–6, 198–9 government 174–5 groceries 13, 34–8, 104, 106, 170 groups 2, 10, 14–16, 22, 26–8, 33, 35, 60–2, 65–6, 75, 100, 105, 113, 134, 172, 204 Hefner 198 Hikita 140 Hindu 1–4, 8–11, 19–22, 24–7, 30–2, 35, 40–2, 47–9, 69–73, 83–4, 95– 114, 126–9, 135–8, 140–6, 148–50, 152


224 Index Hindu ceremonial life 1, 42, 150 Hindu communities 2–4, 7, 10–11, 20, 22, 24–6, 28, 30, 32–4, 36, 40, 48, 50, 55, 137, 199 Hindu consciousness 57, 112, 196 Hindu context 70, 182, 195–6 Hindu culture 23, 146 Hindu deities, folk 73, 82, 122 Hindu devotees 15, 23, 30, 34 Hindu diaspora 3, 9, 12–14, 20, 22, 25–6, 30–3, 39, 136, 143, 190 Hindu discourse 21, 153, 184 Hindu divinity 74, 105, 109–10, 113, 118, 137, 153; laminated pictures of 3, 19, 21, 135, 184; legitimate representations of 118, 146 Hindu domains 2, 33, 107 Hindu elements 27, 40, 139 Hindu Endowments Board (HEB) 46 Hindu festivals 39, 64, 77 Hindu gods 1, 21, 38, 47, 53, 63, 69–71, 78, 81, 91, 100, 104, 110–11, 113, 116–17, 124; producing statues of 34, 50; visual representations of 39, 106, 136 Hindu icons 118, 199 Hindu imagery 12, 124, 199 Hindu mythology 32 Hindu religiosity 3, 11, 18, 25, 27, 63, 73, 77, 170; theistic 44, 202 Hindu religious objects 13 Hindu rituals 11, 23–4, 27, 30 Hindu temples 12, 14, 22, 27, 29, 32, 36, 40, 71–3, 82, 107, 167, 186, 201 Hindu tradition, folk 28, 72 Hindu worship 18, 21, 37, 111, 113, 122, 135, 137, 142–3, 145, 148, 151, 153, 184, 196 Hinduism 2–4, 6–7, 10, 15, 21–34, 54–5, 63, 69–70, 72, 74–5, 77–8, 126, 142–7, 150–1, 195–6, 201; devotional 1, 3, 6, 11–13, 28, 75, 79, 82, 110, 135–7, 189; domestic 17, 22, 54, 75, 82; festival 22, 39, 54, 122; folk 29, 40, 42, 139; logic of theistic 110, 123; popular 29, 32; Singaporean 31, 63, 72, 81; temple 22; theistic 29, 41, 44, 55, 110, 123 Hindus: Indian 187; Singaporean 7, 17, 21, 31, 39, 48, 59, 64, 67, 78–81, 83, 88–9, 93–5, 97–8, 103, 105–9; Singaporean

and Malaysian 6–7, 44, 200; Singaporean Tamil 80, 100; Tamil 49 Hinnells 22, 25 history 6, 23, 63, 71, 97, 112–13, 136, 145, 201 icons 71, 74, 100, 145 identities 9, 36, 96, 146, 167, 169, 190, 198, 202 images 56–9, 61, 71, 74–6, 94, 109–11, 113, 115–16, 122, 136–7, 140, 142–3, 145–6, 150, 153–4, 170 importers 14, 16, 45, 50–1, 59, 120, 148, 154–5, 157–9, 175, 178, 186 India 10–13, 24–6, 30–1, 33–5, 48–51, 53–4, 70–1, 83–5, 93–4, 113–14, 116–18, 121–2, 154–5, 159–62, 164–8, 172–4; medieval 64, 201; modern 70, 136 Indian community 13–14, 22, 35, 48, 125, 158, 168 Indian connection 25, 93, 113 Indian craftsmen 94, 118 Indian designs, traditional 85, 89 Indian gods 23 Indian handicrafts 84, 125 Indian markets 50, 158 Indian religions 23, 73–4 Indian rituals of consecration 140 Indian shores 25, 30 Indians 14, 21, 24, 26–8, 33–6, 40, 47, 49, 51, 63–4, 85, 89, 111, 116–17, 124, 174–5; Singaporean 30, 134 Indonesia 12, 27, 34, 45, 50, 66, 93–4, 111, 155, 157–60, 179, 189 industry 41, 43, 55, 162, 174–5 Internet 5, 14–15, 23, 42, 64, 114, 122, 159, 204–5 Japan 154–6, 162, 185 Jayan 114–15, 123, 126, 129–30, 138, 168–9 Jesus 38, 115 Kamraj Flower Market 162 Karuppanca.mi 41 ka¯vat.i 39, 55, 57–63, 65, 67–8, 130 kitchens 61, 80 ko¯puram 54, 76, 87, 89 knowledge 9, 15, 17, 31, 39, 61, 84, 96, 110, 118, 127, 143, 146, 150, 152, 168

