Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility 9789048532223

Citation preview

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

New Mobilities in Asia In the 21st century, human mobility will increasingly have an Asian face. Migration from, to, and within Asia is not new, but it is undergoing profound transformations. Unskilled labour migration from the Philippines, China, India, Burma, Indonesia, and Central Asia to the West, the Gulf, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand continues apace. Yet industrialization in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and India, the opening of Burma, and urbanization in China is creating massive new flows of internal migration. China is fast becoming a magnet for international migration from Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, Asian students top study-abroad charts; Chinese and Indian managers and technicians are becoming a new mobile global elite as foreign investment from those countries grows; and Asian tourists are fast becoming the biggest travellers and the biggest spenders, both in their own countries and abroad. These new mobilities reflect deep-going transformations of Asian societies and their relationship to the world, impacting national identities and creating new migration policy regimes, modes of transnational politics, consumption practices, and ideas of modernity. The series will, for the first time, bring together studies by historians, anthropologists, geographers, and political scientists that systematically explore these changes. Series Editor Pál Nyíri, VU University, Amsterdam Editorial Board Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University Johan Lindquist, Stockholm University Tim Oakes, University of Colorado, Boulder Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley Tim Winter, Deakin University Xiang Biao, Oxford University

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility

Edited by Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Photograph taken by Bernardo Brown in Colombo, Sri Lanka (2015) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 232 1 978 90 4853 222 3 (pdf) e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789462982321 nur 718 © Bernardo E. Brown & Brenda S.A. Yeoh / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 9 1 Introduction

Human Mobility as Engine of Religious Change Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S.A. Yeoh

11

Section 1  Mobile Religious Practices 2 Saving Yogis

35

3 Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affectwithin Transnational Networks

71

Spiritual Nationalism and the Proselytizing Missions of Global Yoga Amanda Lucia

A Case Study of Three Ritual Events of the Xinghua (Henghua) Communities in Singapore Kenneth Dean

4 Liberalizing the Boundaries

Reconfiguration of Religious Beliefs and Practice amongst Sri Lankan Immigrants in Australia Jagath Bandara Pathirage

101

Section 2  Transnational Proselytizing 5 From Structural Separation to Religious Incorporation

129

6 “10/40 Window”

153

A Case Study of a Transnational Buddhist Group in Shanghai, China Weishan Huang

Naga Missionaries as Spiritual Migrants and the Asian Experience Arkotong Longkumer

7 Religion, Masculinity, and Transnational Mobility

177

8 Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

201

Migrant Catholic Men and the Politics of Evangelization Ester Gallo

The Free Burma Rangers in Karen State, Myanmar Alexander Horstmann

Section 3  Refashioning Religiosity in the Diaspora 9 A Multicultural Church

Notes on Sri Lankan Transnational Workers and the Migrant Chaplaincy in Italy Bernardo E. Brown

221

10 “Bahala Na Ang Diyos” 243 The Paradox of Empowerment among Filipino Catholic Migrants in South Korea Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

11 Feeling Hindu

271

12 Afterword

303

The Devotional Sivaist Esthetic Matrix and the Creation of a Diasporic Hinduism in North Sumatra Silvia Vignato

What Makes Asian Migrants’ Religious Experience Asian? Janet Alison Hoskins

References 315 Index 341

List of Illustrations 2.1 3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 9.1 9.2 10.1

11.1 11.2

“Shiva is my Om . Boy”: tank top from vendor at Bhakti Fest. Joshua Tree, California, 2013 51 Demons leap off the stage during a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014 86 The monk Mulian kneels before his mother (in a cangue) before the gates of the Underworld (from a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014 87 Spirit medium and altar associates gather at the end of an initiation ceremony at Xianzu Gong in Singapore in 2016 88 Buddhist monks from Putian performing rites at the Singapore Kiew Lee Tong temple in 1994 93 Sri Lankan Buddhist monk attends Vietnamese ritual bathing of the Buddha which was held parallel to the Sri Lankan Vesak festival. Darwin, October 2016 109 Entering the Katina parade toward the temple. Darwin, October 2016 111 Sri Lankan Buddhist monks receiving Katina Cheevara from fellow Buddhist monks. Darwin, October 2016 115 Girls from Kiribati Island perform at the International Food Fair at Darwin Buddhist Temple. Darwin, October 2016 116 Sri Lankan Catholic priests in Italy often travel to be present in every location where the Catholic migrant community has settled 234 Celebration of Catholic mass in Sinhalese with the Sri Lankan community in Milan at Santo Stefano Maggiore, August 2014 236 Fr. Marco and members of Legion of Mary celebrated the Feast of Assumption of Mary with cake and fruits in one of the counseling/meeting rooms in Cheonan Moyse Catholic Migrants Service Center. Cheonan City, South Korea, August 2013 253 A six-year-old boy, his head shaved in mourning, is made to perform the funerary ritual for his dead father. Medan, Indonesia, 1994 275 A young mother performs the night prayer outside her mother’s house on the sixteenth day after her baby’s birth (Ritual of Patināṛu). Medan, Indonesia, 1993 284

11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6

A medium-priest performs a ritual of possession in his backyard while the neighbors watch. Medan, Indonesia, 1995 The blood of the sacrificed goat is poured onto the offerings and the amulets at the foot of the ritual pole. Medan, Indonesia, 1993 A medium-priest prophesizes while possessed. Two men hold the sacrificial knife he is standing upon. Medan, Indonesia, 1994 The act of sacrifice. Medan, Indonesia, 1993

286 294 295 297

Acknowledgments From the chapters in this book, many connections can be traced between overlapping themes lying at the intersection of studies of migration and religion across Asia and beyond. The contributors to this volume have their own crisscrossing trajectories that have often converged in past collaborations and projects, and have since this book opened new paths for future partnerships. All of the chapters in the book evolved from the conference “Migrant Communities and Religious Experience in Asia”, held at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore in August 2015. However, many of the participants had already been exchanging ideas for a long time and took this opportunity to delve deeper into the theme of mobile religions in Asia. This collection of essays is the corollary of the very stimulating discussions we held in Singapore, and of the next two years in which we continued to exchange ideas and research findings in preparation for this volume. As editors, we are pleased that this book is not only the conclusion of an exciting collaboration, but also the harbinger of new and innovative research partnerships. The conference in Singapore was organized by the two editors and by Malini Sur, whose contribution during the initial stages of this project helped to shape it in multiple ways that are visible in this final product. Malini’s conceptual clarity was fundamental to identify what was the impulse behind our interest in studying migration and religion together. We are grateful to ARI for taking seriously our interest in building connections between its Asian Migration and its Religion and Globalization research clusters, making possible this international event for which we received scholars from Malaysia (Diana Wong), Singapore (Vineeta Sinha, Bubbles Asor, Kenneth Dean), Hong Kong (Weishan Huang), Italy (Silvia Vignato), Denmark (Alexander Horstmann), Australia (Jagath Pathirage), Turkey (Ester Gallo), the UK (Arkotong Longkumer) and the USA (Amanda Lucia, Attiya Ahmad, Janet Hoskins). Since the conference in 2015, some of the authors have moved on to new appointments in different parts of the world, yet we are proud that the conference and this volume have set the stage for the new academic collaborations that are currently evolving. Janet Hoskins, Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Southern California, and Kenneth Dean, Head of the Chinese Department at NUS and Research Leader for the Religion & Globalization research cluster at ARI, shared with the conference participants all their experience thinking about mobile religions, from Vietnam to the United States, and

10 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

from China to Southeast Asia. Not only those at the conference benefited from their generous participation, readers of this volume will also have the opportunity to learn from their insights in the chapter authored by Professor Dean and the Afterword by Professor Hoskins. We would like to thank the ARI team who took care of all the logistical details of the conference; especially Valerie Yeo, Minghua Tay, and Sharon Ong. We also thank the NUS research and teaching staff and the friends of ARI who contributed to the vibrancy of the conference and offered generous input to this book until its completion. A special note of gratitude to Prasenjit Duara, Jianli Huang, Catherine Scheer, Giuseppe Bolotta, Amelia Fauzia, Nurfadzilah Yahaya, Ronojoy Sen, Bindi Shah, Teresita Cruz-del Rosario, Anju Mary Paul from Yale-NUS, Kwa Kiem-kiok from the East Asia School of Theology, and Francis Lim from NTU. At NUS, Law Wei Ning, Lee Hui Ying, and Grace Chan helped us format and edit the entire manuscript – we are grateful for the care with which they read through the chapters multiple times to improve their clarity and accuracy. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided thoughtful comments and suggestions to refine the theme and focus of the book; and Saskia Gieling and Pál Nyiri at Amsterdam University Press for all their editorial work. This book would not have been possible without all of your generous contributions.

1 Introduction Human Mobility as Engine of Religious Change Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S.A. Yeoh Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch01

There is a fundamental obstacle that makes the combined study of religion and migration particularly difficult: while migration is perceived as the realm of the mobile and transient, religion is imagined as the province of the spatially fixed and historically enduring. Contemporary efforts to bring both areas of research together within a common field are not rare, yet they tend to privilege the disciplinary background of the authors, relegating either religion or migration to a complementary status from their main focus of research. For example, when scholars of religion engage with migration and transnationalism, mobile religious practices appear as an epiphenomenon of global conditions that give rise to unique dynamics which are worthy of study, but not of intrinsic importance to understand religion itself. Robert Orsi’s seminal work in The Madonna of 115th Street (1985) is a preeminent illustration of how scholars of religion have explored migrant religiosity as a space of identity formation and reconnection to the homeland, but where migration only sets the stage for a particular spatiotemporal approach to the study of religious practices amongst migrant communities. From the opposite perspective, scholars of migration and transnationalism recognize the importance of religion in the lives of migrants as a means to give a community visibility in the host society (Baumann 2009; Sinha 2006), to provide safety nets and networks of employment and solidarity (Hagan 2008; Bautista 2016), and to sustain membership in multiple locations (Levitt & Glick-Schiller 2004). To take one example, Peggy Levitt’s work in The Transnational Villagers (2001) accords migrant religion generous treatment, yet the approach remains firmly situated in the field of transnational studies, only marginally engaging with scholars whose research is rooted within a religious studies perspective.

12 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

Despite the different aspects of religion in migration that these influential research projects emphasize, there are two premises that they share. Firstly, migrants are seen as having a religious identity that they bring with them to their place of settlement and that they use in different ways to reinforce attachments or highlight boundaries; meanwhile, the ethical and theological underpinnings of religious affiliation itself are never seriously brought into question. Religious attachments thus are thought to remain firmly rooted in the country of origin and the desire of migrant communities to maintain them as intact as possible is usually taken for granted. Secondly, transnational migrants are perceived to be motivated primarily by economic factors and thus should be distinguished from other travelers – like pilgrims and missionaries – driven by religious inspiration to leave their homeland. The religiously-minded going on holy pilgrimages and embarking on missionary projects are therefore assumed to be exclusively motivated by their religious devotion and pursue pious objectives that remain untainted by material interests. As a departure, this book turns the focus toward cases where these two premises cannot be easily taken for granted. The Asian migrant communities that the chapters examine are especially characterized by their nonconformist attitudes toward religious traditions and conventions, and their bold efforts to make an impact on the spiritual lives of those they encounter abroad. We aim to highlight those cases when migration does not represent an instance for the reinforcement of religious identity, but when distance becomes an opportunity to question one’s beliefs and to explore new avenues of religious experience. At the same time, it is not easy to draw a clear line between transnational migration and missionary voyages, a fact that emphasizes the complicated entanglements that exist between religious motives and the socioeconomic aims that drive labor migration. We thus propose that the arbitrary boundaries of what is strictly defined as a religious journey should be replaced by more porous lines, where the interconnectivity of transnational voyages brings the richness of the migrant experience to bear upon creative forms of religious practice.

A Mobilities Lens for the Study of Religion New methodological inroads developed from a mobilities perspective have made researchers more aware that human migration should not be studied independently from material, technological, and financial modes

Introduc tion

13

of circulation (Urry & Sheller 2006; Chu 2010; Basu & Coleman 2008).1 Such models emphasize the complexity of contemporary transnational social networks and the rich analyses that scholars can produce when they delve beyond their own specializations to explore their work from various disciplinary intersections (Taylor 2001). This volume collectively furthers this argument, yet it highlights that scholarship on mobility also needs to seriously consider the movements generated by networks of religious circulation to understand contemporary transnational dynamics.2 Mindful of the challenges that this task presents us with, we attempt to examine those instances when migration can become the catalyst for religious change. Taking such an approach implies moving away from literature that aims to follow unidirectional migrant trajectories from “sending” to “receiving” countries and how, through religious practice, individuals and communities sustain – albeit with innovations and adaptations – their ties to their home countries and the values of their communities of origin. Rather than imagining migrants who struggle not to lose culture and religion, we suggest that it is worth doing the exercise of reversing these terms in order to open up new ways of interpreting the experience of lived religion in the context of migration. From our perspective, contemporary religions can hardly be characterized as tradition-bound and static social organizations whose sole duty is to reconnect people to their affective roots in the home country; quite on the contrary, religions provide migrants one of the most effective ways to reinvent themselves and take control of their transnational trajectories (Adogame & Shankar 2012; Cao & Lau 2013, 2014). In the process, the religious landscape of the host societies is transformed by cross-border religious activities and the mobility of sacred artifacts, rituals, and spirits (Hüwelmeier 2013; Kitiarsa 2010; Sinha 2006; Lucia 2014). These transnational religious exchanges should not be approached as simple cross-border transactions between different communities, but should rather reflect that 1 From a traditional social-scientific perspective, travel has largely operated as a black box, a neutral set of technologies and processes predominantly permitting forms of economic, social, and political life that are seen as explicable in terms of other, more causally powerful processes (Hannam, Sheller & Urry 2006, 4). The literature mobilities challenges this model by focusing on how material and human circulation interact with the technologies that make it possible. A focus on mobility thus problematizes models that see stability and place as the “natural” anchored state of things, and mobility as the exception. 2 Religious networks and circulation in our understanding should consider the movement of sacred texts, ideas, and pilgrims, but also more broadly the circulation of religious specialists, materials, and scholars.

14 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

migrant and nonmigrant religious life occurs within the contours of a single transnational social field in which changes on one side affect the religious practices observed on the other (Levitt & Glick-Schiller 2004). While the search for continuity and the efforts to sustain traditions are indeed a central aspect of migratory journeys, rupture from unquestioned religious practices and long-standing traditional rituals is for many the driving inspiration to pursue religion and spiritual interests in new ways. Multicultural policies that attempt to regulate migrant religiosity by creating ethno-linguistic spaces to integrate and welcome cultural diversity in host societies have often been rejected by migrants themselves, who are wary of the modern state’s neoliberal restructuring agenda. In her ethnographic work in suburban Massachusetts, Glick-Schiller notes that migrant communities were not receptive to the government’s diversity initiatives, and instead “Buddhist, Muslim and Pentecostal Christian migrants created religious institutions that did not publicly highlight the ethnic or national background of their members” (2011, 223). Such actions to independently determine their own views about religion and culture also show that migrant religion has a political dimension that cannot be merely treated as another variety of ethnic cultural expression. Migration here is experienced as an instance to creatively develop alliances and collaborations capable of challenging institutional and governmental regulatory attempts. In these situations, migration can become a turning point that enables the exploration of alternative forms of religious experience as well as new forms of political identification. These emerging modes of religiosity, however, often cohabit uneasily with traditionalist movements (van der Veer 2002), and as a consequence, manifold tensions emerge within religious migrant communities over how to introduce innovations without generating new conflicts with host societies, the state, and those who remain in the home country.

Migrant Spiritual Agency At the level of the individual, recent scholarship in migration studies has similarly noted that migration can sometimes be experienced as a liberating transition away from moral constraints and as an opportunity to discover new interests at a distance from the gaze of the hometown. Such an emphasis is particularly salient amongst scholars of gender and sexuality, where distance is interpreted more as a source of freedom than an instance of dislocation and nostalgia (Chang & Groves 2000; Ueno 2013; Tsujimoto 2014; Constable 1999; Parreñas 2011; Brown 2017). While this

Introduc tion

15

approach has cast the experience of migration in a different light – where agency, freedom, and a generally more cosmopolitan outlook of the world come to the fore – it has also attracted considerable debate (Pratt & Yeoh 2003). The positive agentive approach, however, has not been particularly influential in other areas of transnational studies, so this book represents an attempt to highlight, in the context of religious experience and spirituality, the different creative ways in which distance from country of origin, family, and community provide key conditions that encourage migrants to explore their spiritual yearnings at a safe distance from the judgmental gaze of traditional religious authorities and unconstrained by conventional rituals and devotional discipline. While religion has often been described as an anchor that orients migrants who become alienated from ethical values and practices, this ignores the flexibility and creativity that characterize contemporary mobile religious beliefs and practices. If migration offers a unique opportunity to explore new cultural and sexual identities away from the censoring gaze of the home, it is also a fertile ground to venture into alternative forms of religiosity and develop new paths to transcendence that circumvent the duties of tradition (Vogel 2014; Chen 2008; Hoskins 2014). While in the work of authors like Orsi (1985), Levitt (2001, 2007), Jacqueline Hagan (2008) and Thomas Tweed (2002, 2008), religion plays a fundamental role in alleviating the stress of alienation and displacement produced by transnational migration, our chapters highlight a very different dynamic. In Asian Migrants and Religious Experience, migration is often narrated as an opportunity to discover and experiment with new forms of religiosity that are frowned upon by communities of origin or are simply unavailable at home. Moreover, these chapters collectively show that migration is also often described as an unparalleled occasion to establish connections with new people in host communities, or to bring the religious message of the migrants to new potential converts. For both of these types of migrant communities, distance is experienced as a blessing rather than a burden that is alleviated by religious practice. Indeed, the political and economic conditions that are often the unwelcome reasons behind transnational migration lose their utilitarian explicative power in individual migrant narratives, to be replaced by the enthusiasm and conviction of religious fervor. The chapter by Asor in this book is a preeminent example of how narratives of migration are cast anew through the lens of religion. Although the anxieties of undocumented migrant precarity in South Korea remain a looming concern for the Filipino migrants that she follows, the new challenges that they face in Seoul encourage them to delve into previously

16 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

unexplored sides of their personality and rediscover their skills in ways that only distance from the home can make possible. Religion thus has the capacity to re-signify migration and assign new meanings to the experience of movement to faraway locations, transforming identities and narratives through tropes of pilgrimage, mission, and the higher calling. Like Asor, Gallo is interested in how an experience that is usually described as degrading and alienating can be reshaped through religious participation into a meaningful sojourn in new lands. Her chapter focuses on the intersection between religion, migration, and masculinity, to emphasize how church participation renovates the narrative of migration of Malayali Christians in Italy. These migrants – who make a living as domestic workers and feel that they must renounce their professional qualifications in order to perform what they regard as an emasculating job – are able to reassert their masculinity by taking on active leadership roles in the context of their religious congregation. Religion therefore becomes a fundamental motivating factor for transnational migrants, often blurring the boundaries between mission and labor migration. Contributions to this volume by Huang and Longkumer eloquently show the difficulty in drawing a clear dividing line between the religious and the financial dimensions of contemporary migratory experiences. Huang examines how Taiwanese entrepreneurs in Shanghai make use of their office spaces to hold Tzu Chi Buddhism meetings, while Longkumer focuses on Nagaland Christian missionaries in China who become transnational workers in order to finance (and sometimes disguise) their religious mission. Religious proselytizing and labor migration in such instances are complementary projects, and what at first sight appear to be independent and conflicting material and spiritual objectives, turn out to constitute a dynamic relationship that enables and potentiates each other’s reach. This mutually reinforcing phenomenon also serves to question traditional missionary structures that locate the financial engine for proselytizing in sending communities while missionaries exclusively spend these funds in destination outposts (Zehner 2005). Moreover, both of these chapters also demonstrate the masking effects of labor migration, amidst anxieties that religious proselytizing produces for state authorities in countries like China, where even the activities of very small congregations are zealously monitored. These examples reveal that religion plays an important role in the development of social bonds between migrant and host communities. Whereas much of the literature has stressed how religious participation shapes

Introduc tion

17

migrant identities, this book emphasizes that religion has the capacity of overriding national, linguistic, and racial boundaries. Indeed, as clearly shown in chapters by Huang, Gallo and Brown, while ethnic tensions and apprehensive stereotypes between locals and migrants remain, a shared religious project puts their common goals above these differences. Religious experience and change in transnational social fields therefore work in both directions: migrants experiment with new forms of spirituality, while host communities are presented with an expanded religious marketplace. Both of these movements stress the opportunities for crossover, experimentation, and innovation that migration enables, offering thus a new way of interpreting the dynamics of religious practice in highly mobile contexts.

Connecting the World through Religion Underpinning our arguments is the useful classification proposed by Diana Wong and Peggy Levitt (2014, 349), who make a distinction between migrant religions and traveling faiths. In their words, “migrant religions travel within the local ethnic confines of the migrant (and home) population, even as they reterritorialize and adapt to new contexts. Traveling faiths, conversely, are religious movements with universal claims around which a religious community forms (deterritorialized religions) that travel to proselytize.” Some of our chapters correspond with the model of migrant religions (Dean, Pathirage, Vignato), emphasizing the knitting together of material and spiritual networks in contexts that stretch from historically localized diasporas such as the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and Hindu Tamils in northern Sumatra, to the recent struggles of emplacement undergone by Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists in northern Australia. Meanwhile other chapters in this book better fit the definition of traveling faiths (Horstmann, Longkumer, Huang), where the missionary objective of transcending borders is pursued under the guise of migrant labor, conflict zone healthcare, and entrepreneurial investments. A third group is also identifiable in our volume but is harder to classify following the traveling faiths/migrant religions model, as it traverses a combination of the two categories. The chapters by Gallo and Brown examine religious initiatives originally developed with one specific migrant community in mind, that later remake and expand their targets to include others in the host societies. Moreover, the work of Lucia further complicates this, as seen in the way recipients of an imported practice like yoga in the United States, later adapt it and become its promoter around the world. Those who

18 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

experiment with new forms of religious practice when unconstrained by the limits imposed by their own religious tradition give new meaning to their migratory itineraries by reaching out to new populations which they aim to attract to their fold.3 What these chapters highlight is the need to broaden the range and complexity of spiritual relationships that can emerge between migrant and host communities and search for new approaches that trace religious borders that do not neatly follow those of the nation (Vasquez & Marquandt 2003; Vasquez & Knott 2014; van der Veer 2002). Clearly, much more than zealous religious proselytizing and devotional diasporic rituals aimed at reproducing the traditions of the home taking place in the spiritual worlds of contemporary migrant populations. Although the classification proposed by Wong & Levitt (2014) is a useful tool for the analysis of Asian migrant and diasporic communities undertaken in this book, our chapters collectively place a stronger emphasis on the connections and interactions that are developed between different communities through religion in transnational social spaces. The volume shows that although migrant communities usually trace their religious identity to a specific tradition in the home country, the lived religious experiences (Orsi 2006) observable in the context of migration produce a much more convoluted reality. Religious ritual and emplacement have often been approached as a key instrument for the reinforcement of cultural boundaries for communities (Baumann & Salentin 2006; Smith 1987; Warner & Wittner 1998), but are rarely understood as an instance that is capable of doing precisely the opposite. In this volume, we argue that shared religious beliefs have the capacity of overriding ethnic, linguistic, and national boundaries. This does not mean that divisions disappear and intra-religious conflict subsides, but it suggests that communities that seemingly have little in common, actually have a powerful motive to transcend the walls that separate them. Pathirage’s chapter is illuminating in this way as it dwells on how migrant communities from three different countries share a Buddhist temple in Australia and are faced with the need to relax certain national traditions in order to build bonds with others who share their religious beliefs. Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists find that they need to stretch their sense of what is appropriate to do in a temple, allowing for musical genres, dress codes, and even eating habits of other communities under the umbrella of Buddhism. 3 Moreover, some religious movements are constituted as an entirely diasporic phenomenon, as exemplified by the Vietnamese Cao Đài, who preach a diasporic doctrine cemented on the loss of their country as part of a divine plan to globalize their religion (Hoskins 2014, 2015).

Introduc tion

19

Although the line that divides what is acceptable behavior in a sacred space in Sri Lanka is clear, these borders need to be negotiated and redefined when Sri Lankans realize that other Buddhists are not as concerned with modesty or vegetarianism, for example. So while Buddhism indeed helps these Sri Lankans maintain the traditions of their homeland, it is not a straightforward process of spatial relocation. In order to make use of the temple in Darwin, these Theravada Buddhists realize that it is necessary to embrace the concept of a broader multicultural, shared sacred space. Vignato’s work with Tamil Hindus in Sumatra also offers a valuable insight because of the long history extending to colonial times that this community has in Indonesia. As her chapter shows, most participants in the Hindu devotional rituals that she examines have little clue of the religious meaning of what they are doing, although they have a profound sense of it being constitutive of their identity as a diasporic community. Yet only select social relationships are reproduced from the Indian context, others are created anew, many times in opposition to what would be acceptable in Tamil Nadu. Vignato’s examination offers a unique insight into the forging of inter-caste interactions that would be censured in India but that make sense when situated in the ethno-nationalist milieu of Indonesia. Religious practice as a phenomenon that transcends boundaries rather than one that emplaces them is an aspect of migrant religiosity that has been overlooked, yet it emerges as a subject on which migrants often spend considerable time and effort. Brown’s chapter similarly deals with Catholics who are also from Sri Lanka but in their migratory experience in Italy encounter many new ways of being Catholic. Although these alternative forms of religious practice do not necessarily transform their own preferred forms of devotion, it profoundly changes the way in which they understand their religion. Asian Migrants and Religious Experience therefore emphasizes instances of religious innovation, hybrid practices, multi-ethnic, and pluri-lingual celebrations that characterize the way in which people live their spirituality as transnational agents. Another important aspect of the approach that we take that departs from previous efforts to study religion and migration is that we minimize the focus on religious adaptation (Barker 2014; Baumann 2009). By doing this, we turn the focus away from how religions adapt to the conditions imposed by transnationalism and migrant labor regimes, to highlight instead the multifarious ways in which individuals and small communities combine moral values, religious principles, and political projects to pursue their spiritual interests (Hoskins 2015). This becomes particularly salient, for example, in a hierarchical and highly structured

20 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

religious institution like the Catholic Church which leaves relatively little space for religious innovation. As becomes clear in contributions to this volume by Gallo and Brown, the very rigidity of the institution is an incentive for individuals and small migrant communities to dialogue with others and generate creative initiatives to live their religion with others who share in the same faith. Anthropologist Thomas Csordas (2014) proposes the concept of “fractal pluralism” to account for such situations where the concept of religious pluralism in a given society is reshaped in order to account for diversity not only amongst but also within religions. Similarly, Steven Vertovec (2007; Meissner & Vertovec 2015) coins the concept of super-diversity arguing that “conventional multiculturalism, is inadequate and often inappropriate for dealing with individual immigrants’ needs or understanding their dynamics of inclusion or exclusion” (2007, 1039). Indeed, in many host communities, classifications such as Muslim, Buddhist, or Catholic have become increasingly insufficient categories of analysis as they fail to provide useful insights when they encompass migrants with different linguistic, cultural, national, and class origins. We thus build on transnational theories that posit the centrality of examining the lives of migrant workers situated in the context of transnational urban networks that transcend borders but which are also inseparable from their interactions with host communities (van der Veer 2015). In the rest of this introduction we situate the works included in this volume against the backdrop of some of the most important contributions to the literature on religion and migration, highlighting how each of the chapters in the book helps us strengthen the idea that religion is more than a vehicle for reinforcing identities. Religious practice for the Asian migrant communities examined here is a key aspect of their migratory experience, yet it is a dynamic field replete with opportunities to (re)shape individual paths and assign new meanings to migrant trajectories.

Transnational Migration as Opportunity for New Forms of Religiosity One of the most illuminating recent academic attempts to examine the intersection of migration and religion was carried out over nearly a decade through a collaborative initiative funded by the Social Science Research Council of the United States, “The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities”. The research program for the project coordinated by Josh DeWind and

Introduc tion

21

Manuel Vasquez – with disciplinary training in migration and religion respectively – culminated in 2014 with the publication of a special issue of Global Networks that offered a balanced approach to understand the religious experiences of migrant communities. As DeWind and Vasquez explain in their introduction, from the migration studies perspective a focus on religion can shed light on “how migrants draw from religious beliefs, practices and institutions to insert themselves in transnational social fields” (2014, 255). From a religious studies perspective, seriously considering questions of settlement and adaptation in the context of migration can help us bypass abstract notions of religion that support unchanging beliefs and doctrines. Their approach was to trace biographical trajectories that revealed continuities and transformations within the different migrant communities studied. However, the focus was mainly directed at how legal models for the administration of migrant populations and religion shaped different patterns of integration and identity formation, offering little attention to narratives of religious encounter and spiritual awakening.4 Although DeWind and Vasquez’s project was pioneering in conceiving religion in globalization in a more dynamic way, it only marginally incorporated into its research program those instances when migrants crossed religious boundaries, broke with the traditions of their communities, or attempted to reach out to other minorities. Nonetheless, their work constitutes a fundamental contribution to the growing literature that recognizes mobility, circulation, networks, and border-crossings, as concepts with increasing purchase in the study of the place of contemporary religion in the world of transnational migration. The chapters in this volume share similar theoretical underpinnings but advance the work in at least three major ways, which we go on to discuss below. A special interest in crossing boundaries is the preeminent concern of the work by religious studies scholar Thomas Tweed (2006), who partly takes inspiration from Arjun Appadurai’s notion of “-scapes” (1996) to offer a framework for the study of mobile religious practices.5 Tweed is especially concerned with developing a methodological approach where religion can be “about movement and relation, and it is an attempt to correct theories that have presupposed stasis and minimized interdependence” (2006, 77). To 4 The chapter by Wong is the main exception, where she focuses on narratives of migration and how they are transformed. 5 In Crossing and Dwelling (Tweed 2006, 69), he defines religions as “confluences of organic channels and cultural currents that conjoin to create institutional networks that, in turn, prescribe, transmit, and transform tropes, beliefs, values, emotions, artifacts and rituals.”

22 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

infuse this notion into the study of religion in the globalized world, Tweed suggests the use of the term “sacroscapes” with the aim of highlighting the trails and landscapes that religious flows sketch as they transform the social arena (McAllister 2005). Tweed also makes use of hydraulic and spatial metaphors as necessary tools to understand transnational religion. While aquatic tropes help set religion in motion, spatial images reinforce the efforts of migrants to make symbolic homes in their places of dwelling. But religion for Tweed is not only about finding one’s place in the world and in the universe, it is also fundamentally about crossing boundaries to reach one’s destination. He details different ways of crossing boundaries (terrestrial, corporeal, and cosmic), which highlight the necessarily multilayered understanding of religion and religious practice that he proposes. However, his theory’s explicit attempt to think of religion in terms of movement does not leave much room to consider the possibility that the interconnections that emerge from such a dynamic approach can also become critical, or even subversive, of one’s values and beliefs. Hence, while Tweed’s work is key to developing a non-sedentary theory of religion and useful in highlighting the notion that religions have the capacity to help migrants make new homes in new places, it does not adequately help us to understand how migratory itineraries can become gateways to new religious beliefs and practices. In the context of this book, we take a somewhat inverse route: it is the experience of migration itself, and the concomitant exposure to new beliefs and modes of religiosity that this produces, that encourages people to think of spiritual interests and ambitions in a new light. The chapter by Horstmann directly engages with Tweed’s work and seeks to push his argument beyond the specific conditions of the Cuban diaspora to examine the challenges faced by Karen refugees who convert to Christianity. Religion enables these refugees to make new homes and build new lives after being forcibly displaced from their land, yet the religion that allows them to do this is not the one they brought from their former homes but the one they encountered through an American missionary family only after arriving in refugee camps. Moreover, the new source of identity and belonging is not made possible by their resettlement but by their engagement with a Christian-inspired organization that crosses back into Burmese territory to support freedom fighters with a supply of nurses and religious messages. Dwelling for Horstmann is a process that differs from the one proposed by Tweed, as it consists exclusively of the new affiliations and humanitarian activities that these refugees embark on. In this sense, it is also a highly mobile mode of religiosity where the main characteristic that unifies these

Introduc tion

23

Christian freedom fighters is their willingness to leave all sense of spatial connection behind in pursuit of their mission. Gallo’s chapter can also be read through the lens provided by Tweed’s work, as Malayali men develop a sense of home in Italy only after religion generates a space of participation that exceeds spiritual and devotional commitments. It is thus the opportunity of taking decisions about the community’s activities and projects that offers a space for individual fulfillment and the reinforcement of a masculine identity in the diaspora. A second book that has influenced our current attempt at understanding the contemporary relationship between religion and migration is the volume entitled Transnational Transcendence (2009), edited by anthropologist Thomas Csordas. In his introduction to the volume, he asks the question, “What travels well?”, remarking that it is important to focus on the means by which religions cross cultural and material borders, and highlighting that mission and migration are the two preeminent historical ways in which religions have traveled. But he also argues that contemporary mediatization and mobility are the dynamics that we need to examine to learn about globalized religion in the 21st century. He remarks that “to be distinguished from both overt missionization and the migration of populations is the mobility of individuals in the contemporary globalizing world” (Csordas 2009, 5). However, Csordas does not elaborate on the concept of mobility, suggesting that it is no more than a slightly updated version of migration. The main implication of this characterization seems to be only that nineteenth-century missionary enterprises or the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade transported religion differently from 21st-century homegrown Evangelical missionaries, labor migrants, and refugees. To be sure, ideological underpinnings, global political contexts, and forms of accumulation are dramatically different, but from such a stance contemporary mobility is different solely because it follows these epochal transformations. Beyond changes in technology that allow for a dramatic increase in speed in human transport and digital communications, Csordas does not envisage mobility to open up a new methodological approach to the study of religion. This notwithstanding Csordas develops a very useful framework to approach transnational religion that is taken up and modif ied in this volume by Lucia and Pathirage. Religious portable practices for Csordas are “rites that can be easily learned, require little esoteric knowledge or paraphernalia, are not held as proprietary or necessarily linked to a specific cultural context, and can be performed without commitment to an elaborate ideological or institutional apparatus” (2009, 4). Both Lucia and Pathirage take Csordas’s concept of portable practice as the starting

24 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

point for their respective analyses of globalized yoga practitioners in the United States and the daily dynamics of a Buddhist temple in Australia. Their work pushes the concept in new directions by showing that although portability is key to the contemporary mobility of these religious practices, they are not simply reproduced intact in different locations. Lucia further shows that the motivations behind the migration of yoga differ widely, ranging from the nationalist goals of those who exported yoga a century ago to America, to the more business- and humanitarian-oriented aims of contemporary American yogis. Pathirage’s focus on the Katina ritual and Dharma Desana events at the Theravada Buddhist temple in Darwin highlight that portability cannot be taken as a characteristic of the entire ritual but is a condition that allows for the ritual to be partially reproduced in different locations. Adaptability is thus presented as a key component for the portability and mobility of religious practices.6 Finally, a third body of scholarship that we briefly refer to in this introduction is the work of Manuel Vasquez (2008, 2011) who departs from the metaphors proposed by Tweed and the general interest in mobility suggested by Csordas to highlight the important role that networks can have for the study of religion and mobility. Although Vasquez endorses Tweed’s hydrodynamic theory of religion (2011, 289-90), he aims to further develop aspects of the theory that remain problematic. In particular, Vasquez argues that while the aquatic metaphors proposed by Tweed are useful in visualizing the fluidity of religion, they often fail to acknowledge the persistence of relatively rigid structures and borders that determine the paths of mobility that religious communities, specialists, and objects actually traverse. Bringing into conversation religious studies scholars with geographers and spatial theorists, Vasquez argues that it is necessary to ethnographically study the richness of everyday religious practices of migrant communities and congregations, while locating their “material practices within translocal religious and nonreligious flows and processes” (2011, 291). Studies of religion and migration have been mainly interested in the use of religion by migrants who feel alienated from their communities of origin and turn toward religious institutions in search of an instrument for moral and cultural orientations. Such models of religion that emphasize its fixed and stable features have contributed to interpreting religious participation 6 Dean’s chapter in this volume further shows that even when portability connects two temples in a direct way, this should not be interpreted as enabling the reproduction of some essential and authentic ritual form. In fact, connections can be highly localized without reproducing any standardized or normative religious practice.

Introduc tion

25

as providing an “anchor and compass” that orients migrant workers in the context of transnationalism, but as Vasquez has noted, “it is a modernist prejudice to see religion as essentially static” (2008, 157). Dean’s work on Chinese networks in Southeast Asia is helpful in filling the gap between the theories of Csordas and Vasquez, as the portability of Daoist practices carried in a trunk packed with talismans, incense, and statues that relocated the power of the gods to the diasporic destinations of overseas Chinese merchants, was also key to the development of trust nodes in these complex financial and commercial networks. In reference to the over-abundance of the concept of networks in the literature, Vasquez insightfully notes a critique by Vertovec (2003), who remarks that the concept of networks says very little about the nature of relations. For this reason, the focus placed by Dean on the circulation of religious artifacts is important to put flesh on the bones of network theories and invites researchers concerned with the functioning of religious networks to zoom in on the specific material dynamics of these modes of translocative interconnectedness. The concept of networks as developed by Vasquez thus provides a unique methodological resource because it encourages researchers to be aware of the fact that flows often underplay the importance of place and the highly unequal freedom of movement that different religious denominations have. The combination of religious affiliation with the passport used by a prospective migrant has a dramatic impact on the freedom of mobility that he or she has. As Vasquez puts it, “networks mark relatively stable but always contested differentials of power, of inclusion and exclusion, of cooperation and conflict, of boundary-crossing and boundary-making” (2008, 169). Indeed, by tracing the historical development of diasporic Chinese networks, Dean also helps us to envision the highly unequal experience of mobility and the myriad interests that converge in the establishment of overseas trust networks. Finally, Vignato’s ethnography examines the question of how Hindu rituals in Sumatra rekindle an identity that is traced to the ancestral land, while at the same time their performative dimensions produce different meanings once removed from Tamil Nadu and situated in the context of ethno-nationalist politics in contemporary Indonesia.

Conclusion: Why Asia? Peter van der Veer has noted that religious migrants are commonly seen as conservative at best, and as terrorists at worst (2002, 103). This is especially the case when the focus is placed on Asian migrants as part of the movement

26 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

of populations arriving in Europe and North America. The literature that approaches transnational religion in a more nuanced way – which we have briefly explored in this Introduction – has concentrated almost exclusively on Christian denominations and their movement from Latin America into the United States (Phan & Padilla 2015). The work of Thomas Tweed, Manuel Vasquez, and Thomas Csordas are all examples of this more creative approach to transnational religion that has generated a series of conceptual tools to study the religious practices of migrant communities away from the more geopolitical and ideological concerns of 21st-century globalization. One of the main objectives of this book is therefore to examine what these concepts can do to help us understand migrant religiosity amongst Asian communities. This volume aims to propose an alternative approach to examine the dynamics of religious mobility emphasizing the important work of networks and material circulation in the formation of religious communities across borders. As Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt, & David Smilde remark, “religious bodies, objects and ideas, leave from and travel to particular national contexts, but they do so through transnational networks, organizations and movements” (2012, 5). Bringing together perspectives from different Asian religious traditions, we examine the worlds that are created by religious workers, objects, and ideas when circulating around the world; and by directing the research lens toward aspects of mobility, we draw on contemporary scholarship that questions traditional patterns that conceive of stability as norm versus movement as exception. This book hence creates space to explore how different Asian communities pursue religious responsibilities and encounter new forms of religiosity when unfastened from local settings, emphasizing the multiple ways in which transnational migrants find avenues of spirituality that address the concerns of highly mobile populations in ways that traditional religious practice cannot. In sum, the main contribution of Asian Migrants and Religious Experience is to build a case for the importance of highlighting that religion in the context of migration is able to, not only maintain, but also generate new social and cultural dynamics that can impact the lives of receiving communities. Regardless of how specific populations across Asia have come to embrace a particular religious faith, it is no longer possible to speak of “sending” and “receiving” communities. New strategies are created and implemented not only to reach out to members of the community, but are increasingly developed with new audiences in mind. In this way, probably the most important connecting thread that brings together our chapters

Introduc tion

27

is the emphasis that migrants place not in preserving their religious values and traditions, but the efforts they make to share their spirituality with others, migrants and nonmigrants alike.

References Adogame, Afe & Shobana Shankar. 2012. Religion on the Move!: New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World. Leiden: Brill. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barker, John. 2014. “The One and the Many: Church-Centered Innovations in a Papua New Guinean Community.” Current Anthropology 55 (S10): S172-81. Basu, Paul & Simon Coleman. 2008. “Introduction: Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures.” Mobilities 3(3): 313-30. Baumann, Martin. 2009. “Templeisation: Continuity and Change of Hindu Traditions in Diaspora.” Journal of Religion in Europe 2 (2): 149-79. Baumann, Martin & Kurt Salentin. 2006. “Migrant Religiousness and Social Incorporation: Tamil Hindus from Sri Lanka in Germany.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 21 (3): 297-323. Bautista, Julius. 2016. “Export-Quality Martyrs: Roman Catholicism and Transnational Labor in the Philippines.” Cultural Anthropology 30 (3): 424-47. Bender, Courtney, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt & David Smilde, eds. 2012. Religion on the Edge: De-centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Brown, Bernardo. 2017. “Unlikely Cosmopolitans: An Ethnographic Reflection on Migration and Belonging in Sri Lanka.” Anthropological Quarterly 90 (4): page numbers. Cao, Nanlai & Sin Wen Lau. 2013. “Reconstituting Boundaries and Connectivity: Religion and Mobility in a Globalising Asia.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (1): 1-7. —, eds. 2014. Religion and Mobility in a Globalising Asia: New Ethnographic Explorations. London: Routledge. Chu, Julie. 2010. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China. Durham: Duke University Press. Casanova, Jose. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chang, Kimberley & Julian McAllister Groves. 2000. “Neither ‘Saints’ nor ‘Prostitutes’: Sexual Discourse in the Filipina Domestic Worker Community in Hong Kong.” Women’s Studies International Forum 23 (1): 73-87.

28 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

Chen, Carolyn. 2008. Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Constable, Nicole. 1999. “At Home but Not at Home: Filipina Narratives of Ambivalent Returns.” Cultural Anthropology 14 (2): 203-28. Csordas, Thomas. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. 2014. “Fractal Pluralism.” Society 51 (2): 126-30. Glick-Schiller, Nina. 2011. “Localized Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism and Global Religion: Exploring the Agency of Migrants and City Boosters.” Economy and Society 40(2): 211-238. Hagan, Jacqueline. 2008. Migration Miracle. Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller & John Urry. 2006. “Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings.” Mobilities 1(1): 1-22. Hoskins, Janet Alison. 2014. “An Unjealous God? Christian Elements in a Vietnamese Syncretistic Religion.” Current Anthropology 55 (S10): S302-11. —. 2015. The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Hüwelmeier, Gertrud. 2013. “Bazaar Pagodas – Transnational Religion, Postsocialist Marketplaces and Vietnamese Migrant Women in Berlin.” Religion & Gender 3 (1): 76-89. Kitiarsa, Pattana. 2010. “Buddha‐izing a Global City‐State: Transnational Religious Mobilities, Spiritual Marketplace, and Thai Migrant Monks in Singapore.” Mobilities 5 (2): 257-75. Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. 2007. God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing Religious Landscape. New York: The New Press. Levitt, Peggy & Nina Glick-Schiller. 2004. “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” International Migration Review 38 (3): 1002-39. Lucia, Amanda. 2014. Reflections of Amma. Devotees in a Global Embrace. Berkeley: University of California Press. McAllister, Elizabeth. 2005. “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (3): 249-55. Meissner, Fran & Steven Vertovec. 2015. “Comparing Super-Diversity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (4): 541-55. Orsi, Robert A. 1985. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Introduc tion

29

—. 2006. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Parreñas, Rhacel. 2011. Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Phan, Peter & Elaine Padilla. 2016. Christianities in Migration – The Global Perspective. London: Palgrave. Pratt, Geraldine, and Brenda S.A. Yeoh. 2003. “Transnational (Counter) Topographies.” Gender, Place and Culture 10 (2): 156-66. Sheller, Mimi & John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207-26. —. 2016. “Mobilizing the New Mobilities Paradigm.” Applied Mobilities 1 (1): 10-25. Sinha, Vineeta. 2006. A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1987. To Take Place. Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, Mark. 2001. The Moment of Complexity. Emerging Network Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tsujimoto, Toshiko. 2014. “Negotiating Gender Dynamics in Heteronormativity: Extramarital Intimacy among Migrant Filipino Workers in South Korea.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 21 (6): 750-67. Tweed, Thomas. 2002. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ueno, Kayoko. 2013. “Love Gain: The Transformation of Intimacy among Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore.” Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 28 (1): 36-63. van der Veer, Peter. 2002. “Transnational Religion: Hindu and Muslim Movements.” Global Networks 2 (2): 95-109. —. 2015. Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century. Oakland: University of California Press. Vasquez, Manuel. 2008. “Studying Religion in Motion: A Networks Approach.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20: 151-85. —. 2011. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — & Josh DeWind. 2014. “Introduction to the Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: A Transnational and Multi-sited Perspective.” Global Networks 14 (3): 251-72. — & Kim Knott. 2014. “Three Dimensions of Religious Place Making in Diaspora.” Global Networks 14 (3): 326-47.

30 

Bernardo E. Brown and Brenda S. A. Yeoh

— & Marie F. Marquardt. 2003. Globalizing the Sacred: Religion across the Americas. Place: Rutgers University Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024-54. —. 2003. “Migration and Other Forms of Transnationalism: Towards Conceptual Cross-Fertilization.” International Migration Journal 37(3): 641-665. Vogel, Erica. 2014. “Predestined Migrations: Undocumented Peruvians in South Korean Churches.” City & Society 26 (3): 331-51. Warner, Stephen, & Judith Wittner, eds. 1998. Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Wong, Diana. 2014. “Time, Generation and Context in Narratives of Migrant and Religious Journeys.” Global Networks 14 (3): 306-25. — & Peggy Levitt. 2014. “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa among the Tablighi Jamaat and Foguangshan in Malaysia.” Global Networks 14 (3): 348-62. Zehner, Edwin. 2005. “Orthodox Hybridities: Anti-syncretism and Localization in the Evangelical Christianity of Thailand.” Anthropological Quarterly 78 (3): 585-617.

About the authors Bernardo E. Brown is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. His current research projects focus on Catholic seminaries and priestly vocations in South and Southeast Asia. His work on return migration to Sri Lanka has been published in several journals including Anthropological Quarterly (2018), Ethnography (2015), The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2017) and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (2015). He received a MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Cornell University. Before joining ICU, he was Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, affiliated with the Religion and Globalization and the Asian Migration research clusters; and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden. Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Professor (Provost’s Chair) in the Department of Geography as well as Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and she has considerable experience

Introduc tion

31

working on a wide range of migration research in Asia, including key themes such as cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migration; gender, social reproduction, and care migration; migration, national identity, and citizenship issues; globalizing universities and international student mobilities; and cultural politics, family dynamics, and international marriage migrants. She has published widely in these fields. Her latest book titles include The Cultural Politics of Talent Migration in East Asia (Routledge, 2012, with Shirlena Huang); and Migration and Diversity in Asian Contexts (ISEAS press, 2012, with Lai Ah Eng & Francis Collins); Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia (Duke University Press, 2013, with Xiang Biao & Mika Toyota); as well as a paperback reprint of her book Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment (originally published in 1996 by Oxford University Press; reprinted by NUS Press in 2003 and 2013).

Section 1 Mobile Religious Practices

2

Saving Yogis Spiritual Nationalism and the Proselytizing Missions of Global Yoga Amanda Lucia Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch02 Abstract The portable practice of yoga f irst migrated through unidirectional networks that transported knowledge from India to the West in the early twentieth century. Today, yoga flows through multidirectional and reverse networks, exposing new forms of hypermobility. This chapter analyzes one of these reverse networks by focusing particularly on how North American yogis export yoga globally through proselytization, marketing, and yoga sevā (“selfless service”) tourism. It reveals how these modern yogis construct the practice as a universal good, and the benefits of “doing yoga” are often parsed with religious language. The author argues that the current hypermobility of yoga is more productively analyzed through missiological models of proselytization and conversion as opposed to economic models of production and consumption. Keywords: yoga, spirituality, secularism, proselytization, globalization, nationalism

Introduction Many contemporary postural yoga practitioners believe that postural yoga is an ancient spiritual practice birthed on the Indian subcontinent approximately 5000 years ago. The Indian government has reinforced this common popular understanding by revitalizing and claiming yoga as a product of India through global extravaganzas, like the inaugural International Yoga Day (IYD) on 21 June 2015 (Associated Press 2015). In a speech at the United

36 

Amanda Lucia

Nations leading up to the 2015 IYD celebrations, Indian Prime Minister (PM), Narendra Modi characterized yoga as “an invaluable gift of ancient Indian tradition” (Suri 2015). Yoga has been similarly framed as India’s gift to the world since the rise of nationalism in the early twentieth century. It was championed as such by Swami Vivekananda on his US tours in 1893-1896 and many religious emissaries from India have reiterated this notion since. In the 1990s, Ashok Singhal, the leader of Hindu nationalist political party Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), explained, “Of all nations, India alone has spirituality”, in Hindi, but using the English term “spirituality” (McKean 1996, xv). Yoga has become the most visible form of Indic spirituality to mobilize globally. It has become India’s leading spiritual export. Despite its modern-day presentation as a secular physical exercise, yoga is intimately related to Indic religious forms, and as such it has become a leading vehicle for “spiritual nationalism” (van der Veer quoted in Csordas 2009, 263).1 While postural yoga often includes religious ritual elements and philosophical (and sometimes theological) underpinnings, the Indian government and other yogic organizations around the world have been careful to distance the practice of postural yoga from religion, and Hindu religion in particular. Their quite accurate fear emerges from the fact that if yoga were to become synonymous with any one religion, it would be rendered particularly local, and potentially exclusionary. Even PM Modi omitted the Surya Namaskar and the chanting of “Oṃ” from the IYD celebrations in order to make it appear less Hindu, despite his close connections to Hindutva ideologies.2 His decision models the way in which a secularized form of yoga has been allowed to become mandatory in some schools in the United States, because it is represented as a form of secular exercise. While some Hindu organizations have attempted to locate yoga as a product of Hinduism, others have recognized that any yogic allegiance to Hinduism may hinder the spread of modern yoga, barring it from universalization and implementation in these types of secular (and government-funded) spaces.3 1 On Hindu nationalism, see van der Veer 1994; Jaffrelot 1996; Nussbaum 2009; Hansen 1999; Appadurai 2006; and Kurien 2007. 2 Leading up to the celebrations, Modi’s political position became somewhat of a double bind. He was caught between the protests of Muslim organizations (particularly the All India Muslim Personal Law Board [AIMPLB]), which claimed that IYD was emblematic of the Hindusaffronization of India, and the protests of sadhus (Hindu holy men), who vowed to launch a “countrywide agitation” if Hindu-derived postures, such as the Surya Namaskar, were not included in the formal program of IYD (Firstpost 2005). 3 See the 2013 lawsuit concerning mandatory yoga in public schools in Encinitas, California (Sedlock v. Baird), related to the 2015 controversies in the days leading up to IYD, wherein the Indian government omitted the chanting of “Oṃ” and the Surya Namaskar in efforts to appease

Saving Yogis

37

Contemporary yogis around the world simultaneously gain credibility and claim authenticity by sourcing the Indic roots of yoga while advocating for its universal applicability (DeMichelis 2005; Strauss 2005; Singleton 2010; Jain 2015). Modern postural yoga has become a “portable practice” (Csordas 2009, 4), meaning a mobile practice that is universal and able to globally travel through networks. This article focuses on the migration patterns of this portable practice, noting how the yogis of the twentieth century have developed different networks of dissemination according to their cultural priorities. While India exported yoga to the West in efforts to present an anticolonial nationalism, the West has begun to export yoga globally through proselytization, marketing, and yoga sevā (“selfless service”) tourism. As yoga has become a portable practice, it has been universalized as “rites that can be easily learned, require relatively little esoteric knowledge or paraphernalia, are not held as proprietary or necessarily linked to a specific cultural context, and can be performed without commitment to an elaborate ideological or institutional apparatus” (ibid.). Yoga operates within globally integrated networks, wherein teachers transfer knowledge transnationally through various epicenters around the globe. It operates both in patterns of exchange and development (shifting gradually over time and across continents) and holographically (with causes and effects forming connections and composites simultaneously and instantaneously), a fused interdependency in its very creation (Urry 2003, 51). The portable practice of yoga first migrated through networks that began transporting knowledge from India to the West in the early twentieth century, but now have expanded into forms of hypermobility, enacted through multidirectional and reverse networks so that the West is now the primary global exporter of yoga. This chapter analyzes this transition from unidirectional migration to hypermobility. I follow the suggestion of Manuel Vasquez, who suggests that “we might also study how religious elites adapt doctrines and ritual practices to particular localities and how locals creatively appropriate the teachings, opening the way for ‘heresies’ and other forms of religious innovation” (2011, 302-3). Yoga has been widely adapted and variously appropriated in the West largely by elite populations. Sometimes its contemporary innovations in the United States look so different from their Indian antecedents that they appear to some as “heresies”. In the United States, there are many of these “heresies”: yoga has aggravated Muslim groups. Also, for a discussion of the Hindu American Foundation’s “Take Back Yoga” campaign, see Andrea Jain 2014, 427-71 (also reprinted in Jain 2015, 130-57).

38 

Amanda Lucia

become overtly marketed as a secular practice, as highly sexualized, and as highly commodified. Here, I focus on the understudied fact that some facets of yoga in the United States have innovated by adopting missionary tactics to spread the practice. Indian emissaries laid the foundations for this proselytizing yoga and North American proponents of modern postural yoga are emulating traditional missionary networks and rhetorical frames to mobilize yoga globally. This article draws from six years of netnographic research following the expressions of yoga online and significant ethnographic research in three types of yogic festival environments. My research organizes these three types of yogic festivals into three correlated forms of yogic spirituality: spirituality as personal religious experience (exemplified by the annual Bhakti and Shakti Fests held in Joshua Tree, California), spirituality as trans-traditional bricolage (exemplif ied by transformational festivals, including Lightning in a Bottle held in Bradley, California, and Burning Man held in Black Rock City, Nevada), and spirituality as the enchanted secular (exemplified by dozens of Wanderlust yoga festivals held in vacation destinations around the globe). Since 2011, I have lived for approximately 140 days at 28 transformational festivals; my average stay immersed in each festival was five days. Although transformational festivals include multiple forms of spiritual practices, yoga was the method through which I observed American spirituality displayed, embodied, and constructed. In festival environments, I took both lengthy and brief interviews with a wide variety of attendees. Interviewees ranged from first-time attendees to the yoga instructors, organizers, founders, and builders of the festivals. I also developed sustained relationships with many festival attendees from within the context of a singular festival or over the course of multiple festivals on the global festival circuit. During festivals, I divided my time between “deep hanging out” (Renato Rosaldo quoted in Clifford 1997, 56) with key informants developed from these sustained ethnographic relationships, taking interviews with festival attendees and famed yoga instructors, and participating and observing tantric and meditation workshops, yoga classes, devotional music, and the multiple spiritual cultures embodied at each festival. I returned to each festival multiple times over the past six years to mark changes; I also observed the festival cultures throughout the year through netnographic methods of online research and participation in local community events. In North America, yoga teachers in the majority of yoga studios and online classes are instructed to keep the practice secular. Many studio owners instruct yoga teachers to minimize religious and philosophical

Saving Yogis

39

references, sermonizing, and mantra chanting. For this reason, festival yoga and yoga retreats have been an extremely important venue for this research because they reveal American yogic discourses as they occur when these restrictions are not in place. Festival cultures give yoga teachers the freedom to voice their philosophies and theologies, and to articulate their own visions for yoga practice and sometimes their utopian visions for the world. Festivals and retreats recur periodically, and sometimes annually, in the same popular destinations. Touristic, luxury yoga retreats are often held in the coastal regions of Hawaii, Bali, Costa Rica, Australia, and northern Europe. Service-oriented yoga mission trips are often held in Costa Rica, Haiti, Cuba, Belize, and Ecuador. These geographic patterns are forming new networks of hypermobility beyond the frames of migration between India and the US and UK. As new networks, they are “flexible, highly dynamic, nontotalizing and multidirectional structures of relationality,” but most importantly, they are constrained within the broader power dynamics of globalization (Vasquez 2011, 298). The tenor of the discourses surrounding and within these yoga festivals and retreats shows that even though yoga focuses on physical postures (āsanas) in the US, it is expressed as a “body of religious practice” (Jain 2014, 99). This scholarly consensus is also reflected in the popular opinions of many Americans. According to a 2016 survey commissioned by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance, 63 percent of all North Americans agree that yoga is spiritual and 72 percent agree that practicing yoga postures is a form of meditation.4 Thus, even while the most physical forms of modern yoga have been extracted from the context of the religions of India and proliferated in the United States, still they retain a semblance of their identity as India’s leading spiritual export. However, when considering the mobility patterns of yoga globally, many scholars turn away from this religious core and instead rely on economic models of buying and selling, producers, and consumers. There is certainly money circulating in the thriving business of postural yoga. American yogis alone spend $16 billion annually on yoga classes, clothing, equipment, and accessories (Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance 2016b); estimates that also include yoga gurus, retreats, and festivals claim the yoga industry ranges from $27 billion to $80 billion globally (Gregoire 2013; Nair 2015). In the United States (as in India), yoga is big business, but very few American yogis begin their yoga practice because they believe it will be a lucrative business 4 “2016 Yoga in America Study” is conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance.

40 

Amanda Lucia

venture. Instead, they “do yoga” because they believe it is good for you – it increases flexibility, it relieves stress, it is a form of meditation, it enhances physical performance, and it is spiritually fulfilling (Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance 2016a, 26). With this in mind, it becomes evident that economic models can only take us so far. If we carefully consider the intentions of contemporary yogis, it is obvious that their utopian and spiritual claims cannot be contained within the analytic of monetary, and neoliberal market-driven pursuits. Instead, scholars should analyze the spread of modern yoga by looking at how it is echoing the traditional missionary modes for the dissemination and expansion of religion. Scholars should be thinking of the current hypermobilities that define the global transmission of yoga in terms of missiological activity, proselytization, and personal transformation, if not formal conversion. In this chapter, I argue that the representational tactics of the spread of yoga are historically, and continue to be, proselytizing in rhetoric and form. Advocates for modern postural yoga construct the practice as a universal good, and the benefits of “doing yoga” are often parsed with religious language. This missiology occurs not only in rhetoric, but it is also centrally located within the aims for the global dissemination of yoga. Thus, integrating an analytic focused on missiological patterns and processes more accurately represents the fundamental aims of the practice. Furthermore, this analysis explains the dramatic demographic shifts among practitioners of postural yoga in the modern period, as second and third generations of modern yogis continue to proselytize the universal good of yoga within their own social and geographical contexts. The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Indian yogis who brought yoga to the United States were interested in spreading yoga, but also in finding new audiences to support their spiritual labors. They exemplified the “complicated entanglement that exists between religious motives and the socioeconomic aims that drive labor migration” (Brown and Yeoh, this volume). They also used migration as a generating force for innovation, responding to modernity by defining yoga as a scientific, universalistic practice that would improve health and concentration. In the United States, their students comprise the second and third generations of the twentiethand 21st-century yogis. My research demonstrates that these contemporary yogis have emulated their teachers’ dedication to spreading yoga globally and have become some of the leading advocates for postural yoga. In its most overt forms, yoga missionary networks aim to export “the good news” of the benefits of modern postural yoga to places like Haiti, Belize, Costa

Saving Yogis

41

Rica, Mexico, Cuba, and Palestine. In its more subtle forms, proselytizing yoga uses slogans and sermons during yoga classes, and mimesis of yogic exemplars to incite personal transformation and spiritual reaffiliations among their followers. Many of the most famous yoga teachers travel intensively along international yoga circuits; they also spread their messages globally through social media and personal websites. The combinative factors of extreme itinerancy and the volume of communication through digital technology result in a new form of hypermobility. Hypermobility enables modern yogis to proselytize the practice of yoga to global audiences at an unprecedented scale and speed. Unconstrained by “traditional religious authorities” and “conventional rituals and devotional discipline”, these global yogis are free to create and disseminate yoga according to their own branded interpretations (Brown and Yeoh, this volume). The expansive multiplicity of branded yogas that have been codified by these modern global emissaries and their predecessors exemplifies the ways in which religion in the context of migration and hypermobility generates exponential forms of innovation.

