Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora:

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. This diaspora’s identity was being shaped by traditional Tamil devotionalism interacting with issues of survival in Germany as well as the politics of militant Tamil nationalism in Srilanka. The vigorous temple building activity exemplifies this. 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, the refugee community grew and established itself through passion and perseverance. 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 it eventually became a prominent as a pilgrimage and tourist destination for Tamils from 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.

Annual chariot festival at Kamakshi Ambal temple, Hamm, Germany, May 2013.

A Visual Diary

Images © Kamala Ganesh

The extraordinary fanfare, suffused with passion and nostalgia, is simultaneously making a loud and colourful assertion about the Tamils’  right as ‘good’ immigrants to enact their traditions in German public space. ​

My Writings on Diaspora