Index


Krishna 128, 141, 152 Kuala Lumpur 34–5, 104, 137 labels 5, 24, 26, 199 labour, human 192 Lakshmi 47, 96, 118, 127, 147, 152–3 lamps 77, 102–3, 171–2 landscape, local Hindu 48, 102 life cycle 18–19, 143, 182 Little India Shopkeeper’s and Heritage Association (LISHA) 46, 48, 66, 168 London 5, 13–14, 34, 104, 137 Lury 18–19 Madras 96, 121–2, 165 Madurai Veeran 40–1, 65, 82, 99–100, 146 Mahabalipuram 7–8, 41, 113–15, 121 Malaya 32–3, 113 Malaysia 3, 5, 7, 11–13, 15, 27–8, 30, 34, 48–50, 91–4, 120–2, 153–7, 159–62, 166, 176, 204 Malaysian 92–3, 158, 175 Malaysian Hindu 30, 39, 65 mantras 98, 143, 173 manufacture 10, 13–14, 16, 50–1, 55, 67, 85, 89, 114, 120, 189 Marcus 7–8 market 5–6, 10–11, 15–17, 41–4, 50–1, 53, 63–4, 83–4, 113–15, 119–21, 154–6, 161–5, 169–71, 189, 193–4, 200–1 market forces 190, 198, 201 marketing 43–4, 84, 111, 133, 168, 190, 193, 200, 203 marketplace 3, 6, 19, 24, 36–7, 39, 46, 49, 54, 123, 125–7, 129, 166, 189–90, 192–3, 202–3 Marx 19, 191–2, 203 material culture 3, 18–19, 97 material forms 56, 101, 103–4, 109–10, 144 material religion 2–3, 12–13 materiality 1, 6–7, 11, 18, 27, 44, 95, 109–10, 123, 135, 141, 153, 179, 193, 195, 197 Mauritius 23, 26–8, 65 Mazumdar 12, 76, 79–80, 217 members 26–7, 36, 46, 61–2, 65, 77, 85, 91, 95, 103, 107, 156, 158, 186–7, 204–5 merchandising 2, 7, 22, 189–90, 199, 202

225

merchants 2, 45–7, 114, 163, 167–8 metals 61, 74, 107, 141, 151 milk 48, 57–9, 66–7, 80, 102, 186 Miller 197–9 modes 2–3, 14–15, 17–18, 31, 49, 51, 53, 70, 75, 78, 88, 96, 103, 109, 150, 199–200 moments 9, 127, 142–3, 149, 182, 195–6 money 6, 89, 127, 129–34, 175–6, 180 Munı¯svaran 6, 40–1, 56–7, 65, 80, 82, 99–100, 111–12, 130–1, 139; statues of 41, 112, 130, 139 Munı¯svaran worship 9, 131 Murukan 57, 59, 67 Murukan worship 67 Mylapore 113–14, 204 mythology 67, 209 needles 59, 61, 65 Nepal 155 Netherlands 27–8, 154, 162 New Delhi 14 non-Hindus 10, 26–7, 37, 49, 73, 78, 80, 88, 100, 128, 158, 199 non-Indian 14, 26, 120, 158 norms 9, 76, 83, 88, 99–100, 156, 181 North Indian Hindu 47, 144 number 1–2, 10, 22, 24–5, 28, 31–3, 36, 63, 94, 154, 160, 167, 170–1, 174–5, 187, 205 objectification 110, 123 objects 1–2, 4–5, 10–11, 13, 16–20, 37–8, 41–3, 49–50, 69–70, 79–80, 123–7, 135–6, 140–5, 189–90, 192–6, 198–203; auspicious 77, 153; everyday 18–19, 184; life history of 18, 145; material 1–3, 7, 12–13, 17, 21, 79, 123, 141–2, 183–4, 187, 196; physical 3, 109; sacred 70, 100, 111, 126, 137, 143, 148, 184, 199, 205; symbolism 18, 143 occasions 45, 53, 64–6, 82, 84, 106, 127–30, 147, 156, 163, 187, 191 offerings 57–8, 153, 168, 182–3 orders 17, 22, 25, 45, 51, 59, 70, 77, 93, 95, 120–2, 140, 158–9, 164, 177–8, 204–5 organisation 66, 73–4, 79–80 ornamentation 58–9, 67, 199