Overt Yogic Missionaries The ambition to spread yoga globally has taken on a multiplicity of forms historically, but recently American yogis have hybridized this ambition with missionary models in innovative and problematic ways. Here, we can see new forms of yogic mobility unfolding within the legacies of missionary activity and colonialism and within the civilizational hierarchies positioned through globalization. At the most overt level, some American yogis have become so convinced of the transformative possibilities of postural yoga that they have endeavored to export it to other environments in efforts to alleviate suffering and social turmoil. When modern American yogis position themselves as yoga emissaries to the impoverished in these countries within the global South, they enact the power relations of traditional missionaries. As Vasquez (2011, 300) argues, “Networks of exchange shape individual and group identities through the distribution of honor, prestige, status, and authority”. These yogic missionary networks reinforce the affluent, giving, and powerful identities of the predominantly white, wealthy American yogi, and the impoverished, receiving, and disempowered identities of the brown, native, global South recipients. Many yoga studios offer retreats that incorporate wellness for American yogis with service opportunities in locations such as Belize, Costa Rica,

42 

Amanda Lucia

Haiti, and Mexico. There are also yogic companies that explicitly focus on the combination of sevā and tourism, such as Mats on a Mission, Seva Yoga Trips, True Nature Yoga Wellness, Yoga 4 Trauma, and Go Give Yoga.5 Each of these companies sponsors yoga retreats that include extensive self-care incorporated with service opportunities. In some cases, it is only that a portion of the profits of the trip will be donated to a charitable organization. But in most cases, the opportunity for sevā is a significant part of the experience. Each of these companies partners with orphanages, service organizations, empowerment programs for girls, or medical needs assistance programs. While some of the sevā work that these yoga tours commit to are largely secular, i.e. building homes, providing funds, and making repairs, some are focused explicitly on exporting yoga and its presumed benefits. In an article entitled “Go Give Yoga Haiti Mission”, Don Wenig, the founder of Dancing Feet Yoga, explains that for Haitians, “We found that the children live an incredibly stressful life. They have to fight for everything… Yoga allows them to reduce their stress, to center themselves, to become calm. Having a yoga mat and a space of their own was a luxury their day to day life doesn’t provide”. Wenig explains the therapeutic effects of yoga practice, suggesting that yoga reduces stress and accentuates calm in the midst of stress and violence. Many yogis missionize postural yoga by emphasizing these therapeutic aspects. Their target populations follow similar networks as Christian missionaries, who have a long history of proselytizing in territories plagued by stress, violence, and turmoil, and they present these communities with a religious solution. In fact, while the American yogis may not have recognized this missionizing pattern, it appears the Haitians did. Wenig explains, “Yoga is not a part of the culture of Haiti, and we had to reassure a handful of adults that it was not a cult, a devil worship, or a religion” (Medlock, n.d.). At Wanderlust in Squaw Valley, I shared a meal with Makayla, a yoga teacher from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who explained that, “We have all gotten interested in yoga as a mechanism to help us deal with trauma”.6 She then expanded this sentiment to suggest that basic yoga techniques like breathing are completely vital to overcoming trauma and that populations in trauma need the skills that yoga can offer. She told me about her friend’s new yoga studio that had opened on the West Bank and she offered 5 See www.matsonamission.com; www.sevayogatrips.com; www.truenatureyogawellness. com; https://yoga4trauma.wordpress.com; and www.gogiveyoga.org. Last accessed 23 August 2016. 6 Interview with Makayla, Wanderlust, Squaw Valley, 19 July 2014.

Saving Yogis

43

the “huge response from Palestinian women” as evidence for the healing powers of yoga. Many American yogis are bringing yoga into “troubled” areas of the world in efforts to promote personal and social transformation. The most extreme of such missionizing activity can be seen (somewhat predictably) in the activities of the Christian-inspired Holy Yoga, which envisions itself as a “missional community dedicated to equipping and providing resources for our instructors to launch, grow and maintain their own personal ministries as collectively we take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth” (Holy Yoga, n.d.). As yoga has migrated globally, it has given rise to multiple hybridities, including subtle and overt forms of proselytizing yoga. Off the Mat, a project that aims to combine yoga and activism, conducts global sevā challenges and is concerned about the perception of their endeavors as missiological. On a recent conference call focused on the “Dos and Don’ts of International Service”, the famed yoga teacher Seane Corn (2015) explained: The assumption is that we go over there and we teach yoga to people, as that is our intention and that is why we are there. It has been very important to us to let it be known that the only time that we offer yoga is as a way to engage, to develop a relationship… it is not something that we bring into the culture. In the same way I wouldn’t go in there and make a suggestion that they should believe in one God over another or encourage them to change their spiritual practices based on my belief system.

Despite its marketing campaigns focused on salacious issues related to female oppression and problematic representations of “empowerment”, Off the Mat spokespeople are critically aware of the dangers of international proselytization and the power dynamics inherent in yogic humanitarian missions conducted by teams of majority white Americans in places like Ecuador, Uganda, South Africa, and India.7 While one can easily critique the very impulse of white Americans embarking on international humanitarian missions targeted at such issues as human trafficking in India (2012), or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Early Childhood Marriage (ECM) in 7 “I can get frozen in my privilege and think ‘well, who am I?’ and then nothing changes or I can ignore my privileges and then nothing changes, or I can acknowledge that I have some privileges, I can acknowledge that within those privileges there is going to be some hurdles to cross and attempt to cross them as elegantly as mindfully as I possibly can, keeping in mind that the person that I am engaging with is a human being and is deserving of respect and that respect goes – that’s the hurdle that crosses all barriers” (Corn 2015).

44 

Amanda Lucia

Kenya (2015), still, the fact that this conversation occurred is a step in the right direction (Off the Mat Into the World [OTM], n.d.). The competitive nature of the American yogic field insures that yogis will continue to advocate for yogic lifestyles, practices, and ideologies to position themselves in contradistinction to other yogis and to provide ready solutions to the problems facing societies across the globe. As American yogis activate the discourses and practices of postural yoga as ushering the potential for personal and societal transformation, they must be hyper vigilant to insure that advocacy does not mirror the “white savior” paternalism of many missionizing discourses.

Marketing and/or Proselytization? By the 1960s, postural yoga had become a vibrant global force, largely due to the efforts of global yoga emissaries (Singleton 2010; Strauss 2005; De Michelis 2005; Jain 2015). As Jain (2015, 69) explains, “postural yoga became something that was increasingly prescribed and consumed as a product independent of ethnic, philosophical, or religious identities or commitments. Postural yoga was instead a product that could be chosen as a body-enhancing practice that was one part of individual regimens of self-development, and it was being packaged in this way for transnational audiences”. Jain argues that the dissemination of modern postural yoga can be best understood through the lens of late capitalist consumer culture. In her view, successful yoga “entrepreneurs” began to “brand yoga in the same ways other products and services are branded… As yoga generates somatic, semantic, and symbolic fields of meaning meant to appeal to consumer desires, brands seek to signify those meanings to millions of individuals interested in doing yoga” (ibid., 77). Jain’s argument directs us to one certain reality: as modern postural yoga has expanded into multiple geographies across the globe, there are increasingly heterogeneous forms of yoga being offered and practiced, and new yoga gurus emerge each day who claim to present more effective techniques, unique styles, and personal charisma than their contemporaries. However, the spiritual has not completely receded, nor has yoga’s Indic religious influences. When there are no restrictions on yoga instructors to keep their practice secular – as is often the case in studios and schools – the religious abounds, untethered. In yoga retreats, festivals, and sevā tourism, yoga practice is contextualized within spiritual and religious ontologies. In fact, many practitioners argue that one can only “do yoga” in the most

Saving Yogis

45

superficial way without stepping into religious territories. It is largely assumed that as yoga practitioners learn more about the history, context, and philosophy of yoga, whether through personal study or the intensive environments of retreats, festivals, and sevā tourism, many will engage its spiritual core. Therefore, cold economism is a limited analytic through which to analyze the layered mobilities of global yoga. Instead, the language of proselytization and missionary activity more closely represents the intent of many leaders within the yoga community as they aim to disseminate yoga globally. Proselytism refers to the act of attempting to convert people to another religion or opinion. It is derived from the Greek prefix “pros” (“toward”) and the verb “érchomai” (“to come”), thus the act of proselytizing invites people to come toward the proselytizer’s perspective, and away from their previously held convictions. As such, at its root, proselytism engages the language of marketing, which is commonly defined as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (American Marketing Association [AMA], n.d.). But with modern yogis’ adoption of yoga, for many, the practice extends far beyond brand loyalty. In my interviews, numerous yogis have discussed their own personal transformations as a result of their yoga practice in direct and revelatory ways. When faced with such inspiring personal transformations, many of the more socially conscious yogis aim to “give back” to society by sharing their practice and newly found knowledge. These yogis can be found giving advice to the “unawakened” of society, mentoring budding yogis, and engaged in humanitarian campaigns that often aim to bring not only relief and services, but also a yogic consciousness (and sometimes a yogic practice) to underserved communities. Many yoga practitioners are first introduced into the world of “alternative spiritualities” through yoga. Yoga practice becomes a point of entry that introduces new ideas, practices, rituals, and religious cosmologies. These yogis migrate into religious territories guided by Indic religious texts, accounts of Indic yogis who practiced before them, knowledge sharing through communal and festival gatherings, and the teachings of yoga gurus past and present.

Conversion and/or Self-Transformation? These yogic adepts and aspirants are not only interested in branding themselves with various yogic products or profiting from yoga (there are many

46 

Amanda Lucia

other more lucrative ways to make a profit in the US). Rather, many serious yogis are actively engaged in a process of spiritual self-transformation that resembles conversion. Certainly, the external markers of personal transformation may include product replacement and different purchasing choices, but the consumptive habitus of the transformation is not the transformation itself. Just as the religious convictions of the Amish are more than their consumption of bonnets and suspenders, so too the spiritual convictions of American yogis are more than their consumption of leggings, yoga mats, and green juice smoothies. Consumptive practices signify distinctive worldviews and changes in consumptive practices are the after-effects of yogic self-transformation. To consider consumptive patterns as the primary rubric for defining American yogis inverts the reality, by placing the effect as the cause. The cause or the motivation that drives everyday citizens to decide to radically change their lives is frankly, much more interesting. As American yogis become increasingly invested in yogic practice (above and beyond the physical postures), they begin to make life changes, community changes, and changes in their consumptive patterns. This gradual process is related to the process of religious conversion. As Dianne AustinBroos (2003, 2) explains, “the language of converts expresses new forms of relatedness [emphasis mine]. The public aspect of this belonging is perhaps a new identity, a newly inscribed communal self-defined through the gaze of others… Conversion is a type of passage that negotiates a place in the world. Conversion as passage is also a quest, a quest to be at home in a world experienced as turbulent or constraining or, in some way, as wanting in value”. Yogic “conversions” are not emblematic of the typical sociology of religion conception of an individual’s adoption of an exclusive affiliation with a new religious institution, but rather they are a process of selftransformation wherein the individual adopts a gradual process of change to newly found spiritual attitudes and ritualized behaviors that buttress their newly formed yogic selves. Although they are usually noninstitutional, as yogic aspirants become increasingly engaged in a process of sacralization as the sangha, or the community of yogis, they begin to construct new identities by adopting new knowledge bases, patterns of dress and diet, value systems, worldviews, patterns of speech and behavior – in essence, creating a new spiritual habitus.8 8 Pierre Bourdieu (1990: 53) defines habitus as “[t]he conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles

Saving Yogis

47

One older, white female yogi explains the effects of her yogic meditation succinctly, by saying “I appreciated [that]… it was recalibrating my thought processes. It was recalibrating my internal disposition to allow a Sanskrit phrase, an ancient Sanskrit phrase to go from being a small program to an application to becoming my operating system and how that allows me to be regenerative and to feel”.9 Her digital metaphor of transformation from her yogic mantra being “a small program” to “becoming my operating system” reveals the gradual processes by which yogic activity begins with small changes and then becomes the foundation for an entirely new modus operandi. In community, modern yogis reflect these “new forms of relatedness” to the world and to each other, and the community bolsters this continual process of self-definition through its internal gaze – the self is defined “through the gaze of others”. As it deepens beyond the physical postures, yogic practice often becomes imbued with deeply ritualized practice, personal spiritual aims, accounts of miraculous events, vibrant communal engagement, and the active construction of new ontological, soteriological, and cosmological understandings. Today’s yogic adepts advocate for the practice of postural yoga as a first step to activate this process of personal transformation. Like the majority of religions, the justification for their solution derives from an initial crisis (Riesebrodt 2010); their urgency stems from a deeply held critique of multiple contexts of contemporary society. From environmental crisis, abuses of women, poverty (often with a view toward the global South), to the rampant corporate takeover of seemingly all areas of individual freedoms and global markets, the yoga community uses postural yoga as an initial solution to global problems. Personal growth through yoga practice becomes a means to initiate change from the inside out – one person at a time. Instead of focusing on institutionalized systems of political, social, and environmental injustice, global yogis aim to change the world through the reconfiguration of individual selves. As a result, there is often an incessant drive within yoga communities to spread yoga, to engage the ever-increasing numbers of people in the practice of yoga, in an urgent effort to transform the world. which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor”. 9 Interview with Bonnie Harter, Bhakti Fest, 7 September 2013.

48 

Amanda Lucia

Proselytization can be defined as the effort to spread a message of social transformation through individual reaffiliations that are constituted by adoptions of a new religious habitus. Proselytic activity targets “for the most part individual religious (re)affiliation, but with the hopes of collective transformation, proselytization resorts to very public strategies to achieve its goals” (Hackett 2008, 14). Advocates of modern postural yoga aim to recalibrate bodies and minds to yogic ideals. They suggest that the practice of yoga is inherently transformative and many leaders in the field view the physical practice as a mere gateway into a deeper investigation that is imbued with religious significance and texture. For example, Seane Corn has recently released a video entitled Body Prayer: The Body and Beyond, with the explicit aim to reveal that “yoga is much more than a physical practice – it’s an opportunity to use the movement and breath to express deep devotion” (Corn 2017). Yoga mentors develop and employ informational networks for students, through which they transfer yogic knowledge, such as scripture, secondary spiritual literatures, and additional supplementary techniques (often meditational or ritual). Many of the yogic adepts who are revered in various yoga communities are revered not only for their physical perfection, but also for their spiritual knowledge and perspective. In fact, the majority of the most famous global yoga teachers cultivates distinct philosophies and systems of meditation and ritual action. Many function as gurus without the title, and advocate a religious worldview in all but name. Thus, instead of viewing these yogic adepts as entrepreneurs marketing and branding products, we must recognize that this is not solely a secular activity. As Hackett (2004) indicates, “Many proselytizers take advantage of deregulation and liberalization, just as they may adopt the styles of new entrepreneurs in quest of profit and markets”. Similarly, yogic adepts take advantage of the markets and adopt entrepreneurial methodologies, but their aims are not solely profit. Their yogic marketing is imbued with a cosmological vision, a ritualized practice, and an aim to transform the very nature of the individual, which they believe will transform society. The analytics of marketing, in its dry economism at best or cynicism at worst, misses the most important emic aspect of yogic adepts’ intentions.10 10 Scholarship, such as the recent work of Carrette & King’s Selling Spirituality, instigates an important discussion about corporate encroachment and neoliberal sensibilities in the contemporary practice of postural yoga. However, it does not engage the emic perspectives of the many serious global yoga practitioners, who do not intend to “recode” yoga into “the individualist values of [the] western society,” but rather aim to transform themselves into that which is “genuinely counter-cultural, transformative and challenging to western cultural norms”. Carrette & King assume that the process of adopting a yoga practice is a unilateral

Saving Yogis

49

The proselytizing impulse stems from the transformative experiences that many yogic adepts believe that modern postural yoga has brought to their lives. Many have experienced what might be comparable to a conversion experience, an ideological and practical process that transforms the individual from one subjectivity to another. Even the most secular yogis have adopted the practice as a means of mental and physical cleansing, to combat the stressors of everyday modernity. As Clara, a soft-spoken yogi at Wanderlust, Mont Tremblant in 2014 explained, “it [yoga] has calmed me down… it’s the mental part of it. It’s just that, breathing, cleansing. Just it’s like taking an eraser to a full chalkboard and you just, you’re leaving the class and you’re feeling energized”.11 This account of recalibrating the stresses of life, reveals one of the most basic and simple influences of yogic practice. For others, the transformation can take on more extreme and intentional forms of recalibration. Some yoga programs explicitly aim to initiate “rehabilitation”, “personal transformation”, and “behavioral change”, as in the Prison Yoga Project.12 At Bhakti Fest in 2012, Liam explained “it was a gradual process and it kind of creeps up on you in the way that it is working on your consciousness… The way this works, the whole transformation… prānayāma [breath control] and those kinds of things that are [more] purifying at the physical level so it feels more direct and immediate. But doing something like that [karma yoga, the yoga of action] where, it is forcing you to pay more and more attention to each action you take and each thought you have towards that action – just really expands your consciousness more and more through every aspect of your life”.13 For this yogi, his postural practice led him to the practices of prānayāma, karma yoga, and residence in an ashram community. In some cases, the physical aspects of yoga have become a gateway to philosophical practices. Whether clearing the mind as if “taking an eraser to a full chalkboard”, or aiming for “rehabilitation” of prison populations, or “expand[ing] your consciousness” in an ashram setting – each refers to the gradual processes of transformation, whereby the practice of yoga slowly and deliberately refashions the self. movement of yoga coming to the West and being transformed according to Western values, instead of investigating the many ways in which the process also flows in the opposite direction. I am particularly interested in the ways in which yoga is transforming those residing in the West through yoga, that is to say, how many Westerners are moving toward the traditional Indic context of yoga. 11 Interview with Marie-Claire, Wanderlust, Mont Tremblant, Quebec, 23 August 2014. 12 See https://prisonyoga.org. Last accessed 4 March 2017. 13 Interview with Liam, Bhakti Fest, Joshua Tree, CA, 7 September 2012.

50 

Amanda Lucia

Subtle Yogic Missionaries: Slogans and Sermons In the first section, I discussed overt yogic missionary activity and demonstrated how sevā missions or “off-the-mat humanitarian” yogis proselytize in familiar, and familiarly problematic ways. Here, I turn to three additional modes of proselytizing outreach that take on more subtle forms: products and slogans, yoga-class sermons, and mimesis of yogic exemplars to incite personal transformation. The first category, products and slogans, is perhaps the most ubiquitous form of proselytization in which the average American yogi engages. Commonplace life directives routinely punctuate a variety of yoga products and promotional materials; they can be found on T-shirts, water bottles, yoga mats, towels, stickers, websites, and the like. Directives can take the form of the short phrases: “Be Love”, “Give Love”, “Trust the Universe”, “Grateful”, “Namaste”, “Salute the Sun”, “We are All One”, “Breathe Practice Repeat”, “Warrior”, “Aim True”, and so on. These slogans proliferate within the yoga community and are repeated often enough that they become signifiers of a distinct ideology – and even an identity. Sometimes they signify the lifestyle philosophy of a particular yoga teacher (i.e. “Aim True” signifies the brand of the yoga celebrity Kathryn Budig) or a distinctive hybrid innovation, as in the case of “Spiritual Gangster” apparel. These proclamations signify (to both self and other) membership within the sangha14 (community of yogis) and a personal commitment to the yoga community. They garner distinction through the expression of a particular faith commitment, a worldview, and a perspective. Some are modeled explicitly from the proselytization slogans of their Christian counterparts, for example, the play on the kitsch slogan “Jesus is my homeboy” to create a yogic T-shirt that declares “Shiva is my Oṃ-boy.” Just as proselytizing religious communities believe themselves to be privy to knowledge that others should adopt, yogis too believe that they have attained knowledge of a practice that is inherently good for all persons. Many practitioners believe that yoga has helped them to achieve personal goals that others should aspire to as well, i.e. openness, freedom, strength, truth, health, radiance, happiness, and power. In fact, some advertisements for teacher trainings and more extensive yogic learning capitalize on this very sensibility. For example, an Exhale Yoga Teacher Training flier reads, “If yoga has changed your life and you want to pass that passion on to others, then 14 Formally, sangha is a Buddhist term used to signify the community of Buddhists or alternately the community of Buddhist monks and nuns. I use it here to refer to the community of yogis, following the language of MC Yogi, one of my informants who quoted using the term with the same signification in the penultimate section, “Yogic ‘Beacons of Light’ to the World”.

Saving Yogis

51

Figure 2.1 “Shiva is my Om . Boy”: tank top from vendor at Bhakti Fest. Joshua Tree, California, 2013

Photo by Amanda Lucia

this is the program for you”. There is a direct relationship between a personal transformation and the desire to share that experience with others. In the religious context, this is the typical sequencing of a conversion narrative,

52 

Amanda Lucia

wherein an individual undergoes a personal conversion experience and then goes on to convert others armed with the evidence of his or her own personal transformation. The narrative of a personal transformative experience is the most powerful tool in the creation of converts. Like many other religious worldviews, many American yogis also posit a problem to which yoga provides a ready solution. For example, Shiva Rae (2014) suggests that we need to “heal the schism” and explains that “[w]hen we ignore the flow, we feel the arrhythmia – the experience of being out of sync with life which can be on five levels: self-rhythms… interpersonal rhythms… communal rhythms… global rhythms… [and] cosmic rhythms”.15 Other teachers explain the problem as a lack of bodily awareness, connection between individuals, intimacy with nature, knowledge of self, or even the lack of an experience of divinity. Saul David Raye (2014) explained in his yoga intensive at Bhakti Fest that “[h]ere on the planet earth, we’re screwing it up because we’re not living in harmony with the laws of creation, the laws of the mother, the laws of all the indigenous cultures”. These yogis believe that the world is in crisis, and yoga is a solution. Freed from the secular confines of studio practice, in festival yoga classes, many teachers include a significant amount of commentary, philosophy, and sermonizing. As Shiva Rae likes to exclaim at Bhakti Fest, this is where the inner-bhakta (devotee) can “come out of the closet!” Mark Whitwell’s classes at Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Shakti Fest, consisted of lengthy sermons (45 minutes) on tantra-yogic philosophy while students sat or laid in śavāsana (“corpse pose”). At the close of her yoga class at Wanderlust yoga festival in Oahu in 2014, Seane Corn offered this prayer, “And we close the practice by giving thanks to God. (…) May we live everyday in harmony and choose to be more mindful and sustainable to her resources. We ask for the strength to continue on our own path, to let go of all that we think we know – to be released from our fear and our rage and our doubt and our shame and our grief, and to open instead to possibilities of love. May we forgive, always, ourselves and others. And commit to that inner purification so that we can show up as who we are – love”. Corn’s prayer suggests a distinctive theology that includes the aims of gratitude to God, harmony and sustainability with nature, and strength and independence on a spiritual path. In her view, the spiritual path referred to involves “let[ting] go of all that we think we know”, which is a standard prerequisite at the outset of conversion narratives of personal transformation. Corn suggests that it is only then, once the mental space has cleared, that the practitioner 15 “Pulse Collective” flier, Bhakti Fest, Joshua Tree, CA, 2014.

Saving Yogis

53

can be open to the possibilities of love and forgiveness, which is “inner purification” of the self.

Mimetic Missionaries: Yogic “Beacons of Light” to the World In addition to slogans and sermonizing, contemporary American yogis present themselves, i.e. their behavior, lifestyle, spiritual acumen, and success, as evidence for the efficacy of the practice. Yogis become examples to be mimetically emulated by their followers and to be witnessed by the general public in efforts to convince them to embody yogic ideals and practices as well. Their bodies, lifestyle, and spiritual messages converge into the presentation of an ideal that is hypermobilized on social media, the Internet, and through their itinerant travel to global festivals, retreats, workshops, and guest teaching appointments. Their yoga practice becomes evidence of positive self-transformation and operates within an ideological system wherein self-transformation is believed to be the catalyst for social change. In their expansionist manner of thinking, the more people who view them as ideal exemplars, the more people who may begin to practice yoga. Consequently, the more people who practice yoga, the more they will impact positive social change. In his yoga class at Wanderlust in Squaw Valley in 2014, MC Yogi encouraged this mimetic model by conjoining commonly cited biblical passages (Matthew 5:14-16)16 and Buddhist frames of suffering and sangha.17 He said, “As the sangha grows on the earth the light starts to swell, and the people suffering find their way to the other side because the beacon of light is strong enough that it shines like a lighthouse. So thank you guys for being that and coming here and shining on the mountaintop”. In this framing, yoga practitioners are a “beacon of light” who can alleviate suffering in the world. The ideal of transforming oneself into a “beacon of light” for the entire world to witness has long roots in discourses of Protestantism and American exceptionalism. The Puritans first used this language and imagined themselves as religious exemplars for the world. Famously, on the Arbella, the ship 16 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven”. (Matthew 5:14-16, NIV) 17 “Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dhamma/Dharma” (Pali: Dhammacakkappavattanasutta; Sanskrit: Dharmacakrapravartanasūtra). See also Rahula, 1974.

54 

Amanda Lucia

that brought Massachusetts Bay colonists from England to America in 1630, John Winthrop used the imagery in his vision of creating a new settlement in America that would be a “city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us”. The passengers of the Arbella imagined themselves as models of Christian charity, beacons of light shining for the world. The Puritan ideal of living by example derives from the Calvinist notion of Predestination – the concept that there are those who are saved and those who are not, and those who are saved act only in accordance with God. This theological perspective had social consequences and Puritans suffered considerable pressure to demonstrate that they were saved to their fellow citizens. Presenting oneself as an exemplary model citizen, one who acts in accordance with God, became of paramount importance for the Puritans. Modern American yogis adopt this Protestant ethos as they obsess over their yogic self-presentations on various media platforms. This preoccupation with self-presentation reveals their desire to present themselves and their yogic bodies as evidence of perfected morality and exemplary yogis to their communities. Just as the Puritans sculpted themselves as exemplars of Protestant Christian piety shining their inner light from a “city upon a hill”, MC Yogi reiterates their quintessentially American and Christian ideals, thanking American yogis for “shining their light from the mountaintop” for all the world to see and emulate. Even more intriguing, he blends these seminal Christian ideas that would justify proselytization and expansion with an invocation of Buddhist cosmology and the centralization of yoga. MC Yogi’s religious hybridity is commonplace in the field of yogic spirituality. In an interview he explained, “I see the Buddha as almost like Christ, Jesus was like a reformer, like Martin Luther. These radical, sort of rebellious, self-realized beings came along and they realized the truth in their own life and they saw the institution [of religion] and how it had sort of hardened and corrupted, like the caste system, you know like the money lenders in the temple. And they just came and, everyone breaks off and starts their own things, but none of it is really broken”.18 MC Yogi hybridizes Buddhist and Christian ideals with the presumed efficacy of yoga practice to encourage his students to embody the “light” and to live as examples for others. The underlying presumption is that this “beacon of light” will attract others to the practice of yoga and thus catalyze social transformation that will alleviate global suffering. Many American yogis also imagine themselves to be leading by example, a “beacon of light” to the world. Melinda, a young bohemian yogi at Bhakti Fest explained to me, “I had to clear a lot of blocks in myself to see myself 18 Interview with MC Yogi, Festival of Colors, Spanish Fork, Utah, 29 March 2015.

Saving Yogis

55

as a spiritual leader, trusting myself as a spiritual leader”.19 At the same festival, Liam explained, “We are coming into an age where people are more and more just waking up in general and… not just in terms of yogic circles, but there are other forms of practices and paths that are really leaning into very similar energetic spiritual kind of directions, that result in the empowerment of the individual and the recognition that each of us can do what we want and that we create our lives… The sad thing is that we’ve been conditioned to believe that we can’t do [these] things”.20 Through introspection and practice, yoga practitioners believe that the yogic path enables them to cleanse and refashion the self and thereby enact personal transformation. Gradually, the personal transformation becomes externally visible, so that one can serve as a “beacon of light” for others. Many American yogic adepts also present themselves as spiritual leaders on social media platforms, through which they become models for others through their lifestyle and self-presentations. Their beauty, peace, centeredness, tranquility, bliss, and flow all become indications of the ways in which their yogic selves have become the “beacon of light” and can radiate a brilliance to which novices can aspire. The yogi is imagined to be progressing ever higher on the ladder of evolutionary processes, engaging in purificatory rituals of self-perfection.21 These Instagram yogis are building on the mimetic impulse that defines the guru-disciple relationship, meaning that disciples are called to refashion themselves by modeling the guru. Such an understanding derives from Indic sources, but dovetails neatly with neoliberal conceptions of the self-disciplined subject who is “active, autonomous, prudent, responsible and calculating” (Godrej 2016, 9; Altglas 2014, 271-81). In this mimetic relationship, yogic adepts show the way for novices through their bodily comportment, self-disciplined behavior, and accounts of their personal spiritual experiences. Instagram yogis hybridize the premodern demand for the mimetic relationship between the guru and disciple with the current pressures to conform to neoliberal forms of subjectivity, and in so doing, they innovate in ways that are hypermobilized to global audiences through modern technologies. The pressures of this mimetic role were revealed directly on 14 June 2015, when Kino MacGregor, an active presence in the yoga community (who at the 19 Interview with Cara, Bhakti Fest, 7 September 2012. 20 Interview with Liam, Bhakti Fest, 7 September 2012. 21 In Indic texts as early as the Mahābhārata, the philosophical schools of Samkhya and Yoga imagined the world and persons in terms of a “ladder” levels of being that descended from some common source entity, with the purest and most holy at the top, and the thickest and most stagnant at the bottom (Fitzgerald 2012, 49).

56 

Amanda Lucia

time had 782,000 followers on Instagram and 264,000 on Facebook), posted on Instagram that she had severely injured her hamstring or hip, to the extent that she could not straighten or put weight on her leg (Remski 2015a).22 Still, in the following days, as if nothing had happened, she continued to proliferate her Instagram profile with her stock of (some previously recorded) short videos of her bikini-clad, muscular body performing sequences of highly difficult poses in beautiful beach and ocean surroundings. This spurious action may be about the maintenance of the brand (as some of her online critics responded), but it was also about maintaining the illusion of bodily transcendence, insuring that the role model of the supple and invincible yogic adept remained an unscathed and intact model for aspiring yogis. In the yogic field, the importance of self-presentation combines with the practical drive for self-promotion through marketing and publicity in efforts to grow a clientele. In this way, self-presentation becomes vitally important, as yogic bodies become evidence of personal transformation. Yogic accomplishment is indexed through the perfected body and conscious spirit. The supposition that ideal bodies correlate to perfected spirituality and consciousness has been a vulnerability and a point of heavy critique for the yoga community. Even when the “yoga industrial complex” has attempted to counteract this presumed correlation by adopting messages of body positivity, it struggles to create meaningful change.23 Some famous yogis use their struggle to attain their current ideal bodies as a means to proselytize to those who suffer within imperfect bodies. They represent themselves as “beacons of light” by issuing redemption narratives explaining how they triumphed over struggle, disease, and pain as a result of yoga practice. Govindas, a famed yoga teacher who teaches at Bhakti and Shakti Fests and Lightning in a Bottle, began practicing yoga as a means to overcome multiple digestive diseases.24 Other celebrity yoga instructors have written full memoirs that highlight their victories 22 Importantly, McGregor’s injury occurred while assisting a student, not while engaged in her own asana practice. 23 See Miller 2016. 24 Govindas is also one of the founders of Bhakti Yoga Shala in Santa Monica, California. He “[Govindas] (Ira Jeffrey Rosen) first came to yoga while living in Los Angeles in 1994 because of health concerns – specifically ulcerative colitis/crohn’s/inflammatory bowel disease. After years of many different practices with the intention of healing (hatha yoga, ayurveda, buddhist meditation etc.), Ira Rosen found his yogic ‘home’ in the path of Bhakti Yoga, the aspect of yoga frequently described as the ‘yoga of the heart’ or ‘the yoga of love and devotion.’ Not by avoiding or denying our life and health challenges, but only by accepting and courageously moving through and forward, the flower of our full appreciation and devotion to Life blooms. It is in this tradition of ‘Bhakti/Devotion’ where Ira was given his spiritual name – Govind Das or simply ‘Govindas’

Saving Yogis

57

over adversity as a result of postural yoga, such as Ana Forrest’s intense account of contending with child abuse, eating disorders, and detachment disorders in Fierce Medicine, or Bhava Ram’s gripping account of how yoga rescued him from a broken back and addiction to pain medications in Warrior Pose (Forrest 2011; Willis 2013). Each of these contemporary yogis echoes the Indian yoga emissary, regarded by many as the founder of modern yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar, who claimed that postural yoga cured his tuberculosis.25 The pressure to represent the self as an ideal yogi and thus attract followers also stems from the economic need and professional desire to grow one’s own yoga community of followers, hence personalizing and representing a particular yogic philosophy, method, or practice (i.e. branding). These proselytizing patterns of increasing dissemination and recruitment derive in part from the intense competition of the yoga market. In order to compete, leading yoga practitioners advocate for their own particular yoga teachings, as Rod Stryker’s website explains, “Our mission is to serve these teachings by continuing to be a leading resource for the dissemination of their wisdom, power and capacity to positively affect all aspects of modern life”.26 Many of the most famous yogis spread their messages widely through the Internet, in studio guest appearances, and in the circuit of retreats and festivals. Many travel within the circuit route from California (often Venice/Santa Monica or the Bay Area), to Vancouver, Hawaii, the Mediterranean (often Greece and Italy), Costa Rica, and then to Bali, New Zealand, Australia, or perhaps Thailand. For those who are interested in drawing a presumed authenticity from yoga’s imagined ancient roots, retreats and tours of India are particularly central. As a result, the most famous yoga teachers have become like the itinerant ministers of nineteenth-century America, traveling amazing distances in efforts to preach the gospel as widely as possible. Many of the most famous yoga teachers in the United States are proselytizing modern postural yoga as a portable practice through geographic networks enabled by globalization and modern technology. From sevā missions to prison yoga, from “beacons of light” to personal transformation, from guru-disciple mimesis to redemption narratives, multiple facets of contemporary yoga draw on religious idioms and rhetorical frames. which means ‘servant of the Divine’… This path of service is at the root of his spiritual life – to serve the Love and Spirit that lives in the hearts of all”. (Bhakti Yoga Shala, n.d.) 25 “The Ultimate Freedom Yoga”, 1976, film. 26 See www.parayoga.com/about. Accessed 9 April 2015.

58 

Amanda Lucia

Yoga instructors have developed expansive global networks, centralized only by the motion of their hypermobility and the itinerant ambitions of their proselytization. Their hypermobility enables them to attract global audiences and opens new avenues for hybridity and religious innovation as they connect their knowledge to new geographies and cultural contexts. However, their proselytizing and innovative hybridizations are merely an exaggeration and extension of the proselytizing impulses of the f irst generation of yogic emissaries. The historical trajectory of the dissemination of yoga has transitioned from the f irst generations of unidirectional migration (India to the West) to contemporary global hypermobility, but both forms of migratory journeys have generated this proselytizing model.

Yogic Migrations: India’s Gift to the World Yoga first came to the attention of Europeans when Alexander the Great documented the bodily contortions and ascetic extremities of Indian yogis whom he encountered in India in 327 BCE. 1500 years later, the Mughals also encountered Indian yogis during their conquests of India. Yogic texts were translated into Arabic and circulated in the West, and selected Mughal leaders were intrigued with the promise of yogic powers, while Sufis found significant confluences of thought with yogic philosophical ideas.27 The initial attraction to yoga stemmed immediately from the simple curiosity of the radically ascetic lifestyles and unusual bodily practices of Indian yogis. Indian yogis were (and are) striking in appearance and their rejection of commonplace human values (comfort, sustenance, progeny) and thus they create notable communities, marked by multiple levels of social distinction. There is also the allure of the dangerous combination of secrecy and power within their practices – a promise that has titillated great rulers and laity alike. Indic yoga draws from Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, but the modern expansion of yoga into global forums coincides with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century developments of global Hinduism (Jaffrelot 1996; Pennington 2005; van der Veer 1994). This historical confluence means that many people view yoga through a Hindu lens. At the same time, this confluence incites Hindus to claim yoga as a derivative of Hinduism on

27 See White 2009, 198-254; and Ernst 2013, 59-68.

Saving Yogis

59

the global stage. There is much at stake in tracing the origin myth of a multibillion dollar industry. At the turn of the twentieth century, many Hindu leaders became globally popular by presenting a form of Hinduism that they claimed was universal, sanatana dharma (“the universal truth”), and which they often articulated in the language of science and spirituality (Aravamudan, 2010; Lucia 2011; Altglas 2014). Leading Hindu reformers, from Rammohan Roy, Vivekananda to Chinmayananda, championed accommodationist approaches that presented a form of de-ritualized, monistic, scientif ic Hinduism on the world’s stages. Importantly, as Joanne Punzo Waghorne has shown, Vivekananda attempted to universalize Hinduism by presenting it globally as an accessible form of spirituality. He attempted to free this Indic spirituality from the legacies of caste and exclusivism. In the process he created a form of “de-ethnicized Hinduism”, that is to say, a form of spirituality that could travel beyond the cultural confines of India (Waghorne 2009). With regard to yoga, though he was against postural practices, Vivekananda promoted his contemplative version of raja yoga as a unifying, nonsectarian, applied spirituality that could be wielded for popular consumption in India, but also for the entire world (van der Veer 2001, 73-4). Several decades later, recognizable forms of modern postural yoga were being created in the Indian centers of Rishikesh and Mysore, drawing on Indian nationalist demands for a strong and muscular populace capable of leading the independence movement. These modern forms of postural yoga combined Indic forms of wrestling and bodybuilding and European forms of gymnastics and esoteric dance (Singleton 2010). Seminal figures like Shivananda and Tirumalai Krishnamacharya blended these traditions and practices together with indigenous yogic philosophy, meditation, breathing exercises, and physical movement. Their amalgamated product resulted in several of the most commonly taught forms of modern postural yoga today. Krishnamacharya, in particular, sculpted the bodies and minds of many highly renowned yoga teachers (and disseminators): his son T.K.V. Desikachar, his brother-in-law B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, A.G. Mohan, and the famed Russian-European dancer, Indra Devi. Except for Indra Devi, all of these foundational teachers were Hindu and they went on to disseminate yoga globally. These yogic adepts disseminated postural yoga as a cathartic and healing physical practice to students across the globe. Capitalizing on the mythos of the yogas of ancient India, they drew continuous lineages between esoteric ancient practices and their modern teachings. They built on Krishnamacharya’s

60 

Amanda Lucia

innovative sequence of postures and crafted a modern postural yoga that was ideally suited to the strains of modernity and the confines of industrial life. His students promoted yoga globally as a health science and believed in yoga’s universality. Those who learned from him adopted these foundations while adding their own personalizations into their practice. Although postural yoga was a conglomerated practice in its modern foundations, yogic adepts, who were teaching and learning in India, presented themselves as reviving the eternal and ancient wisdom of mystical India. Both Iyengar and Jois became globally famous as the fathers of modern postural yoga. They developed new systems of postural practice that expanded rapidly across the globe in the twentieth century, in large part because they were not explicitly linked to religion, as were the soteriological yogas of other more religiously inclined gurus, for example Paramhansa Yogananda. Still, they drew connections between India’s ancient religious history and the innovative forms of postural yoga practice they had created. This bolstered their credibility as purveyors of an ancient tradition and augmented their authority to disseminate their yogic ideas and practices outside of India.28 It is only quite recently that these yogic leaders have been recognized as modern innovators, instead of purveyors of a 5000-year-old tradition (Singleton 2010).29 Their innovations included modern forms of sequencing postures, the rapid movement from one posture to another (vinyāsa), and even particular postures. But more importantly, these leaders democratized yoga. They transformed it from an elite Indic system of knowledge available only to trained religious adepts within Indic religious systems to an agnostic, physical practice that anyone could do. As they and their students migrated outside of India and carried yoga onto the global stage, their reconceptualization of yoga as universal and democratic became one of their most salient and vital innovations. Both Peter van der Veer and Mark Singleton have argued that the drive to spread yogic philosophy and practice globally emerged in tandem with, if not as an expression of anticolonial nationalism in India (van der Veer 28 For more on orientalist constructions of India, see Inden 2006, 13-60. 29 This continues to be a topic of considerable debate. While most scholars have been convinced by the evidence that Singleton has offered (White 2014; Jain 2014), others maintain that there is evidence that even postural forms of yoga are 5000 years old (see the interventions of the Hindu American Foundation and Christopher Wallis in the popular yoga scene). With regard to the scholarly response, James Mallinson (2011) has suggested that there is much work yet to be done to unearth the history of postural yoga, but there is textual evidence for physical yogic practices since the early medieval period. See also Sir James Mallinson and Mark Singleton, eds. 2017. Roots of Yoga. New York: Penguin.

Saving Yogis

61

2009; Singleton 2010). Religious leaders in India began to see spirituality as a means to assert Indian self-worth in defense against colonial critiques. India began to disseminate spiritual ambassadors globally, who spoke in terms of spirituality and situated themselves as wayfaring guides for the West mired in industry and materialism (Lucia 2011). Swami Vivekananda (2003) repeatedly claimed that while the East [India] would learn industry from the West, the West must learn spirituality from the East [India]. He claimed yoga as “the Indian science of supra-consciousness” and presented it as scientific, a rational form of spirituality lacking in “religious specificity” that stands in stark opposition to religion and devotional rituals (van der Veer 2009, 267). After the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda attracted a following in the United States who practiced his meditative and breathing techniques and envisioned yoga as a scientif ic and spiritual practice that did not demand conversion. His treatise on Raja Yoga in 1896 became wildly popular among North Americans, particularly elite women. By the 1920s, with the rise of the bohemians, yoga exploded with popularity in the United States. In this yogic craze, Paramhansa Yogananda (who would later pen his famed treatise Autobiography of a Yogi) began teaching yogic exercises, including postures, to his followers.30 The 1920s also brought yogi-magicians to American stages and sideshows, tantric yogis on national tours and in the presses, and African-Americans who donned the garb and presence of Indian yogis with dreams of fame and fortune.31 By now, the Indian yogi was en vogue among the eclectics and the bohemians, and particularly among members of high society in the US (and in Europe and the UK). As the yogi’s popularity grew, so did his stagecraft. Yogis often presented the contortions of postural yoga and the breathing exercises of prānāyāma blended with a heavy dose of the exotification of India. At the same time, halfway around the world in India, Krishnamacharya and his students were developing new physical techniques to develop a strong and muscular Indian populace. They incorporated wrestling, bodybuilding, gymnastics, and even esoteric dance into their practice – all aimed to help modern yogis build a strong physique. This was quite a different goal than that of yoga as it is explained in the Bhagavād Gītā, as the union of the soul with God, or in Vedanta as the unification of ātman (“the essence of self”) and brahman (“the essence of the universe”), or conversely as in the Yoga Sūtras, as the unjoining of consciousness from matter, puruṣa from prakṛti. Nor were 30 See Pokazanyeva 2015. 31 See Deslippe 2014; and Rocklin 2016.

62 

Amanda Lucia

these modern yogis avatar-gurus (“divine gurus”) in the modern sense. They were the gurus of an older sort – those who had a specific field of knowledge to teach and did so through direct apprenticeship. But even though they were not religious gurus and their yoga was particular in its physical orientation, they did not reject the religious core at the center of yogic tradition. To ground his yogic practice in Indic traditions, Iyengar centralized Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras as the quintessential text of yoga. He also asserted that the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gītā, is “the most important authority on Yoga philosophy” (Iyengar 1976, 19). Even though he claimed that these Indic and Hindu scriptures are the roots of the tradition, he also sought to universalize it – to allow yoga to transcend any one location or religion. He explained, “Yoga is not a religion by itself. It is the science of religions, the study of which will enable a sādhaka [practitioner] to better appreciate his own faith” (ibid., 39). Jois, on the other hand, suggested that the surya namaskār sequence of his vinyāsa system could be traced directly to the oldest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas (Singleton 2010, 221-2, quoted in Jain 2014, 114). In a public interview, Jois affirmed, “The reason we do yoga is to become one with God and to realize Him in our hearts. You can lecture, you can talk about God, but when you practice correctly, you come to experience God inside. Some people start yoga and don’t even know of Him, don’t even want to know of Him. But for anyone who practices yoga correctly, the love of God will develop. And, after some time, a greater love for God will be theirs, whether they want it or not” (Brown 2013, 19). The Hare Krishnas, the most aggressively proselytizing Hindu group in the world, would later echo this sentiment: Fire is fire. It burns whether you believe in it or not (Hughes, Lee, Lucia, & Mukherjee 2015, 58). Both Iyengar and Jois sought the global distribution of yoga and they argued that postural yoga practice is innately beneficial for all persons. In his seminal book, The Light on Yoga, (often referred to as “The Bible of Modern Yoga”), B.K.S. Iyengar quoted the fifteenth-century text, the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, explaining, The young, the old, the extremely aged, even the sick and the infirm obtain perfection in Yoga by constant practice. Success will follow him who practises, not him who practises not. Success in Yoga is not obtained by the mere theoretical reading of sacred texts. Success is not obtained by wearing the dress of a yogi or a sanyāsi (a recluse), nor by talking about it. Constant practice alone is the secret of success.32 32 Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, chapter 1, verses 64-6, quoted in Iyengar 1976, 30.

Saving Yogis

63

Today, the foremost description of Iyengar Yoga on its US website reads, “Yoga is for everyone” (IYNAUS, n.d.). Jois is often quoted to have said, “Anyone can practice [yoga]. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn’t have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga yoga”.33 In both of these fundamental strains of yogic thought that proliferated globally in the twentieth century, yoga was presented as a religiously unspecific universal practice that demands only commitment for success.34 The leading ambassadors for yoga believed that anyone of any faith could practice yoga, but they still privileged Hindu texts, like the Bhagavad Gītā and the Ṛg Veda as the sources of yoga. This is the quintessential move of proselytizing Hinduism, which propagates inclusivism in the form of hierarchical relativism. As Peter van der Veer (1994, 68) explains, “The many gods and paths are manifestations of the One who is formless – but some of these manifestations are higher than others. Moreover, they perform different functions, and in a hierarchical order. The general idea seems to be that other paths do not have to be denied as heretical but that they are inferior and thus cater to inferior beings”. As such, anyone of any faith can do yoga, but it is Īśvara in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gītā, or the Hindu gods of the Ṛg Veda, who occupy the heart of the tradition.

Conclusion The global proliferation of postural yoga is the legacy of these twentiethcentury yogic emissaries. Today, the majority of students around the globe is introduced to yoga through physical postures and a largely secular context. As Burçak Ertimur and Gokcen Coskuner-Balli have argued, the global yoga market is divided between spiritual, medical, and fitness models – and the spiritual model is becoming decreasingly important in the United States. Their recent quantitative research study concludes that, “over the three 33 Matthew Remski (2015b) suggests that Jois may be paraphrasing Pancham Sinh’s 1914 translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā, 1.64, “Whether young, or too old, sick or lean, one who discards laziness, gets success if he practises yoga”. James Mallinson suggests that the paraphrase is taken from the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, v.40, wherein a-tandritaḥ can be translated as “not tired”, which could possibly be stretched to mean one who is not tired, or “one who discards laziness”. 34 Even today, yoga-for-everyone advocacy articles, such as Cody Groth’s “Why Everyone Can and Should Do Yoga”, written for Yoga Digest, proliferate the Internet.

64 

Amanda Lucia

decade time frame of the study [1980-2009], the yoga market was decreasingly associated with the logic of spirituality and increasingly associated with the medical and fitness logics” (Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli 2014, 53). Their data revealed that spirituality had been pushed to the margins of mainstream American yoga. They also suggested that it was Indians and Indian gurus in particular who retained the spiritual core of yoga and proselytized its benefits globally. With the decline of the Indic guru-disciple relationship, the spiritual content of yoga also declined. Furthermore, Americans sought to make yoga socially, culturally, and politically acceptable thus increased its commercial logics. In order to successfully integrate yoga into the global context, they focused heavily on the fitness, medical, and commercial logics and minimized the spiritual foundations (Feuerstein 2003). In most yoga studios, Hinduism and spirituality are routinely recoded into secularized or New Age language in order to increase the studio’s marketability. Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli (2014, 51) quote a yoga studio director saying, “We don’t do any chanting because people are not comfortable with it… We never use the word ‘God.’ We talk about energy, we talk about peace, we talk about mindfulness. We use those New-Agey kinds of words”. These studios gamble on the assumption that yoga can be practiced for solely physical aims productively, so long as one confines the practice to the surface of the tradition. But when one dips below the surface into Indic cultural heritage, proscribed yogic texts, or the greater context of yoga, one quickly becomes immersed within yoga’s religious roots: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While many global practitioners of postural yoga view the practice as mere exercise, others aim to deepen their yoga practice and expand it beyond the physical postures. As they educate themselves more deeply about yoga, whether through readings, study with a teacher, retreats, or festivals, modern yogis are likely to find themselves embedded in multiple religious ideas and practices that contextualize postural yoga. In their readings of primary and secondary religious sources, their meditations, and their personal rituals, some find the active ingredients for a vibrant catalyst for self-transformation. Through an exploration into the spiritual modalities and religious systems that exist on the immediate peripheries of postural yoga, practitioners begin to design a new spiritual habitus. Despite the fact that self-transformation is neither exclusive nor institutional, the gradual intensity of the recalibration of spiritual affinity, if not “religious (re)affiliation”, resembles narratives of conversion. Invigorated with redemption and salvation narratives describing how yoga “changed” or even “saved” lives, many of these practitioners aim to share the practice with others. They become rooted in the belief system that yoga can change the world, one individual transformation at a time.

Saving Yogis

65

As the leaders of yoga culture circulate the globe, spreading their newfound knowledge with eager novices, their itinerancy easily conjures the methods, if not the modes, of missionaries as they endeavor to spread the gospel to more and more souls. Like their forbearers, modern global yogic adepts sermonize, missionize, and proselytize in efforts to transform society into their multifarious visions of yogic utopia and self-perfection. Early twentieth-century yogis were most concerned to establish migratory networks of proselytization from India to the West. But today, yoga has expanded into networks of global hypermobility that extend far beyond the dialectic between India and the West. American yogis have taken control over the dissemination of modern postural yoga and in many ways, they have eclipsed the representation of Indian yogis. In addition to dominating the yoga field, some American yogis aim to expand yoga into the global theaters that they believe need yoga the most – the geographies plagued by stress, violence, and poverty. In its most overt forms, American yogis are following similar patterns of relief missionary work that have been established in carefully articulated networks by their Christian forbearers. In its more subtle forms, they enact the rhetorical strategies and the positionality of missionaries in their efforts to spread yoga as a universal good. In analyzing the global flows of yogic hypermobility, we must recognize that mobility is not only celebratory. Networks of mobility can recreate historical patterns of violence and oppression. American yogis may very well recreate patterns of dominance and subordination through their missionizing practices and rhetorical strategies, especially when applying them to vulnerable populations. The tactics used for the dissemination of yoga globally have traditionally been proselytizing and focused on inciting yogic “conversions” – even when yogic emissaries present yoga practice as secular. Just as religion is being transmitted through “globally integrated networks”,35 “cellular systems”,36 and “hyphal knots”,37 similarly modern postural yoga follows this religious model, even if it is being marketed as a secular practice. Yoga emissaries have expanded the practice into secular and religious fields and they often blend traditional yogic spirituality with their own worldviews, such as 35 “GINs consist of complex, enduring and predictable networked connections between peoples, objects and technologies stretching across multiple and distant spaces and times”. (Urry 2003, 56-7) 36 Cellular systems consist of rhizomically networked cells, as opposed to linear, “vertebrate systems”. (Appadurai 2006, 21) 37 “‘Hyphal knots’ are those key intersections amid the complex networks of mycelia that spread subterraneously throughout the ecosystem and play critical roles in the circulation of resources and information between organic and inorganic matter”. (Urban 2015, 6-7)

66 

Amanda Lucia

environmentalism, feminism, psychology, or aspects of non-yogic religions, such as indigenous religions, tantrism, or Daoism. This hybridization of yoga with multiple worldviews reflects the ways in which its mobility is forcing it into contact and dialogue with existing secular and religious systems. As yoga emissaries position yoga as a universal good within multiple geographical contexts, they hybridize to adapt to the sociohistorical, cultural, and religious conditions of each location and thus become generators of yogic innovations.

References Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage. New York: Oxford University Press. American Marketing Association [AMA]. n.d. “About AMA”. Last accessed 28 June 2015. www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Definition-of-Marketing.aspx. Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Aravamudan, Srinivas. 2006. Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Associated Press. 2015. “Millions across India, World Take Part in Yoga Day Exercises”. 21 June. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/06/20/ world/asia/ap-as-india-yoga-day.html. Austin-Broos, Diane. 2003. “The Anthropology of Conversion”. In The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, edited by Andrew Buckser & Stephen D. Glazier, 1-12. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Bhakti Yoga Shala. n.d. “Yoga Teachers and Kirtan Guides”. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www.bhaktiyogashala.com/bios/govindas.html. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brown, Candy Gunther. 2013. “Declaration”. Sedlock v. Baird. Last accessed 31 October 2016. www.nclplaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DECLARATION-OFCANDY-BROWN-FINAL.pdf. Carrette, Jeremy, & Richard King. 2005. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. New York: Routledge. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Corn, Seane. 2015. “Dos and Don’ts of International Service”. Conference call, 6 April. —. 2017. “Body Prayer: The Body and Beyond.” Last accessed 4  March 2017. www.codyapp.com/plans/the-body beyond?utm_source=coachinstagram​ &utm _campaign=bodybeyond _launch&utm _medium=social&utm _ content=bodybeyond_coachinstagram_seane_022017.

Saving Yogis

67

Csordas, Thomas. 2009. “Introduction”. In Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization, edited by Thomas Csordas, 1-30. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DeMichelis, Elizabeth. 2005. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Deslippe, Phillip. 2014. “The Hindu in Hoodoo: Fake Yogis, Pseudo-Swamis, and the Manufacture of African American Folk Magic”. Amerasia Journal 40 (1): 34-56. Ernst, Carl. 2013. “Muslim Interpreters of Yoga”. In Yoga: The Art of Transformation, edited by Debra Diamond, 59-68. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Ertimur, Burçak, & Gokcen Coskuner-Balli. 2014. “Market Evolution Through Shifts in Institutional Logics”. Vol. 42 of NA – Advances in Consumer Research, edited by June Cotte & Stacy Wood, 123-9. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research. Feuerstein, Georg. 2003. The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice. Boston, MA: Shambala. Firstpost. 2015. “No Compromise on Surya Namaskar: Sadhus Threaten Protests If It Isn’t Included in Yoga Day Event”. 9 June. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www. f irstpost.com/india/no-compromise-on-surya-namaskar-sadhus-threatenprotests-if-it-isnt-included-in-yoga-day-event-2287476.html. Fitzgerald, James L. 2012. “A Prescription for Yoga and Power in the Mahābhārata”. In Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White, 43-57. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Forrest, Ana. 2011. Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit. New York: Harper One. Godrej, Farah. 2016. “The Neoliberal Yogi and the Politics of Yoga”. Political Theory (April): 1-29. Gregoire, Carolyn. 2013. “How Yoga Became a $27 Billion Industry – And Reinvented American Spirituality”. Huffington Post, 16 December. Last accessed 4 March 2017. www.huff ingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/how-the-yoga-industrylos_n_4441767.html. Groth, Cody. n.d. “Why Everyone Can and Should Do Yoga”. Yoga Digest. Last accessed 30 January 2016. https://yogadigest.com/why-everyone-can-should-do-yoga. Hackett, Rosalind. (2008) 2014. “Revisiting Proselytization in the Context of Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars”. In Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars, edited by Rosalind Hackett, 1-34. New York: Routledge. First published by Equinox. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Holy Yoga. n.d. “Instructor FAQ”. Last accessed 9 April 2015. https://holyyoga.net/ become-an-instructor/faq.

68 

Amanda Lucia

Hughes, Jennifer Scheper, James Kyung-jin Lee, Amanda Lucia, & S. Romi Mukherjee. 2015. “Take it Outside: Practicing Religion in Public”. BOOM: The Journal of California 5 (4): 54-63. Inden, Ronald. 2006. “Orientalist Constructions of India”. In Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History, 13-60. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Iyengar, B.K.S. 1976. Light on Yoga. New York: Schocken Books. Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States (IYNAUS). n.d. “Iyengar Yoga”. Last accessed 6 March 2017. https://iynaus.org/iyengar-yoga. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. New York: Columbia University Press. Jain, Andrea R. 2015. Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Kurien, Prema. 2007. A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lucia [Huffer], Amanda. 2011. “Hinduism without Religion: Amma’s Movement in America”. CrossCurrents: Special Issue: Religion in Asia Today, Vol. 61, Issue 3: 374-398. Mallinson, James. 2011. “Haṭha Yoga”. Vol. 3 of Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism, edited by Knut Jacobsen, 770-81. London: Brill. McKean, Lise. 1996. Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Medlock, Stephanie. n.d. “Go Give Yoga Haiti Mission: A Need for Yoga”. Last accessed 23 August 2016. www.gogiveyoga.org/impact-statements. Miller, Amara. 2016. “Eating the Other Yogi: Kathryn Budig, the Yoga Industrial Complex, and Appropriation of Body Positivity”. Race and Yoga Journal 1 (1). Nair, Dipti. 2015. “How the $80 Billion Business of Yoga is a Win-Win Game for Mind and Pocket”. YourStory, 21 June. Last accessed 4 March 2017. https://yourstory. com/2015/06/international-yoga-day. Nussbaum, Martha. 2009. The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Off the Mat Into the World [OTM]. n.d. “Seva Challenge”. Last accessed 6 March 2017. www.offthematintotheworld.org/seva-challenge. Pennington, Brian. 2005. Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Pokazanyeva, Anna. 2015. “Here Comes The Yogiman: Tales of Enlightenment and (Super)power with Particular Reference to the Life and Work of Paramahansa Yogananda”. PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara. Rahula, Walpola. 1974. What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada. New York: Grove Press.

Saving Yogis

69

Remski, Matthew. 2015a. “Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana”. Yoga International, 13 July. Last accessed 13 July 2015. https://yogainternational.com/article/view/kinos-hip-reflections-on-extreme-practice-andinjury-in-asana/. —. 2015b. “WAWADIA Update #10// ‘Lazy People Can’t Practice’: Thoughts on a Yoga Meme”. Last accessed 28 June 2015. www.matthewremski.com/wordpress/ wawadia-update-10-lazy-people-cant-practice-thoughts-on-a-yoga-meme. Riesebrodt, Martin. 2010. The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rocklin, Alexander. 2016. “‘A Hindu Is White Although He is Black’: Hindu Alterity and the Performativity of Religion and Race between the United States and the Caribbean”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (1): 181-210. Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Strauss, Sarah. 2005. Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Suri, Manil. 2015. “India and The Politics of Yoga”. New York Times, 19 June. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/opinion/india-and-thepolitics-of-yoga.html?_r=0. Urban, Hugh. 2015. Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Urry, John. 2003. Global Complexity. New York: Polity Press. van der Veer, Peter. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2001. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2009. “Global Breathing: Religious Utopias in India and China”. In Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization, edited by Thomas Csordas, 263-78. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Vasquez, Manuel. 2011. More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Vivekananda, Swami. 2003. “My Master”. Vol. 4 of Lectures and Discourses, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press and Bookshop. Waghorne, Joanne Punzo. 2009. “Global Gurus and the Third Stream of American Religiosity”. In Political Hinduism: The Religious Imagination in Public Spheres, edited by Vinay Lal, 122-49. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. White, David Gordon. 2009. Sinister Yogis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. —. 2014. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

70 

Amanda Lucia

Willis, Brad (Bhava Ram). 2013. Warrior Pose: How Yoga (Literally) Saved My Life. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books. Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance. 2016a. The 2016 Yoga in America Study. Last accessed 19  January 2016. www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016%20Yoga%20 in%20America%20Study%20RESULTS.pdf. —. 2016b. “The 2016 Yoga in America Study conducted by Yoga Journal & Yoga Alliance”. 13 January. Last accessed 4 March 2017. www.yogaalliance. org/2016YogaInAmericaStudy.

About the author Amanda Lucia is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of California, Riverside where she is Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion. Lucia’s current book project deconstructs the popular category of “spirituality” by investigating its construction and performance in yoga and transformational festivals. Her first book, Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014) investigated transnationalism and gender in a global guru movement. More broadly, her research engages transnational, global Hinduism by focusing on religious migrations and movements established between North America and India since the early 19th century. After earning a BA in Religion and India Studies at Indiana University, she completed her MA and PhD in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Her current interests include guru authority and sexuality, the logics of bricolage spirituality, and the politics of cultural representation. Her articles have been published in History of Religions, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Journal of Hindu Studies, and CrossCurrents.

