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

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

Tamil Weekends: Intergenerational Perspectives on Belonging

“Tamil weekends” describe how second-generation migrants are involved in an intensively packed mix of Tamil linguistic, cultural and religious activities, mostly on the weekends, as part of the first generation’s to (re)create home. Drawing from an ethnographic study in a Tamil Hindu temple, this chapter explores how adolescent students perceive the transmission efforts of the first generation, and what it means for their sense of belonging and their sense of Tamilness in the homeland of Sri Lanka and the new home of Australia. I highlight how first- and second-generation ideologies regarding Tamil identity and belonging are changing with time, largely due to new interpretations of “being Tamil” that vary between and within generations. At the same time, as a result of the threat to Tamil culture in Sri Lanka, there is an enduring sense of duty to maintain the language, religion and culture outside of the homeland