TEMPLE AS PLACE: THE PATHARS AND THEIR DEVASTHANAM AS A UNIT OF ANALYSIS

Abstract

Arulmigu Kamatchi Amman Devasthanam in Penang is the sole Vishwakarma community temple in Malaysia, and it marks an entry into the world of Pathars; the traditional Tamil goldsmiths, a sub-ethnic group within the local Indian diaspora. The conception of this temple as “devasthanam” or “place of God”, by the Pathars, implores this study to explore this community temple as a place. This study frames the temple and the lived experience a person has in it as a unit of analysis. The primary data comes from ethnographic study that involves participant observation and spatial study. The secondary data is drawn from document and photo reviews alongside the writings of pioneering Indian art historians. The findings of this study are chronicled as a narrative account to reveal this temple as a dimension of the local Pathar community’s lifeworld and to understand how it develops into a locus that gathers human experience, insideness and identity formation through the conception of Hindu temple as a synergy of form, meaning and use. The findings of this study not only record this temple as a space of specific cultural continuity, but highlights the need to recognize the diversity and differences within Indian diaspora