3

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affectwithin Transnational Networks A Case Study of Three Ritual Events of the Xinghua (Henghua) Communities in Singapore Kenneth Dean

Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch03 Abstract This chapter explores the continuous reinvention and circulation of ritual traditions within the migration from Putian, Fujian, China, to Southeast Asia. It outlines the historical background of the Henghua migration, and explores how migrants transformed their rituals, creating new gender roles and social relations both in Southeast Asia and back in their home region. The mobility of migrants, ritual traditions, and ritual specialists who move across the entire migration network generates complex network effects. Efforts to spread ritual traditions beyond dialect boundaries are also discussed, as is the role of affect within complex, sensory saturated rituals: 1) a universal deliverance rite; 2) a male spirit-medium training session; and 3) female spirit-medium training sessions that have spread across Southeast Asia and back to Putian, China. Keywords: Southeast Asia, Putian, migration, ritual events

Introduction This chapter examines the history and ritual events of migrants from the Xinghua region (Putian and Xianyou counties of Fujian, China) in Singapore and Indonesia, in order to explore the ways in which these migrant

72 

Kenneth Dean

communities transformed their rituals, and in the process extended their rites beyond their own dialect boundaries, while also creating new gender roles and transforming social relations both in Southeast Asia and back in their home region of Putian, Fujian. The continuous reinvention and circulation of tradition has been a prominent feature of Chinese migrant communities in Southeast Asia for centuries. In order to bring out some of the effects of the mobility of migrants, ritual traditions, and ritual specialists, the chapter first outlines the socioeconomic and cultural historical backgrounds of the Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, through an overview of recent historiography and the analysis of local historical sources including temple and lineage records, stone inscriptions, and liturgical manuscripts. The next section of the chapter adopts a multi-sited anthropological method, examining ritual events in different parts of the Xinghua migration to Southeast Asia. Ritual traditions and ritual specialists (spirit mediums, Daoist masters, temple leaders, and members of the migrant ritual community) circulate between these sites, going back and forth from Sumatra to Singapore to Jakarta to Putian, even as these highly regionally specific ritual traditions begin to attract members of other dialect groups in Singapore. I focus below on the migrants from Putian and Xianyou counties of Fujian province. This region, historically known as Xinghua Prefecture, was originally considered part of the greater Minnan region. The Xinghua region is currently populated by approximately three million people who speak the local Puxian dialect, which is incomprehensible to Minnan speakers in the west and south, and to the Minbei-dialect speakers in the north. Large-scale out-migration from the Xinghua area was a fairly late phenomenon, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and increasing in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, most migrants to Singapore could only find work as rickshaw pullers. Before long, these Xinghua migrants (called Henghua people in Singapore, using Minnan pronunciation) took over the newly introduced bicycle industry and they went on to dominate the public bus companies, automobile spare parts distribution networks, and other aspects of the booming transportation industry in Singapore, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The Henghua migrants monopolized the local transportation industry, a key economic niche in the port cities of Southeast Asia. They used adoption and chain migration to bring additional workers into their business networks spread all across Southeast Asia. They fostered the movement of people, capital, and ideas back and forth within the transnational spaces of the networks (Sangren 1984; Ong 1999; Ong and Nonini 1997; Kuhn 2008; Dean & Zheng 2010).

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

73

Approximately 300,000 Henghua migrants or their descendants now live in Southeast Asia, with over 20,000 in Singapore. There they have established twenty temples, representing the full range of different kinds of temples found in Putian and Xianyou. These include temples of a regional ritual alliance of several villages, village level temples, temples dedicated to local gods, as well as a particular lineage, temples linked to specific spirit-medium traditions, temples of the Three in One religious movement founded by Lin Zhao’en in the late sixteenth century (Dean 1998), Buddhist temples linked to founding monasteries in Putian or Xianyou, temples dedicated to the goddess Mazu from the coastal fishing and peddler villages of Putian, and Christian churches with close ties to Putian Methodist church communities. The Henghua migrants are scattered across Malaysia and Indonesia as well, where they have built large temples, native-place associations, and churches in Medan, Tibing Tingi, Kesaran, Jakarta, Kuching, Sibu, Johor Bahru, Malacca, Seremban, Klang, and Kuala Lumpur. Theorists of the Chinese diaspora have proposed two basic models of the Chinese diaspora: Adam McKeon’s model (2001) of “rays” emanating from multiple points of origin in various qiaoxiang villages, and the “refracted rays” model developed by Mark Frost (2005) to highlight the local adaptation, transformation, and reworking of flows of ideas, people, funds, and practices from China within and between different sites in Southeast Asia. This chapter suggests a new model of circulatory flows back and forth between various nodes of these networks. While McKeon’s model allows for the movements of individuals back and forth between Southeast Asia and their home villages many times over their lifetimes, and while Frost emphasizes the relative independence of Southeast Asia nodes and their ability to create transversal networks across the region, the current flows of people, ritual knowledge, and ritual experience move all around the entire network. We will look at the movements of ritual specialists (Daoist ritual masters, Buddhist monks, ritual opera performers, spirit mediums, and altar-associates). Another important set of flows includes the movements of temple carpenters, wood-carvers, mural painters, and other craftsmen connected to the regular restoration of Chinese temples and ancestral halls in Southeast Asia. By examining the role of rituals within these network nodes, we can gain new understandings of the actions, movements, and affiliations of individual ritual specialists and temple leaders, and of the spatial and temporal (and translocative and transtemporal) imaginaries of temple communities. Some recent examples from the anthropological literature include Steven Vertovec’s (2000) study of the role of temples in different locations in the

74 

Kenneth Dean

Hindu diaspora and Janet Hoskins’s (2015) fascinating account of the development of the Caodai tradition in Vietnam and in the Vietnamese diaspora, and the return flow of ritual change and claims to religious authority of that diasporic community, now amplified and diversified by the effects of the Internet. Transnational studies is aware that it encounters a long history of such flows in Southeast Asia. As Marshall Sahlins (1988, 1993) remarks, this is the place where one can find the long history of globalization in the everyday interactions of different cultural and ethnic groups in the port cities of Southeast Asia. As I will discuss below, there is a need to be aware of the historical layers of the dense networks of transnational institutions we find in the region. More recently, migration studies have noted the need to examine the following: 1) homeland/hostland relations; 2) flow of remittances; 3) labor conditions; 4) gender roles; and 5) religious communities. The political relations of trust networks – links between religious trust and trade and political formations – was a major theme in the work of Charles Tilly that still has much to offer for comparative analysis. Recent work in religious studies has focused on migration and transnational flows. Peggy Levitt’s (2009) God Needs No Passports introduces concepts of “simultaneity” in transnational religious communities and social fields. Thomas Tweed’s (2006) Crossing and Dwelling has proposed a new definition of religion that pays close attention to several different scales of transnational religious experience: 1) bodily effects; 2) domestic spaces (including gendered roles); 3) communal events; and 4) translocal/transtemporal dimensions. This chapter adopts methods of historical analysis, multi-sited ethnography, and ritual studies to examine the mobilities of migrant communities and the effects of their transforming ritual traditions on themselves, their immediate surroundings, and their home region.

Historical Background of the Henghua Migration Beginning in the sixteenth century, a vast overseas southeast Chinese commercial and cultural trading empire spread from the Minnan-speaking region of Fujian to all around the coastal ports of Southeast Asia, replacing the earlier established Arab trading networks (Reid 1988, 1993; Wang 1990; Kuhn 2008; note that these migrants are referred to as Hokkien [lit. Fujian] speakers in Southeast Asia). The new Minnan coastal trading empire was built up through the overseas extension of several social and cultural institutions which structured local society in the Minnan region, including especially temples and lineages, but also native-place associations and

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

75

brotherhoods, and a distinctive form of Chinese capitalism (Ng 1983; Ptak 1990; Kwee 2007). These institutions changed and mutated in different ways at different times in different places. This chapter explores some of these cultural, social, and ritual innovations, and examines their impact back upon their ancestral villages in the greater Minnan area (Kuah 2000; Dean 2011; Dean & Zheng 2010). Unique features of the Minnan translocal, transregional and transnational networks included the building of temples dedicated to the worship of regional gods of the Minnan pantheon, and the production of business trust through rituals performed in these temples (which were also the site of huiguan, business centers of the Minnan communities abroad). Social institutions evolved within these networks, including common-surname associations, credit-rotating associations, burial associations, and other shenminghui (god-worshipping associations) (Yen 1986: Sangren 1987). These networks developed a new kind of flexible capitalism with Chinese characteristics (Kwee 2007). This includes forms of flexible accumulation or “guerrilla capital”, pooling of funds (often within temples) and sponsoring of moneylending associations. Major business and temple leaders could pool considerable funds to bid for the monopoly over the local preparation and sale of opium. The opium monopoly required enforcers, later stigmatized and eventually criminalized as “secret societies”. These male brotherhoods had their own rituals of initiation and principles of hierarchy. Most were based in the Chinese temples alongside other groups. Mid-level Chinese businessmen could borrow from Chinese moneylenders and temple leaders and invest in long-distance trade. Small-scale entrepreneurs could access rotating funds from the credit pools based in the temples. Chinese from different dialect groups monopolized different economic niches, spreading out in business networks across Southeast Asia to source raw materials, to sell a wide range of goods, and, in Indonesia, to collect taxes for the colonial government. The special features of this new kind of capitalism, which was completely different from the joint-stock corporation mode of capitalism of the Western colonial East India companies, contributed to the development of the first truly global markets (Lockard 2010). The idea of alternative modes of capitalism arising amongst transnational religious networks in Southeast Asia was raised by Kwee Hui Kian (2007) in a brilliant article entitled “Pockets of Empire”, which outlined how Chinese social institutions in Southeast Asia had become the bearers of a unique form of capitalism. Earlier scholars had pointed out the flexibility of Chinese social institutions in the Southeast Asian context (Sangren 1984; Tien 1953). Zheng Zhenman (2001) has shown how lineages in coastal Fujian had

76 

Kenne th Dean

transformed from collective units to hierarchical units run by managerial elites who sometimes rented lineage land to tenant farmers from the same lineage. He also shows how the lure of profits and the limited access to land led some lineages to sell shares in the lineage investments, even to unrelated investors. Unrelated male children would be adopted by these lineages and sent overseas to see if they would succeed abroad. If they succeeded, they would be welcomed back as honored members of the lineage, and a spirit tablet would be set up for them in the lineage hall. If they failed and died overseas, another boy would be adopted and sent out. These lineages had become transnational joint-stock corporations. Tien (1953) documented how unrelated groups of Chinese migrants with a common surname, living in Borneo, could invent a mythical common ancestor and worship him together in an empty grave, as a commonsurname group. Many such successful experiments made their way back to Fujian, transforming local social institutions. For example, we see the rise of common-surname associations in Fujian in the mid-Qing dynasty based in many county centers, and later in major cities, as China entered into another phase in mercantile capitalist development (Rowe 1989). Kwee shows that the temples and huiguan (“regional business associations”) concentrated unique features of Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia – the temple/huiguan were centers for regular gatherings as well as large donations, small-scale moneylending, credit pooling, and investing in supply chain distribution systems. Chinese business leaders worked as middlemen and compradors in many Southeast Asian economies. They also served as leaders of the temples and associations. The temple/huiguan assisted in the recruitment and assignment of labor and in the transportation of laborers back and forth to their plantations and mines, and then back to China. An entire infrastructure for the transmission of remittances was developed, specializing in using capital for short-term investments before the remittances were cashed in upon delivery. Meanwhile, leaders of the temples and associations formed syndicates to engage in cartel capitalism – bidding for the opium farms, alcohol, and prostitution that provided the British colonial government with over half its annual income in the Straits Settlements. Many economists have pointed to the close relationship between Chinese merchants and local officials as examples of crony capitalism and characterized Chinese business firms as instances of familial capitalism working through kinship and locality ties. But, other observers have questioned the stereotype and noted the flexibility of Chinese modes of “guerrilla capitalism” or hybrid capitalism in response to changing dimensions of the global economic order. The late nineteenth- and early

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

77

twentieth-century rise of Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Chinese banks in Southeast Asia marks another significant shift in the focus of local Chinese leaders in Southeast Asia away from the temples and association, in response to rising Chinese nationalism, reformist discourses attacking Chinese religion as superstition, and colonial policies designed to criminalize the enforcement arm of the Chinese temples and associations – the so-called secret societies (Dean, forthcoming in 2017). We still need more information on how Chinese religious networks, made up of Chinese entrepreneurs, interacted with changing forms of capitalism in Asia – i.e. mercantilist, colonial-imperial, newly integrated global capitalism supported by steamships and telegraph lines, the rise of post-colonial economies and models of developmentalism, the more recent rise of finance capitalism and neoliberalism, and not to mention, Chinese state corporatist capitalism. Thus, in the study of transnational religious networks in Southeast Asia, one has to follow the money. This is important because the current study of capitalism is temporarily dominated by Thomas Piketty’s (2014) vision of the inevitable laws of capital growth and the seemingly inevitable resulting economic inequality, in which the rich get richer, which can only be solved by having the Socialist Party in France raise taxes on the rich to mitigate the recent extreme disparity. Of course, Piketty is chief economic advisor to this party, but even so, it seems impossible to raise taxes – well then, we all had to just better accept the inevitability of economic inequality. What is missing in Piketty’s account is the role of the managerial elite within finance capitalism. Thorstein Veblen (1898; 1904) has already identified this group as central to the development of capital in the twentieth century. These are the people who led the world into the financial derivatives crisis, and they are the ones who have disarmed official legislation developed to constrain their behavior after the financial collapse. The history of this financial managerial elite within multinational corporations goes back to the British and Dutch East Indies Companies. These were the earliest major corporations, with both shareholders and managerial elites. British legislation made these corporations into legal persons, and established protections for them which the managers would soon learn to exploit for their own profits. Central to these developments was the regulation of privateering and the outlawing of piracy, and the general decline of hostilities between what Charles Tilly characterized as the “criminal states” of Western Europe (2005). Now there were greater spoils to have in the East Indies and the New World than from fighting one another. Insurance companies, banking, and moneylending developed alongside the rise of colonial trading to protect shipping from loss

78 

Kenne th Dean

and piracy, and to provide Western shipping with the latest technological innovations in weaponry. Financial risk, insurance, debt, and speculation were central to the evolution of modern capitalism, and the colonial corporations were central to this process. Risk was distributed between the shareholders. And the financial managers were able to make money and produce more money. Thus, when comparing religious networks in Southeast Asia and examining the trust mechanism they developed to foster long-distance trade, it is important to compare their methods with those of mainstream mercantilist Western colonial capitalism, and its financial managerial elite. This adds another dimension to the examination of the conversion to Christianity as conversion to (Western) modernity (van der Veer 2004, 2013). Of course, documenting alternative forms of capitalism in Asia does not put off the inevitable question as to whether these forms all inevitably ultimately converge – just as all theories of alternative modernities seem to imply – in some kind of in-the-last instance convergence with Western capitalist modernity. There are still important issues to be examined such as the relationship of ritual to trust, and of trust to debt and credit, and the role of ritual practices, group affinities, and shared cosmologies in underwriting debt and establishing trust.

Transnational Networks and Flows of Ritual (Specialists, Knowledge, Materials) The study of transnational networks also needs to draw on sociological and anthropological perspectives: we need to examine forms of symbolic and associative capital and explore the role of individuals within networks. In Southeast Asia, a key variable was the role of gender – local women were often key business partners and were often the only ones who could register property. We also need to constantly check the kinds of interactions that occurred in different historical phases between the Baba Peranakans and new migrants, and between the new migrants based on regional language and affiliations. If one can say that Hindu networks are diasporic because Indian Hindus abroad share a sense of the sacredness of Mother India – is there any variation when the chief migrant group is Tamil and their main deities are part of a much more regional pantheon? When it comes to Chinese networks, there does not seem to have been such a powerful connection to a sacred center – there was of course a sense of a shared superior civilization that made them all Huaren as opposed to Yi barbarians (terms

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

79

which regularly occur in the epigraphy). But the specific sacred sites back home were not part of a generalized sacredness of the empire or the land (although there was some mention in the epigraphy of the official canonization of certain gods). The emperor was far away, and this was especially true for overseas Chinese traders who, for the most part, were acting illegally outside the protection of the Chinese state. What was more important was that the power of the gods could travel with their incense, animated statues, and spirit mediums. Daoist ritual spaces could be created anywhere by the laying out of cosmological symbols and the hanging of scrolls of the highest emanations of the Dao: the Three Pure Ones. Chinese ritual techniques were civilizational techniques, in Marcel Mauss’s sense – they could move across state boundaries. They are portable – like gods and altars – they can fit in a wooden trunk, or be contained within a talisman kept in a pouch hung around the neck. Temples could be built overseas which would be sites for all the same powers of the gods as could be manifested back home. Such networks may be translocative, and even global, but they do not claim to be universal. But there was still one important difference, which drew religious groups back to their founding temples for pilgrimages to present incense ( jinxiang). The power of the founding temple was acknowledged and temple members periodically sought to recharge their own incense burner by gathering more incense from the founding temple. Of course, such return pilgrimages helped build up networks and enhanced the flow of people, funds, ideas, and practices. The new circulations of capital flowing back through the networks to rebuild founding temples and ancestral halls in China can provide new insight into the potential for accumulation within nodes of this longlasting network, and its ability to redirect funds. Over the past 30 years, beginning in 1979, this vast network has turned its energies back toward China – investing billions of dollars in hometowns and villages in southeast China. They have also invested in the reconstruction of their village temples, ancestral halls, and Buddhist monasteries, many of which were destroyed or damaged during the Cultural Revolution. Across China, and especially in southeast China, over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of temples and ancestral halls have been rebuilt. This restoration of local cultural systems is a major phenomenon in world history, but it has scarcely been studied (Kuah 2000; Dean 2010, 2011; Dean & Zheng 2010). This chapter examines another transformation of this process, namely the flow back and forth of ritual knowledge, beginning in the early 1990s. Over the past two or three decades, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, ritual

80 

Kenneth Dean

opera troupes, puppeteers, and marionettists have been contracted to visit a range of sites within the Minnan and the Henghua networks in Southeast Asia. It is more economical for these ritual specialists to perform rites or ritual plays at a series of temples ranging from Kuching to Sumatra, with stops in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in between. But there has been a return flow of ritual knowledge as well, with seasoned members of the Henghua spirit-medium altar associations based in temples in Medan, Tibing Tingi, Kisaran, Semerang, Singapore, and Jakarta regularly returning to assist in group initiation rites for spirit mediums in village temples in Putian. In order to study these flows, it is necessary to conduct research in the home villages (qiaoxiang) and temples of the overseas Chinese in the Xinghua region, while following the flows back and forth to temples and communities in Southeast Asia. Multi-sited research is needed to trace the distinctive features of these transregional and transnational networks. The spread of religious networks is one of the most important cultural aspects of globalization today (Dean 2011). The revival over the past thirty years of hundreds of thousands of popular god temples and their local ritual traditions in rural south and southeast China is closely related to the renewed flows of ritual knowledge, funding, labor, and faith within the temple networks linking numerous temples in these regions to an extended network of branch temples across Southeast Asia. Although these transforming networks and their ritual traditions are less well known than the rapid spread of Christianity in northern China, they are nonetheless a powerful force within everyday rural life in a changing China (Dean 2003, 2011). The study of Chinese networks in Southeast Asia has primarily concentrated on mapping trading routes, and assessing the role of Chinese merchants in these commodity circuits (Ng 1983; Wang 1990; Ptak 1990; Wade 2003; Lockard 2010; Tagliacozzo & Chang 2011). However, it is important to note that ritual procedures were central in building trust within these trading networks. For example, when commercial disputes arose, Chinese merchants were often asked to swear before the gods that they were speaking the truth in their mercantile dealings. This could involve burning a written pledge, smashing a bowl, or decapitating a chicken in front of the god’s statue inside a temple (Katz 2009). A whole network of Chinese temples in the port cities of Southeast Asia played this role, particularly City God temples or early temples, some dedicated to Guanyin, others to Mazu or Tianhou (Goddess/Empress of the Sea). Wang Gungwu (1990) points out that the Hokkien merchant network in Southeast Asia operated outside of the protection of the Chinese state. This network had to develop its own trustbuilding mechanisms. Most City God temples come equipped with a great

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

81

abacus for calculating the true and the false, one’s merits and demerits. This is Confucian morality brought down to the most instrumental level – and calculated on an abacus. These were among the key techniques developed within the Chinese trading system to develop trust in business partners in long-distance trade ventures, in the absence of state sanctions (Katz 2008; compare Sinha 2010). Of course, underlying and funding many of these temples were the great Chinese business families and extended lineages, the different dialect groups and their huiguan (regional business associations) and tongxianghui (native-place associations), and the brotherhoods that enforced their mutually exclusive limits and economic niches. Yet all of these institutions had altars dedicated to the gods of their distinct regional pantheons, and they conducted rituals before their altars on a regular basis. Each trade association had its own temple. Each brotherhood had its rituals (ter Haar 1998). And each family had its own altar for the worship of their ancestors and the gods of their local dialect and regional pantheons. One could go so far as to say that the Chinese family was primarily a ritual unit, rather than a biological unit. Many temples housed shenminghui (“god associations”) or burial associations – groups that pooled money for important life-cycle rituals of their members, each of whom could borrow funds from the group for such occasions, on the promise of returning the funds with interest to the group pool. Most people belonged to several such groups, in order to hedge their bets in case one or two went bankrupt due to the inability of a member to repay his loans. The temple management committees also handled a steady stream of fluid capital, in the form of small donations for incense and oil lamps, as well as per capita contributions solicited from members of the temple community on the birthdays of the gods. Wealthy individuals could display both their piety and wealth through individual contributions. Temple committees could also periodically mobilize larger funds for the repair or reconstruction of temples. Accounts of the uses of these funds were posted on red sheets of paper on the walls of the temple for all to see. We have more to learn about the role of and the interaction between the Chinese temple, family-lineage, and native-place association networks in Southeast Asia in building long-distance trust networks. All of these institutions played a part in the formation of a unique form of Chinese capitalism, which formed within the transnational networks linking south and southeast China to Southeast Asia. Cultural continuity was created within these far-flung overseas Chinese communities through temples dedicated to the most popular local gods

82 

Kenneth Dean

of the Minnan region, including the Xinghua area. The greatest of these were the cults of Mazu, or Tianhou (Goddess/Empress of the Sea), Guangze zunwang (The Reverend Lord of Broad Compassion), Qingshui zushi (a Buddhist monk known as the Master of the Pure Water [Cliff]), Baosheng Dadi (The Great Emperor, Protector of Life), and various tutelary gods, such as the City God of Anxi (see Dean 1989, for a description of the founding temples and the legends of these gods). There are now over 500 Mazu temples in Taiwan alone, and over a hundred more in Southeast Asia. The other chief deities of the Minnan region are also revered in hundreds of temples in Taiwan and all across Southeast Asia. Many of these temples were first founded in Southeast Asia in the early seventeenth century. Currently, in addition to the over twenty million Minnan speakers in Taiwan, there are nearly eight million Minnan Hokkien speakers living in Southeast Asia. They are distributed as follows: Malaysia (1.68 million), Indonesia (1.54 million), the Philippines (1.24 million), Singapore (860,000), Thailand (260,000), Burma (175,000), Vietnam (100,000) Brunei (31,000), Cambodia (30,000), and Japan (3000). All are descendants of immigrants and sojourners from Fujian, or more recent visitors in the latest round of circulation within this vast network.1 In the nineteenth century, Minnan control of the trading ports of Southeast Asia was challenged by the arrival of other Chinese dialect groups, including the Chaozhou Teochew speakers (who ultimately would outnumber Minnan Hokkien speakers), Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, and at the end of the century, the Fuzhou and the Xinghua (Henghua) sojourners. Each of these communities built temples for the most popular gods of their respective regional pantheons. During the 1920s and 1930s, many overseas Chinese sojourners returned to southeast China, or sent funds back to pay for ancestral halls and temples, and magnificent homes in their home villages. But after 1949, and especially during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese sojourners were cut off from their home villages for over 25 years (1965-1990). Only in the 1990s did large numbers of overseas Chinese return to their ancestral villages in Fujian. The 1980s and 1990s were also marked by a fundamental shift in global capitalism as it developed systems of flexible accumulation, characterized by rapid flows of financial capital, outsourcing of factories to areas with cheap labor, and the development of a cadre of technical mid-level office workers and technicians, along with an elite of high-flying capitalist business leaders and financiers. 1 The over six million Minnan immigrants in Southeast Asia represent about one-sixth of the estimated 37 million overseas Chinese living in 160 countries around the globe in late 1990s.

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

83

These economic changes profoundly affected the Chinese “coastal empire” in Southeast Asia. While some scholars have commented on the “flexible citizenship” of Chinese business elites riding the waves of global capital in their “ungrounded empires” based in Southeast Asia (Ong & Nonini 1997), it is important to understand the deep cultural ties of some of these business leaders to localized ritual traditions originating in the local subcultures of southeast China. Rather than arguing that these interests represent a restoration of an essentialist core of Chinese Confucian values arising at the periphery of “Greater China” (Tu 1991), I argue instead that certain of these networks are characterized by specific ritual traditions rooted in localized practices which were never standardized or considered orthodox in China (Dean 2011; Dean & Zheng 2010, chap. 10; see also Watson 1985, 2007). Moreover, these ritual traditions have evolved in distinct cultural contexts and are now once again involved in processes of mutual elaboration, interaction, and transformation.

Importance of Ritual Analysis For the purposes of this chapter, earlier work in ritual studies remain very important: ritual process as analyzed by Victor Turner (1969) and his students calls for close attention to the detailed sequencing and spatial coding of ritual events, as well as the psychological and even ontological state (liminality) of the participants. Although critiqued for his theories of social reconstitution (within preassigned roles) after such open-ended ritual processes – there is no reason to reject his mode of analysis while remaining open to the real possibility that ritual change can transform social roles and categories. I raise one example of such social effects in the account of the rise of female spirit-medium training in the Henghua migrant community below. I have suggested in some earlier essays (Dean & Zheng, 2010, chap. 10) that Chinese ritual contains sedimented layers of overlapping ritual techniques and practices drawn from multiple religious traditions. I describe this abstractly as a syncretic field of forces that takes on different consistencies depending on the mix of ritual techniques at distinct historical phases. This is not syncretism as the conscious interconnection of different symbols into a new intellectual and religious totality. Instead I draw on metaphors from physics to describe a historically changing field of abstract forces organized around bipolar attractors of spiritual self-control and mastery (sheng in Chinese) and the spontaneous manifestation of supernatural power (ling

84 

Kenneth Dean

in Chinese). This model enables me to analyze ritual process in a more open-ended way than in Turner’s case. This is necessary because Chinese ritual events are not only restricted to the activities of the Taoist ritual master within the temple in front of representatives of the community – important as these rites may be in providing an overall framework for the ritual event. The ritual event as a “total social fact” (Mauss) includes the community as a whole, as each of them is brought into a performative relationship within the ritual (even if this involves active rejection of the ritual and alternative forms of celebration by Christian villagers). The gods are carefully moved from their altars and carried around the streets of the village and the spiritual boundaries of their territories – thereby dephasing the metastability of the gods (to use another analogy from physics) – and releasing their powers in a directed flow of energy and blessings transferred to the community and designed to ensure fertility and prosperity. This can also take the form of possession of the spirit mediums. The ritual space thus expands to take in the entire territory, although it is highly concentrated and super saturated with sensory stimulation in the courtyard in front of the temple where multiple forms of expression occur simultaneously. These include ritual opera performances on a stage facing the temple, other musical troupes performing in the courtyard, streams of visiting delegations (also accompanied by musical troupes), individual worshippers rushing to present offerings to the gods at the temples, spirit mediums entering into trance and performing feats of self-mortification in the courtyard or on stage, and many more. All the senses are overloaded in order to achieve the kind of lao-liet or red-hot sociality described by Adam Chao (2008). Speaking of the red-hot, it is important to recognize the transformative role of fire – whether in the burning of incense as offering and entry into ritual, the cooking of food, or the burning of documents and elaborately crafted paper figurines and structures. Nor can anyone forget the role of firecrackers and fireworks in Chinese ritual (sadly forbidden in Singapore). In some especially elaborate ritual events, parallel or even triplicate similar rites addressed to different pantheons are simultaneously conducted by ritual specialists from different liturgical traditions (e.g. Buddhist, Taoists, sectarian). This complicates most models of ritual process or identity formation within ritual. As Daniel Goh (2015, 35) remarks, “ritual is (…) larger than life and culture and big enough to encompass modernity and its projects”. The multiplication of seemingly contradictory frames and representations of deities (Daoist astral avatar, village-temple-based protective force, possessed spirit medium) leads instead to something like a

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

85

positive unconscious – productive of excess or life vitality but disregarding contradiction. This scrambles concerns over authenticity and sincerity but moves beyond a playful “as if” attitude toward ritual performance. Instead, ritual produces an affirmative dynamic spirituality – life “as it is”, to quote Goh once again. I have characterized this seeming confusion as an abstract machine for the putting into motion of infra- and intra-corporeal flows of affect (Dean 2010) – by which I mean that people are pulled or attracted in different directions at the same time, losing their sense of coherence and becoming open to infra-corporeal forces, while simultaneously becoming open to the flow of trans-corporeal flows of energies across the crowd – or the passage of excitement or intensity of affect, through their bodies to the bodies of those they push and pull against. These are moments of the collective transfer of energies in which phenomena-like collective trance can occur. These moments are also central to the experience of acting as a community as a whole, a consubstantial community experimenting with the limits of the self, opening to the experience of the power of the gods. Certainly these moments are short-lived (although they can seem rather endless during fieldwork), and communities and individuals fall back into fixed social and hierarchical roles and relations. Yet something has changed – in a process that made little use of the sincere expression of intention or individual beliefs or the explication of the meaning of ritual symbolic acts by a priest delivering a sermon or commenting on each act as he performs it. Each successfully completed ritual is a collective act completed by the community as a whole.

Three Ritual Events of the Henghua Community 1

The Jiulidong Fengjia Pudu (the ritual for the deliverance of the hungry ghosts held once every ten years by the Nine Carp Cavern Temple)

This major ritual of the Henghua community in Singapore has been held every ten years since 1954. It began in commemoration of all those who had died in the Japanese occupation of Singapore. This was a complex ritual, involving overlapping and parallel series of rites performed by Daoist ritual masters, Buddhist monks, spirit mediums, and acolytes of the Altar Association of the temple, and a performance of the greatest of the Chinese ritual operas, Mulian Saves His Mother, in the context of a rite of deliverance of the

86 

Kenneth Dean

Figure 3.1 Demons leap off the stage during a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014

Photo by Kenneth Dean

souls of the ancestors of the Henghua community. In many ways, this ritual exemplifies the features described above of an especially elaborate ritual event. The ritual process involves overlapping centers of activity – forces of attraction pulling people this way and that – and in which the making of subjectivity and community proceeds by a very different model than in confessional religious rituals. For four decades, the ritual and the ritual opera were performed entirely by the Singaporean members of the Henghua community on their own. After all, during much of this period, plays such as Mulian Saves His Mother were banned in China as “demonic operas”. The performance of this Henghua version of the Mulian story was unique, and it gathered the attention of many scholars of Chinese drama and ritual, including Piet van der Loon in the 1970s; Tanaka Issei in the 1980s and 1990s; Yong-sai Shing and myself in the 1990s; Choi Chee Cheung in 2004; and Choi and myself again in 2014. Tanaka (1993), Yong (1997), and Choi (2007) have all written exhaustive and incisive accounts of the ritual. Already in 1994 the temple committee had come to the realization that the Henghua community was not able to supply enough Daoists, Buddhists, and opera singers capable of singing in Puxian dialect. By this point,

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

87

Figure 3.2 The monk Mulian kneels before his mother (in a cangue) before the gates of the Underworld (from a performance of “Mulian Saves His Mother” at the Kiew Lee Tong temple in 2014

Photo by Kenneth Dean

language policies in Singapore had resulted in a sharp decline in the usage of many Chinese dialects. Therefore, the decision was made to invite Daoist ritual masters, Buddhist monks, and ritual opera performers from Putian. This was the beginning of new transnational flows – movements of invited ritual specialists (Taoist ritual masters, Buddhist monks, and ritual opera troupes) from the Xinghua region were now entering into transnational networks. All this was in part due to the incredible economic ability of the Jiulidong in Singapore, and its ability to coordinate flows of capital, ritual knowledge, and ritual artifacts, while participating as active (and in many ways the leading) ritual participants – that is to say, as the spirit-medium altar associates who organized spirit-writing séances to communicate the gods’ responses to the rituals. The local organizers also arranged for the ancestral worship by the community members, a key raison d’être for the entire ritual event. The ritual specialists were sent by the Jiulidong temple managers to a series of Malaysian temples after the ritual was concluded to raise additional funds to cover the costs of their 30-40 airfares. In 2014, the space for the ritual was even more compressed than in the preceding decades, as the Singapore government had reclaimed the field

88 

Kenneth Dean

Figure 3.3 Spirit medium and altar associates gather at the end of an initiation ceremony at Xianzu Gong in Singapore in 2016

Photo by Kenneth Dean

next door to the temple. Thus an ingenious, modular stage-set approach was adopted to fit in all the necessary altars in different parts of the temple courtyard. These could be put together and dismantled quickly, depending on the sequence of ritual events (occurring in multiple parallel series). Such spatial overlapping, parallelism, and proximity between ritual stages and spaces also resulted in a high degree of sensory overlap of sound, visual effects, and ritual affect. While the Daoists, the Buddhists, and the Mulian ritual operas were more or less conducted on specific altars, the spiritmedium association frequently traversed the entire space to follow the movements of a possessed medium, or bring messages from the gods out of the temple to various altars, even as other rituals were going on. And each of the other groups would from time to time walk through the ritual space of the other ritualists en route to the temple to deliver a message or special offerings to the gods. While the number of Henghua community members making offerings to their ancestors had declined over the decades, representatives of the spirit-medium networks from Jakarta and Sumatra attended the event. Some of the young men from these temples in Indonesia could not speak Chinese, much less Puxian dialect. Nonetheless, they were extremely polite and eager to help out. The fathers of some of these volunteers from networked temples attended the rituals as honored guests. No doubt they

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

89

made substantial contributions to the funding of the ritual as well. Perhaps even more significant were the many Hokkien speakers present at the ritual. Some of these participants had married into Henghua families. Others had been attracted to the ritual life of the temple, including its biweekly spirit-medium consultations. Ritual healings had attracted several such non-Henghua worshippers. The sequence of events of the 2014 ritual was as follows: Day 1: Lunar 7/12 (Thursday, 7 August 2014) Afternoon: Exorcize stage, purify masks, and place ancestral tablets on long tables in front of the temple. 6:00 pm: Beat the drums, and begin reciting scriptures. 6:30 pm: Beat the drums, and begin performing the litanies. 7:00 pm: After the scriptures are done, invite the immortals and saints from all directions to descend to the Cavern-temple, and present them with a vegetarian feast. 7:30 pm: Begin the opera performance (miscellaneous opera). 8:00 pm: After the litanies are completed, invite the Buddhas from the Western Heavens to descend to the Cavern-temple, perform rites of universal deliverance, and recite evening prayers. 11:00 pm: The return of the drums. Day 2: Lunar 7/13 (Friday, 8 August 2014) 7:00 am: Daoists recite scriptures, perform the Presentation of the Memorial, set up the Altar, invite the Perfected Ones, and make the Ten Offerings. 7:00 am: Buddhists recite litanies, purify their Altar, and begin the recitation of Juan 1 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture. 7:00 am: The Spirit Medium Disciples of the Teachings of the Nine Cavern Temple and other volunteers place offerings of tea and rice before all the Invitation Cards of the Gods. 8:00 am: Daoist Master Chen performs sacrificial rites on the stage and tenting, dots (animates) the proclamations and other documents, and the spirit tablets of the lost departed. 10:00 am: Chan Buddhist monks sacrifice to the stage, then return to the temple to make the Ten Offerings. 1:00 pm: The Most Worthy Mulian sacrifices to the stage, and the Mulian play begins. 2:00 pm: The Daoist Master invokes his Masters, announces his titles (to the gods), and recites scriptures.

90 

Kenneth Dean

2:00 pm: The Chan Buddhist monks recites Juan 2 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture. 4:00 pm: Daoist Master Chen takes a tour of inspection of the god’s invitation cards (and the ancestral spirit tablets). 5:00 pm: The Chan Buddhists recite scriptures before the invitation cards (and the ancestral tablets). 7:00 pm: The Daoist Masters set out and worship the Eight Hexagrams. They present pure vegetarian offerings, and announce the objects of tribute (to the gods). 7:00 pm: The Chan Buddhist monks recite Juan 3 and 4 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture. 7:00 pm: The Opera Troupe performs miscellaneous operas. 11:00 pm: The return of the drums. Day 3: Lunar 7/14 (Saturday, 9 August 2014) Dawn: Offer face-washing basin, towels, toothpaste, soap, and tea to the gods and ancestors three times, each time dotting the tablets and invitations cards. 7:00 am: The Daoist Masters perform the Morning Audience Ritual with the Gods, recite the scriptures, perform the Noon Audience Ritual, and present the Nine Offerings. 7:00 am: The Buddhist Masters perform the Morning Services, perform purifications, invoke the Perfected Ones, and recite Juan 5 and 6 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture, perform the “shaving of the head of Emperor Liang Wudi”, and present the Six Offerings. 8:00 am: Disciples and volunteers offer food dishes and rice to the gods and ancestors. 2:00 pm: Daoist Masters recite scriptures. 2:00 pm: Chan Buddhist masters raise the flag (to summon the spirits of the dead), and recite Juan 7 and 8 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture. 4:00 pm: Daoist Master Chen takes a tour of inspection of the god’s invitation cards (and the ancestral spirit tablets). 5:00 pm: The Chan Buddhists recite scriptures before the invitation cards (and the ancestral tablets). 7:00 pm: Daoist Masters perform the Evening Audience Ritual, present vegetarian offerings, and sing praises to accompany the tribute offerings. 8:00 pm: The Chan Buddhists sacrifice to the Stupa (for the extraction of women from the Blood Pool), and perform the deliverance of the women (by means of the Stupa), recite scriptures before the invitation cards

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

91

(and the ancestral tablets – those sponsoring this rite on behalf of their mothers should prepare gifts for the monks). Then, they perform the Evening Services and rites of universal deliverance. 7:30 pm: The Opera Troupe performs miscellaneous operas. 11:00 pm: The return of the drums. Day 5: Lunar 7/15 (Sunday, 10 August 2014) Dawn: Offer face-washing basin, towels, toothpaste, soap, and tea to the gods and ancestors three times, each time dotting the tablets and invitations cards. 7:00 am: Daoist Masters perform purifications and the presentation of sacrificial items, and present the Seven Offerings. 7:00 am: The Chan Buddhist Masters perform the Morning Service, do purifications, and recite Juan 9 and 10 of the Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture. 8:00 am: The disciples and other volunteers place offerings of tea and rice before all the Invitation Cards of the Gods (and the spirit tablets of the ancestors). 10:00 am: Field Marshal Tian (god of theater) and Dukes Zhang and Wang of the Ancient Altar (of the Spirit Mediums) emerge from the temple (i.e. descend into the bodies of spirit mediums). 11:00 am: Daoist Master Chen commands the various Immortals and Saints to head off saving the lost dead. Master Chen takes the statues of the gods, while Field Marshall Tian and Dukes Zhang and Wang of the Ancient Altar carry the golden crowns and the dragon robes up onto the platform for the deliverance of the lost dead. 11:00 am: Daoist Master Chen and the Most Worthy Mulian save the secluded dead and deliver the lost souls, refining their spirits and providing them with food, so that all the lost dead are delivered and then ascend to the heavens (the salvation ritual proceeds by the calling out of the names of the deceased, each of whose spirit tablets is carried on stage, and symbolically transferred to the heavens – this takes several hours, after which the play must go on). 12:00 pm: The Daoist Masters send off the descent of the vegetarian feast. 2:00 pm: Daoist Masters recite scriptures and litanies. 4:00 pm: The Good Deeds (Requiem Service) for the deliverance of the ancestors is completed. Daoist Master Chen, along with Field Marshal Tian and Dukes Zhang and Wang of the Ancient Altar (of the Spirit Mediums) return to the Temple, collect all the Yellow and Red Invitation Cards, and take down the Flags that were used to Summon the Souls of

92 

Kenne th Dean

the Deceased. They deconstruct the Shelter for the Ghosts (the Precious Cold Forest Preserve of the Abandoned Souls). After the completion of these rites of deliverance of the ancestors, prepare for the evening rituals. Chan Buddhist Masters worship the Flag for the Summoning of the Souls, and collect and distribute the Brilliant Lanterns (to light the way for the deceased). Collect the Invitation Cards in hierarchical order, burn spirit money, and then deconstruct the Shelter for the Ghosts (the Precious Cold Forest Preserve of the Abandoned Souls). Deconstruct the invitation emplacements and the altar space, and set up a platform for the worshipping of the Dipper Stars for the prolongation of life. Set up a platform for the performance of the Ullambana Rites, with a space for the Yogic Flaming Mouths ritual. 6:30 pm: Chan Buddhist masters perform the Yogic Flaming Mouth Ritual. 7:30 pm: Daoist Masters set up a space to worship the Dipper Stars and prolong life. Set up the Flaming Mouth of Meng Mountain Altar, and the Altar for the Prolongation of Life. 5:30 pm: Daoist Masters perform the Rites of Universal Deliverance. 6:00 pm: The Opera Troupe performs a miscellaneous opera. 6:00 pm: The Daoist Masters reward and feed the Three Armies of Spirit Soldiers. 6:30 pm: Chan Buddhist masters perform the Opening of the Flaming Mouths (of the Hungry Ghosts) on Meng Mountain and the send-off of the Prajnaparamita Boat. 7:00 pm: Daoist Masters perform the rites for the worshipping of the Dipper Stars, and prepare meat and vegetarian offerings. 10:00 pm: Daoist Masters and Chan Buddhist monks present offerings together. The Good Deeds Are All Done! As this brief account of the main ritual actions demonstrates, the 2014 Fengjia Pudu was a highly complicated ritual event, with simultaneous performance of multiple rites by Daoist masters, Buddhist monks, and ritual opera performers from Putian, as well as by local Singaporean migrant Henghua spirit mediums, marionettists, and masters of ceremony directing the ritual actions of the many Henghua families at the event. There is not enough space here for a full-scale ritual analysis of this multiday ritual event, but this summary already reveals the ways in which ritual roles

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

93

Figure 3.4 Buddhist monks from Putian performing rites at the Singapore Kiew Lee Tong temple in 1994

Photo by Kenneth Dean

are broadly distributed across the members of the ritual troupes and the broader community, and the key importance of the local spirit-medium tradition. The latter go through a series of training sessions such as the one which we now turn to. 2

A spirit-medium training session in Singapore, May 2015

In contrast to the Jiulidong Mulian ritual, the spirit-medium training and initiation session held in May 2015 at the Xianzugong in Eunos was a much more everyday kind of collective ritual training for a group of members of the altar association of the temple, along with a smaller group of first-time initiates. The entire group of some 40 men, aged from fifteen to 85, remained in the temple for five days. During that time, they were taught invocations of the gods and collective line dances. Six of the new initiates began to dream of the gods and were given additional training to become spirit mediums. On the final day of the training/initiation, these six mediums were dressed in the robes of six different gods of the temple, and they led a dance of the altar association around the courtyard in front of the temple. Several members of the altar association had participated

94 

Kenne th Dean

in many of such trainings, or recharging rituals – although only a small number ever become spirit mediums. One proud fifteen-year-old graduated from the initiation and was greeted by his mother, aunts, and sisters outside the temple. They presented him with a red sash, a large stalk of sugar cane, a fedora, and other auspicious food items. He proudly had his photo taken with his father, who had gone through four initiations, and his grandfather, who had lost count of how many training sessions he had completed. From the point of view of migration, it is interesting to note that of the six men who became spirit mediums in this initiation training, three were on six-month temporary work permits. They were young men from Putian who were working in Singapore, and had joined in the training session there when the ritual was conducted. Upon returning to Putian they would be able to join their home temples as certified (with a diploma from the Ritual Court of Lushan Mountain) spirit mediums. Their status as Daoist immortals (albeit temporarily earthbound) was complete. They could participate in the same trainings back in Putian as in Singapore. In this ritual, we see continuity across generations, continuity across space, and the successful embedding of a spirit-medium training tradition within families and community in the diaspora. The fluidity of flows in the training of PRC mediums in Singapore, alongside the continued role of secrecy and revelation in the training rituals, indicates that the networks of the gods continue to expand and deepen within the temple networks of the Henghua transnational community. Just as these PRC mediums received their initiations while working in Singapore, many of the older members of the altar association told me that they frequently return to their ancestral villages in Putian whenever a ritual training session is being organized there. They contribute their ritual knowledge and enthusiasm for these carefully guarded and transmitted ritual traditions. They are now part of a transnational circulatory flow of people and ritual experience that keeps the Henghua community vibrant in the face of rapid change. 3

Female spirit-medium training from Sumatra to Jakarta to Singapore to Putian

I have described elsewhere what I consider to be the strongest example of ritual change transforming gender and social roles – the case of the Putian women in Tibing Tingi in Sumatra who in the 1970s created a set of female initiations and ritual practices for themselves around the cult

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

95

of the Immortal Goddess Ou, which has given them a far stronger role in the operations of the temples of the Henghua Tanban (altar association) spirit-medium tradition in Southeast Asia. These practices have spread through the network and many women have been initiated in temples of the Henghua community in Singapore and Indonesia. These female spirit-medium trainings sessions have begun to spread back to the homeland region of Putian in Fujian over the past decade (Dean 2011). In the most recent all-female initiation training session held at the Chiongyao Temple in Singapore in 2013, over 50 women participated. The eldest was in her 80s while the youngest was six years old. Many of the women were Singaporean Henghua migrants, but others came from Sumatran and Javan temples of the extended Henghua community around Southeast Asia. Several women who attended the ritual did not speak the Henghua dialect. Much of the instruction was in Hokkien, with the Putian chants of invocation of the gods (which are learned in the week-long training session) written out in transliteration. At the conclusion of the ritual, the women emerged from the temple, led by possessed female spirit mediums wielding a forked spirit-writing branch. They danced in line counter-clockwise to the movement of the male mediums and their altar associates. These women had established the full range of spirit-medium trainings and related certificates, all the way to the performance of the Yuxiu (preparatory sublimation – a prefunerary rite). These rites turn these women into immortals on earth, ready and willing to assist in carrying out the actions of the Dao on behalf of heaven.

Conclusions It is important to stress that many features of each ritual are unique to each linguistic-cultural community – everything from the language itself to the architecture and decorations of the temple, food offerings of the cuisine of sacrif ice, vestments of the ritual specialists, musical traditions and ensembles, and the regional opera – all are distinct to each dialect group. Several regional ritual traditions are found in Singapore (Hokkien [Minnan], Teochow [Chaozhou], Cantonese, Hainan, Henghua [Xinghua], and Hakka). Each has its own ritual specialists, dramatic and musical troupes, food art, and ritual forms. Each of these groups has been involved in similar movements of ritual specialists, craftsmen, bearers of ritual knowledge, god statues, and charged incense circulating through their own Chinese temple networks (for more historical context see Yeoh

96 

Kenneth Dean

1996). Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that ritual traditions originating in one dialect are spreading to those beyond the dialect groups, including to non-Chinese speakers. This is to some extent the result of the government’s language policies, intermarriage, and the culturally pluralist conditions of Singaporean everyday life. But it is also the result of regionally specific ritual traditions reaching out to ensure the survival of their temples, which are subject to a 30-year lease by Singapore law (Dean 2015). Many of such groups now use Hokkien or Mandarin and sometimes English to reach out and attract new members to their temple activities. Healing rituals conducted by spirit mediums wielding a forked spirit-writing stick are open to all, and they require minimal linguistic interaction. Spirit mediums, even more than Daoist masters, are able to create new networks and open up new cosmological spaces, sometimes going so far as to create new rituals. Last October, the Nanan Huiguan welcomed at the Singapore Changi airport god statues of Guangze zunwang from the founding temple (which they helped rebuild in the 1980s). These statues were escorted to a dozen of temples dedicated to this god. New networks were established between some of the Singapore temples, which had not earlier exchanged ceremonial visits of spirit mediums. In October 2016, groups of spirit mediums from a temple in Jinmen dedicated to the Three Loyal Gods (Sanzhong) visited a related temple in Toa Payoh in Singapore, where they were joined by representatives and spirit mediums from a recently demolished temple in Singapore (Shuixian miao) and others from temples in Muar and Malacca. This meeting between branch temples was held in Singapore, rather than at the founding temple in Maxiang, Tongan, China. New flows within Chinese temple networks are reconfiguring the power and centrality of the nodes within the networks. Increasingly, Singapore is becoming a travel destination for the gods of southeast China.

References Chao, Adam. 2008. Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Choi Chi Cheung. 2007. “Yinyang Guodu: 2004 Nian Xinjiapo Jiulidong Fengjia Pudu zhong de Liyi yu Juchang” 陰陽過度:2004年新加坡九鯉洞逢甲普度中 的儀式與劇場 (The Passage from Yin to Yang: The Ritual and Theatre of the 2004 Singapore Nine Carp Cavern Temple Fengjia Pudu [universal deliverance rites]), 《南洋學報》 Nanyang Xuebao 61: 1-9.

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

97

Dean, Kenneth. 2017. “Whose Orders? The Chinese Popular God Temple Networks in Southeast Asia and the Rise of Chinese Buddhist Mahayana Monasteries”. In Orders and Itineraries in Southeast Asia, edited by Anne Blackburn & Michael Feener. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press (in press). —. 2015. “Parallel Universe: The Chinese Temples of Singapore”. In Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Peter van der Veer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2011. “Ritual Revolutions: Temple and Trust Networks Linking Putian and Southeast Asia”. Religious Networks in Asia and Beyond, special issue of Encounters: An International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society 4. —. 2010. “The Return Visits of Overseas Chinese to Ancestral Villages in Putian, Fujian”. In Faiths on Display: Tourism and Religion in Contemporary China, edited by Tim Oakes & Donald Sutton. London: Routledge. —. 2003. “Local Communal Religion in Contemporary Southeast China”. China Quarterly 173: 336-358. —. 1998. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 1989. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. — & Zheng Zhenman. 2010. Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Vol. 1 & 2. Leiden: Brill. DeBernardi, Jean. 2006. The Way that Lives in the Heart: Chinese Popular Religion and Spirit Mediums in Penang. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —. 2004. Rites of Belonging: Memory, Modernity and Identity in a Malaysian Chinese Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Frost, Mark R. 2005. “Emporium in Imperio: Nanyang Networks and the Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819-1914”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36(1): 29-66. Goh, Daniel. 2015. “In the Place of Ritual: Global City, Sacred Space, and the Guanyin Temple in Singapore”. In Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Peter van der Veer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hoskins, Janet. 2015. The Divine Eye and the Diaspora‬ : Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism‬ . Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.‬ ‬ Kuah-Pearse, Khun Eng. 2000. Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Kuhn, Philip. 2008. Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kwee Hui Kian. 2007. “Pockets of Empire: Integrating the Studies on Social Organizations in Southeast China and Southeast Asia”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27(3): 616-32.

98 

Kenneth Dean

Kwee Hui Kian. 2013. “Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A Longue Durée Perspective”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 55(1): 5-34. Levitt, Peggy. 2009. God Needs No Passport‬: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape‬ . New York: New Press. ‬ ‬ Lockard, Craig. 2010. “‘The Sea Common to All’: Maritime Frontiers, Port Cities, and Chinese Traders in the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce, ca. 1400-1750”. Journal of World History 21(3): 219-47. McKeon, Adam. 2001. Chinese Migrant Networks and Culture Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawai’i, 1900-1936. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago. McLoughlin, Seán, 2013. “Religion, Religions, and Diaspora”. In A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, edited by Ato Quayson & Girish Daswani. London: Wiley Blackwell. Ng, Chin-keong, 1983. Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, 1638-1735. Singapore: University of Singapore Press. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. — & Donald Nonini. 1997. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Routledge. Pan, Lynn. 1998. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ptak, R. 1990. China’s Seaborne Trade with South and Southeast Asia (1200-1750). Aldershot: Ashgate. Reid, Anthony. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, Vol. 2: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. —. 1988. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, Vol. 1: The Lands below the Winds. New Haven, CT/ London: Yale University Press. Rowe, William. 1989. Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796-1895. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1993. “Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History”. Modern History 65(1): 1-25. —. 1988. “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacif ic Sector of ‘The World System’”: Proceedings of the British Academy 74: 1-51. Sangren, Steven. 1987. History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —. 1984. “Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship”. The Journal of Asian Studies 43(3): 391-415. Sinha, Vineeta. 2010. Religion State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore. Singapore: Springer.

Renewed Flows of Ritual Knowledge and Ritual Affec t

99

Skinner, William. 1996. “Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia”. In Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid, 50-93. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Tagliacozzo, Eric & Wen-Chin Chang, eds. 2011. Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tanaka, Issei .1993. 中国巫系演劇硏究 Chugoku fukei engeki kenkyu (Shamanistic theatre in China). Tokyo: Univeristy of Tokyo Press. Tan, Chee Beng. 2015. After Migration and Religious Affiliation: Religions, Chinese Identities and Transnational Networks. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Tilly, Charles. 2010. “Trust Networks in Transnational Migration”. Sociological Forum 22(1): 3-25. —. 2005. Trust and rule. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tu, Wei-Ming. 1991. “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center”. Daedalus. The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today 120 (2): 1-32. Turner, Victor. 1969. Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company. Tweed, Thomas. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van der Veer, Peter. 2013. The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2004. “Transnational Religion: Hindu and Muslim Movements”. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 7: 4-18. Veblen, Thorstein. 1904. The Theory of Business Enterprise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. —. 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan. Vertovec, Steven. 2000. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London: Routledge. Wang, Gongwu. 1990. “Merchants without Empires: The Hokkien Sojourning Communities”. In The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, edited by James Tracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, James. 1985. “Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of T’ien-hou (Empress of Heaven) along the South China coast, 960-1960”. In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by D. Johnson. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2007. “[Response] Orthopraxy Revisited”, Modern China 33(1): 154-8. Yen, Ching Hwang. 1986. A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800-1911. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Yeoh, Brenda S.A. 1996. Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

100 

Kenneth Dean

Yung, Sai-Shing. 1997. Xiqu Renleixue Chutan: Liyi, Juchang he Shegun. 戲曲人類 學初探：儀式、劇場和社群 (Anthropology of Chinese Drama: Ritual, Theatre and Community). Taipei: Rye Field Publishing Company 麥田出版社. Reprinted in 2003 by the Guangxi Shifandaxue Press 廣西師範大學出版社 Zheng Zhenman. 2001. Family and Lineage Organization and Social Change in Ming-Qing Fujian, translated and with an introduction by Michael Szonyi. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

About the author Kenneth Dean is Raffles Professor of Humanities and Head of the Chinese Studies Department, National University of Singapore, and Professor Emeritus, McGill University. He is the Religion and Globalization Research Cluster Leader, Asia Research Institute, NUS. Dean is the author of several books on Daoism and Chinese popular religion, including Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plains: Vol. 1: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods, Vol. 2: A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities, Leiden: Brill, 2010 (with Zheng Zhenman); Epigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: The Quanzhou Region, 3 vols., Fuzhou: 2004 (with Zheng Zhenman); Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China, Princeton: 1998; Epigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: The Xinghua Region; Fuzhou 1995 (with Zheng Zhenman); Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China, Princeton 1993; and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Brian Massumi), Autonomedia, New York. 1992. He directed Bored in Heaven: A Film about Ritual Sensation (2010), an 80-minute documentary film on ritual celebrations around Chinese New Year in Putian, Fujian, China. His current project is the construction of an interactive, multimedia database linked to a historical GIS map of the religious sites and networks of Singapore. His most recent publication (with Hue Guan Thye) is entitled Chinese Epigraphy in Singapore: 1819-1911 (2 vols.), Singapore: NUS Press, 2017.

4

Liberalizing the Boundaries Reconfiguration of Religious Beliefs and Practice amongst Sri Lankan Immigrants in Australia Jagath Bandara Pathirage Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch04 Abstract The reconsideration of religion in the lives of migrants intersects with the notion of mobility, its shifting meaning of time and space, as well as changes of behavior in everyday life. In a peaceful social environment, radical reinterpretation of religious beliefs and practices is often reluctantly tolerated, but it is also sometimes subject to repercussions. Long-term migration and transnationalism both bring alternatives or changes in religious beliefs and practices. These new interpretations are possible in the context of the migrants’ dislocation from their usual environments. Boundaries of ritual practices and the meaning of inclusion and exclusion are renegotiated. Meanwhile, boundaries of participation are relaxed. The divisions between sacred and profane are also blurred and reinterpreted. This chapter examines the changes in religious behavior among Sri Lankan Buddhist migrants in Darwin, Australia, and examines the ways in which religious beliefs and practices are reconfigured. Keywords: transnationalism, religion, ritual, existentialism, space, Australia, Sri Lanka

Introduction The act of migration is an ephemeral experience. It confronts two lifeworlds: the world left behind and the new world ahead of the migrant. This represents a dramatic shift in their personal lives and such experiences have social, cultural, and psychological effects, including tensions derived

102 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

from the transient natures of the migratory process. Premigratory experience, migration, and various stages of settlement generate intersubjective dialogues, which enrich the understanding of social and cultural life for migrants. The confrontation of two distinctive lifeworld experiences places migrants in an ambivalent position that affects how they conduct their daily lives. For a migrant living in-between two worlds, religion becomes one of the spaces that can bring organization into their lives. This occurs as a result of the place in which religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals articulate the culture that they left behind. Therefore, migrants are compelled at this juncture to reconsider their attachment to religious life. This negotiation of religion is intertwined with aspects of change, such as, the phase of the migratory and settlement process, the migrants’ work status, living arrangements, and so on. Literature across disparate geographies (Hagan 2002; Jackson 2013a, 2013b; Nieswand 2011) highlights the ways in which migrants reconsider and negotiate their new lives, circumstances, and their attachment to religion. Similarly, as Thomas Tweed (2006) notes, religion involves both crossing and dwelling, not because migration transports religious dogmas, beliefs, and practices along with migrant bodies, but rather, because dwelling is imbued with the notions of time and process. Thus, like crossing, dwelling involves going through the process of mapping, building, and inhabiting (ibid., 82), which in turn, becomes a homemaking process. In dwelling, migrants appropriate religion in the practice of migration and settlement to link with their needs. Transnational conditions and dynamics lead to the unsettling of the preexisting boundaries of religious practice. Tweed (2011) characterizes this as a “translocative” form of religion. For example, David Garbin (2014, 364) notes that the religious practice of Congolese migrants in London is enmeshed with politics to transform any mundane space into sacred space, which he identifies as “translocal” and “transtemporal”. In this context, the notion of the sacred and profane becomes symbolic of boundaries that are liberalized and blurred. The ethnographic evidence I present in this chapter supports this argument. Based on the above premises, this chapter seeks to understand the intersubjective relationships that migrants hold through religion, and to discuss how religion can be operated and transformed within transnational social spaces. Nina Glick-Schiller & Georges Eugene Fouron (2001) argue that religion is one important site, among others, where transnationalism operates. I will argue that not only is attachment to religion in transnational social space determined by migrants’ stability in their host community, but

Liberalizing the Boundaries

103

it also hinges on social and cultural factors in their environment, and the ways in which migrants perceive and appropriate such variations within their lifeworld. Both the need for religion in migrant lives, as well as the scope of social environment create and reconfigure the existing religious behaviors and beliefs in the host community. My study highlights that such alterations in religious practices within transnational social spaces go beyond previous restricted understandings of religious changes.

The Research in Context This ethnographic study is based on fieldwork with Sri Lankan migrants living in Darwin, Australia. In the last few years, Darwin has become a popular destination for unauthorized migrants from around the world. In particular, it is a popular destination for unauthorized migrants from Sri Lanka – those who attempt to cross into Italy – affected by the closure of Cairo and the Egyptian sea border. This diversion has since brought hundreds of unauthorized migrants from Sri Lanka to Darwin. In addition, other categories of migrants from Sri Lanka such as those applying for permanent residency and skilled migrants have increased. This increase in Sri Lankan migrants is due to the Australian government making Darwin a top priority area for immigrant settlement to boost regional development. By 2014, Darwin had a thriving Sri Lankan immigrant population of citizenship holders, permanent residents, and skilled immigrants, not including unauthorized migrants. Currently, every month, Darwin welcomes at least one individual migrant or migrant family from Sri Lanka who is seeking permanent residency. Sri Lankan migrants in the Northern Territory of Australia are mainly concentrated in the greater Darwin area and Alice Springs. Within the greater Darwin area, they are mainly located in Darwin, Palmerston, and the neighboring localities. The range of professions occupied by Sri Lankan migrants include white-collar jobs, such as accountants, doctors, and engineers, blue-collar jobs within industries, and lastly, unskilled laborer groups that include mostly unauthorized migrants. The Sri Lankan population in Darwin consists of both Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups. Religions of practice are Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, and Hinduism. These immigrants collectively represent the range of Sri Lanka’s geographical divisions – from the western province, Central, North, north central, eastern, and to the northeastern regions. However, in this chapter, I only focus on the Sinhalese Buddhist transnational community in Darwin. From February 2014 to April 2015,

104 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

I visited and closely observed the major Buddhist events at the Darwin Buddhist temple, and attended other individual religious events held at the respondents’ homes. From January to December in 2015, my fieldwork positioned me as a participant of the religious events, so that I could actively conduct 30 in-depth interviews, observations, and informal discussions. Conventional anthropological discourse on religious change does not provide a substantial framework for understanding the religious behavior of transnational communities across the world (Vasquez 2011, 1). I argue that this is mainly because religious practices among transnational communities are connected to both the dynamics of global change, and the precarious state of the national borders which are altered by both migrants and nation states.

