​

My fieldwork on Srilankan Tamils in Germany was conducted in yearly visits of   a few months at a time, from 2009 to 2013. The annual temple festival at Hamm was one of its highlights. My cumulative insights on this diaspora’s identity  as being shaped by traditional Tamil devotionalism interacting with issues of survival in Germany as well as the politics of militant Tamil nationalism in Srilanka are  exemplified in its vigorous temple building activity. The Kamakshi Ambal temple in Hamm, inaugurated in 2003, is the largest Hindu temple in Europe, built in the classical Dravida style.  Its everyday activities, annual  festivals  and processions embody spectacularly, the interlacing of religion, culture and politics. It is a fascinating story, from a humble and tentative start, growing slowly through  the passion and perseverance of a refugee community,   facing hostility from and later winning the confidence of the locals; its charismatic chief priest’s struggle to get permissions for holding  processions in public space and its ascent as a pilgrimage and tourist destination for Tamils all over Europe. The temples in Germany,  except the Ganesha temple in Berlin, are built and are managed by Srilankan Hindu Tamil communities. The temples have  not  merely channelized devotion through community worship, but also acted as centres for disseminating culture and psychological anchoring. They have helped in defining  a diasporic  identity of self-respect and militance in the face of the violent politics of Srilanka  and its echoes in the diaspora.

​