Abstract
Coming from a staunch Tamil family, spanning four generations since my ancestors’ arrival as indentured labourers in southern Africa, I believed that I had ample knowledge about my religion and culture, but − even as an academic − I realised that this was not the case. From personal observation, I have noted that as each generation in an Indian community grows, its exposure to, and interest in, any aspect of religion seems to be depleted.
At the same time, and conceivably as a result of this perceived disinterest, relatively little has been written about Indian – and in particular Hindu – cultural practice in South Africa. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore the visual rhetoric of Hindu religious architecture in South Africa in order to demonstrate how the historical context, locations, construction, and ornamentation of the temples create persuasive visual arguments for communal identity.
Places of worship are ideal examples of ‘imagined communities’ and Hindu temples in South Africa present a particularly rich opportunity to apply rhetoric as a theoretical framework to explore Hindu identity construction in the diaspora. South Africa offers unique examples that not only differ from what can be considered the ‘archetypal’ approach to Hindu temple architecture in India, but also allow the scholar to demonstrate how communities, while striving for the same religious ethos, nevertheless express this character in response to differing times, changing political dispensations, economic factors and geographical locations.
Key words: South African Hindu identity; religious architecture; visual rhetoric; diaspora.