Travel of Religion or Transnationalized Religion There is much confusion over what is meant by the travel of religion and transnationalized religion. While any religion has the possibility of moving across borders with their believers, not all religions become transnational. Some scholars continue to criticize the ambiguity of applying transnationalism as a concept to religion (Cook 2002, 52), seeing it as an unresolved issue. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between the two terms first and establish the link between transnationalism and religion. This is so to understand the differences between the work of religion in transnational social space and the other forms of religious travel across geographical boundaries. There is a significant difference between transnational religion or what people understand as the travel of religion, and religious operations in transnational social space. Literature on transnationalism and religion can be divided into two categories. The first category consists of the body of knowledge that seeks to understand the transnational characteristics of religion. The second category consists of the body of knowledge that attempts to understand the role of religion in transnational social and cultural contexts. Thomas Csordas’s Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization (2009) provides a comprehensive overview of the two categories described above. Csordas’s volume is not theoretically grounded in the literature of transnationalism, but it recaptures the word transnationalism to denote the movement of religions across boundaries. According to Csordas, missionization and migration are the two vehicles that transport

Liberalizing the Boundaries

105

religions across borders, enabled by “globalization” as a medium. He distinguishes the difference between global religion and the globalization of religion. Through this conceptual distinction and acknowledging the connectedness between globalization and religion, he introduces four different intersubjective modalities of the globalization of religion (ibid., 7). The four modalities are the consequences of the globalization of religion, which explain how religion is being appropriated in different contexts. In his essay and throughout the edited volume, the concept “transnational” intersects with two main ideas; “travel of religion across borders” and “globalization of religion” which also appear in forms of “missionization”, “globalization”, “immigration”, and “diaspora”. The authors in the volume examine the viability of religion to travel and to locate how it is adopted in foreign lands, and therefore consider religious travel to be a part of transnationalism. Thus, in their respective arguments, the authors assert the transnational aspects of religion as something that engages across two or multiple national boundaries. The above perspective raises fundamental questions about religious behavior in transnational social space, which also raises the question of whether religion can be defined as transnational just by crossing borders. In other words, can all religions that cross boundaries be described as transnational? The second category seeks to understand how religion operates in transnational social space (Oommen 2015; Levitt 2001, 2004; Saravia 2008), which I call transnationalized religions. My inquiry includes the analysis of the existing literature on transnationalism and religion, and explores the religious behavior of people in transnational communities. Peggy Levitt (2008, 847) outlines the distinctions between global religion, diasporic religion, transnational religion, and religious practices in transnational space. According to Levitt (2003, 849), most studies tend to look at religion in migration as a phenomenon that grows as a discrete entity instead of attempting to look at it in terms of the effects it has on sending countries, or attempting to understand it as something occurring in the same transnational social field. As she explains (ibid., 253), religion can operate in transnational social space in many different forms, including organizational dimensions, the relationship between transnational social space and other forms of belonging, and in the space of politics. Through these areas, religion grows not as a separate entity but with multiple affiliations within the host and home countries. It not only grows, but also generates effects both on the home and host community (Ebaugh & Chafetz 2002). In her study on transnational migrants in the Dominican Republic, Levitt (2001) highlights the ways in which migrants take leadership

106 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

in functioning civil organizations including churches from Boston, and how power relationships are being shared between their host country and home country. While the transnational migrant community in Boston looks up to religious leadership from the home community, the specific ritual, cultural, and administrative practices developed in Boston are also appropriated in the home community in Miraflores. Thus, religious behavior in transnational social space is something more than the travel of religion across borders. The literature highlights how religion draws connections between home and host countries through different practices, such as bringing religious leaders from the home to the host country through remittances (Levitt 2001; Ebaugh & Chafetz 2002), politics (Levitt, 2008; Leichtman 2013; Garbin 2014), and pilgrimage (De Mola 2002). Researchers note that religions connect throughout their migratory journeys, from decision-making processes, to the trajectories of migrant life (Hagan 2002). However, the literature on religion in transnational social space has overlooked the changes undergone by religious practice in these transnational social spaces, specifically in relation to the people who inhabit them. Even when some studies discuss the ritual practices and belief systems, such interpretations are exclusively limited to the ethnographic description of the religious practices. It is difficult to find literature that explains the ways in which both religion and migrant life intersect with each other and undergo changes within everyday life. To understand how religion operates in transnational social space, our examination must investigate how people perceive, relate, and engage with religion. In other words, it is important to explore the meaning of religion in transnational social contexts along with the examination of growing religious ties between institutions, actors, and nation states. Examination can only become meaningful through such effort. As Levitt (2008, 849) correctly remarks, transnational households, congregations, and communities are the sites of engagement where diasporic or transnational religion is created and connected to global religion.

Is the Sri Lankan Buddhist Community in Darwin Transnational? Darwin has fewer resources as compared to the other states in Australia, and it is still considered as a remote area, despite being an attractive destination for a growing Sri Lankan population. Each year, the Buddhist head monk manages to bring in at least one or two monks directly from Sri Lanka to

Liberalizing the Boundaries

107

Darwin, and invites many other monks who are visiting the other states in Australia. Thus, Sri Lankan Buddhists in Darwin arguably have more interactions with traveling Buddhist monks from interstate and Sri Lanka than any other location in Australia. Darwin is connected through deep social interactions between home and host countries, sometimes drawing connections between the other states of Australia as well. Such interactions are not only restricted to the institutional level, such as frequent visits to the temples, but also individual interactions at private homes. Notably, when migrants travel back to their home country, they arrange meetings and engage in special religious programs with Buddhist monks whom they met in Darwin. Wimal, one of my respondents, described his discussion with a visiting Buddhist monk who serves the highly sacred temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Wimal sought help from the monk to arrange an almsgiving ceremony for the Tooth Relic temple as it was difficult to arrange in Sri Lanka without access to appropriate networks. Likewise, other respondents narrated their requests for information from a Buddhist monk who was visiting Darwin’s Buddhist temple from a famous meditation center in Sri Lanka. These respondents who attended the mediation retreats at Darwin Buddhist temple in 2014 also shared the intention to attend a meditation retreat during their vacation in Sri Lanka. Thus, during these exchanges, religious ties were developing across boundaries through individual connections and organizations. Activities are not restricted to religious provisions; they also include acts of recognition as well. For example, when a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka visited, he brought some sweets and parcels for the head monk, and in turn, these were distributed to the people who were visiting the temple. Likewise, monks sought help from people traveling back to Sri Lanka to send some goods. These were fluid acts of reciprocity between the incoming and outgoing Buddhists. They were not merely favors requested of individuals on personal trips to Sri Lanka; I argue that they represent the engaging, knitting, building, and developing of layers of connections between the home and host countries through religious networks. At the same time, these bonds develop the transnational social space by bringing and investing resources back to the home country. Religious behavior in transnational social space also takes a leading role in this context. For example, a Buddhist monk at the Darwin temple has developed a number of projects to help people in Sri Lanka in the form of a scholarship program for impoverished students in rural regions, the reconstruction of a temple, and the abhayadanya program which releases cows from slaughter.

108 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

Interestingly, all these projects intersect with the idea of religion and social development. If the notion of transnationalism is defined by the interactions between two nation states and multiple practices across borders, then the Sri Lankan community in Darwin can be recognized as a transnational community through its significant level of interactions between Sri Lanka and Australia. Religion is one dimension that contributes to the growing transnational space between the two countries. Nevertheless, this is not the only case. While religious networks and flows of resources remain critical to exploring the transnational behavior of religion, it is also equally important to explore the reconfiguration of religious ideology and practices in relation to the intersubjective relationships of transnational migrants. My one year of fieldwork in Darwin observing the transnational engagement of Sri Lankan migrants highlights the changes of religious practices and behaviors. Such changes include miniature forms of ritualistic enactments, shrinking time and space in ritual behaviors, and the blurring of boundaries between sacred and secular both in imaginary and actual practices. The fieldwork also highlights how reshaping religious practices is a result of the way in which migrants perceive religion in relation to their ongoing migratory trajectories, as well as how they ultimately alter the religious practices as a dialogical process between the religion and themselves. The meaning(s) relies on what they need to achieve through the engagement with religion. These issues will be discussed with an ethnographic reflection on religious behavior among Sri Lankan migrants in Darwin. To portray the above changes, I will comparatively analyze three Sri Lankan religious practices taking place at the Buddhist temple in Darwin. These include the Katina ritual, an International Food Festival, and the Friday Dharma discussion. While the first and last events can be considered as purely religious events, the second one is a social event that was aimed at supporting the maintenance of the Buddhist temple. Similar types of events occur in Sri Lanka, but with a different tone, and these will be discussed with examples to contextualize the Darwin experience.

Katina Ritual: Changing Pattern of Ritual Enactment Katina is a Buddhist ritual that has its historical roots in the time of Bhagwat Gauthama Buddha. Katina is considered a highly meritorious Buddhist practice structured through a series of ritual activities which run over approximately three months. The specific time of the Katina ritual is set

Liberalizing the Boundaries

109

Figure 4.1 Sri Lankan Buddhist monk attends Vietnamese ritual bathing of the Buddha which was held parallel to the Sri Lankan Vesak festival.

Darwin, October 2016 Photo by Jagath Bandara Pathirage

in-between the start and the end of the rainy season. Its main purpose is to take care of all necessities of the Buddhist monks who are residing in the temple during the rainy season. In this historic practice, Buddhist monks fulf ill their daily needs by begging for alms, or pidusingawadeema. During the monsoon, the Buddhist monks’ daily routines are held back by the weather and their activities are restricted to the temple. During this time, Buddhists are supposed to provide alms (meals) and other necessities for the temple to help take care of the monks. Along with that, there are a number of Buddhist practices taking place at the temple, including Dharma Desana (“Dharma preaching”), blessings, and meditation. The end of the Katina ritual is marked by a series of activities such as the Dharma preaching before the closing event of the ritual, Katinacheevaraperahara (a parade of bringing the Katina robe to the temple), the main Katina ceremony of offering the Katina cheevra (the Katina robe), and again the preaching of the Katinanasansa Dharma Desana to describe the merits of the act, then lastly, the Katina Dharma Desana (Katina Dharma preaching)

110 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

which closes the whole ritual. The traditional order of the Katina ritual is as described above. However, this ritual practice has variations in its performance according to the region, province, as well as changes affected by its historical development. During my observations, it was clear that the performance of the Katina ritual by Sri Lankans at the transnational social space in Darwin was different from the usual practice in Sri Lanka. To highlight the structural variations between the Katina rituals in Sri Lanka and Darwin, I will describe my observations of the ritual order that took place at Darwin’s Buddhist temple in 2014. The closing ceremony of the Katina ritual began with Katina Dharma Desana (preaching) held on 10 October 2014, at the temple. The Dharma Desana was preached by a visiting Buddhist monk who resided at a temple in Melbourne. Approximately 100 people, including children, attended the Dharma Desana. The Dharma Desana was delivered in the English language despite the predominance of Sinhala-speaking community members in the audience. A brief translation of the Dharma Desana was provided by the same Buddhist monk at the end of the preaching. As was the usual custom, refreshments were provided at the end of the preaching. The refreshments included sandwiches, pastries, “Kiribath” (a Sri Lankan milk rice dish symbolizing prosperity and nourishment, prepared during auspicious events), and some other ethnic foods such as “vada” (a popular fried lentil snack in Sri Lanka). People left the temple around 10:00 pm, promising to meet early morning the following day to organize the main ritual. When we reached the temple early in the morning, there were a few people engaged in arranging the space and cleaning the main hall for the ritual. We joined them by helping to clean the floor. At around 9:00 am, the family who organized the Katina ritual brought breakfast to the temple. There were 50 people working together at the temple. The area where the Katina ritual was held had been divided into two main sections: the Bo tree (the sacred tree in Buddhism where Siddartha Gautama attained Buddhahood), and the main hall section. A group of people was decorating around the Bo tree with flower vases and flags, while those at the main hall were preparing for the Katina ceremony. Usually, Katina is held at the main Buddhist shrine but for this occasion, it shifted to the other hall because there was a concurrent Vietnamese Buddhist ceremony in progress at the main Buddhist shrine. The main hall was then apportioned into two physical spaces: the space where Buddhist monks took their seats and conducted the Katina ritual, and the space for the

Liberalizing the Boundaries

111

Figure 4.2 Entering the Katina parade toward the temple. Darwin, October 2016

Photo by Jagath Bandara Pathirage

participants. Tables and chairs were arranged for the Buddhist monks and the placement of Katina ritual items, such as the Katina robe and other gifts (pirikara) for Buddhist monks. Next to them was a machine to sew the Katina siwura (the Katina robe). This spatial arrangement linked all

112 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

those who were in attendance – the individual participants, the monks who commanded the ritual order, the ritual itself, and its accompanying objects. The ceremony started around 11:30 am. Katina perahara (the parade), the main ceremonial part of the event started around 10:00 am on the streets at an intersection located several hundred meters away from the Buddhist temple. More than 100 participants joined the parade holding Buddhist flags, flower vases, and the Katina robe. They marched from the junction, entered the Buddhist temple, approached the Bo tree, and then went to the main hall. After the parade, two Sri Lankan Buddhist monks and one Burmese Buddhist monk joined the main ritual. First, the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk worshipped the Buddha and spoke about the importance of the Katina ritual. He then proceeded to the next step, offering the Katina robe to the monk who resided in the vas kalaya (Buddhahood period). In Buddhism, the offering of a Katina robe is considered a highly meritorious act for the participant. From the monks’ perspective, it is offered to a monk who resides the entire time in the respective temple during the time of rainy retreat, without breaking any vinaya (“disciplinary rule”). Following this was a discussion by the Buddhist monks who attended the Katina ritual. After the discussion, the two Sri Lankan Buddhist monks decided to offer the Katina robe to the Burmese Buddhist monk who was residing in the Buddhist temple during the Katina period. After the offering of the Katina robe, the next Buddhist monk delivered another Dharma Desana. This is an essential component in the ritual order as it describes and forges the merits of sponsoring the Katina ritual. Then the participants offered the pirikara (“gifts”) and donations to the other Buddhist monks who attended the ritual. One noticeable feature of this ceremony was that some partners married to Buddhists were of the Catholic faith, and they participated with their spouses and offered gifts to the Buddhist monks. Based on my observations of the event, I summarize here a number of innovations that took place during this ritual. First, there was a significant redesign of the ritual that condensed the use of time and space, and was accomplished by altering ritual performances such as the preparation activities before the ritual, the time of the parade, and the number of prayers delivered. The reduced use of space ranged from the number of locations that the whole ritual was executed in, the distance covered by the parade, and the number of spatial arrangements. For example in Sri Lanka, the general practice of the Katina cheevaraperahara (parade) is to go through all the main roads of the village where the temple is located. By contrast in Darwin, the parade was restricted to a few hundred meters in length.

Liberalizing the Boundaries

113

Furthermore, the arrangement of time in ritual order is different from its original practice in Sri Lanka. For example, the main parade is usually held in the early morning in order to arrive at the temple around 5:00 am to 6:00 am. Following this, the handover of the Katina robe and the closing of the ritual is immediately completed after the parade, typically no later than 6:00 am. But the Katina parade in Darwin began around 9:00 am, much later in the morning and the ritual was completed at around noon. I was interested in this change that I observed and hence consulted with the participants. They confirmed that this was indeed the usual time that the ritual was held in Darwin. By analyzing the entire ritual, it can be argued that there is a significant reconfiguration of ritual practice in time, space, and also the mode of participation. The whole ritual event was condensed and represented as a miniature form of the original ritual. However, the most important aspect of the ritual’s reconf iguration was the way people perceived the whole activity. For them, despite such limitations, holding the ritual is a necessary and important activity in their migrant life. This importance reflects the dualistic nature of their intentions in performing such rituals. For example, holding a ritual can have several meanings such as arranging ritual space for individual members to fulfill their religious intentions, which means to train, teach, and pass the ritual rites or cultural knowledge to the children. Furthermore, this ritual contributes to upholding memories of religious activities back home, and replicating the image of home through religious participation. Thus, the Katina ritual in Darwin is one of the many religious activities that Sri Lankan migrants perform in their transnational religious social space. Furthermore, the rituals contributed to and gave meaning to the temple in Darwin, and its place in connection to the participants’ sense of home through religious symbols. At this individual and subjective level, the ritual helps to fulfill the migrants’ goals in religious life, in a private form of personal silence that is an unexpressed part of their lifeworld. The event provides religious space and represents one of the few rare chances to attend the ritual and reenergize their religious beliefs and practice. At home in Sri Lanka, participants’ lives were enveloped with abundant and vast arrays of religious places and practices, at individual and community levels. As a result, the distinction between the idea of sacred and profane are clearly demarcated. In their new life in Darwin, these migrants are in a vacuum, as they lack both the religious places and activities. As Fred Clothey (2006) notes, religious spaces are not only for its religious activities, but for other community functions as well. The boundary between sacred and profane is clearly differentiated in its ideological and

114 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

metaphysical space, yet it appears much more blurred in its religious context. Thus, the small space at the Darwin temple has become packed with the vast array of activities that cross the boundaries between sacred and profane. What is abundant in home communities for the Sri Lankan migrants is lacking here in Darwin. Yet, through the practice of a miniature form of the Katina ritual, they bring home back into their grasp and attempt to fulfill the objectives of their religious life. This is clearly visible in activities such as the International Food Festival and the weekly Dharma Desana program.

International Food Festival: Between the Sacred and Profane The Darwin International Food Festival is organized twice a year by the Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, and Burmese communities in order to raise funds to maintain the temple. The food festival is held at the Darwin International Buddhist temple. To invite the general population, publicity is created in Darwin in the hopes that people will take interest in the event. The event is generally well attended by not only the members of this temple, but also Australians and other ethnic members of the local population. The 2014 event was ambitious and it included an extravagant multicultural celebration and attractions for all Australian citizens in Darwin. Food and related expenses were covered by the food stall committee or groups from each of the communities. Likewise, the cost of the entertainment was covered by voluntary cost sharing. After the ceremonial address, the event was opened to the participants. During the 2014 event, almost 1000 people attended, enjoying various foods, entertainment, and other performances that ran concurrently with the opening of the food stalls. Attendees could purchase food with tokens exchanged from Australian currency at the entrance. People used the bills at any food stalls that they liked and received change for their purchases in the same type of bills. The unused tokens could then be exchanged back to money before they left. The entertainment mostly consisted of dances performed by different youth dance groups of diverse ethnic backgrounds. These included a dragon dance from a Chinese community, dances from the Indian community mainly to famous Bollywood songs, dances from the Sri Lankan community, and a performance from Kiruba Island. The costumes varied according to their cultural traditions. However, from the Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist perspective and context, apart from the few Sri Lankan dances performed at the event,

Liberalizing the Boundaries

Figure 4.3 Sri Lankan Buddhist monks receiving Katina Cheevara from fellow Buddhist monks. Darwin, October 2016

Photo by Jagath Bandara Pathirage

115

116 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

Figure 4.4 Girls from Kiribati Island perform at the International Food Fair at Darwin Buddhist Temple. Darwin, October 2016

Photo by Jagath Bandara Pathirage

and with the exception of two Chinese performances, the rest of the dances would not be acceptable at this type of event in Sri Lanka. This is mainly due to the opinion that the rest of the dances carried the markers of a mundane life and were representative of desire, which is contradictory to Buddhist traditions. These signs of the mundane or desire were reflected through the combinations of costume, musical rhythms, and erotic types of performance. For example, all the Hindi dances that were performed to popular Bollywood film music would not exist or be tolerated in any Sri Lankan Buddhist space due to its extravagant party type of music. The Kiruba Island dance in which three girls and one young boy performed would not be seen at all due to their costumes and music. The costumes were above knee-length and the dance was perceived by the Sri Lankan audience as sensual and sexual, as some members commented that such performances were not acceptable in a space like the temple. Multiculturalism created a space where the event blurred the boundaries of the conventional Buddhist notions of sacred and profane, yet this was not considered problematic to the many Sri Lankan, Burmese, or Vietnamese

Liberalizing the Boundaries

117

organizers. From the preparation of food to entertainment, these boundaries were extended. Almost all stalls offered different varieties of meats and fish. Usually, the consumption of meat is not encouraged in Buddhist practice. Consumption of meat or animal flesh is associated with the first of the five precepts of Buddhism, and it is linked to the vow of abstaining from killing. In Sri Lanka, despite the situation where some people consume meat in the privacy of their homes, no one will tolerate or accept cooking or bringing meat into the space of the temple.

Friday Dharma Desana (Preaching): Between the Sacred and Profane Weekly Buddhist Dharma preaching on Fridays is another main activity at the Buddhist temple in Darwin. Substantial numbers of Sri Lankan immigrants attend this weekly event. I observed that some attendees were not consistently regular as I could recognize some of the familiar faces at the temple. The number of participants varied from as few as ten or fifteen, or up to 100. The gathering increased in numbers when there were visiting monks preaching the Dharma Desana. For these events, the regular membership encouraged others to attend the Dharma talk, because a low turnout of people would be considered a negative mark against the temple and the Sri Lankan community in Darwin. The intention of the audience varied from a thirst for the teachings of the Dharma, to the need to use the space as a meeting point. Nevertheless, almost all attendees listened to the Dharma preaching regardless of their motivation of attending the gathering. The Darwin Temple conducts Dharma Desana (Dharma talk) each Friday, starting at 7:30 pm. The event is organized by the Buddhist society. The Dharma preaching is usually delivered by the head monk who resides in the temple, or from time to time, he invites other Buddhist monks visiting Darwin to deliver it. The head monk often invites other Buddhist monks who are from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or monks visiting those temples from Sri Lanka or other parts of the world. In 2014, there were five or six Buddhist monks as guests at the Darwin temple who were also visiting other states in Australia. In addition, there were two Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka who especially visited Darwin. These Buddhist monks preached either at the weekly Dharma Desana or the special Buddhist Dharma talk. To assert my argument, I will briefly introduce in the following section the ritual order of the Buddhist Dharma preaching and then discuss the ways in which boundaries are manipulated between sacred and mundane activities.

118 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

For Friday Dharma Preaching, people started to gather at the temple at around 7.00 pm. Dharma Desana was conducted at the main Buddhist shrine. Next to the Buddhist shrine was a passageway that connected to the avaasageya (residence of the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk) and the Bo tree. The crowd was usually divided into two groups and was busy with arranging spaces for the Dharma talk. One group engaged in arranging flowers around the Bo tree and the stupa, together with incense sticks, flower vases, and other necessary objects to offer to the Buddha statue at the main shrine. Another group of people prepared the food table at the passageway next to the main Buddhist shrine. The purpose of this arrangement was for the social gathering after the Buddhist Dharma talk. The flower vases, baskets, and pot of incense sticks were then placed on the table at the passageway, at the entrance of the Buddhist shrine. Meanwhile, some people were scattered around the passageway and engaged in ordinary conversations about politics back at home and their day-to-day life in Darwin. Four main acts were discernible and common to any Dharma Desana event. Preparation for the worship included the arrangement of flowers, incense sticks, and candles; preparing the refreshment table for the attendants after the Dharma Desana, which was not usual in Sri Lanka unless it was a particularly special event. These were the two main acts that people engaged in before the Dharma talk. The other two were the worshipping and listening to Dharma Desana, and the social gathering. These four acts were common to any Friday Dharma Desana talk in Darwin. After the initial preparations for the worship, people lined up from the table up to Buddha’s statue, which also connected the passageway to the Buddhist shrine. The head monk in the temple stood close to the Buddha statue. The other Buddhist monks accompanied him when they were present. The head monk started to chant the gata (“worship chants”) while the people passed the arrangements of flowers, candles, and incense sticks from hand to hand. Finally, when those offerings reached the hands of the Buddhist monks, they were placed on the flower altar of the Buddha statue. Then, the head monk introduced another monk who would address the five precepts and then preached the Dharma Desana to the participants. The Dharma Desana lasted one hour, which is the standard duration for this practice in Sri Lanka. Sometimes the Dharma talk runs for more than one hour. In such instances, a few people showed their disapproval for the extra time taken, and this would lead some to express their uneasiness during more informal gatherings. After the visiting monk preached the Dharma Desana, the head monk would thank him in front of the community with a speech.

Liberalizing the Boundaries

119

At the same time, the head monk took this opportunity to announce the travel arrangements of the visiting monks and other religious activities. This was a time for public announcements to the community. After that, people offered pirikara (some gifts) to the monk who preached the Dharma Desana. After the Dharma Desana, refreshments became the focus of the event, providing space for the mundane life to emerge within the sacred space. What distinguished the space from sacred and profane was not what they discussed but rather what they did in that space. At the end of the Dharma Desana, people gathered around the refreshments and shared their food, as well as their thoughts on everyday life. A few of the participants prepared tea at the residence of the monk. Monks also engaged in preparing tea for the people while chatting with them. The whole space was transformed into a different mode with this act. The Buddhist monks’ code of ethics in practice limited them from consuming any foods after 6:00 pm. Even if the practice was not relevant to lay people, consuming foods in front of the Buddhist shrine or having such events was not a practice that normally took place in a temple environment. It was a clear violation of the meaning of physical boundary in a temple. At a secular level, this gathering served as a social space for introducing and welcoming new immigrants to the community and for social networking. Some scholars (Oommen 2015) highlight in other contexts that religious space in transnational communities performs several other tasks. For example, some of my respondents who arrived in Darwin were brought to the temple by immigrants whom they knew, and were introduced to the other community members. On such occasions, immigrants shared their information with newcomers, particularly about their occupations, the regions they came from, the schools they attended, and so on. For newcomers, this social space provided networking facilities that helped them settle down in Australia. These included finding a place to stay and a job, and obtaining official documents such as a driver license. Also, and perhaps more importantly, like in any other social event, the space became a space of discussion of the politics at home and their concerns with it. At the same time, they also updated other community members on their activities and changes of life in Darwin. There were a few different groups visible in these gatherings. Most often, people talked to each member in the community. However, they were gathered around their interest groups. In general, these groups were centered on their professional and education levels, as well as immigrant status, such as citizenship holders, permanent residents, skilled migrants, and unauthorized migrants. Close scrutiny of their interactions revealed

120 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

considerable differences in addressing and communicating between these groups. Hence, the levels of interrelationship were varied. For example, the way legal migrants talked amongst themselves was different from the way legal migrants talked to unauthorized migrants. A certain degree of marginalization and exclusion could be seen at this level of relationship. Despite the fact that the Sri Lankan migrants came from the same ethnic and religious background, they possessed different hierarchies in their perception derived from different institutional trajectories such as different visa categories, as well as socioeconomic and cultural differences determined by their home country. Thus, the analysis of social space in the weekly Dharma Desana talks at the Darwin temple highlights the shifting boundaries between the secular and mundane. The spaces are infused through the activities of the sacred and profane. Such activities clearly outline the reconfiguration of religious space in transnational social space. It is the result of the conditions created by transnational social and cultural structures.

Liberalizing the Boundaries: Reconfiguration of Religious Space and Practice In his definition of religion, Emile Durkheim (1982) forwards the notions of sacred and profane as two primary elements in defining religion. Durkheim explains that, in the context of religion, all things in the social world fall into two divisions: sacred and profane. This division encompasses peoples’ beliefs, as well as actions. According to Durkheim (ibid., 37), “it is the distinctive traits of religious thoughts”. The distinctive nature of sacredness is derived from the subordination of the mundane life to the superior dimension. As Durkheim (ibid., 40) explains further, “it is quite impossible, unless the profane is to lose its specific characteristics and become sacred after a fashion and to a certain degree itself. The two classes cannot even approach each other and keep their own nature at the same time”. The notion of sacred and profane has been further explored by Mircea Eliade (1958) through a comparative analysis across different practices of religion. Anne White (2010, 111) sums this up as, “the sacred is infused with human reality and Eliade defines this as the concept of hierophany”. However, the Durkheimian division of sacred and profane and its restrictive approach does not operate as its ideal form, at least in certain religious contexts. This is much more significant in religious practices among transnational social fields. As I noted in the introduction quoting Garbin (2014, 364), religious

Liberalizing the Boundaries

121

boundaries always unsettle through migrants’ articulation of religious practices between countries. In this context, how do we then understand the relaxation of boundaries in the notion of sacred and profane? To understand this question, we must look at it from the perspective of the sacred and profane in the Buddhist context, as well as from its practice in transnational space. In general practice, the Buddhist temple becomes a sacred space through certain practices enacted within the Buddhist belief systems. The removal of hats and shoes when entering into a temple, and the act of being quiet and refraining from the behavior of mundane life are essential practices to fit the initial practice of sanvarakama (“discipline”) which leads to the practice of seelaya (a higher level of discipline ordained by the Buddhist principles). These practices are the first steps toward the nirvana. Thus, the Buddhist temple itself becomes a sacred place by its definition and by what one does in that space. In short, contrary to Eliade’s conception of nirvana as the achievement of a “highest point” (1960, 10-12), the notion of the sacred in Buddhist cosmology is attained through ethical practice. In fact in Buddhist ideology, nirvana is not something to possess or achieve, but the ultimate point of detachment from all kinds of possessions. Eating meat and performing sensual dances both violate the boundary of sacredness, not because of the fear of punishment by a heavenly god, but because it hinders people’s ability to detach from desire in the world. Thus, considering the relaxation of such boundaries generated through the religious practice of migrants, it is possible to understand that the social conditions that they confront in the host community are in contrast to the religious dogmas brought from home. As Manuel Vasquez (2011, 72) point outs, the Heideggerian existential approach provides a useful analytical integrity beyond Eliadean “ahistorical approach to the sacred”. According to Vasquez (ibid., 73), “Heidegger would see religious space as the result of the practice of historical, context-bound individuals as they “make room”, carve out spaces by manipulating things, establishing boundaries, pathways, and networks that make traveling and dwelling possible”. In this context, we can see how three different types of religious boundaries are reconfigured from their ideal practice in Sri Lanka: the boundary of the metaphysical state which represents the religious ideologies and dogmas, the boundary of the physical state which relates to the embodied practices of religion such as rituals, and the individual boundary which identifies who is to be included and excluded. This also entails the manner of crossing physical as well as imaginary boundaries. While such separation is useful for analytical purposes, the reconfiguration of religious practices in

122 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

transnational spaces is, more or less, infused with all or some of the above categories. As I previously noted, it is evident that the physical boundary of sacredness always intersects with each event. This crossover is present in foods, bodily behaviors, as well as cultural representations of mundane life. When one of the vital characteristics of religion is defined by the notion of “purity”, the crossing of boundaries through such activities becomes a major reconfiguration of religious belief. This crossing becomes a reconfiguration through the human consciousness of the participants which has been altered to tolerate and accept these changes. Perhaps it would be perceived as normal for the person who sees such alterations from the outside, but this situation is a critical alteration in the Sri Lankan Buddhist context. Such changes not only affect the religious practice in the host community, but also the religious consciousness of the transnational person seeing it as natural. In other words, migrants are the embodiment of the liberal norms of such behavior. Representation of religious rituals in this compact and miniature way is another form of altered religious expression. The Katina ritual provides a clear example of this. The whole ritual has been minimized both in time and space. This reduction changes the form of the ritual. In the Sri Lankan context, the ritual extends to the entire village or the community at different stages of the ritual. By doing so, it allows people to connect with the final-day parade even at home, though most of them cannot walk along with the parade. However, in Darwin, the people are brought to the limited space, rather than extending the parade out to the locals. It is obvious that in a migrant community, migrants are not able to parade around the city or villages. In Australia, this is mainly due to the idea that a bounded community does not exist in unitary space, and religious establishments do not exist in each locality to represent each community. The whole meaning of the Katina ritual – taking care of the monks in one’s own community – has been altered by the extension and scattering of the physical space of the migrant. Thus, the final parade is recreated to bring the people into a smaller space rather than extending it into the larger surroundings. This reduction is similar to the other aspects of performing rituals. What is important is the migrants’ attempt to perform the rituals despite the obstacles. The transformation of spatial arrangement is a response to physical and mental necessities. Transformation of religious space into social space also highlights the infusion of sacred and mundane life, or appropriateness of sacred to secular space. By doing so, they surpass the popularly conceived dichotomy of the sacred and secular world. I do not suggest that they regard

Liberalizing the Boundaries

123

the religious symbols or characters as equal to the objects and people in secular life. Instead, I suggest that they understand and involve the meaning of sacred to extend to facilities offered by their social surroundings and their new lifeworld. These are people who have been dislocated from their ordinary life back in their home country. The meaning of time and space, as well as the activities they perform, has been transformed to match their lives now in their host community. This includes the transformation of working culture, the meaning of social and cultural life, as well as the meaning of religion.

Concluding Remarks Religion changes through journeys and border crossings. Such a conclusion highlights that religion is not neutral and hence cannot travel alone. At the same time, the transformation of religion is connected to the way in which migrants perceive their religion in relation to a vast array of social, economic, cultural, and psychological factors. The reconfiguration of religious rituals and the blurring of boundaries are necessary and intrinsic to religious behavior in transnational social space. Identifying such changes will be crucial to understanding the role of behavior in religion within transnational social space. Is it appropriate to conclude that some people are religious, some are not, or some are neutral to religion? Academic studies suggest that religion in transnational social space generates new religions or religious innovation. Is this assumption accurate? Does it lead to religious syncretism? Based on my fieldwork among Sri Lankan migrants and their religious practices in Australia, I argue that within transnational social space, the space for religious syncretism will diminish or reduce. Transnational social space provides all the resources and wealth to help articulate religious meanings and symbols that are closer to the actual practice. The space might be minimized and time will be condensed. Yet, migrants are able to fulfill the rituals closer to their actual practices and beliefs in the home country. Ritual materials and specialists can be imported as guests, and there is no need for replicating the materials. New and secular political systems at host communities have provided institutional arrangements to support such religious events, and are extended by their sponsorship under the rubric of multiculturalism. Hence, religious activity organizers and priests are free to travel between countries and help the immigrants to constitute the religious institutes in host societies. Immigrants’ communities are able to maintain such religious

124 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

institutes even if there are different obstacles. Such facilitation disrupts the environment necessary for religious syncretism to occur. Through careful scrutiny, it is clear that the Sri Lankan community in Darwin engages in transnational religious practices. The way in which the Sri Lankan community engages in religion clearly highlights that the reconfiguration of rituals has not generated a new religion or a hybridity of religion. Instead, they perform ritual practice and beliefs that are close to the ritual structure back at home. Through such performances and engagement, they reproduce both the religion as a phenomenon, as well as migrant religious consciousness. At the same time, they engage in contributing to the home community by strengthening the connections between countries while obsoleting the geophysical boundaries of the nation. Through these activities, Sri Lankans in Darwin create the meaning of home by living in multiple places that create the meaning of home in both locales.

Acknowledgements This chapter was written during a visiting fellowship at the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, in Canada. I am grateful to Professor Jennifer Hyndman (Centre for Refugee Studies) and Professor Daphne Winland (Department of Anthropology, York University) for their thoughts and feedback. This study would not be possible without the generous support of the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, in Australia. I greatly appreciate the support of Professor Ruth Wallace and Professor Rolf Gerritsen, from the Northern Institute. Also, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Bernardo E. Brown, all panel members, and the audience at the conference “Religious Experience and Migrant Communities in Asia” held at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. I would also like to thank Emily Cowal (McMaster University, Canada) and Katelyn Rossiter (Charles Darwin University) for the proofreading and copyediting, and finally, Subhani Nawalage, for her generous support and care during my stay in Canada.

References Clothey, Fred W. 2006. Ritualizing on the Boundaries: Continuity, and Innovation in the Tamil Diaspora. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Cook, David. 2002. “Forty Years of Religion across Borders: Twilight of Transnational Field”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited

Liberalizing the Boundaries

125

by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 51-74. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Csordas, Thomas, ed. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. De Mola, Patricia Fortuny-Loret. 2002. “The Santa Cena of the Luz Del Mundo Church”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 15-50. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1982 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin. Ebaugh, Helen Rose, & Janet Chafetz, eds. 2002. Religious across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1958. Patterns in Comparative Religion. London: Sheed & Ward. —. 1960. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. New York/ London: Harper Torchbooks. Garbin, David. 2014. “Regrounding the Sacred: Transnational Religion, Place Making and the Politics of Diaspora among the Congolese in London and Atlanta”. Global Networks 14 (3): 363-82. Glick-Schiller, Nina, & Georges Eugene Fouron. 2001. Georges Woke up Laughing: Long Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home. London: Duke University Press. Hagan, Jacqueline Maria. 2002. “Religion and the Process of Migration”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 75-91. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Hurh, Won Moo, & Kwang Chung Kim. 1990. “Religious Participation of Korean Immigrants in the United States”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (1): 19-34. Jackson, Michael. 2013a. The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Well-Being. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2013b. Life Worlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago University Press. Leichtman, Mara A. 2013. “From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar and Back Again: Transnational Religion and Politics among Lebanese Christians in Senegal”. Anthropological Quarterly 86 (1): 35-76. Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2003. “You Know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant: Religion and Transnational Migration”. The International Migration Review 37 (3): 847-73. —. 2004. “Redefining the Boundaries of Belonging: The Institutional Character of Transnational Religious Life”. Sociology of Religion 65 (1): 1-18. —. 2008. “Religion as a Path to Civic Engagement”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (4): 766-91.

126 

Jagath Bandara Pathirage

Nieswand, Boris. 2011. Theorising Transnational Migration: The Status Paradox of Migration. New York: Routledge. Oommen, Ginu Zacharia. 2015. “Transnational Religious Dynamics of Syrian Christians from Kerala in Kuwait: Blurring the Boundaries of Belief”. South Asia Research 35 (1): 1-20. Saravia, Clara. 2008. “Transnational Migrants and Transnational Spirits: An African Religion in Lisbon”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (2): 253-69. Tweed, Thomas. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge/ London: Harvard University Press. —. 2011. “Theory and Method in the Study of Buddhism: Toward ‘Translocative’ Analysis.” Journal of Global Buddhism 12: 17-32. Vasquez, Manuel. 2011. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, Anne. 2010. “Mircea Eliade’s ‘The Scared and the Profane’: Identifying and Solving the Human Problem of Environmental Decline”. The International Journal of the Humanities 8 (4): 108-15.

About the author Jagath Bandara Pathirage teaches anthropology at the Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He completed his BA Honors in Sociology at the University of Colombo and obtained an MSc in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently reading for his Doctoral studies in Anthropology at Charles Darwin University in Australia. His PhD explores how Sri Lankan immigrants in Australia perceive the meaning of “Home” and “Belonging” in the context of transnational practices. He was a visiting scholar to the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Canada from May to July 2015 and was Senior Research Fellow at the Marga Institute in Sri Lanka from 2008 to 2011. He has been researching in the field of migration since 2007.

Section 2 Transnational Proselytizing

5

From Structural Separation to Religious Incorporation A Case Study of a Transnational Buddhist Group in Shanghai, China Weishan Huang

Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch05 Abstract While most scholarship argues that modern Chinese cities are secular national and capitalist projects, my research presents a counterview to secular modernity by offering a case study (Tzu Chi Foundation) of the development of public and private religious sites in the Shanghai region carried out by capital-linked migrants since the 1990s. The Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation (Tzu Chi) is an international Buddhist relief organization founded in 1966 and based in Hualien, Taiwan, which has over seven million members in Taiwan and overseas. Taiwan has served as an important source of immigration that has contributed to the religious revival in China since the latter nation’s opening to outside influences. This chapter focuses on the reproduction of religious beliefs carried out by Taiwanese entrepreneurs in the intersection of transnational migration and the global division of labor in Shanghai. I try to explore the ways in which a transnational religious movement inhabits, adapts, and negotiates with secular forms of postcommunist state regulation and urban restructuring. Keywords: transnationalism, Buddhist humanitarianism, religious integration, Shanghai

Religious communities have long been transnational; a more recent development has been the accelerated formation of transnational religious networks in the last half of the twentieth century due to global processes such as

130 Weishan Huang

international migration, multinational capital, and the media revolution. In this chapter, I attempt to illustrate a transnational process within East Asian religions. The writing will be established in two sets of literature: the theories of religion and globalization and migration studies. There are two dimensions of my research interest in this project. My first task will be to understand the dynamics of cross-strait migration and the strategies of religious practices among Taiwanese immigrants in Shanghai. The second will be to explain the shift of organizational practices aiming at the localization of leadership within the Tzu Chi organization since 2014. According to a study by the Pew Foundation, Asian Buddhists mostly migrate within Asia, a very different pattern from Asian Christians; therefore, the study of Asian Buddhists’ transnational immigration in Asian host societies is significant for the understanding of mobility or local incorporation in this dominantly Buddhist region. Through international migration and capital, Taiwan has served as an important source of immigrants contributing to the religious revival in China since the latter nation’s opening to outside influences. The process of the movement and the localization of religious practices carried out by Taiwanese entrepreneurs will be posited at the intersection of transnational migration and the global division of labor in Shanghai in the last twenty years. The religious movement I am studying, the (Taiwanese) Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, was brought to Shanghai by transnational Taiwanese entrepreneurs in the early 1990s. This chapter begins with clarifications on terminology and the description of this Taiwanese religion in China. The second part focuses on the structural separation of Taiwanese religious immigrants from the local Chinese before 2008 caused by state policies. The third part of the chapter deals with the development of Tzu Chi religious practices and spatial issues in Shanghai. The fourth part discusses the turning point of localization in the membership. I analyze empirical data and the roles of new media to explain conversion in recent years. The fifth part focuses on the challenges of localization and changing missions. My research methods include participant observations and formal and informal interviews with Tzu Chi members in the Shanghai region.1 1 During the summers of 2010-2015, I conducted research on capital-linked Taiwanese immigrants, including the religious communities of the Tzu Chi Foundation, in Shanghai and Beijing. In Shanghai, I visited various Tzu Chi district centers in manufacturing and office spaces. I participated in Tzu Chi’s private and public events during my stay in Shanghai. There were eight sites that I visited regularly. Between 2010 and 2015, most of the Tzu Chi commissioners

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

131

The Mobility of Religion and De-territorialization Globalization serves as an analytical category that indicates that the processes of global interdependence, while continuous, have entered a qualitatively new phase. Some scholars argue that we should use theories of globalization to study recent developments in religion in the US, Europe, and the rest of the world. Earlier literature, including the works of theorists such as Peter Beyer (1994, 2006) and Roland Robertson’s (1992) theoretical concepts of globalization and its interaction with religion, argues that religious revivals are forms of traditional identities that emerge in reaction against modernity. The work of Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff in Africa, based on contemporary ethnography and historical documentation, moves further along this line of thinking with its interpretation of the interaction between religion and globalization. More recently, some scholars have focused on the ethnography of religious groups and movements to show how their influence has extended from the margins to the metropole, and how they challenge the view that international religious expressions are secondary to the primarily economic phenomenon of globalization (Csordas 2009). These studies on religious actors have helped us to understand how the actions and religious identities of non-state actors, such as political actors engaged in local forms of articulation, are free of the constraints of territorial and national states (Casanova 2001, 423). José Casanova suggests that one of the most important effects of globalization on religions is the “de-territorialization” of the latter (Basch, Glick-Schiller, & Blanc 1994; Casanova 2001). By de-territorialization, he means the disembeddedness of cultural phenomena from their “natural” territories. Cultural systems throughout history have been territorially embedded. By territory, what is meant is simply ecology in the strict sense of the term, that is, the relations between organisms and their physical environments. At the peak of European modernity and global colonial expansion, as Linda Basch, Nina Glick-Schiller, & Cristina Blanc (1994), and Casanova (2001) have described it, the world is undergoing a particular form of territorialization. As Manuel Castells (1997) notes, global markets, global media and information systems, global subcultures and identities, and global movements and organizations of a global civil society, all proliferate and become increasingly more relevant, traversing national borders and in Shanghai were Taiwanese citizens; therefore, most of my commissioner informants were Taiwanese.

132 Weishan Huang

transcending national territories. Globalization facilitates the return of the old civilizations and of world religions not only as units of analysis, but also as significant cultural systems and as imagined communities, overlapping and at times in competition, with the imagined national communities (Casanova 2001). As new transnational imagined communities emerge, the most relevant ones are likely to be once again the old civilizations and world religions. I will apply the analytical concepts of “migrant religion” and “traveling faith” proposed by Wong & Levitt (2014), as the editors Brown & Yeoh (this volume) suggest, in the analysis of the Tzu Chi movement in the later sections of the chapter. In Wong & Levitt’s differentiation, “migrant religions travel within the local ethnic confines of the migrant (and home) population, even as they re-territorialize and adapt to new contexts. Traveling faiths, conversely, are religious movements with universal claims around which a religious community forms (deterritorialized religions) that travel to proselytize” (Wong & Levitt 2014, 349).

Capital-Linked Taiwanese in China Taiwan has served as an important source of immigration that has contributed to the religious revival in China since the latter nation’s opening to outside influences. The following discussion will focus on the reproduction of religious beliefs carried out by Taiwanese entrepreneurs at the intersection of transnational migration and the global division of labor in Shanghai. Most of the Taiwanese in Shanghai are economic migrants who are seeking better opportunities. In her book The Mobility of Labor and Capital (1988), Saskia Sassen links the transnational flow of people and capital. She argues that capital mobility has created new conditions for the mobility of labor in which foreign investments provide both the cultural and economic contacts between investors and local workers. In previous research on the ethnic relationship between Taiwanese and Chinese, most of the studies focus on the ethnic dynamics of Taiwanese and Chinese in business settings. Scholars (Gen 2002; Fang 2003) have come to agree that the ethnic separation between Taiwanese and Chinese is evident in cases where the Taiwanese face the arrogant Chinese bureaucrats and lower socioeconomic class labor. However, the Taiwanese tend to identify with the host society once they stay in China longer and consider the country as the place for career development. Some research shows that Taiwanese migrants have tried

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

133

to integrate with Chinese society but have failed because the entrenched ethnic Taiwanese community is already established and difficult to challenge. Deng Jian-bang (2008, 13) argues that Taiwanese entrepreneurs have become “potential immigrants” in China because they spend more time in China than they do in Taiwan during the year. In Deng’s paper, he further describes the sense of detachment that exists between Taiwanese and Chinese workers in manufacturing companies located in the Shenzhen region. Lin Ping’s (2009) study on identity and ethnic boundaries investigates the preferences of residential location among Taiwanese in Dongguan and Shanghai. Li found a common pattern of understanding “being together, but not mixed” caused by the fear of downward mobility. In this chapter, I use religion as a location to first understand the process of localization of a Taiwanese group and argue that the religious identity of being Tzuchians has the potential to gradually override national or class boundaries.

Some Clarifications on the Definition of Terms According to Alejandro Portes, Luis Guarnizo, & Patricia Landolt (1999, 225), transnational entrepreneurs are different from immigrant entrepreneurs since the immigrant entrepreneurs are those who “settled abroad and became progressively integrated into local ways”, while the transnational entrepreneurs cultivate their networks across space, and travel “back and forth in pursuit of their commercial ventures”. Scholars often characterize those entrepreneurs who have moved their businesses from Taiwan to China as adopting cost-reduction, innovation, and quality enhancement strategies, which contributes to the study of Taiwanese migrants in China by positioning them in the economic chain of the global division of labor. In an earlier period, Taiwanese entrepreneurs moved their business to China but left their family members behind. They lived in the industrial parks and maintained separate lives from local labor and local inhabitants. We have witnessed the phenomenon of astronaut-like migration among early transmigrants, which signifies, first, the interest of commuting back and forth in pursuit of commercial ventures, family interests, and the plan to return to the homeland as well. I was informed by my interviewees that most Taiwanese entrepreneurs had brought their families to China. As the (Tzu Chi) Buddhist teaching states, couples should not remain separated for too long. The transformation of capital-linked individuals to family

134 Weishan Huang

migration is hardly a case of “settling abroad”. I have noticed that all of my interviewees had sent their children to study in international schools in Shanghai and eventually to the West for their higher education. Many of the first-generation entrepreneurs still plan to return to Taiwan after they retire. In the 1990s, besides class, the major factor contributing to the ethnic separation between Taiwanese and local Chinese is the political structure, in particular the municipal policies regarding religious foreigners. What makes the political ecology of Shanghai different from the other places, such as the rural areas in China? In my fieldwork, I found out that one important but unspoken regulation among house churches in Shanghai is the separation of “foreign” and “non-foreign” congregations or fellowships. For example, in the “Regulations on the Religious Affairs in Shanghai”, one learns that these regulations are formulated in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws for the purposes of ensuring citizens’ freedom of religious belief, maintaining harmony among and between religions, preserving social concord, and regulating the administration of religious affairs. Yet citizens’ freedom of religious belief is limited. In the name of “harmony”, there are many restrictions that have been set up around faith practices. Since it is “illegal” for citizens to practice religious rituals without religious clergy even at permitted religious sites, almost all religious rituals conducted outside of state-sponsored sites are “underground”. And these rules also apply to foreigners. The restrictions of religious activities of aliens within Chinese territory include the religious ceremonies they participate in or conduct in accordance to their own religious beliefs and customs, contacts with Chinese religious bodies, sites for religious activities, and the religious personnel they employ.2 It reflects the government’s fear of foreign influence on domestic congregations. The Chinese government still treats Christianity as a foreign religion; yet, this regulation is not strongly imposed on Buddhists in Shanghai. Despite all of the constraints of written and unwritten rules, local and foreign residents are still “doing religion” in Shanghai, with some political uncertainties.

2 Article 3 in “Decree of the State Administration for Religious Affairs”, No. 1. Rules for the Implementation of the Provision on the Administration of Religious Activities of Aliens within the Territory of the People’s Republic of China.

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

135

The Influence of Taiwanese Religion in China Tzu Chi migrants and entrepreneurs The practice of most Taiwanese religious groups is to operate outside of an increasingly state-controlled system to administer religion. For example, Fo Guang Shan was one of the Taiwanese Buddhist groups to start an exchange project ( jiaoliu 交流) back in 1989. It was later banned by the Chinese government for ten years. In 2005, the renovation of Da Jue Temple 大觉 寺 in Yixing 宜兴 was marked as the revival project for the mother temple (zuting 祖庭) of Fo Guang Shan, a grand gesture to recognize China as the nation where the pre-Fo Guang Shan lineage was first established. With the increasing popularity of Master Xinyun 星云 in China, Fo Guang Shan started building cultural centers instead of a monastery in the city, such as the Xinyun Cultural Education Center in Shanghai in 2015, in order to avoid the state-controlled system on Buddhist groups. Another popular Buddhist master, Master Jingkong 净空, had established one thousand Jing School Education Societies (Jingzong Xuehui 净宗学会) all over China. Although Jingzong Xuehui was banned as an evil cult in China, Master Jingkong is still popular on social media and continues his influence by crossing over to pan-Buddhist groups. In this short chapter, I will use a case study of a religious group, the Tzu Chi Foundation (Tzu Chi), in Shanghai to study created religious spaces in the manufacturing and later in the residential communities. Hualien is a sacred land for Tzu Chi members. Every May, the major leaders of Tzu Chi overseas branches fly back to Hualien to attend the Global Tzu Chi Day on Mother’s Day and participate in a variety of activities during the following week.3 Tzu Chi is a lay movement apart from the existing Buddhist monasteries, thereby offering a different focus for research compared to previous studies on Buddhist practices within the state system. My research shows that Tzu Chi functioned as a semi-underground organization before 2008, the year the organization successfully registered as an NGO in China. The religion could not be practiced centrally, but rather had to be spread out among households and factories controlled by Taiwanese entrepreneurs with some freedom from state censorship‫ ‏‬. However, since Tzu Chi practices focus on social services, engagement with the host society was seen as a necessary mission. Tzu Chi’s charitable works in rural public areas had been 3 Since 2008, commissioners have been encouraged to hold the Global Tzu Chi Day locally in their respective host societies.

136 Weishan Huang

facilitated by local officials, which was a way of receiving recognition from the rural state. After 2008, large Tzu Chi centers were built in various locations, and younger urban Chinese joined as committed volunteers (zhigong 志工). If Tzu Chi was operating outside of an increasingly state-controlled system, how did it recruit new members? What kind of religious spaces did this semi-underground organization create for immigrants and for newly converted members in a highly controlled society? My research showed that the discourse of this worldly form of Buddhism, particularly focusing on social service, was very appealing to urban converts. The Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, with its millions of members in Taiwan and overseas is indeed the largest social group in Taiwan today, with more than 300 Tzu Chi offices worldwide. 4 As the record from 2012 shows, there was a total of 77,621 certified Tzu Chi commissioners globally in 34 regions. Of this total, there were 50,240 certified commissioners and 27,381 Tzu Cheng Faith Corps.5 Among them, 29,766 commissioners and 19,064 Faith Corps members are in Taiwan. Additionally, 3623 commissioners and 1324 Faith Corps members are overseas members. Commissioners and Faith Corps members are lay leaders who serve as the backbone of global missions. The spread and settlement of ethnic Chinese immigrants in many major cities worldwide is the significant factor behind Tzu Chi’s global network. In China, they require at least two years of training in each local area and are certified by the Religious Bureau at the headquarters. The focus on humanitarianism has separated the Tzu Chi Foundation from other Han Buddhist groups not only in Taiwan and China, but also globally. The founder, Master Cheng Yen, was initiated as a Buddhist nun in 1963 and was influenced by her master, Yin Shun, who taught his followers: “Be committed to Buddhism and to all living beings”.6 This reform is truly Reverend Cheng Yen’s own innovation. The followers of Master Cheng Yen must also join the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan if they intend to convert to the group. Therefore, the identity of being a devoted Buddhist is associated with the secular charitable identity of Tzuchian.7 In the 1990s, as a foreign and organized religious group, the commissioners of Tzu Chi Foundation behaved as missionaries who risked their business interests but insisted on conducting Buddhist evangelism among 4 See http://www.tzuchi.org. Accessed July 20, 2016. 5 Commissioners are lay leaders who have been certified. Tzu Cheng Faith Corps members refer to male commissioners. 6 Zheng Yen is the Chinese spelling, and Cheng Yen is the Taiwanese Chinese spelling. 7 Tzu Chi members.

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

137

Taiwanese immigrants in Shanghai. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Tzu Chi identities served as a tool for survival by preserving strong group ties. This result was different from what had been suggested by the early model of migration theory in the United States, where religious identities were applied or assigned within ethnic lines. Once Tzu Chi was “successfully” registered in 2008, the NGO legal status permitted the organization to recruit local Chinese members, a significant breakthrough for the expansion of organization membership that crossed ethnic boundaries, but not identities. My research showed that the indigenization of Tzu Chi members in China (which is also a growing phenomenon in various Tzu Chi overseas branches) mirrored another phenomenon, particularly in China: the overriding of ethnic divisions through religious affiliations. Class also has been another important variable separating the working and social lives of the Taiwanese and Chinese in China. Most Taiwanese immigrants, entrepreneurs, and business professionals, live a completely different expatriate life through maintaining separate working spaces and dormitories in the industrial parks.8 Taiwanese business expatriates live their lives as transnational migrants traveling between their kinship homes in Taiwan and “guest” homes in China. The population of Taiwanese entrepreneurs and business professionals in my research9 are Taiwanese born.10 The first generation of Taiwanese in China were entrepreneurs running their own manufacturing companies but without college education, while the younger Taiwanese business professionals who worked for them tended to have college degrees.11

The Early Groups Sister Chious’ office also functions as a Buddhist gathering space in Shanghai’s Putuo district, as do the workplaces of fellow Tzu Chi members in the Jiading, Jingan, Baoshan, Pudong, and Minhung districts. These Taiwanese entrepreneurs have all used their companies as spaces to hold their religious events for years. They started gathering at homes, but were discovered 8 Based on my observations during field trips to Shenzhen in 1999 and Kunshan in 2010. 9 Interview meetings were conducted between 2010 and 2014. 10 They were born in Taiwan and were not returned migrants in China. 11 Among my interviewees, children of the first-generation Taiwanese were born in Taiwan and all had attained college degrees in Western countries before they joined their parents’ businesses in China. However, they are not the main research targets that I studied.

138 Weishan Huang

by “Taiban”12 officers who subsequently banned their home events. After their house gatherings were disrupted a few times by the local police, they decided to convene at companies and factories. They hosted Buddhist study groups and Buddhist festivals at their manufacturing and office spaces. My fieldwork on this transnational religious movement led me to discover, firstly, how immigrant entrepreneurs used their economic power to conceal religious practice until they gained their NGO legal status in 2008. People are practicing religion at the risk of losing their businesses. Secondly, even after gaining “legal” status as an NGO, they still have to express their beliefs in hidden ways within small groups. These Taiwanese bosses, like all of the commissioners, are on a mission to promote environmental protection programs. They live frugal lifestyles. Some of them own organic farms at their manufacturing plants. They practice these Buddhist teachings bodily and see themselves as perfecting their lives by acting with kindness, thrift, and prudence in the secular world. By hoping to transform those noble intentions and acts into external rewards, they seek to bring others, such as employees, to join the missions. The problem is that these religious-cultural teachings and practices can be used by Tzu Chi bosses to discipline their lower-class laborers. Since their successful registration in 2008, the pattern of the Tzu Chi family in Shanghai is that the bosses (mostly husbands) are typically busy with the companies, while their wives would volunteer as full-time Tzuchians. Those companies will provide the space for Tzu Chi events, which are aimed at attracting people outside of the company. The practice of Buddhist teaching is no longer just for cultural retention among Taiwanese transmigrants.

Why Would Local Chinese People Join Tzu Chi? When I first visited Sister Mei’s (a senior Taiwanese entrepreneur) company in 2011, there were about fifteen to twenty members in the evening study groups. One year later, when I returned to her office, which was already converted into a Tzu Chi center, I was quite surprised to see more than 60 members sitting in an overcrowded office space that had been renovated for the second time by tearing down the wall dividing the private and public offices. A hidden space is now directly connected to the street. 12 Taiban 台办 officers are the Chinese officials from the Taiwan Affairs Office (Taiwan Shiwu Banshichu 台湾事务办事处) who are responsible for managing Taiwanese affairs within China.

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

139

When I asked a retiree, Sister Cao (a 64-year-old female local Chinese), how she had first heard of Tzu Chi, she said that she had been introduced to it by a friend who was also a Buddhist. She was a full-time volunteer with the Tzu Chi Foundation in Shanghai and had entered her second year (2012) as a trainee for a Tzu Chi commissioner. She enjoyed Tzu Chi’s charitable works, which in her words, “provides something good for me to do and to do it systematically (you xitong 有系统)”.13 Unlike her experiences with other temples, she has had many events to participate in. During the weeks when I was there, she was not only volunteering for Sister Mei’s center for environmental protection campaigns in the housing community, she also traveled 1.5 hours to get to another Tzu Chi district to help out in the kitchen. I asked her how she found out about which Tzu Chi district center needed help or participation and she replied, “Through the phone”. She showed me an instant QQ text message of one such announcement that she received from the other district. Cao, born in Zhejiang province, first immigrated to Shanghai to live with her sister in 1964. In order to support the development of the hinterland (zhiyuan neidi jianshe 支援内地建设), she relocated to Nanjing city with her sister’s family. Between 1968 and 1975, she was assigned to labor in the countryside because of the inferior status of her political background (chengfen buhao 成分不好). She was the first in her family to convert to Buddhism. Difficulties in life brought her to learn about the different faiths after she retired. During my visit in Shanghai, I followed her to various Tzu Chi events. I learned that she also visited different Buddhist temples. On the day of Lunar December 8 腊八, she and her Chinese Buddhist friends were torn over whether to attend the celebration in another temple or the event in Tzu Chi Shanghai center. “The Master [of another temple] asked us to help with preparing congee on Lunar December 8 腊八粥. On the same day, we have a Tzu Chi event. We have decided to attend the Tzu Chi event”, Cao said. During the traineeship period in Tzuchi, Shanghai, trainees were strongly advised not to miss any Tzu Chi events. During my interviews with other trainees in 2012 and 2013, they constantly mentioned that Tzu Chi is a Buddhist practice from Taiwan and that it is “better” than other practices. When I asked them to explain to me what it means to be better, the answers were varied. One sister told me that Tzu Chi is a better practice because it comes from Taiwan. Taiwan itself is better. When I pressed her, she replied that the Tzu Chi Foundation has members in many foreign countries. Wearing a Tzu Chi uniform provides a sense of 13 Interview with Sister Cao in 2012.

