This book asks us to consider what is absent, rather than what is present, when studying religions. Priya Swamy argues that absent religious spaces are in themselves abstract locations that painfully memorialize feelings of shame, oppression and marginalization. She shows that these 'traumas of absence' – the complex, entwined and emotional responses to absent spaces – can be articulated through mob violence and destruction, but also anticolonial struggles or human rights issues. This study focusses on the absence of temples across the global Hindu diaspora, taking the tumultuous narrative of the Devi Dhaam community in Amsterdam Southeast as a central location to detail the over thirty-year struggle to build a Hindu temple in a neighbourhood of vibrant mosques and churches. In 2010, their makeshift space was pulled away from them, provoking tears among elderly devotees, rage among board members and devastation in the wider community. Leaving their goddess with no place to live, some devotees feared for the dangerous repercussions that would follow from uprooting a divine presence from its home. By exploring the ways in which the trauma of absent religious spaces has become a formative aspect of localized but also globalized Hindu identity, this book rethinks the way that empty lots, piles of rubble and abandoned buildings around the world are themselves powerful monuments to the trauma of absent temple spaces that mobilize campaigns for Hindu spaces.

"This book asks us to consider what is absent, rather than what is present, when studying religions. Priya Swamy argues that absent religious spaces are in themselves abstract locations that painfully memorialize feelings of shame, oppression and marginalisation. She shows that these 'traumas of absence' - the complex, entwined and emotional responses to absent spaces - can be articulated through mob violence and destruction, but also anticolonial struggles or human rights issues. This study focusses on the absence of temples across the global Hindu diaspora, taking the tumultuous narrative of the Devi Dhaam community in Amsterdam Southeast as an ethnographic case study to detail the over thirty year struggle to build a Hindu temple in a neighbourhood of vibrant mosques and churches. In 2010, their makeshift space was pulled away from them, provoking tears among elderly devotees, rage among board members and utter devastation in the wider community. Leaving their goddess with no place to live, devotees feared for the dangerous repercussions that would follow from uprooting a divine presence from its home. By exploring the ways in which the trauma of absent religious spaces has become a formative aspect of localised but also globalised Hindu identity, this book rethinks the way that empty lots, piles of rubble and abandoned buildings around the world are themselves powerful monuments to the trauma of absent temple spaces that mobilise campaigns for Hindu spaces"--

This book asks us to consider what is absent, rather than what is present, when studying religions. Priya Swamy argues that absent religious spaces are in themselves abstract locations that painfully memorialize feelings of shame, oppression and marginalisation. She shows that these 'traumas of absence' - the complex, entwined and emotional responses to absent spaces - can be articulated through mob violence and destruction, but also anticolonial struggles or human rights issues. This study focusses on the absence of temples across the global Hindu diaspora, taking the tumultuous narrative of the Devi Dhaam community in Amsterdam Southeast as an ethnographic case study to detail the over thirty year struggle to build a Hindu temple in a neighbourhood of vibrant mosques and churches. In 2010, their makeshift space was pulled away from them, provoking tears among elderly devotees, rage among board members and utter devastation in the wider community. Leaving their goddess with no place to live, devotees feared for the dangerous repercussions that would follow from uprooting a divine presence from its home. By exploring the ways in which the trauma of absent religious spaces has become a formative aspect of localised but also globalised Hindu identity, this book rethinks the way that empty lots, piles of rubble and abandoned buildings around the world are themselves powerful monuments to the trauma of absent temple spaces that mobilise campaigns for Hindu spaces.

The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora is the first comprehensive survey of Indian communities around the world. Over 30 contextual features show the initiatives taken by these communities and the contributions they have made both internationally and to their host societies, in areas as diverse as literature, cuisine, popular culture, sports and political life. The greater part of the book consists of 44 country/region profiles covering all parts of the world. Written by over 60 scholars from across the globe, most of whom are from the diaspora, the encyclopedia provides insights into the experiences of a people about whom much is often assumed but little is actually known. The recent expansion of the Indian diaspora, now some 20-million strong and growing, is a social transformation of global significance. Many members of the diaspora have reached the highest levels of global commerce and trade, international public service and diplomacy, the professionals and academia. In addition, the creative literature from and about the diaspora holds a distinctive and distinguished place in the world's literary imagination.