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ABSTRACTThis article explores the role played by Hindu temples in Sri Lankan Tamils' lives in the diaspora in the United Kingdom. It investigates why those temples became not only places for religious worship but also hubs for the expression of Tamil nationalistic political views, while temples in Sri Lanka managed to keep those politics at bay. Departing from studies on religious belonging in the diaspora, I argue for the specificity of the Sri Lankan experience as mingled with the suffering of war and Tamil nationalistic politics, thus suggesting that historical and political processes are key to understand ways of belonging. I use the lens of the capacity of the sovereign deities to unravel the various ways employed by deities to cater to their devotees' needs. I explore how Hindu deities and refugee devotees in London, while accommodating nationalistic politics, try to establish their own power and claim a form of belonging in the new country. I argue that in the process, both the new sovereign deities and Tamil migrants/refugees not only need each other but also need the deities from home across time and space. [politics, religion, sovereign deity, belonging, diaspora]

Most of the migration studies or diaspora studies predominantly focus on migration patterns, human movements and their circulation over space. Recently a shift occurred focusing on nonhumans and immobility to analyze migration and diaspora. In this article by taking one of the features of Sri Lankan Tamil transnational marriage between Sri Lankan Tamils from Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan diaspora, I argue the importance of time and temporality to rethink about migration and diaspora studies. I show how different temporalities of things and humans that get (dis)entangled at different places and different points in the marriage migration process allow us to shift our lens slightly in future studies on migration and diaspora.

Between 1983 and 2009, thousands of Tamils displaced from Sri Lanka settled in countries such as the United Kingdom (UK). A prominent practice among diasporic Tamils in the UK has been to establish Hindu temples. These temples are sites for the collection and transmission of funds to Tamils in Sri Lanka for the purpose of charity. In 2005, the UK Charity Commission filed complaints against a few such temples alleging the misappropriation of funds. Such allegations were met with forceful denial by the concerned temple trust leaders. I examine one temple charity trust leader's mode of address to the UK government from which it becomes evident that (i) the official charges of financial misappropriation were understood by him as charges of moral corruption, indicating a vulnerability to aiding terrorism. He felt the necessity to redress such charges with an openness to external investigation, but also (ii) felt it important to insist that the UK government understand the gift-giving idiom within which the temple's charity work was located such that any charges of moral corruption had to take into account the goddess deity, the Amman, in whose capacity the temples were collecting charity and who ensured that funds were not misused. She was literally the auditor of funds, and (iii) at the same time, there was an acknowledgement by the wider immigrant community that changing times and motivations for the giving of charity may have made the deity vulnerable to moral corruption.

AbstractIn this article, we compare two kinds of public authority under conditions of civil war. We study two villages in eastern Sri Lanka, both of which came under LTTE rule during the 1990s and 2000s. The first case study describes a rural development society, which was co-opted by the LTTE to rule the village. The second describes the leaders of a Hindu temple, who defied LTTE attempts to settle temple-related conflicts. Conceptually, we draw on the notion of the public sphere as a space of encounter between the rulers and the ruled. This perspective helps us come to grips with the convoluted political landscape of war. Our two case studies suggest that public authority and sovereignty are mutually constituted. We argue that both forms of power are reworked in the encounter with the public sphere. A sovereign aspirant like the LTTE does not simply impose itself on society, it encroaches on it. This involves contingent efforts of reigning in other forms of public authority, some of which are more defiant than others. Conversely, public authority not only derives validity from sovereign endorsement, but from contestations around sovereignty as well.

AbstractOur title quotation is taken from an interview with the chief trustee of a leading Hindu temple in south London, and captures the curious mixture of philanthropy, politics, and individual ambition that has emerged around Sri Lankan Tamil temples in the diaspora. During the long years of civil war, temples became centres of mobilization for the growing Tamil diaspora, and were often accused of channelling funds to the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and its various front organizations. Since the end of the war, in 2009, the same temples now support orphanages and other good works in Sri Lanka, and their efforts are starting to be emulated by temples in Sri Lanka itself. At the heart of our article is a dispute between the UK Charity Commission and the chief trustee of a London temple, who is accused of misuse of temple funds and 'failure to dissociate' the temple from a terrorist organization. A close reading of the case and its unexpected denouement reveals the difficulties of bounding the zone of philanthropy.

AbstractThis article uses the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to make a conceptual argument about sovereignty. Despite its aura of natural order, sovereignty is ultimately self-referential and thus somewhat arbitrary and potentially unstable. At the heart of this unsteadiness, we posit, lies the paradox between the systematic tenets of rational governance and the capricious potential of sublime violence. Both are highly relevant to the LTTE case: the movement created de facto state institutions to mimic governance, but simultaneously deployed an elaborate transcendental register of sacrifice, meaning, and intractable power wielded by a mythical leader. To capture this paradox, we connect the literature on rebel governance with anthropological debates about divine kingship. We conceptualize sovereignty as a citational practice that involves the adaptation, imitation, and mutation of different idioms of authority: political and religious, modern and traditional, rational and mythical. Understanding sovereignty in this way debunks the idea that insurgent movements are merely lagging behind established states. As sites of mimicry, bricolage, and innovation, they transform the way sovereignty is practiced and understood, thus affecting the frame that sovereignty is.

The Intimate Life of Dissent examines the meanings and implications of public acts of dissent, drawing on examples from ethnography and history. Acts of dissent are never simply just about abstract principles, but also come at great personal risk to both the dissidents and to those close to them. Dissent is, therefore, embedded in deep, complex and sometimes contradictory intimate relations. This book puts acts of high principle back into the personal relations out of which they emerge and take effect, raising new questions about the relationship between intimacy and political commitment. It does so through an introduction and eight individual chapters, drawing on examples including Sri Lankan leftists, Soviet dissidents, Tibetan exiles, Kurdish prisoners, British pacifists, Indonesian student activists and Jewish peace activists. The Intimate Life of Dissent will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of anthropology, history, political theory and sociology. Written in a clear and accessible style, it is also suitable for teaching introductory undergraduate courses on political anthropology.