140 Weishan Huang

superiority from affiliating with a transnational, cosmopolitan organization. One brother, Shao (in his early 50s), had a memorable experience in participating in a Taiwanese Buddhist group while he was an international student in Japan. He frequently chanted Buddhist sutras with Taiwanese immigrants, although he claimed that he did not really believe in Buddhism while he was in Japan. He enjoyed the experience of dining gatherings and friendship. “I was so happy when I first discovered that there was a Taiwanese Buddhist group in our residential community. This is a well-to-do community. You must have either a good education or a good income to be able to live here. When I first attended the event, the Tzuchians were so friendly”, Shao said. He stated that the recycling program was a great idea. Tzu Chi brought new ideas to mainland China. He added, “But the Tzu Chi (Foundation) needs to realize this program in all residential communities. We have to find a way of making it big”. Another young woman, Lynn (late 20s), expressed her firm belief in Master Cheng Yan’s teaching. She has a full-time job but still attends the 5:00 pm event at the Changfeng 长风 Center every day, where the group watches the Master’s teaching through satellite. An early 5:00 am program, called “Be Incensed in Dharma Scent” (xun faxiang 薰法香), is a new program which the master designed to teach followers Dharma before they start their day jobs. In Lynn’s family, no one believes in Buddhism. Her mother is particularly concerned about her conversion, but cannot stop her from going to Tzu Chi events. “I never met the master. I have been reading and searching for faith since I was in college. I was deeply touched by the master’s teaching. I came to the Tzu Chi center and read many books before I determined that this is really what I have been searching for, a true and best path of cultivation”, Lynn said. When I asked her what the “true and best” path means, she answered, “I went to the countryside with other Tzuchians for the house visits and poverty relief. I saw how Tzuchians helped those ill elders take baths and cleaned their houses. They behaved so naturally and willingly. They have been doing what the master has been teaching them. It is a practice of Humanistic Buddhism. I could not stop reading those [Tzu Chi] books”. In the eyes of many Taiwanese senior commissioners, she is the model of being diligent and persistent (iingjin 精进). Sister Mei told me that when Tzu Chi China f irst accepted Chinese practitioners, all of the Shanghai members preferred to receive the donation receipts issued in Taiwan rather than in Shanghai. Local Chinese members seemed to have more trust in receipts sent from the transnational headquarters. When asked if members still preferred this option, Sister Mei said the practice stopped as soon as the China branch gained the legitimacy

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

141

to issue donation receipts from the Chinese government. The headquarters preferred to set up independent financial systems in individual overseas branches. The separation of accounting systems between Taiwan and China could also alleviate the burden of being overtaxed by the headquarters in Taiwan. It is the focus on social practices that attracts many newly converted members to the movement. Most of them did not mention the Master in Taiwan. Most of them also did not cite religious teachings in our first interview, although they addressed Tzu Chi as a Buddhist organization. Yet these Tzu Chi social services have created practices, programs, and a new social space in urban areas where there is very little state involvement. Physical spaces are created behind company offices or within the factories for religious gatherings of Taiwanese immigrants in the beginning but then later become community centers for those of mixed ethnicities. It is a social space between the state and private spaces, a created social arena designed to discuss new ideas for community betterment and religious education that are often quite different from the state discourse.

Transnational Capital: “Practicing the Global in the Local” Many Chinese informants mentioned being attracted to the Taiwanese Tzu Chi Foundation because it is from Taiwan. Being a Taiwanese group carries symbolic transnational capital and most of the Chinese look to Taiwan as a stereotypical group of economic elites. I will elaborate more on the meaning of symbolic transnational capital from both the organizational and members’ perspectives, particularly the question of how people construct narratives and local religious sites in the world of the Tzu Chi global movement. Tzu Chi’s de-territorialization is facilitated and furthered by transnational Taiwanese immigrants and the cosmopolitanization of the Tzuchians’ religious discourse, values, and practices. The Tzu Chi denomination has been following the Sutra of Immeasurable Meaning (Amitarthasutra; wuliang yijin 无量义经) for decades. Master Cheng Yen has invited all of the commissioners and volunteers to take the vow of a Humanistic Bodhisattva 人间菩萨, to be sincere, upright, and trustworthy, to fear no hardship, and to offer help to the needy. She asked the Tzuchians to work together to pave the road ahead with “Great Love”, a philanthropic vision that has taken on cosmic dimensions for all Tzuchians. When they engage in civil activities, they are fulfilling the practice of a Bodhisattva. In the following paragraphs,

142 Weishan Huang

I will explain the organizational definition of “Great Love”, and how it is expressed in the local actions of Chinese volunteers. This kind of cosmopolitan love is preached constantly among the Tzuchians and has developed into a “worldly version”, which I consider a form of cosmopolitanism. This identity is embedded in Tzu Chi’s global institutions and located in the geographical framework of global missions. The Tzu Chi movement is unconventional because it is defined more by social service than religious service. How is Tzu Chi mobilized locally and globally? What Tzu Chi’s Great Love stresses is the physical and mental wellbeing of all races and human beings, which is very close to Ulrich Beck’s concept of cosmopolitanism, although it is presented within a religious framework. What, then, is the cosmopolitan position? Beck (2006, 3) defines it as a “global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday reflexive awareness of ambivalences in a milieu of blurring differentiation and cultural contradictions”. Tzu Chi’s promotion of the concept of Great Love represents a unique contribution to modern Buddhist discourse. This teaching is reflected in the discourse regarding the social involvement of volunteers and results in religious revitalization. It is also the discourse of religious cosmopolitanism. It offers a new path for cultivation by not only abandoning self-centered attachments, but also caring for and loving others, and rescuing them from suffering in this world. Yet this process is not completely secular. Adherents believe that walking through this social involvement is a path to cultivate one’s wisdom and to repair one’s karma. Who are “the others”? The Master has said, “In the whole world, there is no one that I don’t love, there is no one that I don’t trust and there is no one that I don’t forgive”. The Master’s teaching pushes worldwide disciples to cross the boundaries of their ethnocentric living experiences and respond to local needs. The concept of Great Love has also been dominant in initiating a dialogue among transcultural and interreligious groups in the immigrant communities in all of Tzu Chi’s overseas branches. Tzu Chi teachings stress the concept of “for Buddhism, for all beings”. Traditional boundaries that used to separate us from others, such as nationality, ethnicity, and religion, no longer divide us nor are they obscured by ontological difference, but have become transparent. This sameness opens up space for both empathy and affection. This is seen in the call to save sufferers whenever one hears their calls for help. Imagining and associating themselves with the hands or eyes of the Bodhisattva, this enables commissioners and volunteers to become sensitive to, and aware of, “others” in a global sense. This is facilitated by the media, which constantly

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

143

replays images of suffering and rescue; the pain of others is internalized by the Tzuchians, becoming a part of their own feelings and experiences. Taiwanese volunteers are eager to fly to various countries to offer disaster relief wherever needed. The emergence of Tzu Chi in Taiwan and its encouragement of voluntarism among Buddhists have led to controversy and debate on the nature of what is considered traditional or authentic Buddhism. As the Tzu Chi organization opens up its membership to the followers of other religions without the requirement of conversion, its religious identity has become negotiable, exhibiting its flexibility in straddling the line between being both a movement and an organization. The use of media is a key way for Shanghai Tzuchians to insert themselves into the global rescue movement. From 2010 to 2013, the presentation of PowerPoints and videos was typical of Tzu Chi education in its study groups. Since 2013, I witness how satellite television and mobile phone applications (e.g. WeChat in China and Line in Taiwan) have become critical tools for communication and education within the organizational network. The collective image of Tzu Chi members in these media forms breaks away from the typical representations of traditional Buddhist individualism and instead offers an image of group action at the grassroots level. The media frequently show groups of Tzuchians in uniforms engaged in humanitarian relief activities, and this contradicts the conventional image of either crowded scenes of burning incense or isolated Buddhists meditating in peaceful surroundings. Since the Tzu Chi headquarters has not sent any nuns overseas for the Dharma teachings, the senior commissioners typically circulate around materials prepared by the Religious Department in Hualien, Taiwan, among speakers in the Shanghai region. Sister Mi (Taiwanese, 55, converted in 2012), the trainee speaker for environmental protection, explained to me that she also adds some local examples to the materials to make it easier for local Chinese to understand. In each event, there are public testimonies, which are called “sharing”, on how volunteers implement the teachings into their daily lives, after the talk. Those stories are based on volunteers’ experiences and their self-reflections on the group’s teachings. In 2013, I interviewed Qing, a male volunteer (Chinese, in his early 30s, and in the police force) who had been a devotee for two years. After watching a video on international relief in Asia in an evening study group, he shared his emotional speech and vowed to recruit 500 volunteers to make a thousand-hand and thousand-eye Bodhisattva. That vivid image came from Master Cheng Yan’s speech: “If we can gather the manpower of five hundred volunteers, they can be a thousand-hand-and-thousand-eye Bodhisattva

144 Weishan Huang

in action. Bodhisattva rescues those who suffer”. This narrative, through the use of computer visualization, is presented as a face of mercy, with the Bodhisattva composed of thousands of Tzuchians’ pictures worldwide. It was released as the cover image of Tzu Chi journals. I had also seen this image in framed posters in most of the Taiwanese senior volunteers’ living rooms. Some commissioners could even pinpoint where they are in the image. In 2015, when I met Qing at the Changfeng Center, I asked if he had reached the goal of recruiting 500 volunteers. He smiled and replied that was his lifetime mission and he would persist until he accomplished it. Tzu Chi missions are not only social service-oriented, but also focused on global problems, such as environmental protection, international disaster relief, and bone-marrow donation. As discussed earlier in the chapter, many members mentioned that international disaster relief is very compelling. The missions focusing on a global scale elevate their Buddhist identity as global Tzuchians who share moral concerns about rescuing people from around the world who are calling for help. The tension between Taiwanese nationalism and Chinese nationalism does not disappear, but it is avoided since there is a higher mission for humankind – rescuing the needy in the local community, in Shanghai, China, and the whole world. By watching Tzu Chi’s videos during group events or the daily satellite news worldwide, Shanghai-based Tzuchians have become aware that local actions are part of a greater mission around the globe. Although media, such as Great Love Television and WeChat, play important roles for the enhancement of global identity, it is an embodied practice, which translates belief into social services that create the sense of collectiveness at the grassroots level.

Religious Incorporation in the Community In this section, I will first discuss the transition to local leadership as evidence of the process of localization. Secondly, I will describe the increasing tension between Taiwanese and Chinese members within the group. Acculturation is an important process for all of the volunteers (both Chinese and Taiwanese) to become a religious Tzuchian. The first step of acculturation is socialization and becoming familiar with all of the teachings and participation in the group’s practices. The second step is gaining recognition from senior Taiwanese Tzuchians. Since 2008, there has been an increasing number of Chinese converts joining Tzu Chi. By 2016, almost all of Tzu Chi trainees in Shanghai were Chinese. It requires two years of training before they can be promoted as

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

145

Tzu Chi commissioners. During the two years of training, trainees must attend all of the classes as well as Tzu Chi public events. Attendance for each trainee is documented in print. Those classes and events are a way of socialization that addresses questions concerning the nature of the “Tzu Chi spirit” and the proper behavior of a Tzuchian. In 2006, there was a structural reform, known as “Four in One”,14 within the Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan. The reform was gradually implemented in overseas branches, including China in 2014. The fundamental nature of the reform is to integrate social services within the communities. The “Four in One” (siheyi 四合一) reform is a way to integrate the junior members in missions so that they do not feel left out in a big organization. Almost all of the senior members repeated the reform motto to me when I asked about Four in One: “The reform is to work together like concentric circles. We all have to assist each other and integrate Tzu Chi services in our own communities. The reform of the new system is that junior members can be appointed as event planners (heqi 和气) and the senior members have to work as the rank-and-file members (xieli 协力)”.15 It is not simply a concern about efficient mobilization. The shift in mission is not only from rural to urban space but also about diversifying the leadership in ethnic terms. “Relay”, the term used for the process of localization among Tzu Chi’s membership and leadership in China, is part of a long-term plan by Tzu Chi headquarters. The idea is to have local Chinese members become the leaders of their own residential communities. The Chinese volunteers are appointed as the group leaders for monthly environmental protection days since 2014, such as in Baoshan, Jiading, and Xuhui districts. “Integrating into the community” represented a shift of organizational development in 2014. The challenge of large-scale distributions in the countryside has attracted a good deal of attention from the Chinese government. Civil groups like Tzu Chi also cannot compete with the capacity of the military in domestic disaster relief. Refocusing missions in the urban residential community seems to be a tactical shift. At the same time, this opening up to the urban residential community serves as a niche opportunity as well. Caring for members’ neighborhoods has created a new mission audience and a new social space for urban Tzuchians. 14 “Four in One” (siheyi 四合一) is a campaign to promote the solidarity among the four tiers of membership. 15 The original wording of the motto is liti liuli tongxinyuan, hehe huxie, renren huigui shequ. shequ dongyuan; shequ faqin guanhuai; shequ siheyi yunzuo 立體琉璃同心圓, 合和互協, 人人 回歸社區. 社區動員; 社區法親關懷; 社區四合一運作.

146 Weishan Huang

Becoming Tzuchian Culturally but Not Socially? The relationship between the Taiwanese and Chinese is not always as serene and affectionate as suggested by official teachings about the “Tzu Chi Family”. The tension between the Taiwanese and Chinese was expressed first along cultural lines and then ethnic lines. I should first stress that the term, acculturation, used in this section does not refer to “the minority” acculturating into the host society. Taiwanese immigrants have very little intention of integrating into the Chinese host society. Instead, acculturation refers to the socialization and aspiration of Chinese members in learning to be Tzuchians. Acculturation is a two-way street. Chinese members aspire to be Tzuchian by taking a two-year training program to learn Tzu Chi discourse, explicitly Tzu Chi humanitarianism (ciji renwen 慈济人文). The lessons are designed to train the uncultivated “mind and body” in religious terms. The socialization of cultured body postures is viewed to be critical as an external expression of the mind. Senior Taiwanese commissioners not only permit but also encourage this socialization of Chinese members in becoming Tzuchians. Taiwanese commissioners are usually at the top of the organizational hierarchy because they have converted earlier and have immersed themselves in the culture much longer. Few Taiwanese senior commissioners have even cultivated religious capital as they have a closer relationship with the master. They, therefore, enjoy the sense of privilege, as senior and core members (hexin 合心), in the power structure of the organizational hierarchy. As mentioned above, the shift in mission is not only about space but also about diversifying the leadership in ethnic terms. In 2014, I started to hear some criticisms regarding the higher standards for acceptance of commissioners for promotion. The bar was raised higher as volunteers were not permitted to miss one single class or event during the year-long training, or else they would be disqualified. The new zero-tolerance policy has made the qualification of commissioners more difficult for new Chinese members. One Taiwanese female commissioner, Mi (55, entrepreneur), was furious because a Chinese trainee under her supervision for two years could not get a promotion as a commissioner: The rules have become harsher every year. The review committee, all composed by Taiwanese commissioners at the moment, should give local people some leniency, as some new members will only miss a class because of a conflict in their work schedule. There is one member who attended 180 events over a year. I do the math. That’s one every other

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

147

day. They still failed her because she missed one event while she was ill. If they [the review committee] only want to recruit people who will not miss a single event or class, they can only convert people who are either retirees or people who are too rich to work. Those senior sisters themselves do not need to work because they are from wealthy families; therefore, they don’t understand the busy work schedules of young people. Don’t even mention young married couples who both work and have a kid.

When I asked how a married couple could participate in an event together if one parent needs to babysit, she said that the couples usually apply for promotions in different years. “They use the motto, ‘advancing your cultivation, career and family at the same time’ (sanye bingjin 三业并进) to disqualify new members. The bottom line is that the working class or people in the service sector have much longer working hours. We should try to understand why they would sometimes be forced to miss one event or just half an event”, Mi said. On whether there was enough manpower to cover all of Tzu Chi’s missions, Mi shared that, “The chair on the review committee argues that now we would like to focus on the quality instead of quantity. There are so many new Chinese members anyway”. When asked how to determine the quality, Mi said, “the committee often applies some superficial arguments to disqualify new applicants. For example, the committee will use one sentence of a member to determine if he or she fits into the framework of Tzu Chi humanitarianism”. Upon enquiring at the community level if it was mandated that all of the newly appointed small-group leaders (xiaozuzhang 小组长) should be Chinese, and if so, how was their leadership performance considered, Sister Mi replied, “Some argue that because they [newly appointed Chinese leaders] don’t have sufficient background in Tzu Chi humanitarianism, they could not have strong leadership. For example, in our district, the rest of the group members feel reluctant to mobilize”. While Tzu Chi belief had led people to cross ethnic boundaries to mobilize collectively in the host society, it is now being tested whether this transition of leadership from a different ethnicity will be a smooth one. Before 2008, Taiwanese and Chinese were separated by city policy. Once the policy barrier was overcome, religious identity seemed to transcend ethnic differences. Taiwanese and Chinese have been volunteers within the same social space, albeit with different power positions in the group. In the long process of religious cultivation, the acculturation of the Chinese

148 Weishan Huang

members into higher social positions within the group was considered incomplete. Chinese were referred to as local (dangdiren/dangdide 当 地人/当地的) in opposition to the status of immigrants, the Taiwanese (taiwanren/taiwan laide 台湾人/台湾来的). Lin’s (2009, 90) study has shown that both ethnicities are “being together, but not mixed” into the same residential space. In the case of Tzu Chi, both Taiwanese and Chinese choose to join the same social group. They both associate with the same religious symbols, values, and identity. Their mobilization subscribes to the same Buddhist ethic. While many young and old Chinese are learning to be a Tzuchian, it is still difficult for them to achieve equal social positions to those of the Taiwanese because of ethnic and class differences.

Conclusion The initiatives for the relocation of Taiwanese capital-linked immigrants from Taiwan to China are based on capitalist drives to seek out lower costs of tax, labor, and land. Before 2008, Tzu Chi entrepreneurs and professionals in Shanghai practiced their belief within the ethnic communities, which Wong & Levitt described as “migrant religion”. However, the ethnic separation within the group was because of the policy design by the Shanghai government. The politics between China and Taiwan has also played a critical role for the curbing of capital-linked migration and religious expansion from Taiwan to China. In 2008, once the Tzu Chi Foundation received recognition from the Chinese government and had legally registered itself as a not-for-profit entity, the Tzu Chi branches in China were able to mobilize its human and monetary resources in both China and overseas to spread their belief in China. The religious movement of Tzu Chi is connected with the historical discourse of humanistic Buddhism in early twentieth-century China and had been transformed into a modern Buddhist movement starting in Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century as discussed earlier. The movement has successfully incorporated universal values, such as Buddhist humanitarianism, in international disaster relief, environmental protection, and religious volunteerism. The Tzu Chi movement, which started out as an immigrant religion in host societies, has developed into a “traveling faith”, a movement which is not only extended by the carrier of ethnic Taiwanese immigrants but also by incorporating modern Buddhist humanitarianism which creates the global niche for the localization and institutionalization of the movement in

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

149

various localities (Huang 2014). This study contributes to the understanding of how a new global religious movement faces challenges in the process of the localization of leadership. Tzu Chi has developed in China for 25 years.16 Taiwanese entrepreneurs migrated to Shanghai because of business investment opportunities. In the f irst f ifteen years, Taiwanese investments provided both the cultural and economic contacts between investors and local workers, although local Chinese were not officially permitted to join the group until 2008. Since 2008, the development of membership indigenization has been rapid. In the eyes of many Chinese members, the business elite has introduced a global Buddhist organization originally from Taiwan. Chinese practitioners are attracted by the social services of reformed Buddhism, a practice which is still very different from the practice of local Chinese Han Buddhism. Mobilization for local Chinese is driven by a global aspiration of being a modern Buddhist in an urban setting. As Richard Madsen (2007) has found, the modern Buddhist identity has assisted the urban middle class to find a new identity in the process of social transition in Taiwan. Tzu Chi has created a social space linked to both its cyber and global mental spaces. Although this research is focused on the physical spaces (offline practices) where people carry out collective actions, there are various new media involved in the organization of the Tzu Chi network as well. Mobile technology’s use of multisites is not new, as the Internet has connected people in different places and spaces since it was first developed. However, how new social media, like WeChat, facilitates the creation of a fluid network of interactions and information in sustaining Tzu Chi’s global network needs further research. There have been several shifts in organizational development in the Tzu Chi Foundation since 2008. First, there is the massive conversion rate among the local Chinese. How to create a new niche for these converts has become a pressing issue. Secondly, in 2014, there was another shift of practice, that of “integrating into the community”. This shift in mission is first about changing tasks, but more recently, it is also concerned with diversifying the leadership in ethnic terms. As there is a new trend of return migration among Taiwanese migrants to Taiwan, the localization of leadership is the next challenge for the sustainable development of the Tzu Chi Foundation in China.

16 The first disaster-relief effort in China was in 1991.

150 Weishan Huang

Acknowledgements This research was supported by both the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity (2010-2013) and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange from July 2013 to June 2015.

References Basch, Linda G., Nina Glick-Schiller, & Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon & Breach. Beck, Ulrich. 2006. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge, MA/ Malden, MA: Polity Press. Beyer, Peter. 2006. Religions in Global Society. London: Routledge. —. 1994. Religion and Globalization. London: Sage Publications. Casanova, José. 2001. “Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization”. Sociology of Religion 62 (4): 415-41. Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. The Information Age: Economy Society and Culture. Volume 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Csordas, Thomas J. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Deng, Jian-bang. 2008. “The End of National Belonging? Future Scenarios of National Belonging from Migration Experience for Taiwanese Entrepreneurs in Shenzhen”. Journal of Future Studies 13 (2): 13-30. Gen, Shu 耿曙. 2002. “‘Zixu Ren’ Yihuo ‘Waiwan Ren’? Da Shanghai Diqu Gao Keji Tai Shang de Quojia Rentong”, “‘資訊人’ 抑或 ‘台灣人’? 大上海地區高科技台 商的國家認同”, “第二屆政治與資訊” 研討會. 宜蘭: 佛光人文社會學院政治 研究所. [Being Information People or Being Taiwanese? The National Identity for Taiwanese High-Tech Business in Great Shanghai] the second Conference on Politics and Information. Yilan: Foguang Renwen Shehui Xueyuan Zhengzhi Yanjiu Suo. 宜蘭: 佛光人文社會學院政治研究所. Yilan, Taiwan: Fo Guang University College of Humanities Institute of Political Studies. Huang, Weishan. 2014. “Buddhist Cosmopolitanism and Public Sphere”. In Cosmopolitanism, Religion and The Public Sphere, edited by Maria Rovisco & Sebastian Kim. London: Routledge. Madsen, Richard. 2007. Democracy’s Dharma. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lin, Ping 林平. 2009. “Cong Juzhu Kongjian Kan Taiwan Ren Dui Dalu Dangdi de Renting” 从居住空间看台湾人对大陆当地的认同 [Do They Mix? The Residential

From Struc tural Separation to Religious Incorporation

151

Separation of Taiwanese People in China]. 台灣政治學刊 [The Taiwanese Journal of Political Science] 13 (2): 57-111. Portes, Alejandro, Luis E. Guarnizo, & Patricia Landolt. 1999. “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 217-37. Robertson, Roland. 1992. Globalization. London: Sage. Sassen, Saskia. 1988. The Mobility of Labor and Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wong, Diana, & Peggy Levitt. 2014. “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa among the Tablighi Jamaat and Foguangshan in Malaysia”. Global Networks 14 (3): 348-62.

About the author Weishan Huang is a sociologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research and publications mainly focus on migration and religion, urban gentrification and religion, and globalization and religious movements. She is the co-editor of the book, Ecology of Faith in New York City (Indiana University Press, 2013). Her current research project is to examine the reconfiguration of two significant state-planned social phenomena, urbanization and religious revival, and its impacts on Mahayana Buddhist communities in contemporary Shanghai, China.

6

“10/40 Window” Naga Missionaries as Spiritual Migrants and the Asian Experience Arkotong Longkumer Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch06 Abstract The main aim of this chapter is to examine the role Naga missionaries, from the Indian state of Nagaland, play in helping us to understand the idea of “spiritual migration”. I want to reflect on the strategic mobility of spiritual migrants “called” to a place not by human design but by divine sanction, and the motivation for this migration being, in part, the impact it will have on the home territory. This chapter will examine Naga Baptist missionaries going to specific parts of Asia and will focus on three questions: 1) what motivates these missionaries; 2) in what ways missionaries negotiate and navigate the worlds beyond their immediate context; and finally 3) how these processes relate to the broader ideas of mission that highlight the nexus between territorial and cosmic narratives. Keywords: Naga Baptists, 10/40 window, missionaries, spiritual migration, spiritual capital, sovereignty

Introduction The main aim of this chapter is to examine the role Naga missionaries, from the Indian state of Nagaland, play in helping us to understand the idea of “spiritual migration”. In an important sense, human history has been marked by migration – in a way, we are all migrants.1 On an abstract 1 In an essay, Andrew Walls, the eminent mission historian, even suggests that the f irst migration recorded in the Bible is from the story of Genesis, where Adam and Eve left paradise.

154 

Arkotong Longkumer

level at least, the term “migration” is a difficult concept as it encompasses a number of interlinked factors – political, economic, social, historical, and religious. Although there has been some research on migrants’ religious experience in destination countries (Adogame 2012; Kahl 2014), I want to reflect on the strategic mobility of spiritual migrants “called” to a place not by human design but by divine sanction, and the motivation for this migration being, in part, the impact it will have on the home territory. In this sense, the chapter advances our understanding of the relationship between mobility, religious networks, and the transnational dynamic, and how it aims to generate new social and cultural dynamics both in destination and home contexts (Brown & Yeoh, this volume). This chapter examines Naga Baptist missionaries going to specific parts of Asia – China, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. It focuses on three questions: 1) what motivates these missionaries; 2) in what ways missionaries negotiate and navigate the worlds beyond their immediate context; and finally 3) how these processes relate to the broader ideas of mission. I suggest that missionary activities are based on the nexus between territorial and cosmic narratives that are related to the question of sovereignty in the Naga context. This covenant – that of sending 10,000 missionaries – is related to the founding of the Nagaland Missions Movement (NMM) in the 1970s and its promise to make Nagaland a “land of missions”. I argue that there is an intimate connection between the “covenant” and potential future sovereignty for Nagaland. The Naga political movement has been active since Indian independence in 1947, primarily led by the Naga National Council (NNC) and has now splintered into different factions. What is central to all the groups however is the notion of sovereignty – which equates to territorial independence of some form. And thus missionaries can be seen as accruing “spiritual capital” – as a form of cultural resource and cosmic purpose that can be acquired and exchanged (Guest 2007, 182) – through the routes God has chosen for them. In addition, what is particularly interesting here is a blurring of the boundaries between Nagas as missionaries and migrants, or between their “spiritual” task and their “economic” ones. As I will discuss, the model of Business as Mission (BAM) reflects this strategy, where missionaries are often required to work as economic migrants to finance their stay, which complicates the missionary/migrant relationship. But as I will demonstrate, what is important and central to their work is the coming together of “covenant” (land of missions) and “fulfillment” (sovereignty). Indeed, the book of Genesis, as Walls (2002, 3) says, “might almost as readily have been called ‘Migrations’ as Genesis”.

“10/40 Window”

155

In order to highlight both the historical and the contemporary angle to this chapter, the data gathered consisted of locally published pamphlets, fieldwork in Nagaland with different missionaries that included extensive interviews (both individual and group), and also an email questionnaire with Naga missionaries working in different parts of Asia.

“10/40 Window”: A Cartographic Gaze I first heard of the “10/40 window” when I was talking with a young pastor, Ako, from a Pentecostal church in Kohima, the capital town in the Indian state of Nagaland (see figure 1).2 Unsure of its origins or how this concept came about, I did a Google search and came across various Christian organizations promulgating this idea, in fact 470,000 of them were run by people from all over the world, but predominantly from North America. Although in use among evangelical circles since the 1970s and 1980s, the “10/40 window” was subsequently developed in a more substantial manner by Luis Bush, a Christian missionary strategist. He discussed it at the 1989 International Conference on World Evangelization in Manila, often called the Lausanne II Conference (see Han 2010). Using Luis Bush’s idea, many organizations, like the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC 2015) working under the motto “Christ to the world by radio”, summarizes the key aspects of the 10/40 window into a visual cartographically demarcated rectangle: Between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator lies a vast region that includes most of Asia, Indonesia, the Middle East, and Saharan and Northern Africa… According to recent research, this land mass holds the least evangelized countries and therefore the highest amount of unreached people… Historically, it has been referred to as “The Resistant Belt” – as it holds the highest concentration of people in the world who are Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist. However, it has also been called a “Window of Opportunity”.

This summary demonstrates the broader ideas of mission within this “window” but in concrete terms, Ako, with his mission, offered a provocative response to 2 All names are pseudonyms. Except where necessary, no specific places are mentioned to protect the location where these missionaries work. For example, instead of Beijing, China, I simply say “China”.

156 

Arkotong Longkumer

how the Nagas are involved in this 10/40 window. He remarked that Nagaland has the ability to reach three billion people for mission work in all directions: Nagaland is “remote” in terms of connectivity but not in terms of location. And the political situation along the border prohibits the free flow of goods and people. But once the political situation in the Northeast improves and trade opens with Burma and Thailand, then Nagaland becomes such a centre for missions. That in any direction – 360 degrees – we have Bangladesh (very unreached area – Muslim state) we have the entire Himalayan region (Nepal and India – Hindu states), you go upwards, Tibet is close by, China (all Buddhists), and then go Southeast (all Buddhists again). So we are surrounded by Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. Just within this area, I believe that there is so much the Nagas can do. The major challenge is of course the political situation. And that in itself has put blinders on the eyes of Naga believers. We somehow believe that unless we have closure on this, we can’t progress. So we know that we have a call for missions, but somehow in the back of many Naga leaders, they feel that we first of all need to get independence, or solve our political situation. So I believe that is what is distracting us from really focusing on the strategies. And this will probably require 20-40 year strategy. And of course the kind of Bible Colleges we have; the theological capabilities built up over the years; the kind of churches the Lord is raising up in Nagaland; and also the Christian consciousness amongst the general population with a willingness to give [are positive traits]. I believe it’s a strategy that the Lord is building and if and when the borders open up and the political situation improves in the Northeast then mission work will take off.

Ako’s eloquent summary of the place of the Nagas is shared by many missionaries that I have interacted with. Although not all speak the language of the 10/40, there is a sense in which these ideas expressed by Ako and the evangelical circles resonate within the larger missionary orbit, and the Nagas are not immune to it. However, this chapter does not attempt to explain the overall ideology of the 10/40 and the evangelical discourse that accompanies it (see Han 2010). Rather, it is a preliminary attempt to locate the strands of the 10/40 ideology as envisioned by the Nagas. I shall represent the 10/40 simply as a gaze, to visualize a section of this “window” – that of Asia – and the overall experience of missionaries as migrants within this cartographic space.3 3 Naga missionaries work in areas all over the world – ranging from the many Indian states, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Japan, to Africa. Here, my sample is limited to missionaries working in

“10/40 Window”

157

In order to make sense of these developments, there are three themes that Ako alludes to that I would like to explore further. The first theme considers the place of Nagaland as a “land of missions”. I will trace the development of this idea through the coming of the American missionaries in the region, alongside the missionary zeal related to the Christian revivals in the 1970s. Second is the political situation in which the Nagas find themselves. This is linked to the long drawn-out nationalist movement that began in 1947 when India gained independence and the future became uncertain for the Nagas within the union. Christianity has played an important role in both cementing the Nagas’ political identity, while also developing a strong culture of belief that allowed them to negotiate the terrain of “covenant”/“mission”/“f ulfillment”. Together, these ideas provide the background to the third theme and the main argument of the chapter, which starts by asking what impact these ideas have had on missionary migrations and activities. I draw on data collected from missionaries or missions in Asian countries to deliberate on their motivations and to reveal how the term “spiritual migration” is largely based on a cosmic narrative – that missionary work will bring to fruition the realization of Nagaland as a sovereign country. I argue that notions of missionary migration are rooted in a deeper understanding of “home” and the connections it promotes are a combination of the cosmic and territorial. Underlying this discussion is the very nature of missionaries as migrants. If migration is a form of mobility (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry 2006) that critiques the bounded categories of the nation-state, community, ethnicity, and place (Ong 1999; van der Veer 1995) based on the movement of people and goods, then we need to ask how migration is manifested in the motivation of its actors. Missionaries, in a sense, represent the quintessential religious migrants in search of potential converts and are motivated to perform religious or charitable work in a territory, whether national or international. Indeed the word “missionary”, from the Latin missi, from the verb mittere, means to “send” (Baggio 2013). In a traditional religious sense, it is God who sends these people as they are “called”. Without dismissing this “calling”, it is likely that churches, families, friends, or religious organizations do the “sending”, supporting these missionaries through finances and other resources, an issue that is not without its own problems as I will discuss. In the past, missionaries often worked with the reigning power of the day, whether it was the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, or British. China, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, as they provide some cultural and geographical overlap for the missionaries and their ideas.

158 

Arkotong Longkumer

Therefore, one can say that the expansion of Empires went hand-in-hand with the extension of Christendom. The Nagas have been recipients of this missionary encounter, which has had both negative and positive impacts especially when “contact” occurs between two competing worldviews. The Nagas have taken on the missionary legacy left by their American forerunners, and decided to act as missionaries – just as they were missionized – relating their work to the global evangelical movement and also giving it an indigenous character. Missionaries, in this sense, are extremely mobile and their possible routes belong to God’s cosmic narrative about Christian citizenship, and not those dictated by nation-states and their boundaries.

Nagaland: A Land of Missions Nagaland is one of the eight states – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, and Sikkim – that make up northeast India. The region shares almost 96 percent of its borders with four countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, and China. Connected with the rest of India through a narrow “chicken neck” corridor – fourteen kilometers wide in the Siliguri corridor of West Bengal – only four percent of its borders is shared with “India proper”. This tenuous geographical link is not only physical, however, though parts of Assam and Tripura have had long connections with “mainland India”. Culturally, much of the region is more contiguous with its Himalayan and Southeast Asian neighbors. In religious terms, it has a large Christian population compared to the rest of the Christian population in India. Nagaland, for example, is the only official Baptist Christian state in India estimated to have around 97 percent of Christians. There are other Christian-majority states – Meghalaya, Mizoram (Presbyterians and Baptists), and parts of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh (Baptists primarily) – that are equally proactive in missionary work. Because of these distinct features, the region is often seen as a recalcitrant periphery being unable to integrate with the idea of India, a project that is not without its challenges more generally. Notwithstanding this geographical and cultural isolation, various nationalistic movements have erupted in the past 60 odd years since Indian independence in 1947, creating a general consensus of marginalization across the region. This is not the place to discuss these in detail, but simply to note the fact that the various nationalistic movements have had a long history of dissent and resistance against the Indian state, shaping the political and cultural landscape of the region. Some movements, like the Naga nationalist movement aligned closely with Christianity, have

“10/40 Window”

159

been active since the 1940s, making it one of the world’s longest running conflicts (Baruah 2003). The interaction between the British administrators and various Christian missionaries – American Baptists, Welsh Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and the Salvation Army – since 1841 has shaped the region considerably. Unable to penetrate the mainly Hindu and Muslim populations of the valley regions, missionaries were encouraged by the reception of the Christian gospel in the hills. According to James C. Scott’s thesis on Zomia – highland communities of South and Southeast Asia – the fact that Christianity contributed “a resource for distance and modernity” had proven attractive to the hill people of Zomia. It also provided an “additional vector for group formation” and “an institutional grid for social mobilization” (Scott 2009, 319-20). Acknowledging that Scott’s thesis on Christianity may not be applicable to all Zomia regions, at least in the Naga case, it is useful in understanding the dynamics at play since the introduction of Christianity by American Baptist missionaries in 1871. In the following, I explain the role American Baptists played in linking their ideology with the Nagas’ sense of mission that subsequently had a major impact on the Nagaland Missions Movement (NMM) and their plans to missionize Asia. The American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society (ABFMS) was primarily formed through the efforts of American missionaries, Ann and Adoniram Judson, whose work in Burma amongst the Karen people (c. 1813-1850) prompted the Society in America to raise funds for their work. Influenced by the Judsons’ work in Burma, the British administrators wanted to introduce Christianity amongst tea-plantation workers in Assam and later also to the hill areas, as a form of “civilizing”. Led by Nathan Brown and Miles Bronson in 1838, the ABFMS started their work in the Assam valley but yielded very little success. It was only after the missionaries undertook the task of missionizing the hill areas that Christianity spread. For instance, William and Mary Clark and their assistant Godhula Brown first initiated work in the Naga hills in 1871. The larger ABFMS strategy was, however, to work with the Shan of Burma, before finally making their way into China. Due to the larger geo-religious vision of the ABFMS, the Nagas were considered an option due to their proximity to the mission’s final destination. In Mary Mead Clark’s (1907) words: From the beginning it was never contemplated stopping alone with these tribes bordering on the frontier; but on and on… these Mountains should be spanned and the kingdom of our Lord extended from the Brahmaputra to the Irawady, and from the Irawady to the Yangtze (p. 135).

160 

Arkotong Longkumer

The ABFMS’ aim was to evangelize the whole of Asia. This is a point that is reiterated again and again in Naga missionary circles – that the ABFMS’s project remains incomplete and it is now up to the Nagas to fulfill the cosmic plan. This basis of American foreign missions during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, argues the historian David Kling, has its roots in the American evangelical movement, related to the Second Great Awakening (c. 1790-1835) in America. It gave rise to the notion of “new divinity”. This is comprised of four main elements, often known as the “Bebbington Quadrilateral” (Bebbington 1989, 2-3: 1) conversionism – the necessity of a new birth; 2) activism – emphasis on religious duties and social involvement; 3) biblicism – the centrality of the Bible as religious authority; and 4) crucicentrism – a focus on the redeeming work of Christ (Kling 2004, 17). “New divinity” also emphasized the dawn of the millennium, influenced by the renowned theologian Jonathan Edwards’s view that Christ’s return would not be a cataclysmic event. Rather, it would be achieved through benevolent activities, social reform, and missionary outreach. In a way, Edwards’s millennialism conjoined “revivalism and missions in a providential scheme” (ibid., 19-20). The “10/40 window” articulates a very similar idea and the Nagas’ response to this sentiment also highlights the transnational character of missions. The impetus for missionary zeal and the formation of the Nagaland Missions Movement (NMM), which became the central body that managed missionary activities for the Nagas, happened during the 1970s revival, a movement of the “holy spirit” that spread all over Nagaland. The formation of the NMM in 1970 for world evangelism by the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) coincided with the famous Lausanne I International Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 under the theme “Let the Earth Hear His Voice”. The Congress produced the Lausanne Covenant which discussed the theology, strategy, and methods of evangelism, with an underlying motive to “define the necessity, responsibility and goals of spreading the Gospel” across nations (Lausanne Movement, n.d.; see Tizon 2008). Invigorated by this Congress, the Nagas decided to have their own regional Congress in 1975 in Dimapur entitled “Nagaland Congress on World Evangelization” where the church adopted the “Nagaland Covenant”, which reiterated the Lausanne Covenant of world evangelization and also strengthened the NMM as the platform through which the gospel would be spread all across the world. Subsequently in 1977, the NBCC adopted a resolution to enlist and send 10,000 missionaries for world evangelism. This theme was carried forward to another major event in 1981 held in Kohima which adopted three “covenants”: 1) guidance of the holy spirit as the second

“10/40 Window”

161

coming of Christ is awaited; 2) promotion of revivals through the holy spirit; and 3) obedience to the Lord’s Commission that “we dedicate our lives, talents, time and resources for the promotion of soul-winning ministry both inside and outside of our land” (Ao 1983, 3). It is important to understand the context of the missionary movement in Nagaland through the prism of these activities because these have shaped the missionary and the national experience. The nineteenth-century ABFMS evangelical drive to spread the Christian gospel in the Naga hills with an eventual desire to venture into China, the transnational Christian movements like the Lausanne Congress, and the Nagas’ own interpretation of the role of missions and their “covenant” all have a bearing on how the Nagas envision themselves as the center of missions for Asia.

God’s Time for Asia: Encounters in the Global South “God’s time for Asia has come”, writes Reverend Alem Meren, one of the most important figures of the NMM. Alem Meren claims that it all began in Asia with Adam, then Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit who first descended on Asian believers, reaching its apogee in the Roman Empire that embraced Christianity as a “state religion”. Little was done to address the spiritual hunger of the people, notes Alem Meren, and therefore the numbers declined. Then God’s time moved to Germany where the reformation occurred, and then to England in the nineteenth century, who sent missionaries all over the world, ending up in America in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this century, suggests Alem Meren, God’s time for Asia has returned (Ao 2012, 50-1). Alem Meren’s statement reverberates with the spread and expansion of Christianity to the global south (Jenkins 2012). The attitude toward missions and the way it is deployed is also very different from traditional colonial structures that were regulated by a certain “territorially-bound, ideal” (Hanciles 2008, 322). Jehu Hanciles notes how traditional missions were a kind of “managerial missiology” with their plans, targets and goals, robust financial and structural resources, to their well-developed networks on the ground. In contrast, he notes how the growth of Christianity in the global south has applied very divergent models, something he calls “beyond Christendom”. This is a paradigm that is more spontaneous, flexible, relational, and culturally diverse, driven by people who live in areas that have no political power, shaped by suffering and subjugation, and doing mission from a position of vulnerability (ibid., 280).

162 

Arkotong Longkumer

Missionary movements from Nagaland f it this model proposed by Hanciles, especially if we take into account the Nagas’ own position of vulnerability due to their political marginalization from the Indian state, but also the fact that they have moved away from the “managerial missiology” that was characteristic of earlier counterparts. For instance, it is very difficult to know the numerical spread of Naga missionaries all over the world. The NMM, despite being the official national body, has little control over individual church plans, regional and tribal church programs, or even individual motivations to go as missionaries. This has caused some problems when attempting to adopt a centralized model. One of the missionaries I interviewed in China has been sponsored solely by her family and not by any organization. It would appear to be in the Nagas’ own interest to monitor the numbers going as missionaries – to reach the magic 10,000-mark of the NBCC resolution – but these tabulations are far from simple. “How is one to determine this?” a retired missionary commented. “Is it individual missionaries, or must one count the family as well? If the latter then we have easily crossed the mark, if the former then perhaps not”. Ultimately, he half-seriously commented: “only God knows”. Nevertheless, inscribed in this missionary experience is a “new evangelical ethics of alterity” (Han 2010, 184). It eschews forced conversion and aggressive persuasion for a strategy that argues for connections, friendships, humanitarian aid, and cultural exchange – through the overarching evangelical trope of “reaching out” to those in need of rescue and love (ibid.). In the following, I wish to explore the journey of Naga missionaries to countries in Asia – Burma, Thailand, China, Laos, and Cambodia – and their experience as “spiritual migrants” that illustrates this “new evangelical ethics of alterity”.

Along Kingdom’s Highway: Motivations of Spiritual Migrants If we are to take Hanciles’s comments seriously with regard to the global south’s model of missions as flexible, relational, and undertaken from a position of vulnerability, then, the Naga missionaries and their motivations can be seen to fit this model. Many missionaries whom I spoke to narrated their struggles in sustaining their work once they migrated to their various destinations. Speaking to me at length during a mission conference in Impur (Nagaland), Lanu, a missionary in China for over five years, told me how he prayed for eighteen years to go to China. Then one day, he received a phone call from the Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang (ABAM), a regional

“10/40 Window”

163

church organization, which asked him if he would go to China as the first supported ABAM missionary. Although he accepted, he had no idea how to apply for a passport or visa. “But God said ‘your time has arrived so get ready’”. Trusting in God, Lanu continued, everything fell into place and he was able to go to China. While the “call” into missions is attractive and powerful, individual motivations are often tempered by the question of financial support for many of these missionaries. Some were resigned to the lack of financial support from home churches and the NMM, while others had to find alternative work as migrants to support their work. One of the things that is striking is that the missionaries embark to host destinations as a “calling” but have become economic migrants as a result. In other words, they start off as missionaries, and during their mission they find that work and business are very good tactics to achieve their missionary objectives, while also providing them with financial security. So unlike some migrants who may refashion themselves as missionaries, Naga missionaries refashion themselves as entrepreneurs. 4 In another instance, Amok, who has worked as a missionary in various places like Nepal, Thailand, Hong Kong, and now in China, told me how in his twenty years of working, his path was always opened miraculously – money for flights, unplanned visa clearances, issuance of passports, and financial support for food and accommodation. Recollecting when God told him to go to China, he shared with me a vision where God told him that “he had already opened the door for China”. Before the Lord gave me the vision, I was totally prejudiced against China because they killed God’s children and destroyed Christ’s churches, and they gave training to Naga young people and supplied weapons for Nagaland Independence Movement. But now I have surrendered my life to my Lord to do His will. He loves China and so I also love China. He gave his life for the Chinese so I am willing to invest my life in them too!

He told me how he was harassed on numerous occasions by Chinese immigration officials. He even managed to smuggle in 10,000 Chinese bibles without being caught in 1982 – a time when the Chinese communist government was extremely vigilant of missionary activities. In one story, Amok discussed rubbing off a “Warning” sign stamped in his passport by Chinese immigration officers on an earlier visit. It was like God’s hand was involved, 4

Thanks to Bernardo E. Brown for raising this point.

164 

Arkotong Longkumer

he said. He then walked through immigration without the officers noticing anything of its erasure. Many of the missionaries narrated stories of this kind of everyday miracles. On the one hand, it may be easy to dismiss these acts as instances of “luck” or “happenstance”, but on the other hand, for these missionaries, they represent the ideal motivation and power to know that they are on the right path: that once God calls a missionary, he or she is never abandoned. These stories are circulated in churches, families, and urban and village settings in Nagaland, giving further legitimacy to the work missionaries are doing and the fact that they are fulfilling God’s promise. In fact, Lima, working as a missionary teacher in Cambodia for five years, told me that a missionary is seen as highly prestigious, and attracts admiration and respect. While these stories provide inspiration and purpose to mission work, very little is known about the everyday negotiations of missionaries as they work in their new locations. In the annual report of the Nagaland Missions Movement of 2008, missionaries working all over the world provided short descriptions of their work. David, recently commissioned to work with the Thailand Lahu Baptist Convention (TLBC) as a missionary, recounts how “the Lahus are very similar to our Naga people in many ways” (NMM2008, 52). In another account, Daniel, a missionary in Laos, notes how “Laos is so much like Nagaland. The people look like us, eat similar food, wear similar clothes, etc. But they don’t have Jesus” (ibid., 51). The familiarity of “home” is very much evoked in these reports and the fact that these contiguous cultural symbols represent a sense of belonging and mission, not simply as a transnational activity, but as a responsibility. Distance and proximity, two key missionary tropes, are encountered in these narratives, or as Sarah Ahmed says, “which construct ‘the strange culture’ as their object (distance), are also contaminated by that very object (proximity)” (2000, 12). The Nagas’ migration stories hark back to these ideas of proximity and distance. For instance, it is said that the Nagas have migrated from Mongolia, via China and Southeast Asia. Naga nationalists, for example, especially the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM), believe that “Nagas are a chosen people with a chosen destiny, guided by God along their migration from Mongolia to their present land of habitation to form a Naga nation, and destined to be messengers of the Christian God to their neighbors, particularly the Hindus (in India) and Buddhists (in Myanmar)” (Lotha 2009, 16). This belief is encapsulated in the popular slogan “Nagaland for Christ”. This nationalist link will be addressed in a later section but for the moment it is necessary to note that this migration route is seen as God’s destiny and the return of missionaries to these lands as the fulfillment of

“10/40 Window”

165

the Nagas’ promise to God. These stories are important because they give a glimpse of the role missionaries play in negotiating the “covenant” set by the NBCC and the NMM. However, it is also important to understand the way Naga missionaries negotiate their everyday surroundings, and the challenges and celebrations they experience when performing God’s calling. The physical features and ethnicity of the Nagas allow these missionaries to blend in with their Asian neighbors. Amok told me that “when we go to China, we become absolutely one with them, the same facial structure, the same color, and the same way of living”. While this makes mission work easier, it also brings about challenges, creating a certain ambiguity in the nature of Naga identity. Speaking to a group of Naga missionaries from China during the 2014 mission’s conference in Impur, Nagaland, they told me how they entered China as students enrolled in courses that taught Chinese history and language. Once they were there, people did not suspect that they were non-Chinese, as no one believed that they were Indian or from India. This made their mission work easier. They live in Yunnan province and work mainly with the Miao people. Temsu, another missionary working in Laos for over ten years, wanted to enter China from Laos but was prevented once the Chinese border guards discovered a photo of him in his laptop with “Indians” in the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. Because the border guards did not believe his story that he was actually from Nagaland, in India, the guards then searched through his computer, found a copy of his e-bible and extracted the word “war” from it, to manufacture the idea that he was a Tibetan infiltrator. In fact, the major problem with Naga missionaries in China is being seen as Tibetan. Cultural and physical similarities do provide missionaries with a degree of invisibility not available to many missionaries from, say, America. In rare cases, however, for example in Cambodia, Lima reported that locals preferred “white” or “American” workers rather than the Nagas – who look and behave very much like local Cambodians. Perhaps the distance of race, geography, and culture plays a role in highlighting the allure of alterity for the Cambodians. While, generally, the Nagas’ ability to assimilate works to their advantage, missionaries also have to find a cover or a job to legitimize their time in these host countries, which blurs the boundaries between their “spiritual” task and their “economic” ones. This is called the tent-making model of mission. It speaks to an earlier point about how missionaries turn into migrant workers, due to the missionary tactic, but also because of the practical need for financial survival.

166 

Arkotong Longkumer

Missionaries take on the cover of a “business” and through that business reach the local people to give witness. John, who has lived in China for over eight years, runs a restaurant as a “self-sustaining project” while he witnesses to people whom he befriends. He told me how his friends in China support him financially and through their support he rents an apartment to run the Sunday worship and training. Due to working six days a week as a cook, he can only commit to Christian work during his free time, primarily teaching music to the small Christian community he is associated with. This kind of model is very common in closed-door countries, I was told. Another example is given by Temsu, who told me that he has opened a cafe in Laos. He initially started it to support his missionary work, as funds were very scarce from his home church and it was difficult for him to support himself. Through this model, he calls it Business as Mission (BAM), he has been able to attract non-Christians. His tactic is to try his best to live a Christian lifestyle. For him, Christianity and mission are a way of life. People who witness his life, would sometimes comment, “I just want to be like you guys”. Although not the sole method of evangelism, this is effective to the extent that Temsu now works in a school and a hotel, and runs a restaurant with a Hmong Christian friend. He primarily evangelizes to his staff and their families as they have developed a level of trust. This tactic takes time, confessed Temsu, but he noted, “if we can live as Jesus taught then we are going to attract people”. Teaching English is another common job that missionaries do. In fact, aside from a few exceptions, many of the missionaries I have been in contact with over the years are working as English teachers. A group of missionaries in China narrated how they work with American and Canadian missionaries as “English teachers” (their cover). They worked in a language institute and would teach English to various groups – from police officers, teachers, to business people. They would build friendships in these encounters and then meet outside the workplace. Once these acquaintances become deeper and lasting, they “witness” to their Chinese friends and slowly some respond to the gospel. They use their apartment as a makeshift church where they meet for bible study, and their bathtub can function as a pool to perform baptisms. It appears that many of the Naga missionaries in China and Southeast Asia work with the minority populations – like the Hmong in Thailand and Laos, the Karen in Thailand, the Lahu in Thailand and Yunnan, and the others like the Miao, Lisu, and Yi. Several informants in my interviews mentioned this but Lanu’s response encapsulates their thoughts most effectively. He said:

“10/40 Window”

167

Han are very advanced and educated, and it’s very difficult to talk to them. The minority people are so open and they are willing to learn and they are teachable and therefore mission work with the minority group is more successful. In our church we have 5-6 Han Chinese and 30-40 are from minority groups.

It is interesting to note how the hill populations are those more likely to convert in these regions. Perhaps it could be related to a very similar kind of lifestyle that was echoed in the earlier missionary reports and Scott’s theories on Zomia. While cultural resemblances play a part, it must also be noted that many of these “hill tribes” still practice their local religions, or “animism”, as some refer to them. When missionaries in the nineteenth century started work in northeast India or even in Southeast Asia, they realized that it was extremely difficult to penetrate communities with an established “world religion”. Once their attention switched to the “hills” in the case of the Judsons amongst the Karen, or the Clarks amongst the Nagas, it yielded more converts. It is interesting to observe that these patterns are also experienced and perpetuated by Naga missionaries, playing on the “civilized”/ “primitive” tropes inherited from colonial missionaries, and perhaps Victorian attitudes that crudely divided the realm between two spheres – Christian (civilized) and heathen (uncivilized). This bifurcation – also envisioned through the 10/40 window – may appear too simplistic, but Naga missionaries also deploy the language of paternalism when referring to the hills tribes of China, Laos, and Thailand. In many of these countries, there is enormous risk to these missionaries, as they have to deal with the authority of the state. Many of the missionaries are therefore careful in protecting their cover and avoiding public attention. The temptation to participate and become visible in the larger work of establishing churches is valuable, but the risks outweigh the need. Lanu, for instance, talked of the dangers of working as a Christian missionary in China. He explained how he is currently involved with five house churches and the people have repeatedly asked him to become their pastor. “As a foreigner”, he remarked, “I can’t serve as pastor because if I am caught then it’s an immediate jail sentence – and who knows when I will be out. (…) There are also intelligence officers who infiltrate these churches, so it is extremely important to be vigilant”. Naga missionaries are not working under the legitimate authority of any nation-state. India is not aware of these activities, so if they are caught, they have no legal cover. They solely depend on informal networks of local sympathizers or fellow missionaries

168 

Arkotong Longkumer

for help. This brings us back to Hanciles’ point about the spontaneous and nonstructural aspect of missionary activities in the global south. This lack of structure brings with it enormous risk. One may question the motivation, but as with most migrants (for example the ones in the camps in Calais, France), there is enormous personal risk. Some do it for economic gains, or for human security, yet in the case of missionaries, the sole gain is to build up spiritual capital and work toward a universal notion of Christian citizenship. Amidst the unfolding human drama, missionaries also find time to celebrate and to make lasting human connections with the people they work with. Many go with families, while some get married to other missionaries working in the field. Sometimes, Nagas in the vicinity meet during special occasions like Christmas, where they share news, food, and refresh their ties with one another. For some missionaries, like Visako who works on his own in China, it is lonely and very difficult to share personal stories about his work and worries with family and friends via email or phone as he is always looking over his shoulder – the fear of being caught is an everyday reality. But he, like many others, has found friendship in difficult places and the “converts” they eventually get, bring them joy and purpose to their journeys. Lanu met his Naga wife in the mission field: One night I was praying, God told me that your wife is going to play the keyboard. But then I got married and I asked God, why doesn’t my wife play any keyboard or sing. Then God said to me, the music your wife will play is with her smile – when we do ministry together the Chinese people like the way she talks to them and smiles and that is the music of God she is giving right now. God’s plans are not our plan. We think in a worldly way, but when taken in the spirit, then it is different.

For missionaries like Visako and Lanu, these celebratory moments happen due to their obedience to God’s plan for their lives. From gifts of money, unsuspected visas arriving on time, protection from dangers, all are seen as divine manifestations of the “calling” that cannot be explained in worldly terms, but, as Lanu says, “in the spirit”. But underlying this missionary logic is the ongoing tension between the territorial and the cosmic narrative that is imbedded in this idea. In the following section, I develop this idea of “spiritual capital” that brings together the covenant and the idea of fulfillment – in bringing about a sovereign Naga country – that is so central to Nagaland’s future.

“10/40 Window”

169

Toward Spiritual Capital The idea of “capital” that can be acquired, exchanged, and distributed comes from Karl Marx’s (1970) work on Capital – that is both “fixed”, tied up with certain industries or equipment, and “circulating”, that is achieved through production by generating value or wages (Foley 1986, 45; Guest 2007, 183). This notion of surplus generated by circulating capital is not merely concrete, but also tied to socioeconomic relation, as “mobilizable resources” (Guest 2007, 183). Building on Marx’s notion of capital, scholars have applied it to other areas such as human, economic, political, cultural, social, and religious (Becker 1964; Bourdieu 1977; Putnam 2000; Verter 2003). For our purposes, the idea of “spiritual capital” relates to the mobility of resources that is activated and circulated by individuals and societies that, in turn, produce other kinds of capital. In this sense, accruing “capital” also converts into related others – mission (spiritual capital) into sovereignty (political capital), and status (symbolic capital). In this sense, “spiritual capital may be regarded as a more widely diffused commodity, governed by more complex patterns of production, distribution, exchange and consumption” (Verter 2003, 158). However, using the economic language of capital is not helpful in describing those missionaries whose motivations are not simply material but are, in a broader sense, about salvation based on the covenantal model of chosenness. It is important thus to broaden the idea of “spiritual capital” from the sociological language of material conditions, to the cosmic understanding of purpose. As I have intimated, the 10,000-missionary idea was established as a “covenant” during the 1970s revival, partly influenced by the Lausanne Congress on world evangelization. For some people, until this covenant is fulfilled, a sovereign Naga nation will remain unrealized. Here, two narratives are vital to the unfolding of this idea. The first one comes from a strong nationalist rhetoric propounded particularly by the main nationalist group – the NSCN-IM. The route of migration – from Mongolia, China, Thailand, and then Nagaland – is not an accident. Why did the Nagas stop in this area and why did they not venture further? The territorial fact of Naga settlement in their present location cannot be attributed to human factors, but to the larger cosmic narrative of God’s plan, according to the President of the NSCN-IM, Isak Swu. He pushes this idea further – and this is an idea that has broader resonance amongst the Naga public. Nagaland is an area surrounded by non-Christian religions, but why is it that Nagaland was Christianized by the ABFMS missionaries? And here the two impulses – the nationalist and the missionary zeal – come together seamlessly. Nagaland’s

170 

Arkotong Longkumer

mission is to spread Christianity to the neighboring countries, a project that remained unfinished by the American missionaries. Isak Swu even claims that Nagaland will be a “theocratic state” – ruled by the Holy Spirit and where the Bible will be the constitution (O’Driscoll 2003). Swu’s idea is also taken forward by one of the prominent prayer centers in Nagaland, Ghatashi Nagalim for Christ, which has close links with the nationalist movement, particularly the NSCN-IM. Their resolute stance on Naga nationalism is unreservedly prophetic and messianic. Samuel, one of the interpreters of these prophecies, told me that through this theocracy the “Naga nation will be saved. No Hindu temples, no Muslim mosques – it will be cleared of idolatry and only Christianity will be practiced”. He further explained that Nagaland is the only country in the world that has proclaimed itself for Christ – “Nagaland for Christ” – and that is why “God loves the Nagas very much”. This is how he explained the missionary covenant: 10,000 missionaries were promised but we couldn’t send [them] because we are under India. Whatever industry we have once we are independent, all the proceeds – 10% tithes – will be given to missionary work. Missionaries are there – those unborn even – and the anointing power will be given in Ghatashi for these missionaries to go to the rest of the world… Missionaries will go to the whole world – Japan, America (North/South), Greenland to New Zealand. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Communism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Baal, Kemot, Asshayat, Nehoyat [unclear names], Judaism [will be transformed by Christianity]. Jesus as the son of the God will be preached all over the world.

The political prism is vital to this discussion. Ever since Indian independence in 1947, the “Naga political problem”, has been a thorn in the side of India. The Nagas have long sought sovereignty from India: starting from the Naga National Council (NNC) in 1946, it has taken on different forms culminating in the formation of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) in 1980. Culture, race, religion, and territory are all seen as distinct, which furthers the argument that the Naga areas were never a part of Indian, Burmese, or Chinese states but were always “independent”. Since 1997, there has been a cease-fire with the main nationalist groups, primarily with the NSCN-IM and talks have been ongoing with the Indian government at the highest level. This political uncertainty in Nagaland since the inception of the NNC has shaped the tempestuous landscape and history of the Naga

“10/40 Window”

171

people. For the missionaries, a political settlement can never be attained by anxious longing, but according to Alem Meren, one must pay the price. This price is missionary work. In 1971, a popular prayer started all over Nagaland where the central theme was: “Do we want Nagaland to become a Missionary Land for the nations of the world?” (Ao 2012, 61). This prayer to God, promising mission, was widespread and eventually led to the revival movement in the mid-1970s, which resulted in dramatic increases in Christian conversion. Amok, one of the main architects of the Nagaland Missions Movement, reflects on this: A dark cloud overshadowed Nagaland. About twenty years ago there was a struggle for independence. We lost more than 5,000 lives during that struggle. At the same time, the Spirit of God was also working. He moved in the hearts of His children to pray. Prayer cells were organized; chains of prayer were also conducted from one hour to another, from one day to another, from one week to another, from one month to another and from one year to another. At last, the Lord answered our prayers. Nagas have sacrificed 5,000 lives for the Naga Independence Movement. We therefore resolved to enlist 10,000 volunteers for Christ to fulfill the great commission.