226 Index paintings 47, 57, 63, 67, 110, 112, 116, 121–2, 125, 135, 145 pa¯lka¯vat.i 59, 67 pae¯calo.kam 110–12, 114–15, 128 Penang 7, 34–5, 57, 95, 104 photographs 9, 54, 63, 89, 100, 105–6, 110, 113–15, 122, 135, 137–8, 144–5 pictures 17, 35, 41, 51, 63, 77, 81, 87, 95–7, 100–1, 107, 113–16, 118–19, 124–5, 138, 140–2; framed 3, 122, 137–8, 141, 144 politics 136, 200 Pongal ix, 42, 44–5, 65–6 practitioners 1, 14, 25, 28, 42, 72, 74, 101–2, 190, 193–4, 196, 199, 202–4 prayer altars 1, 3, 5, 9, 19, 21, 39, 63, 69, 78–89, 91, 93–4, 96–7, 99–101, 105–6, 109; custom-made 21, 87, 90; domestic 111, 177, 183; home 39, 63, 73, 98–9, 101, 105, 107, 137, 139 prayer items 10, 14–16, 21, 31, 34–6, 39, 49–51, 55, 57, 63–4, 89, 93, 113–14, 125–6, 131–4, 170–1 prayer room 79, 81, 87–8 prayers 43, 64, 71, 75, 77, 81, 87–8, 95, 101–3, 124–6, 128–9, 133–4, 138–9, 141–3, 170–2, 180–1 price 23, 31, 37, 51, 54, 59, 67, 85, 88, 90–3, 113, 118, 121–2, 131–5, 158–9, 178–9 priest 43, 53–4, 71–2, 84, 88, 97–8, 101, 107, 115–16, 128, 134, 141, 150–1, 181 printed images 122, 136–7, 140 processes 3, 6, 8–9, 12, 16, 19–21, 50, 55, 61, 63, 69, 79, 145–6, 158, 196–7, 203–4 production 4, 7, 17–18, 20–1, 30–1, 54–5, 57, 110, 114, 122, 136, 148, 154–6, 166, 175, 192 products 6, 14–16, 23, 37, 39, 41, 43, 50–1, 53, 55, 63–4, 84, 92–4, 120–1, 123, 166 profane 11, 97, 194–6 profit 39, 131–3, 164, 169 project 1–3, 7, 11, 20, 30, 123, 166, 188, 192, 194–5, 204 properties 131, 183–4, 192, 194–5 public culture 142 puja 14, 23, 42–3, 67, 69–71, 74, 76, 97, 100–2, 113, 134–5, 149–50, 153, 169–70, 185–6

puja accessories 5, 14, 24, 114 puja items 2, 4–9, 11, 13–16, 21–4, 36–9, 55, 63, 83–4, 126–7, 169, 180, 189, 191–6, 198–9, 203–4 puja room 61, 79–81, 94, 96–7, 101, 105, 199 quality 23, 37, 39, 83–5, 88, 117–19, 122, 132, 151, 181, 191 regions 24, 32–3, 35, 40, 44, 113, 156, 158, 160, 168, 179, 186–7, 194 relationship 6–7, 18, 72, 79, 121, 140, 192, 198, 202 religion 3, 6, 10, 12–14, 21–2, 25, 31–2, 64, 110, 136, 152, 190, 194, 196, 198, 200–1 religiosity 7, 12, 17, 24–5, 28, 31, 73, 131, 139, 190, 200, 203 religious domain 3, 18, 181, 190–1, 194–5, 198, 201, 203–4 religious events 39, 46–7, 149, 171 religious identity 24–5, 36, 88 religious imagery 1, 21, 110, 118–19, 124, 199, 201 religious landscape 29, 72–3 religious objects 2–5, 8, 10, 13–14, 16–20, 30, 33–4, 36–8, 50, 63–4, 123–7, 143–5, 180–1, 191, 193, 204–5; everyday consumption of 17–18; treatment of 17, 196 religious practices 1, 7, 9, 13, 20–1, 73, 79, 131, 142, 191, 194, 202–4 religious specialists 1, 7, 30, 43, 72–3, 106, 109, 137, 152 religious traditions 10, 12, 14, 26, 29, 31–2, 39, 65, 73, 88, 100, 124, 135, 150, 191, 200–1 research 3, 6–9, 13–15, 20, 31, 67, 78–9, 84, 91, 97–8, 113, 148, 189, 191, 196, 202 residential spaces 80–2, 106 retailers 5–8, 10–11, 41–4, 53, 59–60, 83–5, 91, 93–5, 113–16, 119–21, 123, 125, 127–33, 158–60, 174–5, 184–6 reverence 32, 75, 95–6, 125, 149, 185, 193–4, 205 rice 48, 58, 66–7, 96, 144 risks 129, 164, 176–8 ritual 1, 5–6, 12, 21, 27, 29–30, 32, 39–44, 69–75, 77, 81–2, 126, 143, 145, 182–3, 185–7; daily 12, 32, 71


