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Ancient Sacrality and Bangalore's New Temples

Sun, 13 Apr

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No.44/A, Kamaraj Rd, Bharati Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560042, India

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Ancient Sacrality and Bangalore's New Temples
Ancient Sacrality and Bangalore's New Temples

Time & Location

13 Apr 2025, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

No.44/A, Kamaraj Rd, Bharati Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560042, India

About the event

How does contemporary religiosity in Bangalore connect to the ancient idea of jirnoddhara and more recent ideas of conservancy spaces and eminent domain?  To explain, I focus on two examples:

svayambhu (self-born) Ganesha temple in a park in Jayanagar is part of a new temple phenomenon for gods who self-arise (udbhava). This example helps us understand how the idea of self-bornness allows temple builders to bend the temporality of modernity that urban planning emplaces.

A transgender Tamil swami built a plague goddess temple on encroached railway land at the edge of the Bangalore city railway station on a spot where the goddess told him she appeared in 1898 when another big plague epidemic happened.The temple manifests all this layered history in an equally layered architectural aesthetics consisting of fibreglass, cement, ceramic, tiles, steel grills, calendar art, brick, lemons, flowers, a fire walk, brandishing swords, and so on.

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