However, for some like the Ghatashi group, as elaborated above, the missionary movement is stagnant due to the presence of the Indian state. 30,000 missionaries, not 10,000, are ready to march under the banner of a theocratic Naga country, according to their ideology. Linking this notion more globally, Paul Freston (2001) argues that the interaction between evangelicals and politics can be termed “evangelical nationalism”. This idea relates to the ABFMS’s “new divinity” theology, and the Nagas’ own covenant agreements with God during the 1970s revival. In fact, the NSCN-IM has appointed an Honorary Ambassador in the United States, Grace Collins, who runs an organization called the Naga American Council. She is mobilizing churches in the US to pray for the Nagas. Isak Swu has stated that 15,000 congregations have begun to pray for the Nagas every Sunday (Lotha 2009, 285). To their Christian American audience, Nagaland is represented as “a remote land of jungle, Jesus – and religious war”, or “God Bless the Broken Road – Nagaland’s war for Christ” (Daily Herald 2003). The discussion so far suggests that there is a strong undercurrent of evangelical nationalism that is shaping the missionary narrative in Asia. The initial impetus of the NMM was for world evangelism that was shaped by its global manifestation but also closely tied with the turbulent landscape that

172 

Arkotong Longkumer

has embroiled the Nagas since 1947. Many share this nationalist narrative: that Nagas are to missionize Asia which in turn will bring to fruition the covenant made by God to the Nagas. Nagaland will officially become a land of missions, once God’s promise of sovereignty is fulfilled. Missionaries are the ones accruing spiritual capital for the nation as they fulfill the covenant. But although not all missionaries share the kind of “evangelical nationalism” as the paragon of nationhood, there is nevertheless an agreement on the larger point of missionary work.

Conclusion Most studies on religion and migration examine the role migrants play in host countries, either through reverse missions – for example, African migrants playing a role in the religious landscape of the place where Christianity came from (Adogame 2012), or when migrants start practicing their “religions” in host countries (Gallo 2014). Naga missionaries present an interesting case because they complicate the way we understand migration. This is partly because their actions have a direct, if not physically evident, impact on their home country and because their political desires for sovereignty are not just a concern for the political sphere but one that is intrinsically linked to their own cosmic narrative. Through these activities, they also complicate the mission/migration idea. Many go as missionaries, but end up as economic migrants, primarily out of financial need but also due to mission strategy. As I have shown through different examples, there is often a blurring of the missionary/economic migrant dynamic. The migration of these missionaries largely depends on what constitutes Christian citizenship and how this consists of territory (the sovereignty of Nagaland) and spirituality (the covenant with God). It also ironically plays on the territorial promise – perhaps like Israel – that depends on the spiritual capital that such migrations ensure. Discussing migration studies, Anderson & Keith (2014, 2) argue that migration must take into account the relationship between “individual/family, the state and the nation; between identity, sovereignty and place, foregrounding questions of citizenship and belonging”. The Naga missionaries demonstrate that ideas of citizenship and nation can be as interlinked with religion, in this case, Christianity, as it can be with ideas of identity and belonging, as seen through the individual missionary narratives. The Naga missionaries represent another divergence from the traditional pattern of migration by demonstrating an alternative model of missionizing

“10/40 Window”

173

that has been shaped through their own marginalization from the Indian state. They subscribe to the general principles of evangelization that demonstrate a “philosophy of praxis – believing by doing, synthesising a unity of theory and practice” (Han 2010, 201) – and by animating the relationship between sovereignty and mission, culminating, eventually, in the second coming of Christ where a total Christian universe is imagined. Exemplifying this “praxis” – and echoing Jonathan Edwards’s millennial narrative of Christ’s return through missionary outreach – is where Christian missionary activities and the religious expressions they expound have a migratory character: from its earliest forms to its contemporary global spread to the rest of the world. For Alem Meren who has been a missionary for over 40 years, migration is not only about human mobility and the movement of ideas across borders, but also from the “earthly to the heavenly, from natural to the spiritual, and from the domain of Satan to the domain of Christ”. Spiritual migrants always imagine this world as only temporary and that people are migrating to a “future dwelling place” (Nausner 2014), transforming the immediate present to one that is better.

References Adogame, Afe. 2012. The African Christian Diaspora. London: Bloomsbury. Ahmed, Sarah. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge. Anderson, Bridget & Michael Keith, eds. 2014. “Introduction”. In Migration: The COMPAS Anthology. Oxford: COMPAS. Ao, Alem Meren. 1983. Our Covenant with God for World Evangelization. Mokokchung: CYE Press. —. 2012. History of Revival, Evangelism and Mission. Dimapur: Western Printing Press. Baggio, Fabio. 2013. “Missionaries”. In The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness. London: Wiley Blackwell. Baruah, Sanjib. 2003. “Confronting Constructionism: Ending India’s Naga War”. Journal of Peace Research 40(3): 321-338. Bebbington, David. 1989. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. Grand Rapids, OH: Baker. Becker, Gary. 1964. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”. In Power and Ideology in Education, edited by J. Karabel & A.H. Halsey, 487-511. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

174 

Arkotong Longkumer

Daily Herald. 2003. “God Bless the Broken Road – Nagaland’s War for Christ”. 5  May. Last accessed 24  October 2011. http://penandpassport.wordpress. com/2009/08/21/god-bless-the-broken-road-nagalands-war-for-christ/. Downs, Frederick. 1983. Christianity in North East India. New Delhi: ISPCK. Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC). 2015. Join FEBC in Taking a Look into the 10/40 Window. Last accessed 29 July 2015. Promotional pamphlet is available via email request from http://info.febc.org/1040-window-resource-guidegoogle?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1040resour ce&gclid=CNfd94T5_8YCFULmwgodcycEPw. Foley, Duncan. 1986. Understanding Capital: Marx’s Economic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Freston, Paul. 2001. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gallo, Ester (ed.) 2014. Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Guest, Mathew. 2007. “In Search of Spiritual Capital: The Spiritual as a Cultural Resource”. In A Sociology of Spirituality, edited by Kieran Flanagan & Peter C. Jupp, 181-200. Farnham: Ashgate. Han, Ju Hui Judy. 2010. “Reaching the Unreached in the 10/40 Window: The Missionary Geoscience of Race, Difference and Distance”. In Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions, edited by Jason Dittmer & Tristan Sturm. Farnham: Ashgate. Hanciles, Jehu. 2008. Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration and the Transformation of the West. New York: Orbis Books. Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller, & John Urry. 2006. “Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings”. Mobilities 1 (1): 1-22. Jenkins, Philip. 2012. Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press. Kahl, Werner. 2014. “Migrants as Instruments of Evangelization: In Early Christianity and in Contemporary Christianity”. In Global Diasporas and Mission, edited by Chandler H. Im & Amos Yong. Oxford: Regnum Books International. Kling, David. 2004 “The New Divinity and the Origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions”. In North American Foreign Missions, 1810-1914, edited by Wilbert R. Shenk. Grand Rapids, MA/ Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Lausanne Movement. n.d. “Lausanne I: The International Congress on World Evangelization 16 July 1974-25 July 1974”. Last accessed 29 July 2015. www.lausanne. org/gatherings/congress/lausanne-1974. Lotha, Abraham. 2009. Articulating Naga Nationalism. PhD diss., City University of New York.

“10/40 Window”

175

Marx, Karl. 1970. Capital. London: Dent. Nagaland Missions Movement (NMM). 2008. Annual Report. Dimapur, India: Nagaland Baptist Church Council. Nausner, Michael. 2014. “A Spirituality of Migration?” In Migration: The COMPAS Anthology, edited by Bridget Anderson & Michael Keith. Oxford: COMPAS. O’Driscoll, Sean. 2003. “Religious Fervor May Dominate Emerging Indian State of Nagalim.” Washington Diplomat. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tizon, Al. 2008. Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. van der Veer, Peter. 1995. Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Verter, Bradford. 2003. “Spiritual Capital: Theorising Religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu”. Sociological Theory 21 (2): 150-74. Walls, Andrew. 2002. “Mission and Migration: The Diaspora Factor in Christian History”. Journal of African Christian Thought 5 (2): 3-11.

About the author Arkotong Longkumer is an anthropologist, who is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He is the author of Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging: The Heraka Movement of Northeast India (Continuum, 2010) and has published in journals such as Himalaya, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, and Religion. He is currently writing a book on Hindu nationalism in Northeast India and Hindu nationalists’ engagement with indigenous peoples.

7

Religion, Masculinity, and Transnational Mobility Migrant Catholic Men and the Politics of Evangelization Ester Gallo

Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch07 Abstract This chapter draws from ethnographic research conducted in Rome with Catholic Indian and Filipino men and explores the nexus between religion, masculinity, and transnationalism. It highlights how membership of Italian Catholic congregations allows migrant men to appeal to a more “universalist” morality and to more “legitimate” gendered subjectivities, while also to withdraw from demeaning representations as “ethnic Catholics”. The paper analyses how migrant men who are religiously trained in Italy become agents of re-evangelizations to be sent “back” to Asian countries by Italian Catholic institutions. In the process, transnational mobility does not only mold deep transformations in everyday gendered religiosity, but also indicates ongoing changes in the institutional features of this world religion. Keywords: masculinity, religion, reformed Catholicism, ethnic churches, transnationalism

Introduction This chapter explores the link between gender and migration in the development of religious transnational connections. It focuses on the agentive role of Catholic Indian and Filipino men in building religious enclaves in Italy and promoting evangelical activities in their countries of origin, and in Asia more generally. The analysis responds to the need of further

178 

Ester Gallo

developing a more relational approach to gender within global flows and better understanding men’s highly heterogeneous involvement in migration (Willis & Yeoh 2000; Hibbins & Pease 2009; Hearn & Blagojević 2013). It does so by focusing on how religion shapes specific understanding of masculinity in the diaspora, while also being transformed in its meanings and practices through migrant men’s mobility. The chapter aims at understanding how gendered forms of migration do not only reproduce religious tradition in the diaspora, but also creatively and somehow unpredictably transform religion. It does so by interrogating the ways in which transnational mobility leads migrant men to question religion both at home and in the host society, and to discover new religiously informed models and experiences of their masculinity. In the last two decades, religion has featured with renewed pervasiveness in a growing literature concerned with migrants’ transnational belonging and minority identity politics in the diaspora (Levitt 2003; Werbner 2002; Smith & Grodz 2014; Allievi & Nielsen 2003; Vertovec 1997). Scholars have shown how religion supports transnational mobility at different stages of migration, by providing migrants with material, emotional and spiritual care, and by influencing premigration decisions, migrant journeys, and settlement, as well as the maintenance of diasporic networks (Hagan & Ebaugh 2003; Hinnells 2007; Menjivar 1999; Sandoval 2001). The flow of people, remittances, objects, and ideas has been deemed to counter-balance the traditional outflows of global religion from its “traditional holy centers” (cf. Geertz 2005; Beyer 2003), and to transform religions from below (Hüwelmeier & Krause 2010; Vasquez 2008). Religious flows transform people and places, creating new “spiritual streams” and reformed ways of expressing emotions, and giving shape to transformed “sacroscapes” (Tweed 2006, 60-2). At the same time, while religious flows certainly challenge traditional sacred cartographies (Della Dora 2009; Eade & Garbin 2007), people continue to have differential access to transnational mobility, and their lives are also likely to be framed by stasis and immobilities across gender, class, race, and age divides (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry 2006; Skeggs 2004;). Peggy Levitt, Kristen Lucken, & Melissa Barnett (2011, 470) note how “the geographies that religious actors and objects traverse are not virgin territories. Spaces become places because of their history, politics and culture”. Indeed, persistent postcolonial power relations may well act to reassert hierarchies between religious “centers” and “peripheries”, as well as essentialized notions of collective religious belonging (Baumann 1998; Grillo 2010; Thobani 2014). In this light, we can read the work of Valentina Napolitano (2007, 2016)

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

179

on the way the Catholic Church engages through pedagogical activities with Latin American Catholic migrants. While migrant inflow in Europe is considered a payback of past colonial evangelization, Latin American Catholicism raises anxieties in traditional Catholic “centers”, due to the former’s assumed distance from a reified notion of Roman religious purity and orthodoxy. This prompts Catholic institutions to engage with a meticulous and gendered work of evangelization, through which colonial missionary power is reenacted in the present. Overall, while migrants have grounds to imagine themselves as “religious global citizens” (cf. Levitt, Lucken, & Barnett 2011, 473), their participation in transnational religious scapes might be filtered by refashioned power hierarchies. These considerations hold relevance for a gendered analysis of the relation between migration, mobilities, and religion. I draw from Beverly Skeggs (2004), Kevin Hannan, Mimi Sheller, & John Urry (2006, 3) who note how the mobility paradigm might at first glance appear to be framed around a “hegemonic model of cosmopolitan and bourgeoisie masculinity”, that is around a reified model of unanchored flows of privileged male subjects: a model which, however, as the authors themselves stress, involves only a minority of men. More realistically, mobile men enter global flows not only as hegemonic subjects (Connell & Messerschmidt 2005) but also, perhaps more frequently, as subjects facing de-skilling, marginalization, and racialization (Herbert 2008; Walter, Bourgois, & Loinaz 2004; Gallo & Scrinzi 2016). To what extent, and in what terms, does religion enhance migrant men’s mobility and become a resource in the fashioning of renewed identities? In turn, how is religion transformed in its meanings and practices through gendered forms of transnational mobility? This chapter locates the analysis of migrant men’s shifting religious engagement within the broader context of their gendered labor trajectories and kinship experiences as domestic/care service providers within the international division of reproductive labor (henceforth IDRL). A detailed analysis of migrant men within the IDRL goes beyond the scope of this chapter and has been developed elsewhere (Gallo & Scrinzi 2016). Still, a brief mention of migrants’ gendered labor experiences provides the ground for our understanding of the role of religion in inhibiting or promoting social and geographical forms of mobility, and of the changes that have occurred in Catholic belonging through men’s migration. The chapter begins by exploring the role of Catholic networks in promoting the inflow of migrant men within feminized occupations and in constructing a racialized stereotype of “Asian Catholic” men as respectable, and yet inferiorized agents of evangelization for “oversecularized” Italian families. This opens the way to

180 

Ester Gallo

the analysis of how, through participation in ethnic churches, migrant men aim at developing a new transnational role within religious congregations while also detaching themselves from unmanning stereotypes as “domestic subjects”. Yet remaining within ethnic churches might also be understood as a form of ghettoization from “mainstream” religion and the hosting society. In this context, Asian migrant men entering into the reformist movement, known as The Neocatechumenal Way, promises to fulfill different expectations. It allows Indian and Filipino men to enter into a congregation which is intimately located in the holy center of Roman Catholicism but which is simultaneously aiming for a renewed evangelization of the “peripheries”. This move, it is suggested, allows migrant men to participate in a new diasporic design of Catholic expansion from its “traditional center” to Asian countries and, in the process, it opens renewed spaces for mobility while also raising new dilemma’s in migrant men’s lives.

Research Methods This paper constitutes a first attempt at bridging two different research projects. The first one draws from prolonged ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the two Italian cities of Rome and Perugia (1996-1998; 2000; 2006-2008; 2010; 2011-2012) with Christian migrant laborers – mainly coming from Asian and Latin American countries – and in Kerala, India, with Malayali Christian emigrants. Ethnographic fieldwork is combined with a total of 160 semi-structured interviews conducted in Italy with migrant domestic workers, Italian employers, Catholic institutional representatives (mainly parish-based priests), Catholic trade unions, and worker’s associations, as well as recruitment agencies. The project explores gendered forms of mobility within the IDRL: it compares the experiences of migrant men and women, and explores how gendered labor experiences in the diaspora drive changes in masculinities and femininities. It aims at developing a more relational understanding of gender within global domestic labor by also analyzing the role of Catholic networks, training, and job placement in shaping migrant men’s and women’s labor and family experiences. Particular attention is paid to understanding how migrants’ religion and ethnicity are racialized by national Catholic actors in order to construct gendered models of the legitimate and trustable worker, who could be “easily” accepted within Italian households. Interviews with Catholic actors, as well as the histories of migrant laborers from India, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, revealed the centrality of an essentialized notion of “Asian Christianity” in

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

181

driving positive stereotyping about “affine” and yet “subordinated” domestic workers and, in turn, shaping gendered employment relations and migrants’ (limited) chances of social mobility in Italy. This research raises numerous questions about, firstly, the link between mobility, religion and masculinity in the context of Christian migration to a Catholic-dominated country like Italy. Secondly, it brings me to interrogate the role of ethnic churches in Italy in developing new forms of communicating and experiencing religion to its members, and to connect Christian migrants with “mainstream” Italian Catholic parishes. These questions have only recently started to be addressed through an ongoing project which aims at analyzing in a comparative perspective gendered models of church-based religious involvement among Italians, migrants, and minorities in urban Italy (Rome and Perugia). Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and life narratives, the project focuses on how migration has changed the life of Italian parishes and how this change is reflected in renewed gendered patterns of religious participation. The research aims at analyzing the encounter, reciprocal distancing, and yet also “border crossing” that seem to characterize the relation between “ethnic churches”, “ordinary” Italian parishes, as well as new “native” reformist movements like The NeoCatechumenal Way. Preliminary ethnographic research has so far been conducted in Rome and Perugia for a total of four months between the end of 2013 and summer 2015: it involved four parishes where different forms of Catholic involvement among natives, migrants, and minorities coexisted. In the same period, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Indian and Filipino migrant men, and with ten Indian, Italian, and Filipino religious representatives of the Catholic Neocatechumenal Way. Some of the migrant men who were interviewed in the context of the second research project were already known to me, as they had participated in my previous study on domestic work. Prior acquaintance enhanced the possibility of being more warmly involved in changing parish activities, as migrant men were often keen to share with me how church involvement compensated their otherwise demeaning working experience and, in the words of one of my informants, provided a means “to know other sides of their life beyond cleaning”. Further, it also allowed me to gain better insights into the temporal changes occurring in migrant men’s involvement with Catholic networks and activities, and the extent to which religious engagement enhanced both their mobility in the host society and drove changes in their gendered identity. Yet, it should be noted, while the analysis developed in the first part of this chapter draws from a more consolidated research

182 

Ester Gallo

experience, the data on migrant masculinity and evangelical activities within ethnic churches and The NeoCatechumenal Way would need to be further developed by future research.

The Allure of “Asian Catholicism” The Catholic Church has traditionally played a complex role in supporting migration flows and processes of gendered integration of migrants in Italy (Andall 1998). The Church has been at the forefront in the development of a wide network of services for migrants, thereby compensating for the absence of the State (Ambrosini 2015). Yet, its discourses on migration, pluralism, and human rights are nevertheless ambivalent, and range from a traditional “Christian moral universalism” imbued with new evangelical missionary spirit, to forms of “selective solidarity” toward Christian – and particularly Catholic – migrants which at times take the shape of a polarization between “Us Christian” and “Muslim Others” (Garau 2010; Gallo & Scrinzi 2016; Triandafyllidou 2006).1 Catholics from Asian countries have constituted an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church’s transnational politics of “selective solidarity”, both at the level of vocational as well as labor recruitments. Establishing new “Asian connections” is key to the post-Vatican II search for a new hegemony of the Catholic Church as a transnational actor (cf. Ferrari 2006). Eastern Catholic Churches are deemed to be uniquely vital in a secularizing world and thus able to infuse European Catholic institutions with new life.2 Since the late 1960s, transnational activities aiming at connecting Roman Catholicism with Eastern Churches range from the recruitment of new vocations in countries like India, Sri Lanka, or the Philippines (Rodelli 1992), to the provision of spaces in emerging Asian ethnic churches in Italy and the creation of pastoral training centers (see Brown, this volume). Among the latter, for instance, the Pontifical Institute San Giovanni Damasceno in Rome has recently been transformed to host the training of 50 priests from 1 The existence of different – and often contrasting – positions within the Catholic Church reflect its multilayered composition which includes the Vatican (as a transnational political actor), national episcopal conferences, and NGOs, as well as a myriad of locally based networks of parishes, associations, and grassroots organizations. It is not possible in this context to analyze the recent course taken by the Church under the guidance of Pope Francis. 2 The expression “Eastern Catholic Churches” here refers to those Catholic Churches in Asian countries, as they have been defined in Vatican documents. See, for instance, one of the most influential conciliar documents, Lumen Gentium (1964), Paragraph 23.

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

183

Kerala, on the premise that Catholic Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites symbolize the most flourishing and revitalizing expressions of contemporary Catholicism. In parallel, the Catholic Church has been an active agent in promoting the international mobility of Catholic Asian migrants, through the widening of transnational parish networks at both ends (Gallo 2014). In Italy, the Catholic Church has indeed played an agentive role in the insertion of Asian migrants (women and men) within the IDRL, thereby responding to the demand of changing care and migration regimes for a flexible and unskilled workforce (Kilkey, Lutz, & Palenga-Mollenbeck 2010). While the majority of this workforce is made up of women, a re-masculinization of paid domestic/care work is taking place throughout Europe (Kilkey et al. 2013). In Italy, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the number of men employed in this sector shifted from between twelve to fifteen percent to reach eighteen percent in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis due to growing male unemployment in other sectors (Caritas 2013). A significant proportion of migrant men who work in this sector are Catholics, with Filipinos, Indians, and Sri Lankans making a significant share of the total (approximately 37 percent, ISTAT 2013). Asian migrant men enter into the IDRL through their connection with women who have previously migrated and who are working in this sector. Their role as “following husbands” often combines with downward mobility within largely feminized occupations (Gallo 2006): as such, for migrant men, reaching Italy combines a moral and material debt toward women’s kin networks, process of de-skilling, as well as proximity with a dominant Italian Catholic milieu. Connections with the national Catholic Church is determinant for migrant men not only to find relatively secure jobs, but also to construct a certain degree of respectability vis-à-vis Italian society and the growing criminalization of foreign subjects (Gallo & Scrinzi 2016). The influence of the Catholic Church emerges in the way Asian internationally mobile subjects come to be known (cf. Asad 1993) by “mainstream” religious figures and institutions. Among the Catholic trade unions ACLI COLF, the adoption of a “clerical approach to labor relations” (Andall 1998, 129) is premised upon the clearing from labor relations of any source of conflict and the construction of migrant domestic work as a naturalized act of love toward Italian families and of sacrifice with respect to the migrants’ families left behind (Scrinzi 2010). The National Episcopal Conference (CEI.) has been active in promoting an idea of migrant Christian or Catholic women and men as docile and fervent in order to build, first of all, specific vocational attitudes and, subsequently, racialized working capabilities.

184 

Ester Gallo

To some extent, Catholic voluntary associations (like Sacro Cuore or the Scalabrini Order) and local parishes aim at “turning the migrant Other into a recognizable – and yet inferiorized – Catholic subject through evangelization” (Napolitano 2007, 73). At the same time, strands of the Catholic Church also promote a discourse that goes beyond the missionary “top-down spirit” of evangelization, and ascribe to Asian Catholic domestic workers the potential for an active, transformative, and generative role with respect to fading Italian religiosity, and a redemptive role within Italian family lives (Gallo & Scrinzi 2016; Gallo 2014). The training activities which are organized by Roman parishes for men who enter the domestic/care sector channel racialized notions of gender and sexuality and tend to desexualize migrant men, dissociating them from the idea of their being a sexual threat in the private sphere of the employers’ home. The projection of working and social respectability by Catholic figures toward Indian or Filipino men in contemporary times reiterates a naturalized association between feminizing notions of “oriental faith”, “family devotion”, and “labor inclination.” Priests I spoke with tended to distinguish between, on the one hand, the suitability of Malayalis or Filipinos as domestic/care service providers and, on the other, the unreliability of non-Christian “South Asian” migrants or other communities like “North African” ones. The two fragments of interviews with Italian priests are symptomatic of how the racializing notion of “Catholic Asian respectability” operates both at the levels of religious vocation and working skills: We particularly welcome here in Rome priests from India, Sri Lanka, or the Philippines because of their long tradition of acquaintance with Catholicism and their higher educational level: their true vocation, their natural disposition towards the sacrifices of vocation, their values have been less contaminated by the Western style of life. They are more like we were one century ago (…) and they can therefore revitalize our Church. At the same time, we have to train them here, you see, to be sure that they do not go too far from the orthodoxy, from the center of our religion (…) their values and religiosity is fervent, but they need to study history, theology, language (…) in the proper way. (Interview with Bishop P.T., Rome, 2010) I usually tend to favor Asian men when families ask me to find a good employee. They are religious, and I can also get information about them through the Malayali or Filipino priests I know here in Rome. Being a good Catholic is an advantage for Italian families, as they are in many cases a guarantee not only of good services but also to share the house

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

185

with a good and reliable person. Of course, we respect all their religious traditions, but we also offer workers some teachings on Christianity, so to make them closer to the Roman tradition, and to the Italian one. (Interview with Father G., Rome, 2012)

As the passage above implies, “Catholic Asian masculinity” is at once a marker of exoticized proximity and inferiorized respectability: it makes migrant men and priests acceptable within Italian houses and national Catholic institutions as a source of revitalization, and yet in need of guidance toward a proper understanding of “true” religious orthodoxy, with the latter associated with Italian Roman Catholicism. Among the Indian and Filipino Catholic migrants I interviewed, being known by the local Catholic volunteers and/or being known by them as a “good Catholic” can bestow respectability, which is somehow accepted as a way to overcome the suspicion of potential employers. Indeed, the “goodness” of Asian Catholicism also constitutes a form of positive stereotype usually adopted by employers of domestic male workers. Yet, this stereotype is used to inferiorize Asian Catholics on the premise that their assumed fervent devotion constitutes a backward model with respect to the more secularized detachment from religion of Italian men. It is in the context of feminizing labor experiences and of constraining religious relations that some aspects related to the importance of ethnic churches for Indian and Filipino men emerge.

Building Ethnic Churches The formation of ethnic churches in Italy is a relatively recent and certainly understudied phenomenon. With reference to the US context, Peggy Levitt (2003) notes how one of the effects of transnational mobility has been the growing multicentric nature of global Catholicism and the move away from the traditional model of the national and homogeneous parish toward the creation of multiethnic congregations. My preliminary observation in Rome brings me to consider how the inflow of Asian Catholics to the city has progressively led to the creation within existing parishes of different ethnic churches which, in many instances, coexist alongside “ordinary” national parish life. The formation of ethnic churches has certainly led to deep transformations in ordinary Catholic parish life: parishes need to respond to the demand of migrants to carve out space for their own celebrations and, in many instances, parish attendance has grown as a result of migrants’ participation. In the context of Malayali

186 

Ester Gallo

Syrian Christians, religious events that are felt by devotees as particularly important in the def inition of a Christian but distinct Indian identity may include rituals inspired by the ancient Syriac traditions – such as the Nasrani Qurbana (commemoration Jesus Christ’s Passover in Jerusalem), or the Njana Snanam (baptism ceremony which follows Syriac liturgies and chants), as well as the celebration of more syncretic festivals like Onam (harvest and prosperity festival).3 South Asian Catholicism in Rome is in line with the search for public visibility enacted by South Asian religious communities throughout Europe, through the organization of processions, festivals, and other religious events (Jacobsen & Raj 2008). Yet, when compared to the context analyzed by Levitt, it is still early to talk about the formation of multiethnic congregations. Ethnic churches in Rome seem to conduct an autonomous life with respect to each other, and remain excluded from equal relations with Italian Catholic institutions and from equal possibilities of status and career mobility within the Church (Ambrosini 2015). One of the first elements that has attracted my attention is the importance of ethnic churches among Indian and Filipino men who search for a new public visibility within the community through renewed religious engagement and transnational activities. This, I suggest, allows migrant men to partly detach themselves from unmanning representations related to feminized occupations and to find some public visibility as community organizers. Similar to the analysis developed by Sheba George (2005) in the context of Malayali migrant men who migrate to the United States following their wives, active religious participation gives men the opportunity to overcome the questioning of their breadwinning role and a resulting sense of fragility in their gendered identity. In my interlocutors’ narratives, the birth of ethnic churches is intimately linked to the work of pioneer migrant women. Since the late 1980s, migrant women are usually the first to demand a space within local parishes to hold community meetings, and a selected time during holidays to hold the holy mass according to the “traditions” of the country of origins. In this respect, ethnic churches represent, to some extent, spaces where the feminized nature of certain migration patterns become visible, both through organizational activities as well as in patterns of networking and sociability. The creation of ethnic churches is also important for migrant women and, perhaps more forcefully, for migrant men in setting a distance 3 Onam has a Hindu origin but it is celebrated in Kerala as a State festival by different religious communities.

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

187

between the working milieu of Italian households and a reaffirmed sense of religious identity as “Indian” or “Filipino” Catholics. Among the Indian and Filipino men I spoke with, a dialogue with Italian Catholicism is pursued in the public sphere and the “private” domain of domestic work relations. Still, an impetus to reaffirm the uniqueness of religious practices and rituals associated with the country of origin also characterizes male domestic workers as a politics of distinction from often degrading working experiences. In recent years, both Indian and Filipino migrant men seem to have progressively gained public visibility in church life, particularly establishing networks between the ethnic church and Vatican/Catholic institutions to promote specif ic religious events such as processions, pilgrimages, or special festivities. Men tend to present themselves as more apt to take care of the institutional life of ethnic churches, and to leave women to more practical daily work related to cleaning, cooking, and decoration of the church. Particularly men in their 40s and 50s more explicitly make sense of their active participation as a way to enhance the well-being of the community and to make Italians aware of different Catholic traditions. Mr. Pedro F. is a 51-year-old Filipino man who is particularly active within the “Sentro Pilipino” and the Capellania Cattolica Filipina (Filipino Church) that have been established within the Basilica of Santa Prudenziana in Rome. When I first interviewed him, Mr. Pedro F. was particularly determined to create a shrine within the Church to host an image of Santo Niño de Cebú, one of the most important religious expressions of Jesus Christ’s infancy and object of national Catholic devotions in the Philippines. In a similar line, Mr. Pedro F. was particularly active in organizing a public parade where members of the community could engage with the Sinulog dance which traditionally accompanies the procession. In recalling this enterprise, which eventually led to one of the first big celebrations in the capital in 2007, Mr. Pedro F. emphasized the importance of his managerial role in moving around between Catholic offices, the Filipino consulate, cargo, and custom agencies, and contrasted this with the dormant parish life that preceded his activism. Importantly, for migrant men who have become active in ethnic churches, a renewed masculine identity is channeled not in terms of spiritual participation in community life, but by constructive engagement with the complex material, bureaucratic, and economic layers of religion. During a more recent procession organized in 2014, Mr. Pedro F. visibly acted as the main protagonist of the event: he was elegantly dressed and had spent a long time to welcome and greet local authorities. He made sure that all of his guests – Italian families, Filipino migrants coming from the other cities,

188 

Ester Gallo

and other foreigners – had the information brochure by commanding community fellows to be quick with the distribution. He gave an introductory speech before the procession in which he explained the history of the Santo Niño de Cebú tradition, and welcomed interviews and demands from the press and others. The event also subsequently enhanced his visibility in the community and his reputation with Catholic authorities. Festivals, processions, and philanthropic events become a way through which migrant men can enact a model of responsible masculinity – which is deemed to have weakened through the flattening and isolating nature of migrants’ household-based occupations. Men stress how the organization of such events require them to move around and negotiate with different institutional actors, as well as engage with transnational activities with the country of origin, and often openly conceptualize this networking as a masculine endeavor. The same gendered characterization of men’s role within ethnic churches emerges in migrant men’s narratives of the financial and symbolic investments made in the trade of sacred objects. The obtainment from India or the Philippines of icons, statues, clothes, and other materials related to the organization of festivals is deemed crucial for setting up and distinguishing community spaces in existing parishes. The migrant men I could talk with frequently presented themselves as those in charge of supervising and managing transnational activities related to the reproduction of religious spaces in the diaspora, thereby channeling an idea of community heritage management as a manly enterprise. In the context of Syro-Malabar Catholics4 in Rome, a similar conceptualization of transnational religious activities as a way to build new respectability vis-à-vis Catholic authorities, while also distinguishing them from “banal” Italian Catholicism, emerges. The Syro-Malabar parish emerges as a place to nurture a specif ic religious identity vis-à-vis the Italian society. Importantly, the delineation of boundaries with Latin Catholicism overlaps with the search for distance from the daily routine of domestic labor and the limitations of social life required by this kind of employment. Furthermore, Syrian Catholic men stress how the establishment of an independent parish allows them to better cope with the folkloric and often demeaning representations of their religious traditions: 4 The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is one of the many Keralan churches representing Syro-Malabar Christians. The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is officially recognized by the Vatican as an Eastern Catholic Church. The former recognizes the supreme authority of the Pope yet maintains an autonomous and self-governing status.

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

189

The family I am working with, they go once a month to church (…) they sometimes ask me to go, but I am very bored in their mass (…) no dances, little music and very little community sentiments (…) and also I see them all the time, and I did not like this feeling of having to spend also my free time in the church with them. Now that we have our church I am happier (…) it is a space for myself, for us. (Interview with Mr. Thomas from Kerala in Rome, 2014)

In the contexts of Filipino Churches, Malayali men have been particularly dynamic in promoting transnational activities related to the organization of processions dedicated to the Malayali saints St. Thomas and St. Alphonsa, as well as those inspired by the influence of Hinduism like the one of Onam.5 If, for migrant men who could achieve a certain degree of mobility outside feminized occupations, new church roles represent a way to enact models of public and responsible masculinity, for those who remain bounded to domestic/care occupations, church attendance offers a space to nurture some degree of independence from the stereotyping and disciplining attitudes of Italian employers. Although allegiance to ethnic churches seems a dominant model among Indian and Filipino men in Rome, some also seem to critically perceive their marginalization as subordinated “Asian Catholics” and search for renewed membership in “Italian” congregations and for novel connections with their countries of origin and Asia more generally.

Masculinity and the New Evangelical Mission In some Catholic parishes where Asian men are present, and in the city more generally, new spaces of Catholic belonging that are offered by “Italian” Catholic reformist congregations that, while still being mainly composed by nationals, have started to appeal to migrants as a way to enact new forms of world evangelization. One of these congregations is the Catholic reformist movement known as The NeoCatechumenal Way.6 The NCW is a Catholic 5 A Malayali harvest festival that is celebrated between the end of August and the beginning of September in honor of the legendary figure of King Mahabali. 6 Founded in Spain in 1964 by Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernandez, the Way responds to the Vatican II’s (1962) call for a renewed Church, that should be able to “enflesh” the reality it seeks to communicate and to be “close to people’s everyday life” (Himes 2006, 17). Today the NCW counts 40,000 communities worldwide with nearly 1200 itinerant/missionary families and a growing number of members (i.e. one million members).

190 

Ester Gallo

movement founded in Madrid, Spain, in 1964 by Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernandez as a positive response to the Second Vatican Council (1962). In line with the conciliar ethos, the movement aims at embodying a renewed Church that is able to “enflesh” the reality it seeks to communicate and to be “close to people’s everyday life” (Himes 2006, 17). It aims to purify the institutional credibility of Catholicism, and to transform radically at a global level the way in which this religion is understood and practiced. The entrance into the movement is conceived in terms of a radical conversion also for Catholics, as it requires a radical change not only in their involvement with parish life, but also in their family, work, and social life, as well as the acceptance of NCW presbyters’ authority in their intimate lives. Conversion to the NCW formally leaves little space for “cross-fertilization with other religions” or “banal” expressions of Catholicism (cf. Csordas 2007, 299). Initially considered with suspicion by Catholic institutions – and still condemned as heretical by many – the NCW’s global success in mobilizing Catholics has meant a slow process of institutionalization, eventually ratified in the approval of the Official Statute in 2008. This Statute recognizes The Way as an “integral part of Christian education” within the Catholic Church and confers Vatican approval; it is an instrument “offered to Catholic Bishops and National Episcopal Conferences worldwide as a way to actuate new forms of evangelization” (Argüello & Hernandez 2008, 5-6). Since the mid1970s, Asian countries – and specifically India, China, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan – were targeted as primary destinations for spreading “The Way”. These countries were considered to be in “danger” of secularization due to growing economic development, and “their” Catholicism was deemed to be corrupted by the coexistence with non-Christian denominations. The creation of two important Redemptoris Mater in Bangalore and Manila, respectively in 1974 and in 1996, responded to the need to train priestly communities with the intent of evangelizing Asia. Redemptoris Mater also work in close collaboration with local NCW communities in Asian countries as well as with NCW families sent there from Europe. Indeed, like in the rest of the world, evangelical missions and conversion politics in Asian countries are carried out through a complex network of itinerant families and families in mission. The former are usually selected by the NCW leaders to be sent to Asian countries with the aim of creating new NCW communities within existing Catholic parishes, and to “convert” into the movement Catholics as well as members of other religious denominations. Families in mission hold a more temporary task of supporting itinerant families for shorter periods, providing them with different kinds of services such as cleaning, baby-sitting, or participation in parish-based activities. Importantly, and

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

191

partly in line with the Vatican II ethos, NCW families are entrusted with a higher evangelical authority compared to NCW priests, as they are deemed to be closer to the many dilemmas and struggles of families worldwide and thus more able to attract converts. Both itinerant families and families in mission are supported by their community of origin in Italy or Europe, and the latter is responsible for providing them with the necessary financial and emotional support throughout the duration of their mission. In this respect, the NCW interestingly combines more hierarchical and institutionalized aspects of traditional Catholicism with more fluid and horizontal networks of organization typical of Charismatic Christianity. In some parishes in Rome where The Way is present, Asian migrants and minorities are identified as important agents for bridging the “center” of Catholicism with its “peripheral” Asian locations, although – as the above reflections suggest – this also requires migrants to move away from their allegiance to ethnic churches and to the “hybrid” Catholic traditions and practices associated with their countries of origin. From their side, the Indian and Filipino “converts” I spoke with are attracted to The Way by virtue of two main projects of self-transformation: firstly, in their relation with Italian reformist Catholics, and secondly with respect to their country of origin. In both contexts, religious transformation requires migrant men to reconsider their family and intimate lives. My acquaintances emphasized how conversion to The Way allows them to establish spiritual connections with Italians, something that is deemed more difficult through their belonging to ethnic churches. Importantly, first interviews suggest how this attitude holds a generational dimension, with younger men sometimes being more dissatisfied with their participation in ethnic churches compared to more mature or elderly ones. Among the former, new gendered subjectivities are sought as individual, householder, and Catholic devotee. Entering The Way is deemed not only to provide a new space for religious life beyond ethnic affiliation, but also to renew men’s understanding of family duties and rights. Premarriage (male and female) chastity – which is required by elder NCW presbyters – is for instance an element that is often valued by the Indian and Filipino men as a way to achieve religious purity, and as an inroad to a more solid conjugal life in the future. The valuing of shared chastity between young women and men should perhaps be understood by referring to a growing gendered morality within the NCW that somehow goes beyond the conventional understanding of Catholic hierarchy between “powerful” and relatively “sexually free men”, on the one hand, and “virtuous women” on the other (cf. Mayblin 2010). In this respect, the NCW appears in many instances close to more conservative

192 

Ester Gallo

forms of Evangelical Christianity. Being “open to life” and birthing many children is another important – and highly contested – element in NCW evangelizing process, which also calls for new models of responsible fathers and mothers. Indeed, the NCW morality assigns to both men and women equal responsibility toward the preservation of family morality. By partly embodying a criminalizing Italian discourse over migrant men and dangerous and uncontrolled sexuality, the Indian and Filipino men I spoke with emphasized how their membership of NCW allowed them, on the one hand, to confer new moral principles to their sexual and family life, such as premarriage chastity as a sign of purification against the “sins” committed before the “conversion” and a new marker of respectability; on the other, the model of sacrificial masculinity enhanced by The Way is set against what they frame as more “backward patriarchal values” of their country of origin: In India men enjoy more rights than women (…) they are the bosses of the family (…) and society is usually supportive of men (…) you can see now with all the violence against women that has grown throughout India. This is because people have run far away from god (…) Our mission is to teach people a new world of Christ where men and women share the same rights but also have to bear similar sacrifices for their family, the community and the Catholic world. (Interview with Neel, 32 years old, from Kerala, in Rome, January 2015. Member of a family in mission in Delhi)

Importantly, the guidance of NCW presbyters on their intimate life is much valued by Indian and Filipino Catholic men I spoke with as a means of spiritual growth and is set against the more instrumental and racializing attitude of ordinary parish activities which aim at turning Asian migrants into “good domestic workers”: When I first came to Italy I followed a training course in a parish in central Rome. Here priests have this idea that men like us, from India, Sri Lanka or the Philippines are good Catholics (…) many of us where from there (…) but ordinary priests they do not really know much about the way we feel about our religion (…) what we do really want. In The Way it is different (…) yes, it is true (…) they often criticized our traditions, they expect us to change (…) But they offer an alternative you see (…) not only a job, but a new way to discover the teaching of Christ, a new life where you are part of a common project. (Interview with Francis, 28 years old, Perugia, 2015)

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

193

The possibility of being trained not only by priests but also by lay presbyters is also valued as a way to challenge ecclesial hierarchies and migrant men’s previous subordination to priests who know very little about the daily struggles and sacrifices of ordinary people. My Indian and Filipino informants value the possibility of being part of a global project of Asian Catholic renovation. This possibility is achieved by agreeing to become itinerant/missionary families for the NCW movement, and to leave Italy for new evangelical destinations in Asia. Importantly, from the Indian and Filipino families who undertake this way, it is expected to move away from their personal history as labor migrants toward the acquisition of new religious roles. The conflict between existent loyalties and affections and the chosen future life path informs a recurrent sense of incomprehension and abandonment from their wider networks of kin and friends. It also produces ambivalent relations with their countries of origin, where they are usually (but not necessarily) sent as primary evangelical destinations. Francis and Sheba are a Malayali couple who left Rome in 2010 with the mission of creating a new NCW community in a South Indian town. After many years of working in Italy, and two children, the move required them to leave their job – and to stop sending remittances home – to learn Hindi (their mother language being Malayali) and to live for three years with the monthly support of their “Italian” community in Rome. In 2013, Sheba found a new part-time job in Ranchi as a secretary, while Francis remained fully engaged with missionary activities in the town. By that time, the couple had four children, a fact that caused them to be negatively perceived by other (non-NCW) Catholics within the Indian parish. Their call for openness to life created many tensions, as it was considered to be against the Indian national policy of birth control and modern family life, and to shed negative light on Catholics as “religious fundamentalist” and traitors of Indian modernity. After a parish clash where some Indian Catholics blamed Francis for betraying the Indian state, Francis was called on by the Archbishop and was warned against proselytizing activities that could compromise the movement’s acceptance in the new context. In 2015, Francis and Sheba returned to Italy and decided to withdraw from evangelical activities in their country of origin. As this brief account shows, migrant men (and their families) are attracted to the possibility of developing new evangelical activities in their countries of origin, and yet also find it difficult to handle their mediating role between, on the one hand, the dictates of the NCW and, on the other, the national and local orientations of the Church in the missionary destination. While their being “native” might ideally ease the promotion of evangelical

194 

Ester Gallo

activities, the latter also raise citizenship and religious dilemmas at the very moment in which the principles of the movement – like those related to reproductive strategies – enter into conflicts with national policies and with the more accommodating policy of (Indian) national Catholic representatives.

Conclusions The relation between gender, migration, and religion seems to have largely privileged women, the latter being overall more markedly considered as the “keepers of the cultural flame” (Levitt, Lucken, & Barnett 2011, 481) and being responsible of transmitting religious “traditions” (cf. Cannell 2006; Woodhead 2007). A focus on migrant men, masculinities, and religion has only recently started to be adopted (Bonifacio & Angeles 2010), and it certainly deserves further investigation in the future. This chapter has started to explore the experiences of Asian migrant men and the production of masculinities within the context of a double process of transnational religious flows. There are those that accompany the movement of people, objects, and ideas from Asian countries toward European destinations like Italy, and that reshape the meanings of Catholicism through migrants’ gendered engagements in the construction of “ethnic churches” in the diaspora. Others are generated within the “traditional” center of world Catholicism as a response to religious global movements and, through new evangelical activities in Asia, aim at reasserting the orthodoxy of a Eurocentric model of Catholic purity. In both processes, men emerge as active subjects in reframing the meanings of religious experiences in the diaspora. Yet, their involvement in global Catholicism is framed by blockage in potential geographical and social mobility, and by dilemmas in their gendered religious belonging. Migrant men are confronted with essentialist representations of Asian Catholic men as “devoted and feminized” subjects, which powerfully work at discursive and experiential levels. Religious practice in Christianity has largely been associated with femininity and the private sphere since the nineteenth century (Woodhead 2007), and in the context of the present analysis come to embrace also the representations of the “reliable” and “devoted” Asian Catholic domestic male worker who, in order to be accepted in the receiving national polity, is bound to be feminized (Gallo & Scrinzi 2016). The preliminary ethnographic insights developed above show how migrant men move throughout and actively contribute to build different

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

195

religious fields, the latter ranging from training parish activities, to the “reassuring” domain of ethnic churches, and to the daring ones created by new global Catholic reformist movements like The NeoCatechumenal Way. In the context of the present analysis, religious engagement is significantly influenced by labor experience and by a persistent sense of being marginalized by both Italian society and Catholic institutions as folklorized and exoticized Asian subjects. Entering the NCW promises Indian and Filipino men not only better and more equal proximity with a reformed Italian Catholic milieu, but also a sense of membership of the global project of transformations of “Asian Catholicism”. In the process, they engage and disengage from models and experiences of masculinities, a fact that often creates dilemmas and conflicts in different ends of their trajectories of mobility. Engaging with transnational missionary activities implies an engagement with models of masculinity where “traditional” meanings of (male) breadwinning and patriarchy are (at least apparently) challenged, and to make public new gendered models centered on premarriage chastity, post-marriage fertility, responsible fatherhood, piety, and shared sacrifice. These new religious gendered subjectivities – and their public enactment in missionary destinations – emerge as a source of tension between individuals, kin network, and religious affiliation, and seem to challenge migrant men’s mediating role between different religious expressions within Catholicism.

References Allievi, Stefano, Jørgen Nielsen, eds. 2003. Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe. Leiden: Brill. Ambrosini, Maurizio. 2015. “Protected but Separated: International Immigrants in the Italian Catholic Church”. Paper presented at Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism, Middlesex University, London, February 2014. Andall, Jacqueline. 1998. “Catholic and State Construction of Domestic Workers”. In The New Migration in Europe. Social Constructions and Social Realities, edited by K. Koser & H. Lutz, 124-41. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Argüello, Kiko, & Carmen Hernandez. 2008. Neocatechumenale Iter Statuta. Roma: Edizioni San Paolo. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University. Baumann, Gerd. 1998. “Body Politics or Bodies of Culture? How Nation-State Practices Turn Citizens into Religious Minorities”. Cultural Dynamics 10 (3): 263-80.

196 

Ester Gallo

Beyer, Peter. 2003. “De-centering Religious Singularity: The Globalization of Christianity as a Case in Point”. Numen 50: 357-86. Bonifacio, Glenda Tibe, & Vivienne Angeles, eds. 2010. Gender, Religion and Migration. Pathways of Integration. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Cannell, Fenella. 2006. “Introduction”. In The Anthropology of Christianity, edited by F. Cannell, 1-24. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Caritas Dossier Statistico Immigrazione. 2013. (33rd Report on Immigration) XXIII Rapporto sull’Immigrazione. Rome: IDOS. Connell, Raewyn W., & James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”. Gender & Society 19 (6): 829-59. Csordas, Thomas. 2007. “Global Religion and the Re-enchantment of the World: The Case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal”. Anthropological Theory 7 (3): 295-314. Della Dora, Veronica. 2009. “Taking Sacred Space out of Place: From Mount Sinai to Mount Getty through Travelling Icons.” Mobilities 4 (2): 225-48. Eade, John, & David Garbin. 2007. “Reinterpreting the Relations between Centre and Periphery: Pilgrimage and Sacred Spatialisation among Polish and Congolese Communities in Britain”. Mobilities 2 (3): 413-24. Ferrari, Luisa. 2006. “The Vatican as a Transnational Actor”. In The Catholic Church and the Nation-State. Comparative Perspectives, edited by P.C. Manuel, L.C. Reardon, & C. Wilcox, 33-49. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. Gallo, Ester. 2006. “Italy Is Not a Good Place for Men. Narratives of Place, Marriage and Masculinity among Malayali Migrants in Rome”. Global Networks 6 (4): 159-74. —. 2014. “Introduction: South Asian Migration and Religious Pluralism in Europe”. In Migration and Religion in Europe. Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by E. Gallo, 1-27. New York & London: Routledge. Gallo, Ester, & Francesca Scrinzi. 2016. Men of the Home. Migration, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Garau, Eva. 2010. “The Catholic Church, Universal Truth and the Debate on National Identity and Immigration”. In Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, edited by A. Mammone & G.A. Veltri, 158-69. London: Routledge. Geertz, Clifford. 2005. “Shifting Aims, Moving Targets: On The Anthropology of Religion”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (1): 1-15. George, Sheba. 2005. When Women Come First. Gender and Class in Transnational Migration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Grillo, Ralph D. 2010. “British and Others: From ‘Race’ to ‘Faith’”. In The Multiculturalism Backlash. European Discourses, Policies and Practices, edited by S. Vertovec & S. Wessendorf, 50-71. London: Routledge. Hagan, Jacqueline, & Helen Ebaugh. 2003. “Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process”. International Migration Review 37 (4): 1145-62.

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

197

Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller, & John Urry. 2006. “Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings”. Mobilities 1 (1): 1-22. Hearn, Jeff, & Marina Blagojević. 2013. “Introducing and Rethinking Transnational Men”. In Rethinking Transnational Men. Beyond, Between and Within Nations, edited by J. Hearn, M. Blagojević, & K. Harrison, 1-25. New York: Routledge. Herbert, John. 2008. “Masculinity and Migration”. In Gendering Migration. Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain, edited by L. Ryan & W. Webster. Aldershot: Ashgate. Hibbins, Raymond, & Bob Pease. 2009. “Men and Masculinities on the Move”. In Migrant Men. Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience, edited by M. Donaldson, R. Hibbins, R. Howson, & B. Pease, 1-20. London: Routledge. Himes, Kenneth. 2006. “Vatican II and Contemporary Politics”. In The Catholic Church and the Nation State. Comparative Perspectives, edited by P.C. Manuel & C. Wilcox, 16-31. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. Hinnells, John. 2007. “Introduction”. In Religious Reconstruction in the South Asian Diaspora. From One Generation to Another, edited by J.R. Hinnells, 1-12. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hüwelmeier, Getrud, & Kristine Krause. 2010. “Introduction”. In Travelling Spirits. Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, edited by G. Huwelmeier & K. Krause, 1-16. London: Routledge. ISTAT. 2013. Statistiche sulla previdenza e assistenza sociale. Rome: ISTAT. Jacobsen, Knut, & Selva Raj. 2008. “Introduction: Making an Invisible Diaspora Visible”. In South Asian Christian Diaspora, edited by K. Jacobsen & S.J. Raj, 1-16. Farnham: Ashgate. Kilkey, Mayella, Diane Perrons, Ania Plomien, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo, & Hernan Ramirez. 2013. Gender, Migration and Domestic Work. Masculinities, Male Labour and Fathering in the UK and USA. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Kilkey, Mayella, Helma Lutz, & Ewa Palenga-Mollenbeck. 2010. “Introduction”. Social Policy and Society 9 (3): 379-84. Levitt, Peggy. 2003. “You Know Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant: Religion and Transnational Migration”. International Migration Review, 37 (4): 847-74. Levitt, Peggy, Kristen Lucken, & Melissa Barnett. 2011. “Beyond Home and Return: Negotiating Religious Identity across Time and Space through the Prism of the American Experience”. Mobilities 6 (4): 467-82. Mayblin, Maya. 2010. Gender, Catholicism and Morality in Brazil. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Menjivar, Cecilia. 1999. “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism: A Case Study of Catholic and Evangelical Salvadorian Immigrants”. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12 (4): 589-611.

198 

Ester Gallo

Napolitano, Valentina. 2007. “Of Migrant Revelations and Anthropological Awakenings”. Social Anthropology 15 (1): 71-87. —. 2016. Migrants Hearts and the Atlantic Return. Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Fordham University Press. Rodelli, Luigi. 1992. “Il Kerala é vicino. A Proposito della tratta delle suore Indiane” (Kerala Is Close By: On the Trafficking of South Indian Nuns). Terzo Mondo 10: 7-10. Sandoval, Efren. 2001. “Catholicism and Transnational Networks. Three Cases from the Monterrey-Huston Connection”. In Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by H.R. Ebaugh & J.S. Chafetz, 93-109. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Scrinzi, Francesca. 2010. “Masculinities and the International Division of Care: Migrant Male Domestic Workers in Italy and France”. Men and Masculinities 13 (1): 44-64. Skeggs, Beverly. 2004. Class, Self and Culture. London: Routledge. Smith, G.G., & Stanislaw Grodz. 2014. Religion, Ethnicity and Transnational Migration between West Africa and Europe. Leiden: Brill. Thobani, Sitara. 2014. “A Universal Hinduism? Dancing Coloniality in Multicultural London”. In Migration and Religion in Europe. Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by E. Gallo, 29-43. Farnham: Ashgate. Triandafyllidou, Anna. 2006. “Religious Diversity and Multiculturalism in Southern Europe”. In Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship, edited by T. Modood, A. Triandafyllidou, & R. Zapata-Barrero. Abingdon: Routledge. Tweed, Thomas A. 2006. Crossings and Dwellings: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA/ London: Harvard University Press. Vasquez, Manuel. 2008. “Studying Religion in Motion: A Networks Approach”. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 20: 151-84. Vertovec, Steven. 1997. “The Meanings of ‘Diaspora’ as Exemplified by South Asian Religions”. Diaspora 6 (3): 277-300. Walter, Nicholas, Philippe Bourgois, & Margarita Loinaz 2004. “Masculinity and Undocumented Labour Migration: Injured Latino Day Labourers in San Francisco”. Social Science & Medicine 59: 1159-68. Werbner, Pnina. 2002. Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims: The Public Performance of Pakistani Transnational Identity Politics. Oxford: James Currey. Willis, Katie, & Brenda Yeoh. 2000. “Introduction”. In Gender and Migration, edited by K. Willis & B. Yeoh, i-xxxii. Cheltingham: Edward Elgar. Woodhead, Linda. 2007. “Gender Differences in Religious Practice and Significance”. In The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, edited by James Beckford & N.J. Demerath III, 550-70. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Religion, Masculinit y, and Transnational Mobilit y

199

About the author Ester Gallo is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, and Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute. Her research interests cut across migration and gender, religion, kinship, memory and middle classes, with specific reference to India/South Asia and Italy/Mediterranean. She is the editor of Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences (Routledge, 2014) and co-authored with Francesca Scrinzi Migrant Men, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour: Men of the Home (Palgrave MacMillan – Migration, Citizenship, and Diaspora, 2016). She has recently published a monograph on the link between colonial history, kinship memories and class formation in Kerala, titled The Fall of Gods. Memory, Kinship and Middle Classes in South India (Oxford University Press, 2017).

8

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience The Free Burma Rangers in Karen State, Myanmar Alexander Horstmann

Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch08 Abstract Building on ethnographic f ieldwork on humanitarian cultures since 2007 in Karen state, eastern Myanmar, this chapter examines the vastly expanded mobility of displaced Karen villagers in the evangelical humanitarian movement Free Burma Rangers in the Thai-Burmese borderlands. While refugees are too often presented in literature as victims, I argue that by joining the mission, the Karen freedom fighters become ambassadors of a political ideology and evangelism. Bringing Christianity with them from their homes, displaced Karen meet the evangelical humanitarian organization at the Thai refugee camps, train with them, and supply the villagers left behind with emergency healthcare and religious messages. Funded by American free churches, the US military, and resettled Karen communities in the West, the freedom fighters of the Free Burma Rangers mobilize people and resources all over the globe and expand their operations to the Kurdish areas of Syria and the Nuban mountains of South Sudan. Keywords: Karen state, refugees, Free Burma Rangers, humanitarianism, mission

Introduction The intersection between migration, religion, and globalization is among the most exciting debates in current migration studies (Csordas 2009). In our

202 

Alexander Horstmann

recent publication, Building Noah’s Ark (Horstmann & Jung 2015), we follow up on the work by Mark Johnson & Pnina Werbner (2010), Aihwa Ong (2003), Peggy Levitt (2007) and Pnina Werbner (2003) to illustrate the centrality of religion in strategies of emplacement and navigation. Religion, we argue, is a lens for understanding the efforts that are invested in transforming strange and hostile environments into more docile and peaceful ones. Religion can be seen as a privileged site through which to study agency, making losses more bearable and reconstructing lives more comfortable. In writing about religion and motion, I have been inspired by Thomas Tweed. In Tweed’s opinion, religion is intimately linked to involuntary mobility: it assists in crossing boundaries and is part of a process of reconstructing the self and reimagining the community (2006). From this perspective, Karen villagers, whose homes have been violently displaced in the protracted conflict in eastern Myanmar, are becoming mobile subjects against their will. Bringing religion with them as cultural baggage, they act as missionaries of some sort, mobilizing throughout Myanmar, Thailand, and the West, to spread the good news of Karen Christianity if they are Christian, or to reconstruct Karen monasteries in political exile if they are Buddhist. Being victims of violent displacement, 72,000 Karen villagers received the mixed blessing of resettlement in the West (between 2006 and 2011).1 They bring their pastors with them and send remittances to their families at the refugee camps of northwestern Thailand, or to political organizations, or missionary churches. As the Karen celebrate the Karen New Year or Christmas together, the Karen Diaspora spreads worldwide, forming a global religious community with a circulation of community leaders in the many overseas chapters of resettled Karen communities – from the United States to Norway and England, and from Canada to Australia. In a sense, there is “a blessing in disguise” that provides the Karen with the opportunity to reorganize in transnational social fields, with the church service being the core of community cohesion in the Diaspora. The importance of religion cannot be underestimated. Even as wages are sent back home in the form of remittances, nations are imagined and reproduced over long distances, and religious organizations and networks spread at a fast pace around the globe. Religious cosmopolitanism is stimulating, as it finances the revitalization of religious communities and often connects religion and nationalism, threatening the sovereignty of nation-states. As 1 The statistic is provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM 2011) that has been responsible for 72,000 resettlements of refugees from Myanmar at the Thai camps to the West during the period of 2006-2011.