Index ritual life 78, 153, 195 ritual objects 2–3, 6–7, 18, 22, 55, 111, 123, 125, 141, 143, 153, 168, 184, 189–90, 192–5, 202 ritual practices 3, 11, 29, 102, 135 ritual purity 77, 105, 173–4 ritual value 149, 184, 196, 202 ritualistic use 156, 193 rods 58–9, 61 room 54, 76, 80–1, 87–8, 91, 94–5, 100, 102 root 74, 184–5 rows 34, 38, 92, 114, 117, 168 rudraskham 129 Rukmani 22, 25 rules 53, 64, 73–4, 97, 99–100, 102, 104, 128 sacrality 4, 7, 18–19, 69, 95–6, 153, 179, 184, 195 sacred space 9, 21, 69–70, 72–6, 78–9, 81–3, 107, 170 sacredness 7, 18, 123, 141, 145, 183–4, 195–6 sacredness of objects 143, 195 sacrifice 74; ritual of 74–5 sale 15, 17, 22, 35, 38, 41–2, 47, 53, 55, 68, 93, 117, 133–4, 168, 170, 179 Samy 106 Sandhu 33, 64 schools 74, 103, 105 sculptures 93, 105, 115–16, 128, 145 selling 2, 5, 47, 49, 53–4, 89, 91, 93, 117–18, 124, 127, 131–3, 135, 168, 178–9, 190 Sembawang 157, 170 Serangoon Road 21, 24, 35, 49, 57, 64–5, 92, 106, 115, 151–2, 168–9, 179, 186 services 1, 4, 14–15, 26, 28, 32, 34–5, 39, 43–4, 48–50, 53–5, 89, 128, 168, 173, 186–7 sessions 82, 106 set apart 194–5 shelves 16, 36, 38, 47, 50, 64, 83, 85, 87, 91, 94–5, 109, 111, 125 shops 36–9, 42–3, 51, 53, 83–4, 92–3, 97–8, 114–17, 120–4, 127–8, 130–5, 159, 161–2, 167–70, 172, 174–6 shrine 14, 29, 58, 69–73, 77; family 21, 27, 70, 74–5, 78–9, 81–2, 105, 107 shrine room 76–7