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

203

Thomas Tweed (2006, 54) writes, “Religions are confluences of organiccultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and superhuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries”. The idea of “making homes and crossing boundaries” is at the heart of his theory as he sees “religion as serving” as a clock that encompasses past, present, and future (including afterlife), and as a compass and itinerary to “position women and men in natural terrain and social space” and “enable and constrain terrestrial, corporeal, and cosmic crossings” (Tweed 2006, 74-5). Religious practice (religioning) can be liberating: while looking at religion not only as a tool of existential struggle, but also as a vehicle of agency, meaning-making, border crossing, and homemaking, we can understand religion as a political project and aspiration, reaching out in a transnational context and space. While Tweed brings out nicely the emotional dimension of religion as an existential spiritual need, Manuel Vasquez (2010) sees religions as dynamic material and historical expressions of the practices of embodied individuals who are embedded in social fields and ecological networks. In my own work, I look at the partnership that some Karen have established with Christian faith-based and humanitarian organizations (Horstmann 2011, 2016). Taking into account the fact that the founder of the Free Burma Rangers – a humanitarian organization that helps the wounded in Myanmar and other conflicts around the world – strongly feels that he is on God’s mission, we can interpret the humanitarian practices of the Free Burma Rangers as transnational and portable religious experiences that involve Karen warriors in operations in eastern Myanmar, and more lately expanding their activities into the Kurdish regions of Syria and the Nuba mountains of Sudan. The founder of the Free Burma Rangers openly understands himself as a missionary who travels to dangerous places to help the wounded and spread the word of Jesus. The Free Burma Rangers are an important part of the process of political community formation in the local arena. They are an American missionary group, but are substantially involved in the Karen state in Myanmar. Burma is represented as the showpiece of evil, whereby a ruthless Burmese Army is oppressing innocent villagers. Burma thus becomes the center for the spiritual and financial mobilization of mission groups in the United States and Europe. The focus on Burma is further highlighted by celebrity humanitarianism. The Bush family and especially the former president’s wife, Laura Bush, have developed a keen interest in Burma and in the fate of political activist Aung San Suu Kyi. During her trips to Burma, Mrs. Bush also met with the FBR. Since then, the FBR has enjoyed special support from her, acting as an ambassador for liberalism and democracy in Burma. The

204 

Alexander Horstmann

Bush family, who is also known for its vocal support of missionary churches in Texas, is clearly intervening in local politics and contributing to the emergence of an “American Front” that supports the democratic opposition as well as the Christianized Karen on the eastern frontier of Myanmar. Celebrity humanitarianism is further accentuated by regular visits from Hollywood star and special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie. The Karen are therefore viewed as persecuted Christians, worthy of media attention in the global Christian community. In the global humanitarian field, the FBR and other faith-based groups have succeeded in transforming victimhood into a heroic struggle to assist and liberate persecuted Christians from evil worldwide. In this way, religious solidarity is helping to build a project – mobilized by donations from the local parishes and faith communities – that shrinks distances in a globalized mission. I highlight the way in which displacement and human suffering in southeastern Myanmar are being used to support a missionary calling from a faith-based humanitarian service group that provides emergency health services to the wounded in numerous ethnic conflicts across Myanmar over the last decades. While displacement as involuntary mobility and exodus has only negative connotations, the connection to religion perhaps enables us to think of displacement as a strategy for achieving greater protection. In this more positive notion of agency, religion is a tool with which the displaced people rebuild a sense of homeland, belonging, and engagement with other religious spaces. With this tool in their hands, displaced Karen can attempt to regain control over their lives, shaping and sacralizing spaces by situating themselves simultaneously inside and outside the international regime of refugee protection while their physical displacement remains forced. Sometimes, the benefit of a religious network may make all the difference to physical survival, while in other contexts the benefit may be all but spiritual.

The Free Burma Rangers The Free Burma Rangers is a community-based organization founded by Allan Eubank and his son, David. Allan Eubank is a veteran American missionary based in Chiang Mai. Before studying mission work, he served as a captain in the United States Army during the Korean War. After training as a seminarian and missionary, he settled down in Chiang Mai with his wife Joan to bring God to the Thai and ethnic-minority people. Allan and Joan

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

205

started to convert the Lao Song in Nakhon Pathom (northeastern Thailand, sharing a border with Laos) but had to wait 50 long years to witness their first baptism. In a second project, he also rode elephants to evangelize the Talako sect in eastern Myanmar. He is expecting a breakthrough there any time now, as their spiritual leader prepares to be converted. Inspired by traditional Thai drama (lakorn), Allan and his wife established a full-time theater troupe that would perform the story of Jesus in Thai villages. His son David used to serve as special envoy of the United States Army in the Myanmar-China borderland. Later while he was training as a theologian in an American seminary, his father called him up as the Wa were looking for a Christian warrior and had caught sight of a picture of David in green military uniform. In view of the suffering of the Karen, he decided to establish the Free Burma Rangers to provide more efficient help. As the Karen have a 200year history of Christianization, they hold special meaning as a people, for American Baptist missionaries. The Karen are at the center of staffing the FBR and protecting their activities through the Karen National Liberation Army troops. David Eubank spends his time in and out of the ethnic conflict zones of Myanmar and Chiang Mai, and also travels to the United States and Europe to promote the FBR. The FBR coordinate their activities closely with American Christian groups and human rights groups doing similar work, but with an emphasis on human rights documentation. However, being a missionary organization, the Rangers work mostly with faith-based groups and missionary churches. There is little contact between the Rangers and other international organizations working on similar human rights issues or in the medical domain, or with the Catholic faith. The Rangers nonetheless certainly see themselves as part of a democratic front that is bringing values of freedom, culture, and religion to a vandalized and mismanaged country of the global South. The intention to save lives through emergency healthcare is, in a sense, an honorable and uncontested undertaking. While the well-known French Doctors Without Borders works on a principle of human rights, the Rangers perceive themselves in a sacred struggle of good against evil. While the French doctors remain impartial, the Rangers take the side of the ethnic minorities and walk with the ethnic armies. While the French doctors are secular, the Rangers follow Jesus’ call. While the French doctors use only medicine and scalpels, the Rangers are armed. While the Rangers normally avoid any contact with the Burmese Army, they are not pacifists and are willing to stand their ground with the displaced villagers and to defend them if necessary. The positively formulated reason for the existence

206 

Alexander Horstmann

of the Rangers is to assist those marginalized groups most affected by violence. Most significantly, the Rangers establish a presence in spaces that are not normally accessible to humanitarians. It is the identity marker and strength of the Rangers that they appear in war spaces to demonstrate that the displaced marginalized groups are not alone, and that the Rangers will assist them, share time with them, and defend them if necessary. The Rangers’ leader, David Eubank, does not hide his political viewpoint: by highlighting the atrocities of torture, abuse, rape, and brutal killings of civilian populations, he argues that it is our moral obligation to use our physical strength to help the wounded and take action against the perpetrators. Taking an American Christian political standpoint, Eubank risks perpetuating a conflict while ignoring the local knowledge, cultural resources, and ethnic diversity of the Karen and other groups. The military aspect of the FBR is present due to the fact that its founder used to work as a special envoy of the United States Army while his father, a veteran missionary in Chiang Mai, served as an officer during the Korean War. Strictly speaking, the FBR is a civil-society organization, placed within an international church, and drawing its mandate from the Lord and its support from donations. The Rangers’ military equipment is only used for defensive purposes and never strategic ones. And yet, if Rangers are forced to use a gun to attack enemy forces, they will do so. While the French doctors withdraw in political protests upon military intimidation, the Rangers use military equipment and walk with ethnicminority armies to force their way to the front zone. Their engagement for the wounded deserves applause, but the fact that the Rangers are armed – as well as their close alliance with the ethnic insurgents – positions them as an enemy of the Burmese Army. Their highly desired presence and medical services therefore arguably contribute to the insecurity of the extremely vulnerable communities of internally displaced people and form a potential threat to their safety. Through this lens, I explore the religious experience that is associated with the careers of refugees who become Rangers to help the most vulnerable as well as the mobility of the refugee-migrants. At the center is an evangelical expression about the presence of the “saving angels” in a “landscape of evil”. The young nurses who serve in the FBR are themselves migrants away from their homes and they understand their job is a service to God and the Karen people. In this sense, the devotional experience of servicing the FBR propels a specific personal trajectory in the mind of a young nurse and places him or her in a global field as a political ethnic humanitarian. Most of all, it places him or her in a global religious field, or a global religious

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

207

community, as a servant of God. Humanitarian assistance becomes, in Thomas Csordas’s (2009, 4) words, a “portable practice” that dramatically broadens the radius of the participants while taking them hostage in a sort of a crusade that brings the participating Rangers into great danger. Indeed, a few Rangers have lost their lives in action as reported by David Eubank, yet more have died due to malaria and landmines. The FBR have become closely associated with the displaced and victimized Karen, as they are seen as good people who have no responsibility for their fate. The Karen are widely known as Christian, flourishing under the material and spiritual support of the American Baptist missionaries, as are the Kachin. And yet the majority of the Karen are not Christian but Theravada Buddhist, following the Mon-Burmese and Karen cultural traditions as well as resilient spirit beliefs. The hugely popular monk, U Thuzana, for example, may well be a spiritual competitor. Being a staunch Karen nationalist, U Thuzana and his Democratic Karen Buddhist Army are constructing new pagodas in the territory under his influence. In this politically loaded field, the Rangers may well intensify religious tensions. Moreover, while instrumentalist arguments of exchanging humanitarian entitlements for conversion may be avoided, this is precisely what the leader of the Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT) claims they are doing. Many displaced villagers are definitely not Christian but this does not stop the Rangers from involving the displaced people in Christian prayers, gospel songs, and long hours of Bible teaching in the “Good Life Club”. I suggest that this expression can be best thought of as a ritual in which the practice of assisting the suffering is ritually confirmed and presented in a variety of social media. The key religious expression is prayer. The prayer is geared to action and personalized to the Rangers. The Rangers are also part of a prayer group that offers “prayers for Burma” by appointment in Myanmar, Thailand, the United States, and many other places around the world. David Eubank begins every interview with a prayer. In a trailer for the FBR film, he asks God why he has been sent on this journey and why there is so much suffering in the world. While scholars of religion like Robert Orsi (1985) and Thomas Tweed (2006) have highlighted the connection to home that objects of worship provide, the FBR do not offer continuity in a new home, but rather a moment of purification, spiritual healing, and conciliation. In this space, people can have a liberating experience through prayers which may even create new hope. Dave Eubank sees himself as a warrior and crusader who confronts and overcomes evil by saving lives and souls. Instructing and inspiring him as to how to act and pray, the Lord guides him in all his actions. By imposing

208 

Alexander Horstmann

his prayer on all faith communities in Myanmar, he represents himself as a leader who knows the way out of tyranny and toward the light. My research on humanitarian and Christian missionary practices among the Karen migrant communities emphasizes its political character: humanitarian assistance in the borderland of Thailand and Myanmar is embedded in a much broader picture involving Christian organizations and missionaries, or to paraphrase the words of the missionaries, one of “a struggle between good and evil”. In writing this article, I contacted members of the FBR in Chiang Mai. The Rangers all welcomed me with an open heart, especially the members of the Eubank family. I was also able to speak to young Karen nurses who had joined the operations of the FBR on a regular basis in case of need after being requested to. I would like to express my deep respect for their uncompromising commitment in helping wounded and traumatized villagers. I would like to especially thank the veteran and now retired missionary, Allan Eubank, who generously shared with me the history of his own engagement in Thailand and that of his son, David. For reasons of my own safety, and especially that of my informants, I was not able to walk with the Rangers on patrols in areas full of land mines. I was able to watch promotional clips and public relations materials used by the FBR. David Eubank promotes his organization during interviews with pastors from charismatic Protestant churches and American Christian humanitarian organizations such as Compassion International. His team has produced a number of informative and insightful clips, including DVDs, on the work and mission of the Rangers. Dave Eubank has often sent reports to CNN and BBC, and there was also a very helpful report on the Rangers in the Kachin conflict produced for the German Weltspiegel. Methodologically speaking, I am interested in the self-declared mandate that the FBR gives itself for its intervention in violent conflicts. Focusing on Karen who participate in an undeclared war for humanity and justice, I am interested in not only the drastically expanded mobility of the Karen who participate in the global operations, but also the subjectivity of the Karen nurses who become doctors, humanitarian activists, and missionaries, and their relations with their Karen patients. I am also interested in how the participating Karen become witnesses to the moral outcry against the atrocities committed against innocent civilians. The FBR is a humanitarian organization, embedded in a much wider picture of geopolitical factors deeply situated in the political conflict in Myanmar, connecting the local ethnic Karen and other ethnic-minority groups in Myanmar to global formations and communities. They particularly

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

209

relate the displaced Karen migrants to American and international church congregations who, with their donations, enable the FBR to expand their services and connect to Karen Christians in manifold networks and webs. From a perspective of humanitarianism as everyday practice, the Rangers actively participate in what Redfield (2006) has called global advocacy. They particularly use the concept of témoignage, or witnessing to construct the moral truth for an international audience. While the Rangers do not have the scale of humanitarian giants such as Doctors Without Borders, they have expanded their operations from Myanmar to many other conflict zones (e.g. Kurdistan in Iraq and the Nuba mountain in Sudan). The Rangers normally shun media and the Eubank family, in particular, has remained secretive in order to protect its ethical integrity and informants from possible persecution. However, the first public media presentations have now surfaced and the Rangers have sent their material to CNN and other media outlets. The Rangers’ public relations include presentations and fundraising in evangelical churches in Chiang Mai, Texas, and Prague. In addition, American children prepare Christmas gifts, crafts, and woolen hats for distribution among the needy as part of the activities of the “Good Life Club”. Religion as faith is closely associated with a life in motion as it offers a vital resource of interpretive and practical agency, in particular for people seeking to reestablish their lives in a new place (Rytter & Olwig 2011). Informal and private networks can be an important source of encouragement and assistance. Religion can thus be conceptualized as flows of crossing and dwelling that move around the world to create new communities. In his scholarship, Tweed (2006) argues that religiosity is the itinerary and compass that guides people’s journeys and orientation and protects them from misfortune. The central function of religion in the reconstruction of home is illustrated by Orsi’s work on migration and religion. In The Madonna of 115th Street (1985), Orsi shows the centrality of Catholic religiosity for the self-description, identification, and dignity of the Sicilian Italian community in Harlem. It is through the mediation of the Maria image in the annual procession of New York that the presence of the Italians in Harlem is manifested and in which the sacred icon is dramatically inscribed on to the urban space. Likewise, Tweed shows how Catholic Cuban migrants have strong affectional bonds to the image of Virgin Maria and how their folk Catholicism becomes the major anchor for community life in exiled Miami. This comes out in a ritual in which the new Diaspora gives an emotional veneration to the statue of Maria, with the procession centering on Maria as a symbol of the lost home in Cuba and the reconstruction of home in Miami.

210 

Alexander Horstmann

But while Tweed has stressed the emotional warmth that religion offers to Diaspora, Vasquez finds that Tweed’s flows of joy and suffering seem naive in front of the power and coercion that are also part of religious mobility. This attention to power and coercion is needed in relation to formal political religion. Informal, private minority religions, especially those related to spirit worship, have not even been recognized or seen as religious, but rather as barbaric and uncivilized. Missionaries argue that ethnic minorities are caught in a climate of fear and have to be liberated and guided to the savior. In this effort, prayer is a very efficient technology in which the spirits can be harnessed and liberation achieved. The pastoral relationship comes to the fore in the context of humanitarian assistance. Refugee ministries and urban ministries – which are organized around the world in slums, and refugee camps – work among the most vulnerable groups for the Kingdom of God. Missionaries and Christian volunteers organize outreach campaigns to access the most disadvantaged populations and offer humanitarian assistance in the form of grassroots education and emergency healthcare. Missionaries specializing in urban missions or refugee missions volunteer in migrant churches, work in train stations near the homeless, establish shops in red-light districts to pay prostitutes to stay away from sex work, offer relief to drug addicts, set up their tents next to garbage collectors, and offer shelter to North Korean defectors, education and shelter to orphans, and emergency healthcare to the wounded. Christian missionaries have thus opened hundreds of orphanages in the most crisis-stricken countries affected by natural disaster and violent conflict. Missionaries see themselves as holy warriors who regard Myanmar as a territory in which millions of souls are waiting to be saved. But these vulnerable populations now feel pressured to be a part of the imagined community of Christians. They sometimes think that their former cultural traditions are inferior and an expression of their ignorance. Christianity thus exercises a modernizing disciplinary effect in which it is positioned as the superior religion, representing the humanitarian organization as the donor, and the refugees as the passive recipients and helpless “children”. In this context, the faith-based humanitarian organization constitutes a strong case of religious patronage. And yet coercion does not, of course, need to be present in missions and many of the conversions are not enforced but come about through free will. The mission of a Karen Jesuit priest, for example, helps Karen displaced youth to find sanctuary in a Catholic seminary in Chiang Mai province and go through trauma therapy, education, and learning. Joel Robbins (2004) demonstrates impressively that people like the Karen are able to embrace Christianity while keeping much of their local cosmologies intact. Many

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

211

Karen communities have adapted Christian doctrines to their traditional utopian and millenarian visions.

Missionaries and Missions in Myanmar’s Ethnic-Minority Frontier Regions The Karen can look back on a massive 200-year history of Christian missionization, beginning with the arrival of American Baptist Judson in 1813. It was with the conversion of the first Karen that the mission really prospered. Inspired by Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), American Protestant missionaries followed. However, it was the Karen themselves who became very enthusiastic missionaries among Karen groups as well as other ethnic minorities in the frontier regions of Burma, for example, the Chin and Kachin. The Karen identified the American missionaries as white brothers who returned the golden book to them. Some 30 percent of the Karen converted to Protestant and Catholic Christianity. The relationship between the missionaries and the newly educated Karen elite was a very close one and the Christian Sgaw-speaking Karen, inspired by missionary education, desired their own nation. This educated segment of the Karen elite later founded the Karen political organization, the Karen National Union (KNU). Animosities between the Christian and Buddhist Karen produced serious tensions and even violence between the now divided groups. The first wave of Karen refugees in the early 1980s was largely Christian, as the Christian villagers in the valley close to the Salween River were hit hard by the violence. These refugees were almost able to keep their communities intact and often selected their pastor as the community leader in the camp. The sections in the camp were named after the communities back home and the same building materials were used, in emulation of their original home village, for reconstruction in the camp, with the church as the symbolic center. The Karen church and indigenous refugee committees in the camps established a natural partnership with the incoming humanitarian organizations at the Christian Thailand Burma Border Consortium, later the Border Consortium. The Rangers preferred to operate secretly and outside of the Consortium but in close partnership with the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), the Karen National Liberation Front. Some of the doctors from that wing became the Eubank family’s most loyal associates and partners during the operations. This is how the Rangers became closely associated with the ethnic armies in Myanmar’s frontier regions, most recently with the fully Christianized Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

212 

Alexander Horstmann

Helping the Wounded: The Free Burma Rangers in Action In one of the most protracted civil wars, the Burmese Army inflicted tremendous suffering on the civilian populations, resulting in large-scale displacement. The Burmese Army suspected the villagers were providing food and shelter to the armed wing the Karen National Liberation Army. The FBR saw the Karen ethnic army as a prodemocratic force, hence trained and supplied their soldiers and nurses to work for the Rangers. It was the dilemma of many international humanitarians who cannot access or stay in crisis zones. Humanitarians all over the world have become more vulnerable to attacks. The Rangers overcome this problem by deciding for themselves where and when they go. This clearly implies a great risk as the Rangers are identified as the enemy of the Burmese Army. As their presence would also endanger the displaced, the Rangers have to move quickly. And yet David Eubank and his team ask the Rangers to stay on with the people if they cannot flee. This means, in principle at least, that the Rangers must be willing to die in action. This challenge requires hard training in the base camp. More than 350 Rangers have been trained in the White Monkey base camp in Chiang Mai province. While the core of its staff is Karen, the FBR today is a multiethnic group of members from other ethnic-minority groups as well. In the beginning, there were David and his most loyal Karen followers, often themselves displaced by the violence. Now, there are no less than 70 teams operating in Karen, Kayah, Shan, Kachin, Chin, and Arakan states. Each team consists of four to five Rangers: a team leader, a medic, a photographer or videographer, a security specialist to map their route and liaise with rebel armies, and lastly, a Good-Life-Club counselor in charge of the educational and health needs of village children. The Rangers today operate in many different frontier and conflict zones of Myanmar, especially in the Shan, Kachin, and Arakan states. Expanding on its model with the Karen, FBR has trained emergency teams for all ethnic-minority groups. Over the years, the FBR has gradually increased its activities, working together with humanitarian organizations, especially with the faith-based organization partners (namely the International Relief and Development), other groups in the Border Consortium, as well as human rights organizations such as the very professional Karen Human Rights Group and Burma Issues. Volunteers and staff often switch between these groups. Many of its nurses also serve in the armed wing of the KNU, the Karen National Liberation Army. Due to their camouflage, the Rangers are easily

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

213

recognized and identified as part of the enemy by the Burmese Army. The Rangers are well equipped, employing the latest military equipment and providing training and military support in logistics and orienteering, communications, and satellite. They travel by jeep until they reach the conflict zone. From there, they have to walk through the rough forest and avoid the roads till night. They connect with the camps of internally displaced people and start work immediately upon arrival. Medics feed children and old people, operate on land-mine victims, and help deliver babies. As the internally displaced villagers basically lack everything, the Rangers save numerous lives as they are the only doctors present. Blankets, clothes, medicine, food, mosquito repellents, and even radios are distributed. As they are constantly in and out of the conflict zones, the Rangers tirelessly document and report in detail on ongoing human rights abuses. While FBR acts on its own initiative, it is part of an extensive network of community-based organizations on different ethnic borderlands that is willing to sacrifice for religious reasons. Another service organization operating on human rights is the Karen Human Rights Group. The group is founded by a different secular type of American human rights activists, some of them associated with the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic and some studying in the Agrarian Studies program at Yale University with James C. Scott on the weapons of the weak, everyday resistance, and state avoidance. These human rights activists have trained Karen villagers to carry out fieldwork and document human rights violations quickly; they have shared experiences with the villagers and facilitated a space for villagers to improve their self-protection capacities. The Karen Human Rights Group extensively reports on every human rights abuse as documented by villager witnesses on its homepage. Together with the organization Burma Issues, human rights trainers have successfully mobilized social capacities among villagers, relying on existing traditional security networks. The Karen Human Rights Group and Burma Issues have also launched film and video productions on state development projects, such as the planned dams on the Salaween River, explaining how these projects threaten the livelihood of the villagers. Trainers in this project confirmed to me that it is much easier to work with Christian communities as they are used to developing sophisticated social networks and clusters in their villages and across the communities. There seems to be little interface between the Karen Human Rights Group and the FBR, except that they occasionally use the same personnel and share information on human rights violations in Karen state.

214 

Alexander Horstmann

The Performance of Emotion and Affect The work of the Rangers has a strong performative side. In this configuration, the work of the Rangers is presented as pure heroism and sacrifice. The heroism of the FBR founder and his family is highlighted in the staged performance of dramatic images on video clips circulated among American and worldwide church congregations. The family is at the center of Christian discourse on moral values. David is in no way a lone adventurer as he brings his family with him to the base in Burma. Dave’s family is on the center stage of the entire Rangers’ cinematic presentations. His wife Karen is actively involved in the Rangers’ activities. Dave and Karen have two teenage daughters and one younger son. Their children have American as well as Karen names, and the Karen names point to an identification with the Karen, whose language the children have also picked up. Dave’s daughters are outspoken actors and humanitarians in their own right who can speak with conviction on the Rangers’ missions. The video clips show one of David’s teenage daughters riding a white horse, making its way confidently through the deep jungle. The white horse exemplifies both the purity and the noble aims of the mission and the family’s total dedication to the cause. It appears as if the daughter were an angel with wings who can fly away from the danger zone if needed. David’s wife, Karen, is a teacher who leads a team to provide the displaced and traumatized villagers with entertainment through the Good Life Club. The Good Life Club wants to encourage the villagers through making handicrafts, playing children’s games, singing songs, and learning Bible stories. The Good Life Club is about proselytizing in a playful way. Young people all over America prepare Christmas gifts, clothes, woolen hats, and other useful things for the villagers. Karen and her team members lead in encouraging prayers. One of the main principles of the Rangers is that the Karen should feel that there is someone to assist them if they need it, for Dave states that he “does not value his own family above any other Karen family”. Life being full of wonders, the Eubank family has thus far not been hurt.

Concluding Remarks For Tweed, transnational migrants are “natural theorists of religion”. While Tweed exemplifies its centrality for belonging and imagination, religion has been left out of refugee studies. The neglect is due to a diminished understanding of religion. Talal Asad, in Genealogies of Religion (1993),

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

215

critiques the study of religion that universalizes a Western definition of religion as interiority. Vasquez (2010, 24) says that the focus on meaning has blurred the political functions of religion. While religion is certainly central to community, solidarity, and cohesion in the sense of Durkheim, missionization also entails truth claims and involves processes of othering. Religion deals with the construction and disciplining of bodies, management of churches, and design of public spaces and communities. More than beliefs, religion mediates the competition for political and economic resources and missionization with competition for the souls of the displaced. Religion can be a conscious strategy and choice, enhancing people in their bare lives and transforming the bare into sacred life. To speak of the creative imposition of spatial sacralities in the diasporic space moves the conversation toward a notion of religion as an enabling and constraining force. The humanitarian and political intervention of the FBR makes it a political force that directly involves itself in the violence in Myanmar. As stated above, the fact that David Eubank is an American missionary does not help to lessen religious tensions but may even intensify it. As an armed movement with a clear political message, the Rangers may endanger those vulnerable communities they are supposed to protect. The FBR may have saved hundreds of lives or more, but the way the organization positions itself as an enemy of the Burmese military is problematic, as is its active involvement and overlap with the ethnic-minority armies. The non-state ethnic-minority armies are also problematic as they exert pressure on the vulnerable village communities as well, in the form of recruitment and taxation. Most problematic of all, the donations that strengthen the FBR also help the ethnic-minority armies, but not the mutual support and security networks of the ordinary Karen. While the donations enable the FBR to purchase equipment and medical supplies and recruit personnel, ordinary Karen villagers hardly have any voice in the Rangers’ media representations, appearing only as passive, happy recipients of the Rangers’ generosity. The transition from a victim of the atrocities to a Ranger and nurse is introduced as a natural pathway. It is a conversion process in the double sense. The young men portrayed in this chapter give themselves to Jesus (making a transition from animism) and the Rangers (making a transition from the jungle village). Conversion can be understood in multiple senses: not only conversion to a religion, but also to a lifestyle or an identity. The pressure for Rangers to convert to Christianity may be subtle but is always present.

216 

Alexander Horstmann

In this sense, the Rangers may well be one opportunity for young Karen to find a home, belonging, team spirit, and potentially, martyrdom and sacrifice. These young displaced Karen convert to the imagined community of a global Christian ecumene, firmly based in the imagination of the American and Christian political thought that has identified the Karen as worthy of material as well as spiritual support. The FBR are expanding, identifying new enemies and vulnerable groups that seek their military and medical assistance, and reaching out to places and conflicts around the globe. The young Karen who join the Rangers begin a new life on the Thai-Burmese border and find employment with one of the communitybased organizations (CBOs) in the humanitarian economy of Mae Sot or Chiang Mai. Being part of the Rangers, they also join a political project and missionary adventure, going on tours to collect donations from church congregations for further dangerous missions with the FBR. However, the Rangers also participate in proselytizing activities among the internally displaced. By far, not all displaced Karen or other ethnic minorities are Christian, and villagers belonging to Buddhism or animism may well feel uncomfortable with the powerful Christian message of the Rangers. Local cosmologies, cultural traditions, and rituals weave into powerful sense-scapes among the minority groups of the Karen, Karenni, and Kayah who resist the pressure of soft missionization in the refugee camps (Dudley 2010). While older Christians welcome church rebuilding in their communities, internally displaced villagers from animistic communities may be quite lost amidst the Bible songs of the Good Life Club as they have different visions of a good life or might simply be confused. The FBR constitute an astonishing case of religious mobility and mobilization in the context of a flourishing humanitarianism and the rise of moral ideologies (cf. Fassin 2011) in an increasingly fragile and violent world. The Karen who participate in the missions of the FBR as well as other humanitarian organizations become missionaries in their own right who leave their protected environment to go out on dangerous missions as well as doing missionary work in the hills of eastern Myanmar and in the refugee camps of northwestern Thailand, and as Rangers in Myanmar and elsewhere. These Karen cultural ambassadors are not the passive and victimized refugees we know from media images, but are in fact homegrown missionaries who use their enhanced mobility to establish religious centers wherever they are.

Helping the Wounded as Religious Experience

217

References Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Csordas, Thomas, ed. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dudley, Sandra. 2010. Materializing Exile: Material Culture and Embodied Experience among Karenni Refugees in Thailand. Oxford/ New York: Berghahn. Fassin, Didier. 2011. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Horstmann, Alexander. 2011. “Ethical Dilemmas and Identifications of Faith-Based Humanitarian Organizations in the Karen Refugee Crisis”. Journal of Refugee Studies 34 (3): 513-32. —. 2016. “The Culture and Landscape of a Humanitarian Economy among the Karen of Southeast Myanmar and Northwestern Thailand”. In Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes: Local Practices, Boundary-Making and Figured Worlds, edited by Su-Ann Oh, 171-90. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). —, and Jung Jin-heon, eds. 2015. Building Noah’s Ark for Refugees, Migrants and Religious Communities. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2011. “IOM Resettles 90,000 Refugees from Thai Camps.” June 16. Last accessed 21.10.2017. www.iom.int/ news/iom-resettles-90000-refugees-thai-camps. Johnson, Mark, & Pnina Werbner. 2010. “Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys: Ritual, Normativity and the Religious Imagination among International Asian Migrant Women”. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11 (3-4). Levitt, Peggy. 2007. God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape. New York: The New Press. Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Orsi, Robert. 1985. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Redfield, Peter. 2006. “A Less Modest Witness”. American Ethnologist 33(1): 3-26. Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rytter, Karen, & Mikkel Olwig. 2011. Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls: Family, Religion & Migration in a Global World. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Tweed, Thomas. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

218 

Alexander Horstmann

Vasquez, Manuel. 2010. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Werbner, Pnina. 2003. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. London: Hurst.

About the author Alexander Horstmann is Associate Professor of Modern Southeast Asian Studies at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University, Estonia. He published Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands (with Reed L. Wadley, Berghahn 2006), Faith in the Future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religion and Cultural Traditions in Asia (with Thomas A. Reuter, Brill 2012) and Building Noah’s Ark for Migrants, Refugees and Religious Communities (with Jin-Heon Jung, Palgrave 2015) in addition to numerous articles on migration, religion and identities.

Section 3 Refashioning Religiosity in the Diaspora

9

A Multicultural Church Notes on Sri Lankan Transnational Workers and the Migrant Chaplaincy in Italy Bernardo E. Brown Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch09 Abstract With the inflow of five million migrants to Italy, the Catholic Church makes special efforts to attend to the pastoral and cultural needs of Christian transnational workers. Ethnic chaplaincies celebrate mass in a variety of languages and encourage migrants to replicate national traditions, festivities, and devotions. While this approach shows a sensibility toward migrant communities and the challenges that they face when trying to observe Asian forms of religiosity far away from home, it also labels these rituals and traditions as cultural practices that are clearly distinct from the orthodoxy determined by European Catholicism. Sri Lankan priests note that although churchgoers value their dedicated pastoral efforts, Italian clergy often marginalize them and treat them as foreign labor. A profound contradiction emerges when migrant clergy attempt to revitalize parish life in Italy but are restrained by local Church authorities who claim to be protecting European Catholic traditions. Keywords: reverse mission, multiculturalism, vocation crisis, global Catholicism

Introduction Over the last century, the demographics of the Catholic Church have shifted toward the southern hemisphere where currently 70 percent of Catholics live. More broadly, Christianity has become a world religion of the non-West, as its regional balance continues to shift away from Europe where the share

222 

Bernardo E. Brown

of Christianity has dropped from 66 percent to only 25 percent in less than 100 years.2 But the movement of Christianity to the South also needs to be situated in the context of a massive population flow of migrant labor that travels in the opposite direction, bringing millions of Latin American, Asian, and African migrants to Europe and North America (Jenkins 2006; Sanneh 2008). Taken together, these two transformations are dramatically changing the linguistic and ethnic landscapes of national churches in western Europe and the United States, prompting Christian denominations – especially those responsible for the global expansion of Christianity in the last two centuries – to seriously think about the changing shape of their clergy and flock, and take actions that reflect the super-diversity (Vertovec 2007) of their congregations. The decline in religious participation that had been predicted by secularization theories of the twentieth century only accurately foresaw the growing religious apathy observed amongst western Europeans (Berger 1999; Casanova 1994; Taylor 2007). However, one aspect that theorists of religion and critics of secularization seem to have underestimated at the time, was the magnitude of the process of Asian and African decolonization that has transformed the ethnic and religious landscapes of Europe since the 1960s (Castles, Haas, & Miller 2014; Hanciles 2014). European Christian churches that were fairly homogeneous religious institutions bounded by language, territory, and ethnicity, have become complex and culturally diverse formations where multiple and conflicting interests and traditions coexist. European secularization therefore did not give way to the fading of religious values and the emptying of churches. Instead, Catholic and Protestant congregations have been renewed with the inflow of young and devoted migrants who enliven parishes and religious festivities from the laity as well as the clergy. This chapter aims to examine how this Christian renewal is manifested in the life of parishes in Italy by focusing on the case of Sri Lankan clergy who migrate to serve the needs of the Sri Lankan Catholic community settled in the country. The Sri Lankan presence and participation in the life of Italian Catholicism is, for the most part, welcomed as an injection of life and youth to parishes where declining participation and aging congregations seemed irreversible only three decades ago. Yet my ethnographic work amongst 2 Statistics taken from “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 20102050” (2015) and “Faith on the Move: The Religious Affiliation of International Migrants” (2012). Both reports are published by the project “Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life” of the Pew Research Center.

A Multicultural Church

223

Sri Lankan migrant priests also shows that the flexibility and openness of Italian Catholics – and especially of Italian clergy – have clear limits that delineate the contours of a Catholic theology and social hierarchy strongly shaped by European ideas of culture, race, and tradition (Frederiks 2009). I therefore explore how the Catholic Church addresses its contemporary linguistic and ethnic diversity by promoting the establishment of ethnic chaplaincies that cater to the incoming migrant Catholic populations (Trzebiatowska 2010; Gray & O’Sullivan Lago 2011). I highlight that the multicultural approach that the Church adopts to foster cultural diversity often encounters the same obstacles faced by multicultural initiatives at the governmental level to manage migrant diversity in host societies (Nanko-Fernandez 2006; Casarella 2008; Povinelli 2002; Glick-Schiller 2011). Asian Catholics in Europe are thus offered space and freedom to replicate national devotions and reproduce cultural traditions and festivities (Gallo 2014; Napolitano 2015), but such practices are regarded as unorthodox performances that have no role to play in the Italian context. In short, although migrant religiosity is celebrated for its colorful performance of Christian devotion, it ultimately remains a foreign practice that sooner or later should return to its proper locations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, multiculturalism is only one of the challenges that Sri Lankan priests have to navigate in Italy. When assigned to work for the migrant chaplaincy, these priests do not exclusively serve the communities from their country of origin, they also play a fundamental role as a source of labor in a country with an aging clergy and a sharp decline in religious vocations (Garelli 2014). Migrant priests are thus hired to assist elderly Italian parish priests and to take charge of parishes without a resident priest. When performing such work, migrant clergy are not encouraged to reproduce the Catholic traditions of their communities but to adapt as much as possible to the dynamics of Italian Catholicism. As I will show with two ethnographic vignettes from my fieldwork with Sri Lankan Catholic clergy, the Italian Church attempts to attend to very different problems through the labor of migrant priests. On one hand, migrant clergy are asked to carry out their pastoral and liturgical duties in a way that satisfies the cultural expectations of Sri Lankan Catholics; on the other, they are required to rid themselves of all these same characteristics when dealing with the Italian laity (Brown 2017). Ethnographic fieldwork for this project was partly conducted in five Italian cities in 2014. However, my work that examines the mobility of Catholic clergy in Sri Lanka extends over four years and many trips to the National Seminary in Kandy, Sri Lanka. For my research in Italy, I interviewed more

224 

Bernardo E. Brown

than twelve Sri Lankan Catholic priests who were working there in 2014 or who had spent extended periods of time in Italian parishes. Given that traveling to Rome for graduate studies is a fairly common practice amongst clergy from Asia, many priests have spent several years studying in Italy and hence are familiar with Italian culture. However, clergy relocating to Europe for their graduate studies are not always affiliated with the Migrant Chaplaincy. In addition to the fifteen priests who are appointed exclusively to conduct pastoral work in Italy, at any given time, there are at least another fifteen of them for their studies or administrative appointments. My research also included interviews with Italian academics and Catholic priests, as well as with members of the Sri Lankan Catholic community settled in Italy. Before moving to the ethnographic section in which I reflect on the challenges of implementing these multicultural initiatives, I would like to discuss two key aspects that set the stage for the arrival of migrant clergy to Italy. First, I discuss the Vatican’s multicultural approach to the mobility of Catholic populations and how it understands the cultural needs of migrants coming to Italy. Secondly, I examine the initiatives taken by the Church to deal with the shortage of ordained clergy in Europe and North America and the problems that such an approach produces. Once this background is established, I analyze some of the concerns and opinions of Sri Lankan migrant priests who have worked in Italy for extended periods of time.

Multiculturalism: Fastening Faith to Culture In response to the growing importance of human mobility in the contemporary world recognized by the watershed Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), commonly known as Vatican II, the Catholic Church created the “Pontifical Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People” in 1970, later elevated to the “Pontifical Council” in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. The Pontifical “Instruction” of 2004 Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi (“The Love of Christ towards Migrants”) noted that, [T]he uprooting that moving abroad inevitably involves (from country of origin, family, language etc.) should not be made worse by uprooting the migrant from his religious rite or identity too. When groups of immigrants are particularly numerous and homogeneous therefore, they are encouraged to keep up their specific Catholic traditions. In particular, efforts must be made to provide organized religious assistance by priests of the language, culture and rite of the migrants selecting the most suitable

A Multicultural Church

225

juridical option from among those foreseen by the CIC and the CCEO […]. This means that local Churches must rethink pastoral care, programming it to help the faithful live their faith authentically in today’s new multicultural and pluri-religious context.

Furthermore, the Instruction (2004) also emphasized Canonical reforms enacted with the specific objective of implementing the mission of the Pontifical Council which requests parish priests, [T]o be especially attentive towards persons who are far from their country. [The new Code] envisages the establishment of personal parishes as well as missions for the spiritual care of the faithful and even the creation of specific pastoral figures such as Episcopal vicars and chaplains for migrants. (Can. 476, 518, 568)

The Catholic Church thus acknowledged that in the context of globalization and transnational labor, the lives of Christians from the southern hemisphere are radically transformed and actions should be taken toward identifying these communities as well as their material and cultural needs. Although several initiatives have been developed by national churches in Europe and North America to facilitate the integration of migrant minorities (Napolitano 2015; Triandafyllidou 2006), these have often been guided by problematic theories of multiculturalism that replicate conflicts and tensions faced by civil governments in the implementation of similar policies. From an anthropological perspective, recognition of underrepresented groups and care for their cultural needs raises a specific set of issues that are important for my analysis of the Sri Lankan Chaplaincy. The heightened awareness that both religious and secular institutions in the northern hemisphere have developed toward the presence of communities from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds has often too easily translated into initiatives that essentialize cultural identity and make a caricature of cultural diversity. One of the reasons for this is that the concept of minority identity remains under-problematized, leading to the persistence of static views of culture that demand migrant communities to constantly offer proof of authenticity, locking them in a circular performance of foreignness (Povinelli 2002). Such a problem is not unlike the one that civil governments have faced over the last three decades when attempting to address the changing demographic landscape and religious diversity of European nations (Modood 2013). Yet in the context of the Roman Catholic Church, the situation takes an added twist of complexity as questions of diversity and integration cannot

226 

Bernardo E. Brown

be simply approached using strategies designed to facilitate intercultural and interreligious dialogues. To be sure, intra-religious problems of cultural integration pose challenges that cannot be addressed through the promotion of multicultural values such as tolerance and diversity, given that the different communities involved already share their fundamental religious beliefs and partake in the same religious institution. Steven Vertovec (2007) develops the concept of super-diversity to account for such situations, where the growing complexity of contemporary societies renders categories of nationality and religion blatantly insufficient to describe the multiple layers and entanglements produced by internally heterogeneous social formations. Roman Catholicism is a paradigmatic example of a super-diverse religious institution that has struggled with cultural diversity since the early stages of its Europe-led missionary expansion to South Asia in the sixteenth century (see Županov [2005] for a historical account of how European Jesuit missionaries dealt with cultural differences in India nearly 500 years ago). While common doctrinal and theological tenets may not be contested by Catholics from different geographic origins, communities can live cultural aspects of their religiosity in dramatically different ways, as a cursory look at South Asian and western European Roman Catholics would make evident. The explicit mission of Sinhalese priests in Italy is to minimize the effects of distance from home, culture, and family, so that the “uprooting (…) is not made worse by uprooting the migrant from rite and identity too”, as the passage from the 2004 Instruction quoted earlier notes. Identity here is interpreted as rooted in the country of origin and seemingly untouched by migration. The effects that migration can have on identity are always of distortion, where the risk is that Sri Lankan identity becomes hybridized and blended with Italian behaviors and values. For this reason, Sinhalese priests in Italy are expected to behave as cultural bearers, capable of reproducing the logics of Sri Lankan Catholicism as best as possible (Munasinghe 1997), avoiding “contamination” from European and other non-Western traditions. Anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) has provided an insightful ethnographic approach to the challenges posed by the politics of multiculturalism as implemented by the Australian state. Her work shows how the national government’s conscience-stricken awareness of the historic mistreatment and marginalization of aboriginal communities led to the promotion of policy initiatives aimed at overcoming the country’s historic debt with its native populations. Yet in order to qualify as potential beneficiaries, claimants were required to fulfill a strict list of requirements meant to provide evidence of their legitimate aboriginal status. However, the set of

A Multicultural Church

227

conditions imposed and designed to offer proof of authenticity of aboriginal claims also worked as a strategy to exclude these groups from formulating substantial economic and political claims that could conflict with the interests of white Australians. In other words, if aboriginal communities were to base their legal demands on the grounds of authenticity, they had to renounce all claims to modernity and political or economic equality.3 Povinelli’s analysis of multicultural policies in Australia can provide an instructive gateway to think of how the Catholic Church approaches its migrant communities living in Italy. One of the main problems with diversity and inclusion initiatives designed in the Catholic context is that they blend the religious identity of foreigners with their class background as migrant workers. In this way, Asian Catholicism is inseparable from popular forms of religiosity associated with lower levels of education and working-class aspirations. From a Catholic multicultural perspective, these heterodox practices should be allowed, encouraged, and also offered appropriate space, although precautions should also be taken not to interfere with the normal functioning of Italian Catholicism (see Gallo, this volume). As a consequence of such an approach, what counts as Sri Lankan Catholicism for diversity initiatives is not circumscribed exclusively to regional devotions, artistic performances, and other South Asian traditions, but extends to virtually every religious activity performed by Sri Lankans. Implicit here is the notion that South Asian religious devotion or the kind of dedicated pastoral work that Sri Lankan priests do in Italy is only effective to evangelize workingclass South Asian migrants and has little to offer local populations. Indeed, beyond the practical importance of offering religious services in the language of migrant communities to attract foreign parishioners, there is nothing that Italian Catholicism identif ies as a potential gain from migrant inclusion into local parishes (Ambrosini 2007). As scholars specialized in contemporary Italian Catholicism like Garelli (2014), Palmisano (2010), Napolitano (2007, 2015), and Muehlebach (2013) have noted, the Church across Italy has retained its capacity to influence Italians on political topics and social issues to a degree that Christian denominations in other European nations have not, yet Italians have also grown increasingly distant from the Church in their spiritual pursuits and are unlikely to see Italian parish priests as moral authorities. 4 Garelli’s insightful research 3 See also the seminal work of James Clifford on the politics of recognition (1988). 4 Michael Herzefeld in Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (2009) also notes that the Church has indeed remained powerful, although its capacity to influence public opinion is often resisted and has alienated many Italians.

228 

Bernardo E. Brown

project supports this observation, demonstrating that although two-thirds of Italians feel that the local parish is an important institution, less than 40 percent identify with the clergy that run it (2014, 96-100). This situation appears to have encouraged local clergy to turn their main focus of interest away from the strictly religious, signaling that to many Italian priests it is more important to engage with questions of social welfare, political rights, and problems of bioethics, than to conduct ordinary parish pastoral work (Herzfeld 2009). As a consequence of this, Italian parish priests appear to have grown more in touch with political causes than with the spiritual needs of parishioners, leaving a vacant spot that is filled by Sri Lankan and other migrant priests who only have pastoral duties to fulfill in Italy. As I will examine in later sections, Sri Lankan clergy who are trained to be dedicated pastoral workers strongly believed that there is more than one lesson that Italian Catholic priests could learn when it comes to pastoral work and ordinary parish life; yet they also noted with a tinge of frustration that in spite of the welcoming attitude with which they were received, there is little interest in how Sri Lankan priests conduct their work. In short, migrant religiosity is celebrated as proof of the vibrancy and diversity of Roman Catholicism but is defined in such a way that it exclusively fulfills a cultural objective and not a religious role. The multicultural inclusion of Asian religious workers in Italy therefore responds to a racialized construction of Asian Christians who are perceived as docile, submissive, and fervently devout (Gallo 2014, 251). South Asian Christians are thus treated with an overprotective care that combines a nostalgic appreciation for their conservative piety, with a need to protect them from the hazards brought about by secularism to Europe (Hüwelmeier 2014, 50-1). Implicit in the promotion of cultural diversity within the Church are deep-seated tendencies to mark non-Western forms of Catholicism as theologically unsophisticated and prone to heterodox practices that need to be kept in check by the normative orthodoxy defined from Rome (Kollman 2014; Phan 2005).

Sri Lankan Migrant Clergy in Italy The problem of declining religious vocations has been an ongoing concern for the Catholic Church since the reform years of Vatican II (1962-1965). In recent years, some in the Church have attempted to refashion the discourse of decline by emphasizing the exponential growth in priestly vocations that

A Multicultural Church

229

has swept across Asia and Africa, yet the reality of European Catholicism is indeed grim. Even in the 21st century, when the exodus of people from the Catholic Church appears to have ceased, the dwindling of vocations has continued steadily. Between 2001 and 2011, European vocations dropped by 21.7 percent while in Asia and Africa religious vocations grew by 30 percent. Although the absolute numbers of clergy worldwide has remained stable in the last years (approximately 410,000 Catholic priests globally), the redistribution of the Catholic map is demographically and culturally transforming the Church into a virtually unrecognizable institution (Walls 1982; Jenkins 2006; Phan 2005; Jones 2014).5 While a century ago European priests traveled to Asia as missionaries, the new demographic balance of global Catholicism reversed the flow of these religious specialists, bringing Asian clergy to occupy parishes left vacant by aging priests who are too old to handle the ordinary activities of a Catholic congregation (Sanneh 2008; Hanciles 2006; 2013). However, the work assigned to these migrant priests in countries like Italy is very different from the educational and evangelizing mission of their European predecessors; in many ways, the logic behind the contemporary migration of foreign clergy to Italy is comparable to that of ordinary labor migrants. The Sri Lankan Migrant Chaplaincy is a transnational network of migrant priests who are based in fifteen Italian cities and attends to the pastoral and liturgical needs of the nearly 150,000 Sri Lankans who live in the country. An increasingly large number of clergy from countries like the Philippines and India has been following a similar trajectory to respond to the inflow of nearly five million migrants who are currently living in Italy (twenty percent of the clergy in Italy are currently from non-EU countries). But these migrant priests not only work with the communities from their own countries, they are also expected to develop their Italian-language skills to serve as ordinary parish priests for Italians. As the average age of Italian clergy has surpassed 60 and with more than twenty percent of priests who are above 80 years of age (Garelli 2014), the arrival of young and energetic migrant priests has become an unexpected solution to the shortage of ordained clergy. However, migrant priests are mostly replacing Italian clergy in ministries that are unattractive to them, thus leaving the most relevant and desirable positions reserved for Italian priests. In this way, I argue that there is not only a demographic shift at play, but also a transformation that is operating along racial lines. 5 Statistics published by the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

230 

Bernardo E. Brown

Sri Lankan priests who volunteer for assignments with the Italian chaplaincy are recommended by their bishops to the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference), which later appoints them to work in specific dioceses with migrant communities. Upon arrival, many of them participate in a workshop organized by the Catholic NGO Migrantes aimed at helping them familiarize with Italian culture and become acquainted with common legal problems faced by migrants. This workshop provides priests from Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a certificate required by church authorities in order to work in local parishes. Other Catholic organizations also provide language training, especially catered to priests and religious workers, as well as other services to help the migrant clergy in their work.6 After arriving in Italy, priests are given a stipend similar to the one received by Italian clergy (approximately €850), and are appointed to conduct their work in designated parishes.7 Italian bishops are responsible for finding appropriate locations for the ethnic chaplains to perform their pastoral work, which is generally divided between serving as regular parish priests to Italians and acting as chaplains for the Sinhalese community. In this way, on any given Sunday, a Sri Lankan priest celebrates mass in Italian at 8:00 am in one parish, and then moves to another parish to pray again in Sinhalese at 11:00 am, where he also spends the rest of the afternoon in Catechism, choir, devotion hours, and organizing community events and meetings. In 2014, a Sri Lankan priest in Rome protested that at the parish where he worked, Italian mass was usually attended by not more than twenty people, but at least 200 people came for the Sinhalese service. In spite of the evident disparity, when Easter celebrations were being organized in 2013, the Sinhalese community was only offered a small meeting hall for their celebrations and “kindly” asked to leave the main parish for the Italians. The main church remained virtually empty throughout the holiday, while the small chapel attended by Sri Lankan Catholics was filled to capacity. “We are migrant labor too”, he continued, “not very different from the domestic workers. We come, do our job, help the local churches in whatever they need, get our salary, and a couple of years later we go back home”. 6 In 2014 in Verona, for example, Fondazione CUM (Catholic Center for Missionary Cooperation) provided a one-month basic Italian course for international priests for €570. Several other small Catholic organizations throughout the country offer similar programs to help foreign priests settle in Italy. 7 Except for the presence of one Sri Lankan Tamil Chaplain working in Sicily, most of the work caters exclusively to the Sinhalese community. The Sri Lankan Chaplaincy in Italy is virtually a Sinhalese chaplaincy as only Sinhalese priests are involved, and all texts and materials produced are geared exclusively toward the Sinhalese community in Italy.

A Multicultural Church

231

One of his colleagues in Colombo reinforced this view by situating such problems in the Sri Lankan context, arguing that many young priests who received a costly decade-long training at the National Seminary of Sri Lanka were hired to work temporarily in foreign dioceses.8 He complained that many priests got used “too easily” to life overseas, and often used the civil war in Sri Lanka and concerns over their personal security as an excuse to remain in Europe and Canada. The ethnic conflict between the central state and Tamil separatists – as this priest remarked – ended in 2009, so while it had indeed forced thousands of civilians to seek refuge abroad, many more had stayed in Sri Lanka, and now required the attention of the clergy, especially in war-torn areas undergoing difficult processes of reconstruction. But migrant priests often got accustomed to the comforts of living overseas and were reluctant to return and work in their own country. Sri Lankan parishes are generally busy round the clock, bustling with parishioners and seeking a priest’s advice on the most varied topics; meanwhile practicing Catholics in European cities only visit church for Sunday mass and the occasional confession or mid-week prayer. Sri Lankan priests who stayed in Europe therefore were able to save money, enjoy a less hectic work schedule, and live with comforts unavailable at home – three conditions that discouraged them from returning. Yet these Sri Lankan priests in Italy often felt constricted by the pastoral priorities of the local Church which left little space for them to innovate. A problem highlighted by virtually every Sri Lankan priest I spoke to, was the nearly bureaucratic formality with which Italian clergy approached their pastoral work, where delivering sacraments had become a transaction between priest and parishioner, a relationship monetized by the local dioceses. Their engagement with the parish communities had thus become increasingly limited, turning clergy into mere sacramental providers to commemorate moments of passage in the lifecycle of Italians (birth, marriage, and death). As Garelli (2014, 105) notes, “the figure of the priest is more one of an operator of religious services than a moral or spiritual figure of reference”. Many priests in Italy have therefore turned toward more scholarly commitments, political and environmental activism, or administrative functions, leaving the space for everyday pastoral care increasingly vacant. 8 This problem is not unique to Sri Lanka. Recent statistics show that ten percent of Catholic priests in Germany are foreign-born, many of them from India. Church statistics estimate that more than 1800 migrant priests are currently working in Italy. Scholars like Philip Jenkins (2002) have pointed out that this practice can be deeply harmful to the long-term interests of the Catholic Church, as highly qualified clergy from the South are removed from dioceses where Catholicism is thriving and relocated to districts where these priests have little work to do.

232 

Bernardo E. Brown

A priest in Colombo who had worked in the United States for two years sarcastically remarked that, “in the US we get paid $20 per mass and $200 per funeral. Many priests I know wish they had five funerals a day!” Likewise in Italy, beyond the sacramental function played by the priest often in suburban parishes, there was little role left for them to play as community leaders and pastoral workers. As a consequence of this, migrant clergy who arrived in Italy and saw empty parishes and monotonous religious celebrations were eager to take this situation as a challenge and work to revive local congregations, yet they were only encouraged to take such a proactive attitude toward the migrant communities. When it came to conducting ordinary parish work with Italians (assisting aging parish priests, replacing those on leave or vacation, etc.), they were asked to exclusively “deliver sacraments” without attempting to introduce innovations. A Catholic lay leader once remarked in conversation with me that migrant priests were very helpful in the current context where a lack of ordained priests hampered the normal functioning of parishes, but they could only represent a temporary solution. In his view, Italians would ultimately rely only on Italian priests when it came to matters of crucial importance, and the Church should realistically not expect the foreign priests to truly understand Italian society and culture in depth. He explained that, “if a worker has a problem with an employer, he needs help from someone who not only knows the language, but who understands Italian labor laws and union politics, migrant priests cannot do this kind of work”. An interesting aspect of such a position was that it implicitly devalued the importance of ordinary parish pastoral work, and highlighted the more secular-activist dimension of the priesthood in the 21st century. Migrant priests were thus seen as “back-up” clergy and were praised for their willingness to help in remote rural and mountain areas, making the more challenging and key urban and working-class areas available to the Italian priests who were expected to have a critical social impact in these locations. This situation could be extremely frustrating to many enthusiastic pastoral workers from South Asia who often played key roles in their dioceses of origin and were important actors in their communities. Nonetheless, migrant priests were glad to fulfill the tasks that they were assigned to and soon started to enjoy their lighter workdays. As a Sri Lankan priest explained, he had to be careful not to hurt the sensibilities of the local clergy, as “after all, we are guests here and we came to help, so although we might have different ideas, we have to help in whatever they think is most urgent”. This also highlighted the hierarchical structures of the Catholic Church,

A Multicultural Church

233

as Catholic priests remain always attached to their dioceses of origin and responded to the authority of their bishops. Although many of these priests often spent long years overseas, their main responsibilities continued to be located in Sri Lankan ecclesiastical districts.

A View from the Chaplaincy Italian bishops were keen on finding suitable venues for the chaplains to conduct their work with the migrant communities, as they made a special effort to avoid interfering with the normal activities of Italian parishes. One of the Sri Lankan communities in Rome gathered at a vacant convent which an order of nuns agreed to share with them on Sundays; meanwhile in Milan, an entire parish, Santo Stefano Maggiore, was dedicated exclusively to the Migrant Chaplaincy, hosting Sinhalese, Korean, Spanish, and Tagalog celebrations every Sunday. Negotiating these arrangements often caused a degree of friction between the Italian and migrant priests who disagreed over what kind of space migrant communities should be offered in Italy. Schedules were thus rather flexible, as patron saints and religious festivities celebrated by the different migrant communities exponentially multiplied the number of people attending service, or when national holidays or “independence day” anniversaries made their annual return and transformed the churches into meeting points for the entire communities regardless of the migrants’ religious affiliation. In those cases, the coordinators of the migrant chaplaincies came up with alternative arrangements, relocations, and changes of schedule to accommodate the different communities as best as they could. Sri Lankan migrants and clergy praised the efforts made by the Italian Church to respect and support their cultural and linguistic traditions, although some of them were uneasy about the particular way in which they were welcomed as fellow Catholics. Solutions were readily offered to the incoming populations, although all initiatives appeared to be guided by the premise that these were temporary visitors who needed a provisional response to their demands. Cities like Milan that dedicated an entire parish to the Pastorale dei Migranti (Diocesan Pastoral Office for Migrants in Milan), managed to reduce frictions over the use of space; yet at the same time, such initiatives also reduced opportunities for the integration of the diverse Catholic communities settled in the region. “Take a look at this church. It’s closed, run-down, dark. All the doors and windows shut. Can you imagine something like this in Sri Lanka?” asked one

234 

Bernardo E. Brown

Figure 9.1 Sri Lankan Catholic priests in Italy often travel to be present in every location where the Catholic migrant community has settled

Photo by Bernardo Brown

of the priests working for the Chaplaincy as we walked down the streets of Rome. We had just passed a sixteenth-century minor basilica – located only a few steps from Piazza Venezia – where the Sinhalese migrant community has met every Sunday since 1992. He argued that the secularization of Italian society was so widespread that it had also made the priests overly secular and “professional”, making the celebration of mass almost a monotonous bureaucratic procedure. As he explained, “We believe in mysticism and we celebrate it. Many Italians value this and come and tell us what a difference it is to experience mass when celebrated by a foreign priest”. Some Sri Lankan priests thus cultivated much better relationships with Italian parishioners than with Italian clergy. Another Sri Lankan priest working in Rome remarked that, Coming to Italy has been a very humbling experience […]. People have been so warm and welcoming to Sri Lankan workers. I sometimes see domestic workers who work for Italian lawyers who know how to fight for their rights because their own employers have taught them how to do it. In Sri Lanka we make Tamil people feel as foreigners in their own country, and then we come here and see how Italians welcome us […]. It is true that they are indifferent to religious practice and devotion, but at the same time they are truly generous and caring. Sometimes much more understanding than we are, it makes you think twice about things […]. There is much that the Sinhalese community can learn from Italians.

A Multicultural Church

235

These members of the Sri Lankan clergy not only developed a keen understanding of Italian culture but had also taken a step back from their involvement with the Sinhalese community which allowed them to take a critical stance toward some dynamics pervasive in their homeland. They truly worked toward bridging linguistic and ethnic barriers and creatively adapted their pastoral mission to the diverse requirements that migrants and nonmigrants had, yet their approach was not especially valued by an Italian Church that appeared to have left only a minor role for pastoral training in the formation of its clergy. One of the Sri Lankan priests living in Italy since 2010 explained that when he first arrived he was prepared to confront a secularized Italian society with low levels of church attendance, but he was not prepared to accept the indifference with which Italian priests confronted this situation. From a Sri Lankan perspective, an empty church is an embarrassment for a parish priest, so when these migrant priests arrived in Italy, their immediate reaction was not to analyze the cultural dynamics of contemporary Italian society, but to look toward the work of individual local clergy to assess the situation. If modernity, secularization, and urban life were the standard macro-narratives used in Italy to explain the decline of religiosity amongst Catholics, Sri Lankan clergy tended to analyze the situation at a different level, focusing on the individual work of clergy, their availability, and their behavior toward parishioners (Brown 2017). Sri Lankan priests who underwent a kind of formation that stressed the importance of pastoral work and were especially trained to be present and serve the community round the clock, sometimes had an almost instant impact on Italians who narrated their encounters with South Asian priests as deeply spiritual and emotional. Some Italians even opted to seek spiritual guidance from priests who often struggled to make sense of the anxieties of modern Italian urban life. The cultural and linguistic barriers that separated foreign priests from local parishioners seemed to have encouraged the development of bonds at a more affective level, articulating common problems in a more universal key capable of cutting across cultural boundaries. Similar to dynamics commonly found a century earlier across South Asia, these reverse missionaries in Europe were often free from local stereotypes and prejudices, social stigmas, and political stances that local communities based their judgments on (Stirrat 1992). Points of intersection between foreign priests and Italian parishioners were therefore found at a more affective level and through the articulation of local problems in a language that necessarily transcended local idiosyncrasies.

236 

Bernardo E. Brown

Figure 9.2  Celebration of Catholic mass in Sinhalese with the Sri Lankan community in Milan at Santo Stefano Maggiore, August 2014

Photo by Bernardo Brown

Alternative Experiments The Catholic Church is well aware that large contingents of faithful migrants from the southern hemisphere that arrive in Europe are giving new life to dormant parishes that otherwise remain empty for most of the week; therefore, some Church authorities are animated by the possibility of catalyzing the religious fervor of non-Western Catholics toward the reawakening of the Church in its former heartlands. Furthermore, transnational migration provides Catholicism with a unique opportunity to dispute evidence that suggests the decline of traditional forms of Christianity in the West. Recent initiatives implemented in Italy point toward a new approach to intercultural dialogue. At the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants, a Sri Lankan priest commented on a series of bilingual masses organized at the initiative of different Italian and Sri Lankan communities. During one of these occasions, the Sinhalese community was invited to participate in an Italian mass presided by the local bishop. For this celebration, all prayers and responses were in Italian as the Sinhalese community contributed music and choir. The sermon for this combined mass was delivered in Italian but a second sermon – which summarized

A Multicultural Church

237

the bishop’s words – was given in Sinhalese. In another of these new experiences in Rome, mass was prayed entirely in Sinhalese to a mainly Italian laity who followed prayers and readings on paper. Furthermore, special celebrations were hosted by Italians for Migrant’s Day in Florence, and a multiethnic Christmas celebration was organized in 2013 in the Sicilian city of Syracuse. The priest also explained that opposition to these initiatives did not usually come from Italians – some people in the Sri Lankan migrant community were resistant and weary of these multicultural celebrations given that so much effort was placed on reproducing Sri Lankan church structures. He remarked that these celebrations were of great appeal to Italian Catholics who would otherwise remain largely uninterested in Church activities. From his perspective, Sri Lankan Catholics in Italy could do what ­Italian priests and the Italian Church could not do: enable a rapprochement between laity and church. He offered other interesting examples that pointed in the direction of an unexpected return of the Church to Italian homes that was not made possible by either local or foreign priests, but by devout migrant workers who had the capacity of inspiring a kind of Catholic religiosity that Italians had grown resistant to, especially when promoted by members of the clergy. For example, he explained that some employers gladly drove their Sri Lankan housekeepers to church on Sundays and were flexible and understanding toward the religious commitments of migrant workers, especially during religious holidays. He noted that, When Sri Lankans have a problem they light a candle and pray to St. Anthony and just leave it for him to solve it […]. Italians are so dependent on medicine and science, they are very rational, leave no room for the work of faith, but sometimes their housekeepers suggest that they go to church and say a prayer, or they bring a small statue of St. Anthony to the home. Italians still don’t believe too much in these things, but they allow for this to happen in their homes.