227

Siddique & Puru Shotam 33, 35–6, 38 silver 53, 107, 151–2 Singapore 4–9, 11–16, 21–2, 30–5, 39–41, 47–51, 53–5, 59–63, 76–85, 89, 91–6, 109–13, 120–3, 154–68, 173–6, 184–7 Singapore-based retailers 50, 121 Singapore businesses, large 50 Singapore laws 72, 82 Singapore market 34, 156 Singapore Tourism Board (STB) 46–8, 168, 174 Singapore Trade Development Board (STDB) 185 Singaporeans 35, 46, 87, 93, 105–7, 113, 167, 174–5, 186 Sinha 6, 9, 29, 32, 40, 56–7, 63, 73, 78–9, 81, 99–100, 139, 147 skills 2, 4, 33, 61, 84, 89, 113, 122, 146, 166–7, 173–5, 187 smell 151, 153, 161 society, consumer 196–7 South Asia 136 South India 65, 67, 71, 103, 111, 113, 165 South Indians 32–3, 39 Southeast Asia 12–13 spaces 7, 13, 21, 23–4, 27–8, 34, 36, 38–9, 48–9, 69–70, 76–84, 94–6, 99–100, 103–4, 153, 169; commercial 35–6, 123, 168, 186–7; community 21, 27, 35–6, 49; revered 69, 79–80 Sri Sreenivasa Perumal Temple 64 stalls 47–8, 114, 167, 170–1, 175 statues 63–4, 80–2, 89, 91, 95–101, 106–7, 112–22, 124–6, 128–9, 131, 133–5, 137–42, 144–7, 153, 171, 196; construction of 173, 195; god 146; metal 138, 144, 202; painted 35, 38; securing 50, 114; selling 84, 117, 134; three-dimensional 137, 139; worshipping 138 stocks 45, 47–8, 114, 159, 177–8 store-room 87–8, 106 stories 3, 5, 7, 20–2, 64–5, 87, 96–7, 107, 114–15, 144, 148, 183–4 stories of objects 11, 13 Strasser 200, 204 style 71, 73–4, 82, 91, 111 sugarcane 1, 45, 48–9, 67 Sundaraj 138, 140, 151

228 Index


suppliers 10–11, 13–16, 45, 50–1, 53, 120–1, 156–9, 164–7, 176, 178, 184 supplies 41, 43, 50, 92, 107, 131–2, 155–60, 163–4, 179, 189 Swamimalai 113–14, 121 Tai pu¯cam 28, 42, 57, 65, 68, 77, 130, 179 Taippon.kal 45, 48–9, 179 Taiwan 155–6 Ta¯marai 151–2 Tamil Nadu 3, 6–7, 27, 32, 34, 51, 59, 71, 84, 91, 105–6, 113, 115, 132, 161–2, 165–6 Tantras 32, 64, 71 temple 28–30, 32, 53–4, 64–6, 69–73, 75–7, 81–2, 96–102, 104–7, 114–16, 134–7, 144–50, 166–8, 176–8, 181–3, 185–7; consecrated 72; family 113; home 82, 108; jungle 63, 73, 81, 105 temple authorities 53–4, 144 temple rituals 71, 205 temple statues 137 temple worship 21, 74, 105 texts 65, 71, 74, 104, 110, 141, 150, 152, 205 Thailand 12, 34, 50, 93, 111, 113, 116, 154–5, 158–60, 187, 189 Thiru 117–18, 121–3, 130–1, 133 tourists 22, 46–8, 117, 120, 125, 127–8, 135, 168–9, 174, 205 trade 2, 6–7, 13–15, 21–2, 33, 36–8, 59, 83, 93, 123–4, 126–7, 154, 161–2, 172–5, 177–8, 180 treatment 17, 135–6, 153–4, 183–4 trees 69, 141, 144, 150, 183–4 Trichy 7, 113–14, 121, 167 Trinidad 26–8 Tuesdays 102–3, 152

United States 11, 23, 28, 76, 89, 154–6, 162, 185, 204 use value 125, 192, 197 value: exchange 19, 125, 192–3, 202; monetary 123, 125, 192, 194 Vedic religion 74–5 vegetables 155–6, 168, 170, 186 vendors 149, 159–60, 163, 167–8, 170, 172–4, 176–82 ve¯ppilai 152–3, 160, 171–2 Vertovec 12, 22, 25, 27, 29 Viknesh 45, 158, 161, 164, 172, 176 Vilva 152–3, 171–2 Vinayagar 118, 152 visual images 110–11, 116, 143–4, 146 visuality 109, 135–6 wall 81, 87, 94–5 wares 15, 45, 47, 53, 164, 167 water 65, 128, 144, 154, 178, 185 websites 14–15, 23, 64, 89 weight 89, 91, 162–3, 201 women 53–4, 101, 107, 134, 163, 167, 173–4, 183, 186–7 wood 57, 74, 84, 91, 95, 120, 133 words 2, 71–2, 76, 115, 137, 142, 148, 152–3, 185, 194 workers 125, 132, 161, 166, 174–5 workmanship 34, 39, 83, 85, 92–3, 113, 117–19, 132 world market 154, 185–6 worship: act of 11, 22, 64, 76, 105, 135, 138, 140, 142, 151, 193; domestic 29, 74, 77, 99, 102, 150; home 79, 99, 105, 109; image 74; object of 34, 75, 120, 138, 141; sphere of 5, 126 Yishun 53, 157, 159, 170–1

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