Indeed, even the reintroduction of religious iconography to Italian homes was sometimes reluctantly tolerated when suggested by migrant workers who occasionally brought home an image of the Holy Family or an olive branch on Palm Sunday. The priest thus praised this kind of evangelizing work that the clergy were no longer able to accomplish but was, as he observed, developing spontaneously between Italian and Sri Lankan Catholics.

238 

Bernardo E. Brown

Conclusion Multiculturalism not only allows the Church to protect the Catholic piety and devotion of migrant communities, it also contains it. From a European perspective, popular devotions are seen as the expression of a bygone era and an obsolete manifestation of Catholic religiosity. Pilgrimages, local festivities, and devotions to saints or the Virgin Mary, are welcomed and accepted practices only in the form of migrant cultural traditions. As Robert Orsi’s (2006) work on Marian devotions in the United States has shown, they are far from the direction in which the Vatican believes contemporary mainstream Catholicism should be headed. The implementation of a multicultural agenda in the context of Catholicism is partially the manifestation of a particular way of interpreting the significance of the demographic shift in the balance of Christianity toward the southern hemisphere. Theologian Martha Frederiks (2009), writing on the Church’s ethnocentric multicultural approach to migrant Christians, has noted that, “European Christians have tended to declare its strain to be universal and normative”. As intercultural theologians like Andrew Walls, Jehu Hanciles, and Lamin Sanneh have similarly remarked, since its inception, Christianity has not been inextricably linked to one particular culture; from a theological standpoint, the Christian message focuses on the individual recipient and the recipient culture (Sanneh 2008), therefore from the outset it has been shaped by local languages and cultures, making its translatability a key component for the diffusion of Christianity as a world religion. The change of balance in the demographics of Catholicism at a global level has not only represented an opportunity to offer an optimistic diagnosis of the current state of the Catholic Church, it has also become an irrefutable argument to capitalize on the vocation surplus and thus recruit “migrant labor” for European countries. From my own research with Sri Lankan migrant clergy often emerged the embodiment of an active and creative priesthood, eager to reach out to Sri Lankan migrants and Italian natives alike. While many amongst the European Catholic clergy felt frustrated by the lack of interest shown by Italian Catholics toward the Church, Sri Lankan priests were curious to understand the reasons that led to this situation and implement creative strategies that could revive their religiosity. As opposed to the Italian clergy who explained the laity’s indifference using ready-made arguments of secularism, materialism, and loss of values, Sri Lankan priests never had harsh words for Italians. Indeed, migrant priests generally held the highest esteem for Italians regardless of their Catholic piety, and if they were to assign responsibility for the

A Multicultural Church

239

unresponsiveness of people toward the Church, all the blame pointed in the direction of the native clergy.

References Ambrosini, Maurizio. 2007. Gli immigrati e la religione: Fattore di integrazione o alterità irriducibile? (Immigrants and Religion: Questions of Integration or Unescapable Diversity?) Palermo: Fondazione Ignazio Buttitta. Berger, Peter. 1999. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Washington, DC: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Brown, Bernardo E. 2017. “In Search of the ‘Solemn’ with Sri Lankan Migrant Priests”. TAJA – The Australian Journal of Anthropology 28(2): 180-194. Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Casarella, Peter J. 2008. “Recognizing Diversity after Multiculturalism”. New Theology Review 21 (4): 17-28. Castles, Stephen, Hein de Haas, & Mark Miller. 2014. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). n.d. Last accessed . http://cara.georgetown.edu/index.html. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Frederiks, Martha. 2009. “World Christianity: A Training School for Multiculturalism”. World Christianity 38 (1): 3-20. Gallo, Ester. 2014. “A Suitable Faith: Catholicism, Domestic Labor and Identity Politics among Malayalis in Rome”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by Ester Gallo. Farnham: Ashgate. Garelli, Franco. 2014. Religion Italian Style: Continuities and Changes in a Catholic Country. Farnham: Ashgate. Glick-Schiller, Nina. 2011. “Localized Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism and Global Religion: Exploring the Agency of Migrants and City Boosters”. Economy and Society 40 (2): 211-38. Gray, Breda, & Ria O’Sullivan Lago. 2011. “Migrant Chaplains: Mediators of Catholic Church Transnationalism or Guests in Nationally Shaped Religious Fields?” Irish Journal of Sociology 19 (2): 94-110. Hanciles, Jehu J. 2006. “Transformations within Global Christianity and the Western Missionary Enterprise.” Mission Focus 14: 4-27.

240 

Bernardo E. Brown

—. 2013. “Migrants as Missionaries, Missionaries as Outsiders: Reflections on African Christian Presence in Western Societies”. Mission Studies 30 (1): 64-85. —. 2014. ‘‘‘Africa is our Fatherland’: The Black Atlantic, Globalization, and Modern African Christianity”. Theology Today 7(2): 207-220. Herzfeld, Michael. 2009. Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hüwelmeier, Gertrud. 2014. “‘Our Future Will Be in India’: Travelling Nuns between Europe and South Asia”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by Ester Gallo. Farnham: Ashgate. Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2006. The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. New York: Oxford University Press. Jones, Arun W. 2014. “Scholarly Transgressions: (Re)writing the History of World Christianity”. Theology Today 71 (2): 221-32. Kollman, Paul. 2014. “Understanding the World-Christian Turn in the History of Christianity and Theology”. Theology Today 71 (2): 164-77. Modood, Tariq. 2013. Multiculturalism. Cambridge: Polity. Muehlebach, Andrea. 2013. “The Catholicization of Neoliberalism: On Love and Welfare in Lombardy, Italy”. American Anthropologist 115 (3): 452-65. Munasinghe, Viranjini. 1997. “Culture Creators and Culture Bearers: The Interface between Race and Ethnicity in Trinidad”. Transforming Anthropology 6 (1-2): 72-86. Nanko-Fernandez, Carmen. 2006. “We Are Not Your Diversity, We Are the Church! Ecclesiological Reflections from the Marginalized Many”. Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Papers Series 10: 81-105. Napolitano, Valentina. 2007. “Of Migrant Revelations and Anthropological Awakenings”. Social Anthropology 15 (1): 71-87. —. 2015. Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Fordham University Press. Orsi, Robert A. 2006. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Palmisano, Stefania. 2010. “Spirituality and Catholicism: The Italian Experience”. Journal of Contemporary Religion 25 (2): 221-41. Pew Research Center. n.d. “Christians.” Last accessed 10 February 2017. www. globalreligiousfutures.org/religions/christians. Phan, Peter. 2005. “A New Christianity, But What Kind?” Mission Studies 22 (1): 59-83. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

A Multicultural Church

241

Pontifical Council. 2014. “Instruction: Erga migrantes caritas Christi (The Love of Christ towards Migrants)”. Last accessed 20 April 2014. www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/pontif ical_councils/migrants/documents/rc_pc_migrants_ doc_20040514_erga-migrantes-caritas-christi_en.html. Sanneh, Lamin. 2008. Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stirrat, R.L. 1992. Power and Religiosity in a Post-Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Triandafyllidou, Anna. 2006. “Religious Diversity and Multiculturalism in Southern Europe: The Italian Mosque Debate”. In Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach, edited by Tariq Modood, Anna Triandafyllidou, & Ricard Zapata-Barrero. London: Routledge. Trzebiatowska, Marta. 2010. “The Advent of the ‘EasyJet Priest’: Dilemmas of Polish Catholic Integration in the UK”. Sociology 44 (6): 1055-72. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024-54. Annuario Pontificio. 2013. Annuario pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Walls, Andrew. 1982. “The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture”. Faith and Thought 108: 39-52. Županov, Ines. 2005. Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India, 16th-17th Centuries. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

About the author Bernardo E. Brown is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. His current research projects focus on Catholic seminaries and priestly vocations in South and Southeast Asia. His work on return migration to Sri Lanka has been published in several journals including Anthropological Quarterly (2018), Ethnography (2015), The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2017) and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (2015). He received a MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Cornell University. Before joining ICU, he was Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, affiliated with the Religion and Globalization and the Asian Migration research clusters; and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden.

10 “Bahala Na Ang Diyos”1 The Paradox of Empowerment among Filipino Catholic Migrants in South Korea Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch10 Abstract Based on narratives of Filipino (un)documented migrant workers and marriage migrants in South Korea, this chapter examines how migrants make sense of their migration experiences as a religious journey and as a spiritual calling. At the individual and community levels, Filipino migrants employ their lived and organized religion as empowering and enabling strategy to mitigate the alienating, precarious and isolating aspects of migration experiences. I argue that the process and strategy of empowerment is a paradoxical dynamics which necessitates interventions from local and/or transnational organizations which have the capacity and credibility to provide empowering spaces and infrastructures. Furthermore, this “mediated empowerment” is double-edged as it advocates migrant agency but also serves as policing and regulating apparatus. Keywords: migrant empowerment, migrant agency, Catholic Church, Filipino migrants, South Korea 1 “Bahala na ang Diyos” (“It is all up to God”) originates from the Tagalog phrase “Bahala Na” (the closest English translation is “come what may”). Some scholars trace three dimensions surrounding the religio-cultural and psycho-sociological usages of “bahala na”: 1) religious dimension: “it serves as a religious tool through which one’s life may be interpreted” with “a belief that somewhere, a cosmic force exists that controls the flow of the events in the universe. It is common for a Filipino to believe that his or her life is lived according to a fixed blueprint, which was designed by a cosmic force”; 2) psychological dimension: “a reservoir of psychic energy and functions as an effective psychological prop on which one leans whenever life’s situations get tough”; 3) sociological dimension: “a binding covenant through which people commit themselves to help or to care for one another. The concept then becomes a boundary marker for interpersonal relations.” (Casiño 2005, 83-5; cf. Jocano 1981)

244 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

Introduction The past two months were a test of survival. All my dreams and hopes could have crashed down. I was worried that all doors would shut on me. But I decided to keep quiet and continuously seek God as my armor amidst all frustrations… As an undocumented worker, I have to work hard to survive, do my best and be patient in everything. Emotionally drained, thinking if I could still work here or not, given that many new documented workers are coming to replace us… Prayers are my weapons in overcoming my fate. Last Monday, I was informed that the company is still keeping us. If you leave it all up to God, He provides.

These are but a few of Juan’s posts on his Facebook wall making sense of his migrants’ experiences and trajectories through the lens of religion and spirituality. Like Juan, an undocumented migrant worker in South Korea for twelve years, many Filipino migrants construct and interpret their migration journeys using their religious beliefs and practices. To a large extent, religion has become a framework for many migrants to: 1) comprehend their sense of displacement and experiences of downward social mobility, legal liminality, and occupational precarity; and 2) “maintain self-cohesion, self-continuity and self-esteem” (Marcus & Rosenberg 1995, 81) in their everyday lives. This chapter examines how migrants like Juan employ religion not only as a repository of tangible support and migrant capital, but also as a reservoir of intangibles such as sense of self, individual agency, and empowerment to comprehend, negotiate, contest, and even alter power structures that define migrants’ invisibility and otherness in the host society. I aim to go beyond a functionalist and instrumentalist treatment of religion by highlighting the “religion” in the religion-migration nexus and focusing on how migrants (re) construct their migration journeys as a “theologizing experience” (Smith 1978) that can mitigate the impact of migration as an “alienating experience”. The nexus between migration and religion is often analyzed using the “bridge versus barrier metaphor” (Connor & Koenig 2013), whereby religion serves as a facilitator of assimilation, upward mobility, and social integration, especially in the American context (Bonifacio & Angeles 2010; Ebaugh & Chafetz 2000; Warner & Wittner 1998; Morawska 1994; Portes & Zhou 1993); or as a hindrance to incorporation into the mainstream society (Brubaker 2001; Alba 2005; Casanova 2007) in the European context. In this chapter, I posit that “migrant religion”, which I delineate as an admixture of migrants’ experience of the sacred (Vaughan 1991) and

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

245

religious practices nurtured and overseen by an organized religion, serves as an empowering strategy to assuage the realities and experiences of defenselessness and vulnerabilities. I unpack migrant religion and empowerment from migrants’ personal and, at times, paradoxical and self-contradictory accounts and narratives of agency and sense of self in relation to community and society at large. The empowering potential and enabling impact of migrant religion has not been systematically studied and has hardly sustained scholarly attention for the following reasons: 1) the notion of empowerment is a problematic heuristic tool that has ideological baggage ranging from ethnocentricism, conservative liberalism, socialism, to democratic approach;2 2) migrant religion is negatively understood as “backward” and even “threatening to modern Western values” (Shinozaki 2015); and 3) the long-standing secular slant of the sociology of religion. Rather than “invisibilizing” empowerment and religion as analytical tools, this chapter seeks to employ them to understand larger themes such as fluidity of individual agency, heterogeneity of migrant subjectivities, and changing religious landscapes in the context of migration. Using the narratives of Filipino (un)documented migrant workers and marriage migrants in South Korea and their religious practices within a religio-ethnic community, I seek to answer the following questions: how do migrants construct their experiences and trajectories as a religious journey? To what extent do revitalized religiosity and newfound spiritual calling shape their immediate and future agenda and their social relationships? What are the specific religious strategies and practices that these migrants employ in attaining varying degrees of “sense of self”? In finding answers to these questions, I further consider empowerment as a paradoxical strategy with contradictory (un)intended outcomes. Although Filipino migrants are seemingly undergoing a movement from a passive positionality into a more proactive state of autonomy and self-worth at the individual and community levels, they are in fact constrained by external forces such as migration and integration regimes, societal discrimination, and nonaccess to “empowerment infrastructures” due to their noncitizenship and “governance” from various social institutions. Rather than analyzing this conundrum through the lens of an agency-structure divide, I claim that 2 Elisheva Sadan (2004, 74) elaborates these ideological orientations surrounding the notion of empowerment as follows: 1) “ethnocentric approach which seeks solutions for difficult social problems of ethnic and other minorities; 2) conservative liberal approach which seeks to revive community as a social unit which among other things has to care for its weak citizens; 3) socialist approach which demands equity and social responsibility in the treatment of social problems; and 4) based on profound and professional implementation of democracy”.

246 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

migrant empowerment is a paradox whose process and outcome necessitates mediation by people, organizations, and institutions with credibility and capacity to provide spaces and resources which migrants employ in the production and maintenance of a “sense of self” and self-worth amidst social exclusion, discrimination, and marginalization. In this study, the Catholic Church as a mediator has a paradoxical positionality of, at once creating spaces and infrastructures for empowering migrants as part of their mission and vision of welcoming the “strangers”, while at the same time unintentionally serving as an apparatus of the state in controlling and regulating the spaces for empowerment.

Theorizing Empowerment There has been an explosion in the use of the term “empowerment” as an empirical and analytical tool in development studies, economics, social work, feminist studies, management literature, sociology, policy, and legal studies. Despite the glamorous appeal of the terminology, it is in fact a heavily ideological and problematic notion that is often employed to describe an ideal for marginalized populations to gain access to more freedom, choice, agency, and power in controlling their lives. For the purpose of this chapter, I do not discount the problematic aspects of empowerment theory. However, I find the processual and relational nature of empowerment useful to my argument. I view empowerment as a process for individuals, communities, and organizations to gain control, and to have more opportunities, choices, and power. As a result, individuals and communities can become active participants in changing their circumstances and shaping their environment (Dierckx & Van Dam 2014). I claim that migrant empowerment is a transition, a shift from a passive state of limited choices into a state of increased “access and control over resources” (Inaba et al. 2001 quoted in Piper 2004). By considering empowerment as a continued process, migrants who wish to achieve their individual and collective agency are in constant engagement (negotiation, resistance, co-option, consensus, cooperation, etc.) with social structures. The human agency in migrants are “enabled” and/or “constrained” by structures such as migration policies, integration regimes, labor markets, migrant organizations, and receiving/sending states. Migrants can be investigated as “social actors who exercise agency” to manage their migration and social experiences “even under the most extreme forms of coercion” (Long 2001 quoted in Bakewell 2010, 1694).

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

247

However, this shift from disempowered and powerless positionality into a more actively empowered state with agentive power does not transpire overnight. As Sarah Steimel puts it, “[I]t is unlikely for someone who is disempowered to suddenly define him or herself as empowered” (2011, 267). The processes of individual and collective empowerment especially for marginalized groups often necessitates mediation in enabling migrants to achieve a certain level and extent of “agentive power”. Autonomy and control to shape social relations and social structures especially in receiving societies have become particularly onerous for migrants in the Asian context where “extraordinary and complex processes of migration” are at work (Yamanaka & Piper 2005, 34). Migrants have to contend with strictly calibrated migration regimes, differential integration programs, noncitizenship status, and rules governing temporary migration where they are regarded as mere sources of cheap, disposable labor. Given these structural constrictions, migrants must seek the assistance of and engage with mediators, intermediaries, and partners to transmute self-empowerment achieved through everyday resistance (Yeoh et al. 2002; Yamanaka & Piper 2005; Pande 2012) into collective empowerment which could effectively shape and alter the existing “migration structures”. Against this backdrop, I introduce what I call mediated empowerment or a “system of intervention” (Dierckx & Van Dam 2014) which facilitates migrants to gain “control over their lives” and help them minimize, maneuver, handle, and overcome the structural controls. These intervention methods developed and provided by pro-migrant organizations, in this case, the Korean Catholic Church, create “empowering spaces” and empowerment resources for migrants to recognize, achieve, and develop their own self-efficacy and capacities at the individual and collective levels. This is not to say though that self-empowerment cannot be realized without these interventions. However, the process of empowerment necessitates infrastructures which migrants can use to reinforce their newly achieved self-efficacy in the context of migration. I claim that the pro-migrant organizations like the Catholic Church are relatively successful in creating basic conditions which allow migrants to discover and make use of their individual and collective capacities and “agentive power”. Using these “system of [empowerment] interventions”, pro-migrant organizations aim to do the following: 1) bolster migrants’ “sense of ability” and belief in resolving issues; 2) organize disempowered migrants to build their own communities and organizations through which migrants can express their personal grievances; and 3) integrate individual, group, and community empowerment into a “single intervention system” in response

248 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

to migrants’ multiple needs. Nevertheless, these empowerment interventions simultaneously “restrict and control opportunities in other arenas of [migrants] lives” (Steimel 2011) hence unintentionally (re)producing asymmetries in power relations. As a result, a disjuncture between migrant empowerment as a discourse and migrant empowerment in practice transpires. Conflict and tension between empowerment discourse and practice occurs when the methods of intervention end up interfering, curbing, and restraining migrants’ freedom and choices in other arenas of their lives. This happens when the process of empowerment becomes rigidified in terms of rules and structures which eventually reinforce the existing oppressive social structures (Guevarra 2006).

The Context South Korea has emerged as a country of migration in only three decades. Not only did it become an important destination for many migrants from neighboring Asian countries, it has also determinedly pursued multiculturalism as a response to cultural diversity and demographic changes. In 1987, the Dong-A Ilbo, a major broadsheet newspaper, first recounted the presence of hundreds of Filipino domestic workers in the posh neighborhood of Gangnam. According to leading migration scholar Dong-hoon Seol (2000), this was the f irst public report of migrants’ presence in South Korea. By December 1993, as the Korean government off icially adopted the controversial Japanese model of Industrial and Technical Training Program (ITTP) which allowed migrants to work in South Korea as trainees not as workers, the number increased seven-fold to 45,499 of which 92 percent (41,877) were undocumented and only 0.1 percent (599) were under the trainee scheme. Due to the unpreparedness of small and medium businesses to hire migrant workers, most trainees were being grossly underpaid or unpaid, overworked, discriminated, and vulnerable to verbal, physical, psychological, and mental abuses. Despite social concerns surrounding migration, the migrant population grew exponentially by 85 percent or 245,359 by 1997. With migrant issues yet addressed and unresolved at this point, Korean pro-migrant organizations, mostly faith-based, provided assistance to migrants and advocated for migrants’ rights, which led to the enactment of the Employment Permit System (EPS) in 2004 and the eventual abolition of the trainee system in 2006. The EPS, albeit the criticisms and contentions raised especially by Korean civil society, has gone through several amendments since then,

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

249

and is currently enforced to manage labor migration and accord basic labor rights to migrants. By the mid-2000s, the Korean state made a surprising move to embrace multiculturalism as a national project to respond to the changing demographic changes brought about by the low fertility rate, aging population, and the growing migrant population, especially marriage migrants and their “multicultural” children and “multicultural” families (damunhwa gajok). In August 2009, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security announced the “era of one million residents” (Choo 2011). In 2015, official statistics recorded a total of 1.8 million foreign residents, mostly composed of highly skilled professionals, international students, marriage migrants, migrant workers, and undocumented migrants. Although the migrant population comprises only about 2.3 percent of the total Korean population of 50.2 million, it has greatly transformed not only the demographic, but also the sociopolitical landscape of South Korea in terms of the politics of belonging and national identity. International migration has been perceived not only as a response to the “demographic crisis” and labor scarcity in the manufacturing sector, but also as a locus of contestations, conciliations, inclusions, exclusions, power struggles, individual agency, and community spirit. In the context of these paradoxical propensities of migration in South Korea, a “migrant civil society” has emerged to elevate migration issues and concerns in the public sphere and produce significant changes in terms of labor rights, advocacy, activism, and social integration on behalf of migrants. Existing literature has extensively discussed migration as one of the strategic sites featuring the comeback of Korean civil society in engaging with the state and the wider publics. While acknowledging the noteworthy efforts and “success” of Korean migrant civil society as a “highly credible social force” within the context of migration (Migration Policy Institute 2008), migration scholars mainly employed a meso- and macro-level investigation by focusing on Korean pro-migrant organizations, migration regimes, and state-civil society relations as the units of analysis. Consequently, most scholarly work neglected migrants and migrant communities as the primary objects of analysis. As a departure, this chapter examines how migrants at the individual and community levels are impacted by the “social transformations embedded in the migration processes” (cf. Castles 2010). Based on a thirteen-month multisite fieldwork in four Catholic migrant centers (“Center” hereafter) located in Seoul, Suwon, and Daejeon, I focus on how Filipino migrants and migrant communities appropriate their migration journey as an empowering “theologizing experience” rather than as an

250 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

“alienating experience” despite their paradoxical positionality of being “not wanted but needed”, partially incorporated and semipermanent in Korean society. In the next sections, I will further demonstrate how empowerment is a religiously mediated process in the context of migration in South Korea. I discuss the role of everyday lived religion which is controlled and/ or guided by an organized religion in terms of institutional structures, dogmas, and (in)tangible resources in empowering Filipino migrants and their communities.

“Bahala Na Si Lord”: Mediated Empowerment through Prayers and Surrendering A group of Filipinos bundled in thick winter coats, muffler scarves, boots, and mittens were huddled in front of the Columban Missionary House in Seoul. They were happily chatting and laughing, oblivious to the below-zero temperature and bitterly cold night. It was the first of the “nine-night” series of masses celebrated by Catholics in preparation for Christmas Eve. Filipinos from various parts of Seoul and satellite cities braved the cold weather and for some, the risk and danger of being caught in an immigration crackdown. Although the large wooden gate to the Missionary House was shut, many came early in anticipation of a large crowd, and I had a chance to chat with eager churchgoers while waiting. Many of them were undocumented workers so I asked them if they were not worried for their “safety”, given that the Eucharistic celebration would end around 11:00 pm or midnight because of late dinner or snacks afterward. One migrant joked that the immigration officers were already taking a rest and the “business hours” were over. Everyone laughed at the comment. Then he added, “I have been in Korea for ten years without passport and visa. I regularly attend mass in Hyehwa on Sundays. I completed Simbang Gabi (Nine-night series of masses) for many years here in Korea but through God’s mercy (awa ng Diyos), nothing happened to me. Before I leave my house or factory, I always make the sign of the cross. I am OK”. The rest of the churchgoers simultaneously talked about their own “near-caught” experiences with the paparazzis (Filipino migrant communities’ code for immigration officers). Luis, a 43-year-old undocumented migrant who has been in Korea for thirteen years, shared his many “near-caught” experiences. Although he evaded being caught in several crackdowns, one incident left a permanent mark in his mind. When the immigration officers raided his factory, he was caught by surprise and his hand got stuck in a driller-like machine that he

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

251

was operating at that time. His index finger was slashed and his thumb became twisted inside the machine but the trickling blood and pain that followed did not stop him from dashing out of the factory and speeding across an open field to dodge the “clear and present danger” of being caught and deported. He firmly believed that God had kept him safe during his “illegal stay” in South Korea. According to Luis, overstaying “illegally” was a difficult decision for many undocumented workers but a necessity to ensure that his children would be able to finish their university education. Luis’s account is just one of the many stories of migrants’ survival in South Korea. At first glance, migrants’ decisions may be deemed as fatalistic, passive, and “non-agentive” in that migrants rely on the “will of God” (kaloob ng Diyos), “God’s mercy” (awa ng Diyos), and “God’s blessing” (biyaya ng Diyos). This “fatalistic” worldview of migrants toward their status and circumstances may be attributed to the Filipino concept of Bahala na (short for Bahala na ang Diyos or bahala na si Lord), a context-based idiom, cultural trait, and philosophy which broadly means “leaving something or someone in the care of God” (Gripaldo 2005). Many migrants leave their “fate” to God in various phases of migration. For newcomers, getting “good” employers is “just like a gamble” (parang sugal lang). When migrants “hit a jackpot” of finding “generous, kind employers who treat them well”, they believe it is luck (suwerte). Otherwise, migrants are deemed unfortunate when their Korean employers are “bad” which usually means that the employers are stingy, manggugulang (shrewdly taking advantage of migrants in terms of salary, overtime pay, and lack of knowledge of migration laws), and bastos or crass (having a habit of talking down to migrant workers, shouting, and commanding orders). However, migrants’ heavy reliance on the “Divine Providence” is often simultaneously employed alongside other creative ways of overcoming a sense of insecurity and powerlessness. One way of supplementing this reliance on God’s protection and “Divine Providence” is through prayers and constant communication with God at the individual and group levels. Marie, who worked as a nanny/English tutor/domestic worker in Korea for seven years without a passport and working visa, attributes her fortitude, resilience, and optimism to her strong faith in God. When she encountered a traumatic experience3 and underwent a severe culture shock, she could only rely on God: 3 Marie arrived in Korea in 2006 expecting that she would work as an English tutor. It turned out that she would work as an “all-around worker” (cleaner and cook by day and English tutor to a mother and son by night). Her employer withheld her passport, and Marie was told that she

252 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

Not that I was a very religious person but I have a great faith in God. So I kept praying. I really didn’t want to stay in that house. I just wanted to go back to the Philippines. Finally, through God’s will, I was able to contact my friend and we met in Hyehwa Church. She introduced me to other Filipino friends and they convinced me to stay in Korea. It was also God’s will that I decided to stay in Korea… Even if I am “illegal” here, it was not my fault. They took my passport and didn’t return it. After everything that I went through [her employer even attempted to “kidnap” her by dragging her from a pizza parlor to the backseat of a cab], I should have tried to get a work permit. (Interview with Marie, an undocumented domestic worker and an active church volunteer, 23 April 2013)

Marie believes that her prayers helped her overcome her struggles. She likens ardent praying to a meaningful conversation with someone who perfectly understands and loves her. Like many other migrants, she believes that it is through prayers and “Divine Providence” that she is able to make the “right decision” (staying in Korea after her traumatic experience) and make sense of her personal situation and external circumstances (being undocumented is partly her responsibility but also inevitable given uncontrollable factors). Other migrant workers and marriage migrants who decided to “run away” or “overstay” interpret their decision as an outcome of prayers, long discussions, and counseling with family members and other migrants and “God’s blessing” (another chance and opportunity to work, earn, and save money in Korea). When migrants who have been in Korea beyond their contract period are asked how they survived, a typical response is, “If they really want to venture in Korea for the second or nth time, they have to make prayers [as] the anchor of their decision and survival strategies. Prayers sustained us”. In this way, individual prayers and communication with God is an important aspect of individual empowerment because it helps migrants not only overcome their personal difficulties, loneliness, and helplessness, but also facilitates migrants’ interpretation of themselves and the world around them in terms of “existential conditions, lifestyle, needs and aspirations” (Giordan & Woodhead 2013). could only have her salary in the fourth month because the employer had paid her placement fee which was not true because migrants are directly hired by either the Korean Ministry of Labor or the immediate employers. Without money and a phone, she could not get in touch with her friends who were deployed by other employers. She did not have any plan to “run away” until one night when she felt that her drunk employer “verbally harassed” her by commenting: “You are getting thin. I liked you when you were fat but I like you better now that you are thin”. (Interview with Marie, 23 April 2013)

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

253

Figure 10.1 Fr. Marco and members of Legion of Mary celebrated the Feast of Assumption of Mary with cake and fruits in one of the counseling/ meeting rooms in Cheonan Moyse Catholic Migrants Service Center. Cheonan City, South Korea, August 2013

Photo by Bubbles Beverly Asor

Aside from the perceived power of prayers and communication with God at the individual level, migrant-related prayers are also done at the group and community levels as part of the practices and traditions of an organized religion. Each Catholic migrant community has one or several prayer groups. Suwon Emmaus has a small group of migrants which regularly conducts a Lectio Divina or the Catholic practice of praying, reading the Bible, meditating, and contemplating. The group visits a selected household of a marriage-migrant’s family based on a rotation principle. The family gets to keep the image of Virgin Mary for a week or until another household agrees to let the Virgin visit their home. I joined a few of these house visits,

254 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

which mainly consisted of praying the rosary followed by snacks and catching up. Cheonan Moyse also holds a regular prayer meeting for marriage migrants and their respective Korean husbands at the Catholic migrant center. Hyehwa Catholic Community holds several simultaneous prayer meetings and Bible sharing at the migrants’ households. Although individual prayers are subjectively effective in empowering a migrant to overcome his or her personal trials and migration-related issues, integrating an individual prayerful way of life and a “culture of prayer” at the community level can pave the way for migrants’ selfdiscovery that they have the capacity to change themselves and their environment. Through prayers and other forms of worshipping (singing, reading the Bible, religious practices, and symbols) nurtured and reinforced by an organized religion’s teachings and practices, migrants learn how to surrender all their worries, joys, failures, loneliness, and pains to God. Through communal activities such as Eucharistic mass and prayers, the individual migrants realize that his or her “personal grievance” is not entirely a personal burden but a systemic issue shared by other migrants. To a large extent, collective empowerment is mediated by religious effervescence in the Durkheimian sense whereby people praying together affirms social bonds where the fervor of collective empowerment may flow because of spiritual unity. Through religious effervescence, migrants achieve a critical consciousness that they have control over their life, destiny, and environment through spiritual surrender or the opening up to a higher force greater than the individuals and the “mega-structures” (cf. Orloff 2014). While the nexus between surrendering and empowerment may appear in contrast with each other, Judith Orloff insists that surrendering does not mean that one has to give up power but is actually a means to gain power. This is based on the assumption that power is one’s capacity to “become fully human and to influence and transform our social and physical environment [and] is tightly connected to our ability not only to assume but to embrace vulnerability as a lovable part of who we are” (Brown 2010 quoted in Champagne 2014, 156). This religious effervescence may be effective in producing an antidote to individual migrants’ troubles and a source of unity for a group, but it is also ephemeral yet habitual, requiring group members to attend religious rituals on a regular basis. For example, the Novena to the Mother of Perpetual Help requires nine Wednesday masses for the intercessory prayer to be fulfilled and petitions to be granted. Many devotees of novena prayers zealously believe in the power of this devotion. When prayers are unanswered, they usually placate themselves by saying that in “God’s time, He will provide

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

255

what He thinks is best for me”. This prayer and placation may not be soothing and empowering at all times, yet migrants continuously pray for “God’s will” in “His time”.

God’s Mission and Plan: Mediated Empowerment through Spiritual Signification Using their experience of surrendering and a closer relationship with God, some migrants turn to spiritual signification to understand their migration experiences and their future in a context of temporality and uncertainty. Many active church volunteers interpret their volunteerism as either a consequence of a “transformation of the heart” or part of God’s mission and plan. In the past when I was still in the Philippines, I hardly attended mass. But I wonder why now that I am here in Korea, I changed my mind and I now go to Church regularly. Maybe, God willed a transformation of my heart. Therefore, since I came here in Korea, I was drawn to God again. (Interview with Marie, 23 April 2013)

Marie is quite convinced that her “undocumented stay” in Korea is part of “God’s plan”. The only thing that I am holding onto is the fact that the Lord sent me here. He is my passport all the while. In the first place, I did not tamper with my documents [in reference to other migrants who “changed names” to reenter Korea] and I was never in a frenzy and an eager beaver to come here in Korea. Nothing at all. So I always tell God, “since you sent me here and allowed me to stay here despite many difficulties, please let me stay and I will surrender everything to you”. (Interview with Marie, 23 April 2013)

God’s plan, for Marie and other active volunteers in the Church, means she had to make the most of the opportunity that she had been presented with. During the interview, Marie was one of the female lay ministers (or Extraordinary Minister of the Holy Communion by the Canon Law)4 which 4 According to the Canon Law, a lay minister can be any Catholic who performs a task in any church ministry (liturgical, catechetical, pastoral, and social justice, etc). They can be lectors, acolytes, altar servers, cantors in the music ministry, or ushers. But for ordinary Catholics, the term “lay ministers” only pertains to the Extraordinary Minister of the Holy Communion who is

256 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

is rare in the Philippines, a lector, and an active member of one of the prayer groups. She believes that her stronger faith and active volunteerism in the Church is a source of joy and meaning of life which also drives her to do more for others. Not that I am very active in the church but it is just that I feel good when I do something for other people. The first time I joined the lay ministers, I wondered what was that feeling that came to me. I felt I was in heaven. I had great joy. From that time on, I started treating life as a blessing. I know life is hard. But I am really happy.

Through teaching catechism as a lay minister, Marie realized that she had a passion and love for teaching and wanted to make a career out of it. She planned to return to the Philippines, get married to another Church volunteer she met in Korea, and continue her studies. This realization of one’s potentialities and abilities as part of God’s mission is also felt by Fe Gimarino-Kim, an active church leader, founder-president of the Filipino Korean Spouses Association and the leader of Couples for Christ in Incheon. Her passion and advocacy to help marriage migrants stem from her deep religiosity, extensive experience of volunteerism in Caritas Davao, the Philippines, and in the Catholic migrant community in Incheon. Fe believes that her deep concern for marriage migrants must be God’s mission for her. In 2004, this mission was realized as a result of Fe’s lobbying for a law which guarantees citizenship for marriage migrants even after divorce caused by domestic violence. She told me that she did not expect her organization and her lobbying to be successful but she just tried her best. At the moment, Fe is preoccupied with several projects: a scholarship program through her organization, Filipino Korean Spouses Association (FKSA), and linking the organization with a transnational migrant organization, United Filipinos Worldwide for Community Development (UFWCD); her future plan of launching a child development center for the “multicultural” children; fundraising through singing and beauty pageants; and expanding the membership and programs of Couples for Christ (CFC), an international lay movement which originates in the Philippines that aims to strengthen and renew the Christian family life for Filipino migrant women married to Koreans. Her new mission is to extend membership to Korean husbands and eventually convert them to Catholicism especially those a lay person who gives communion to churchgoers during mass or to sick people in the hospitals or homes.

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

257

who do not have any religion. Fe regards her own husband’s conversion to Catholicism as God’s blessing and a spiritual mission for her. She attributes the establishment and recognition of CFC as a Catholic organization in Incheon as part of God’s plan to use her as a “messenger”. Some migrants like Fe interpret their life story and migration experiences as part of a “destined” spiritual journey. In many of my respondents’ signif ication of their migration experience vis-à-vis their renewed or newly found spirituality, they believe that their life in the Philippines has inadvertently paved the way for their “mission” in South Korea. In many ways, they believe that their migration experience is part of the spiritual journey which can be a commencement and/or culmination of a larger plan. Fe, after surviving terminal illnesses (leukemia when she was a teenager and then cervical cancer), believes she has to fulfill God’s plan for her in South Korea. There is a popular and commonsensical belief among Filipinos that a person with strong faith and abandonment to the will of God may survive a serious illness or other difficulties. This is further supported by the assumption that if one survives terminal illness or near-death experiences, God has a “special plan” for the person, and hence a “second chance” means more responsibilities. Fe is willing to take on more responsibilities for her advocacy because this is what she needs to do as prompted by her faith. For Fe, Marie, and other active and devoted migrant volunteers in the Catholic migrant communities in Korea, their spirituality empowers and guides them to find new identities, subjectivities, and meanings in their life. The Catholic discourse and teaching on migration have shaped migrants’ signification and reinterpretation of their own spiritual and migration experiences. The Catholic Church declares itself as a pilgrim church and a pilgrim community (Pope Paul VI 1964). This concept of pilgrimage transpires in two ways: external (mobility and movement across time and space) and internal (journey toward spiritual goal and end). Through this external and internal journey, each human being is a pilgrim on earth. In the case of Filipino migrants who are literally moving from one country to another, they are perfect embodiments of pilgrims with a responsibility to spread the word of God as a “new breed of evangelizers”. In a homily delivered to Filipino migrant workers, the late Cardinal Stephen Kim regarded the Filipino migrants’ presence in Korea as a “divine plan”. Your human motivation for coming here is to give a better life to yourselves and to your loved ones through your energy and skills. However, deeper reflection may bring you to the realization that you are here with

258 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

a special mission to rejoice in the faith and to share it with others… Your community is like a little island in a vast ocean but do not think that your influence is negligible. Passers-by who see you streaming into the church will be touched by your faith. Those who notice you gathering together are impressed by your sense of dependence on and support of one another. This is one of the ways in which you respond to the command: “Go teach all nations”. (Sambayanan newsletter, 14 April 2002)

This spiritual signif ication and reinterpretation of Filipino migrants’ spirituality and active religious actions empower migrants to take up a “powerful” role above and beyond the role of a migrant worker. As evangelizers through example and faith, migrants and their communities are able to regain hope that there is something beyond the temporality of overseas work. One priest even lauded the Filipino migrants as worthy of sainthood and canonization (Sambayanan, 3 June 2000). Although this has empowering effect on migrants, it simultaneously demands migrants to live according to the tenets and practices of the Church to maintain this “sainthood” while living up to the expectations of the church, migrant community, and state regulations.

Translating the Personal into Interpersonal: Mediated Empowerment through Responsibilization and Volunteerism In the previous section, I presented how migrants appropriate their migration journey as religious experience that contributes to their building of “sense of self” in a very personal and personalized way. However, my respondents also demonstrated a strong need and willingness to “share God’s blessings with others” through their relationships with other migrants, their families, migrant communities, and larger society. Although a high level of self-consciousness may bring autonomy and empowerment to the individual, the empowerment process reaches full circle when others positively affirm the signification and reinterpretation of the sense of self through interpersonal relations. By establishing effective and meaningful relationships in small self-help groups, communities, and organizations, individual migrant’s capacities and potentialities may be further developed and reinforced. Through interpersonal relations that are formed and sustained in the religio-ethnic space provided by the Catholic Church, migrants are able to hone motivations for volunteerism. Catalyzing their desire and actions

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

259

to help themselves and other migrants, migrant volunteers are able to achieve certain levels of interpersonal empowerment. This is realized when migrants discover and develop their personal skills (dancing, singing public speaking, cooking, photography, acting, and other interest-based talents) and people skills (leadership, public relations, communication, management, organizing, and civic commitment). Being a migrant volunteer here in the “Independent” Center helped me a lot in my personality development. I gained self-confidence especially in speaking in front of the public. I also acquired more self-assurance and self-reliance to face many challenges and to conquer my fear of being in front of many people. I became a lector, a commentator in the mass, a choir member even if I am not the greatest singer, and a planner of migrant programs and events. I learned how to mingle with people with high positions. I learned to value the talents and skills of fellow volunteers and to respect everyone around me. It is very rewarding to be a volunteer. I found many friends who became my extended family who are always there for me when I am in need. (Interview with May, an undocumented worker, 28 March 2013)

My respondents believed that it is through volunteerism that they are able to develop their interior selves which eventually facilitates a maturity of their exterior selves by establishing meaningful interpersonal relations with fellow migrants, migrant volunteers, Korean volunteers, and migrant center personnel. It is through these interpersonal relationships that some migrant volunteers found new identities and subjectivities as volunteers, migrant organization leaders, and members by which they can have a sense of meaning and purpose apart from their identity as migrant workers and breadwinners. Many of these migrant volunteers are in fact undocumented workers, but they are able to acquire visibility and voice by taking on important roles in the Church and migrant community (cf. Lorentzen & Mira 2005) albeit temporarily during the religious services and other migrant activities legitimized by the Church. This is also not to say that these undocumented workers are completely safeguarded by the protective cloak of the religious institution. During crackdowns and deportations of undocumented migrants, migrant leaders are not spared, and the Church cannot do anything but to visit them in the detention centers, pack their bags, and take care of their severance pay. Through their church, communities, and organizations, migrants who are often overlooked and invisible in the host society are acknowledged

260 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

for their “talents, time and efforts”. Some migrant volunteers in the church choir and cultural committee are able to perform in public gala and multicultural events for “important people” such as local politicians and Korean audience. Migrants who are active volunteers and performers also feel proud to “rub elbows” and exchange hellos with these “important people” (cardinal, bishops, priests, city mayors, government off icials, embassy officials, etc.). Many migrant volunteers who are undocumented workers are even friends with the police officer assigned to their community. They attribute these “opportunities” to their volunteer work in the church and migrant community. In return for volunteering here? [Long pause, and then laughs] Well, I am able to meet and be introduced to the mayor, the bishop, and Korean volunteers even if I am just like this [referring to her undocumented status]. (Interview with Jade, an undocumented migrant worker and an active church volunteer, 13 January 2013)

These opportunities to interact with people outside the migrants’ circle can be regarded as a symbolic recognition and validation of their volunteer work, and in many ways, enhance their human and social capital. Due to cultural and language incompetence and limited opportunities to establish interpersonal relationships with both fellow migrants and local people, most migrants find it useful and beneficial to join religious, social, and cultural organizations for the accumulation of social and human capital (cf. Putnam 2000) that are mostly mediated and maintained by pro-migrant organizations in the South Korean context. While some migrant volunteers feel “proud” to be given opportunities to interact with local people and “VIPs”, others derive self-satisfaction and legitimization of their volunteer work from fellow migrants. Nora, a committee leader at the “Center”, is often surprised to know that many Filipino churchgoers recognize her as one of the “church people” (taong simbahan). She says she does not volunteer to be publicly recognized but it is her way of “giving back” after God answers her prayers. Eddie often feels the same way whenever “‘strangers” greet him outside the church and commend his work as a volunteer. Although at first, he just wanted to clean the church’s toilet after the Eucharistic celebration, he later became a member of the steward committee, leader of the altar server committee, Eucharistic committee, and leader of the Catholic migrant organization. Volunteering which started as a form of “killing time” on Sundays has become his life and an important part of his weekend routine.

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

261

In many ways, for many migrant volunteers, interpersonal empowerment is derived from doing meaningful and purposeful work outside their homes and workplaces. Volunteering does not mean migrant volunteers have a luxury of time or that they do not have much to do in their spare time. In fact, many migrants prefer to rest and catch up on lost sleep than do volunteer work.5 However, no matter how “time-consuming” it is to do volunteer work at the migrant church and migrant community, some volunteers believe it is a source of rejuvenation and empowerment of spirit. The cases illustrated above may be a contentious point in framing the notion of empowerment. Is empowering migrants similar to coping strategies or simply a temporary respite from the difficulties brought by migration? However, in this case, migrant volunteers are able to recognize and discover their other potentialities in socialization and volunteering for other migrants. Unearthing potentialities through interpersonal relationships is a form of empowerment because migrants are able to take on different roles in relation to other migrants. This is where the notion of empowerment as a relational process may take place. Migrants may have various motivations for volunteering, such as the accumulation of human and social capital or for a personal mission, but altogether it has positive impact on their personal and interpersonal lives. I equate this positive impact of volunteerism with interpersonal empowerment as migrants are able to gain some control of their personal lives by choosing which aspect of their private self and behavior is extended to the public sphere. Upon reaching a certain level of interpersonal empowerment discovered through increased spirituality and religiosity and/or by participating in the sociocultural migrant space, many migrant volunteers enact “valued roles, identities, and subjectivities” within migrant communities and organizations. Migrants’ volunteerism and willingness to devote their time and effort in establishing and maintaining interpersonal relations and community spirit give voice, visibility, and appearance to the invisible and voiceless migrants. Through individual and collective efforts, migrant communities are recognized and even applauded in Korean public spaces. The Ansan migrant community’s cultural ensemble is often invited to showcase their cultural presentations in multicultural festivals all over Korea. The Hyehwa Filipino Catholic Church choir holds concerts and performances in big auditoriums and music halls. Migrant singers as representatives of their migrant communities belt out their diva voices 5 Based on my informal chats and unstructured interviews with migrant community members who are not volunteers in the Catholic migrant organizations.

262 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

and musical prowess in singing contests. Many of these performers are actually undocumented workers. Rather than feeling disempowered and debilitated by their status and position, these migrants take advantage of the opportunities to assume different identities. For one day as a performer, choreographer, musician, make-up artist, hairstylist, or official representative of the migrant organizations/communities in public spaces and official functions, these migrants temporarily suspend their role as undocumented workers, as lowly migrant workers, or as inferior migrant spouses. Being in a legitimate group, undocumented workers do not have to worry about crackdowns. There is a temporary interruption of the existing status quo so as to allow the “desired identities” to emerge once in a while. This strong sense of responsibility is derived not only from a personal belief and conviction but also from the organizational need. Although Catholic migrant organizations are structured and divided into committees (Liturgical, Steward, Altar Server, Education, Justice and Peace, Social/Cultural, Choir, Newsletter, etc.), almost all migrant volunteers have to take on multiple roles especially due to lack of human resources when preparing for migrant events. These multiple roles may cover sacred or religious tasks inside the church (reader/lector/commentator, church ushers, altar servers, lay ministers, choir members) and sociocultural tasks outside the church (cleaners, decorators, cultural performers, singers in events, dishwashers, planners, cook, sellers of raffle tickets, beauty pageant contestants, basketball/bowling/volleyball players, sports coaches, drivers, etc.). These responsibilities demand time and effort from many migrant volunteers. When there are major events such as Migrant Sunday celebration, migrant organization’s anniversary or an annual religious festivity, some migrant volunteers have to start working on food preparations, decorations, and cultural dance numbers as early as Friday night, hence relinquishing overtime or night-shift work on weekends. Although many respondents complain about how much time and energy they spend on volunteerism and migrant community activities, they feel “needed” and “important” in the migrant space and equate the new roles and positions as God’s plan and mission for them. They express “feeling” and “having” a sense of responsibility not just toward the “good” of the migrant community but also about themselves. My respondents confided to me that they have to “feel responsible”, “act responsibly”, and “be responsible”. This strong sense of responsibility is derived not only from personal religious convictions, but also from the organizational needs of migrant communities.

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

263

Mediated Empowerment as Apparatuses of Control and Regulation I examine this nexus between personal and collective sense of responsibility as the core of the paradox of migrant (dis)empowerment in three ways. Firstly, migrant volunteers have to exemplify and embody a model migrant by possessing all the positive qualities of a good Christian, a faithful husband/wife/partner, a generous family member, a patriotic Filipino, and an exemplary “guest” of Korean society. For example, some migrant volunteers are asked to “take a backseat” from performing the valued roles when they are rumored to be or actually engaged in “illicit” extramarital affairs (kopol-kopolan). Instead of carrying out the duties of a lector or commentator in the mass or a soloist in the choir, they are asked to take a temporary leave or carry out other tasks not seen by the public. Migrant volunteers who are chosen to be lay ministers need to have a church wedding even if they are already married through civil rites. Interestingly, there are no severe punishments for a supposedly “mortal sin” in the Catholic standard except for community stigmatization in the form of gossip, parinig (giving insinuations out loud in group conversations), innuendos, and cryptic messages on Facebook as a way to tell the family in the Philippines. On the part of migrant center staff especially priests and nuns, they try to reprimand the congregation in the formal setting through homilies, retreats, and talks. Some migrant workers claim that there are priests who are “scared to tackle the issue on the pulpit out of fear to hurt many people especially the priests close friends among migrants”. Pastoral workers appear to be resigned and “hopeless” when it comes to resolving “contractual relationships”. In many ways, the priests and nuns are as disempowered as the migrants themselves who feel that there is no way out of the marriage trap. In the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, divorce is not an option hence many migrants fall into the trap of a married-but-not really married situation. Secondly, migrant volunteers are trained and expected to lead the Catholic migrant community in the maintenance of a “collective moral responsibility” rooted on self-efficacy, self-control, and self-improvement. The Church provides the configurations and arrangements for the migrant volunteers to take the lead in maintaining moral responsibility through spiritual retreats, leadership trainings and seminars, and establishing partnership in coming up with ways and means to maintain the migrant communities’ harmony and development. Through these “moral interventions”, migrant volunteers become both a mouthpiece and gatekeeper

264 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

of what ought to be “responsible” and “moral” for the community. To be responsible is almost synonymous to being morally upright and to keep the moral responsibility at the individual and collective levels. This is not to say though that all migrant volunteers adhere to these moral standards but many agree that they ought to follow the norms no matter what. Mamang, a veteran migrant volunteer in Maria Yi Center, continuously apologized and felt guilty for having a younger partner after her long-term separation from her philandering husband in the Philippines. When I told her that she is now qualified to apply for legal separation and annulment, she said it is still a sin in the eyes of the church and God but she assured me that she is a good person. According to Mamang, she may not be the exemplary “church person” but she devotes her time and effort in serving God. This is also the case of a “couple” who were leaders of a Catholic migrant community in the “Umbrella Center.” Mamang is just one of the many migrants who are “temporarily” or “contractually” married to someone in South Korea while legally married to their husband or wife in the Philippines. Due to this increasing number of relationships, Catholic migrant organizations have set up written requirements for potential migrant volunteers who wish to serve in the church to indicate that they possess “good moral character”. Thirdly, migrant volunteers are expected to shepherd the larger migrant communities toward practices of generosity and self-control. Through the efforts and testimonies of the migrant volunteers, other migrants are encouraged to be generous in giving donations (and reproached when they are not), to actively participate in migrant community events, and/or to manage their own lives. Migrant newsletter articles, homilies, and seminars often touch on the subject of generosity and self-efficacy. A chaplain interviewed for this research lamented that many migrants are stingy when it comes to giving donations for good projects in the church but would extravagantly spend on traveling, skiing, expensive gadgets, and karaoke nights. I actually observed that many migrants put i-cheon-won (2,000 won or US$1.6) in the collection basket during mass. This signif ies that although many migrants obtain benef its from Catholic migrant centers in terms of material, social, cultural, and mental/ psychological benefits, many migrant churchgoers do not see the need to extend help through donations because there is an assumption that the Korean Catholic Church is rich. The mass collection is used by the Catholic migrants for the maintenance of the center, food for migrant community activities, and other utilities. A second collection is usually made when migrants request and seek financial help such as the death of a migrant,

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

265

hospitalization, serious illness of migrants or their families, accidents, and transnational philanthropy/gift giving. Most Catholic migrant centers support philanthropic projects in the Philippines such as long-term scholarships for public-high-school students and financial help for victims of natural catastrophes. Migrant volunteers play an important role in coming up with fundraising activities such as beauty pageants and singing contests. Some of them are chosen to represent the migrant community in gathering donations from one Korean Catholic parish to another. Although the Church may be accused of imposing “compulsory generosity” by burdening the migrants with “guilt” if they don’t share their “blessings”, we can also equate migrant communities as training grounds for learning and practicing generosity. It is not just tangible and material donations that the Catholic migrant centers require and demand from migrants as many of these migrants themselves do not have enough money. The migrant centers serve as a site for migrants to learn what Smith & Davidson (2014, 18) call “relational generosity” or people’s willingness to freely share their time, attention, and emotions in relationship with other people.

Conclusion Migration is a Janus-faced process and social phenomenon. On the one hand, it is regarded as a positive force in engendering “development” for individuals, families, households, communities, and sending societies. It has also been transforming the demographic, social, political, and cultural landscapes in both the receiving and sending societies. On the other, migration is often portrayed as a locus of marginality, systemic inequalities, and precarity. Migrants have been depicted as subjects of passivity, vulnerability, disempowerment, and despondency. In fact, some scholars acknowledge this overemphasis of the victimization, specifically of migrant women, in migration studies (Krummel 2012). In more recent years though, there has been a move of the analytical focus towards migrant agency and empowerment (cf. Piper 2004; Lorentzen & Mitra 2005; Briones 2009; Umut 2009). Building on this emerging body of work, this chapter has considered the notion of empowerment and agency through which migrants appropriate their migration journeys from a religious and theological lens, and using these subjectivities to construct new identities and collectivities. I further push the analysis by treating empowerment as a paradoxical process. While empowerment is idealized as a process of achieving self-autonomy, self-control, and self-eff icacy, it actually

266 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

necessitates spaces and (in)tangible resources for empowerment to take place mainly because of the complex nature of the migration process. In the case of the South Korean context, migrants are constrained by structural forces due to their noncitizenship, nonaccess to public resources, and temporariness in the receiving society. There are opportunities and prospects available to achieve some degree of empowerment for some migrants (legal migrant workers and marriage migrants) but other empowerment infrastructures are accessed by “citizens” on behalf of those migrants outside the purview of migration policies, integration regimes, and welfare mechanisms. Most of the time, mediators such as local and transnational pro-migrant organizations employ what Sadan (2004) calls the “system of empowerment interventions” for migrants to achieve self-efficacy. These interventions may come in the form of the following: 1) a theological blueprint as a basis of subjective and positive appropriation of migration journeys; 2) community infrastructures and resources to acquire alternative identities and perform new roles that are made available within the context of migration; and 3) platforms and avenues that can alter power structures by visibilizing the “invisible” migrants in the Korean public sphere through sociocultural and religious activities and organizations. These interventions are intended to facilitate the development of migrant agency and self-empowerment for migrants’ future plans such as return migration, circular migration, stepwise migration, or settlement in South Korea for marriage migrants. Paradoxically, these interventions which produce empowering subjectivities among migrants can unintentionally serve as apparatuses of controlling and regulating migrant bodies through morality and religious discourse and practices. Furthermore, as an (un) intended outcome, the Church and other pro-migrant organizations find themselves in a paradoxical positionality of serving as an “empowering” organization yet at times falling into the trap of complicity with the state and market in governing migrants as disposable others.

References Alba, Richard. 2005. “Bright vs. Blurred Boundaries: Second Generation Assimilation and Exclusion in France, Germany and the United States”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (1): 20-49. Bakewell, Oliver. 2010. “Some Reflections on Structure and Agency in Migration Theory”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (10): 1689-708.

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

267

Bonifacio, Glenda Tibe, & Vivienne Angeles, eds. 2010. Gender, Religion, and Migration. Pathways of Integration. Place: Lexington Books. Briones, Leah. 2009. Empowering Migrant Women Why Agency and Rights Are Not Enough. Aldershot: Ashgate. Brubaker, Rogers. 2001. “The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (4): 531-48. Casanova, Jose. 2007. “Immigration and the New Pluralism. A European Union/ United States Comparison”. In Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, edited by Thomas Banchoff, 59-84. London: Oxford University Press. Casiño, Tereso C. 2005. “Bahala Na: A Critique on a Filipino Paradigm of Folk Spirituality”. Asia Pacific Journal of Intercultural Studies 1 (1): 145-60. Castles, Stephen. 2010. “Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (10): 1565-86. Champagne, Elaine. 2014. “Power, Empowerment and Surrender in the Context of Paediatric Spiritual Care”. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 19 (3): 150-63. Choo, Hae-yeon. 2011. “Citizenship at the Margins: Filipina Migrant Women and the Paradox of Rights in South Korea”. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Connor, Phillip, & Matthias Koenig. 2013. “Bridges and Barriers: Religion and Immigrant Occupational Attainment across Integration Contexts”. International Migration Review 47 (1): 3-38. Dierckx, Danielle, & Sylvie Van Dam. 2014. “Redefining Empowerment Interventions of Migrants Experiencing Poverty: The Case of Antwerp, Belgium”. British Journal of Social Work 44: 105-22. Ebaugh, Helen Rose, & Janet Chafetz. 2000. Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Giordan, Giuseppe, & Linda Woodhead, eds. 2013. Prayer in Religion and Spirituality. Leiden/ Boston: Brill. Guevara, Anna. 2006. “Managing ‘Vulnerabilities’ and ‘Empowering’ Migrant Filipina Workers: The Philippines’ Overseas Employment Program”. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture 12 (5): 523-41. Jocano, F. Landa. 1981. Folk Christianity: A Preliminary Study of Conversion and Patterning of Christian Experience in the Philippines. Quezon City: Trinity Research Institute. Krummel, Sharon. 2012. “Migrant Women: Stories of Empowerment, Transformation, Exploitation and Resistance”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (7): 1175-84.

268 

Bubbles Beverly Neo Asor

Lorentzen, Lois Ann, & Rosalina Mira. 2005. “El Milagro Esta en Casa: Gender and Private/Public Empowerment in a Migrant Pentecostal Church”. Latin American Perspectives 32 (1): 57-71. Marcus, Paul, & Alan Rosenberg. 1995. “The Value of Religion in Sustaining the Self in Extreme Situation”. Psychoanalytic Review 82 (1): 81-105. Migration Policy Institute. 2008. “Top 10 Migration Issues of 2007: South Korea Opens Its Arms”. Last accessed 14 February 2014. www.migrationinformation. org/Feature/display.cfm?id 663. Morawska, Ewa. 1994. “In Defense of Assimilation Model”. Journal of American Ethnic History 13 (2): 76-87. Orloff, Judith. 2014. The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Surprising Ways Letting Go Can Empower Your Life. Nevada City, CA: Harmony Books. Pande, Amrita. 2012. “From ‘Balcony Talk’ and ‘Practical Prayers’ to Illegal Collectives. Migrant Domestic Workers and Meso-Level Resistances in Lebanon”. Gender & Society 6 (3): 382-405. Piper, Nicola. 2004. “Gender and Migration Policies in Southeast and East Asia: Legal Protection and Sociocultural Empowerment of Unskilled Migrant Women”. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25 (2): 216-31. Pope Paul VI. 1964. “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church – Lumen Gentium”. Last accessed 28  October 2016. www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. Portes, Alejandro, & Zhou Min. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants”. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (1): 74-96. Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Sadan, Elisheva. 2004. Empowerment and Community Planning: Theory and Practice of People-Focused Social Solutions. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. Seol, Dong-hoon. 2000. “Past and Present of Foreign Workers in Korea 1987-2000”. Asia Solidarity Quarterly 2: 6-31. Shinozaki, Kyoko. 2015. Migrant Citizenship from Below: Family, Domestic Work and Social Activism in Irregular Migration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, Timothy. 1978. “Religion and Ethnicity in America”. American Historical Review 83(4): 1155-85. Smith, Christian & Davidson, Hilary. 2014. The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose. New York: Oxford University Press. Steimel, Sarah. 2011. “Negotiating Tensions across Organizational Boundaries: Communication and Refugee Resettlement Organizations”. Unpublished PhD diss., University of Nebraska.

“BAHAL A NA ANG DIYOS”

269

Umut, Erel. 2009. Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship: Life Stories from Britain and Germany. Aldershot: Ashgate. Vaughan, Leslie. 1991. “Cosmopolitanism, Ethnicity and American Identity: Randolph Bourne’s ‘Trans-National America’”, Journal of American Studies, 25(3): 443-460. Warner, R. Stephen, & Judith Wittner. 1998. Gatherings in Diaspora Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Yamanaka, Keiko, & Nicola Piper. 2005. Vol. 11 of Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia: Policies, Actions and Empowerment. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Yeoh, Brenda S.A., P. Teo & S. Huang. 2002. Gender Politics in the Asia-Pacific Region. London: Routledge.

About the author Bubbles Beverley Neo Asor is Assistant Professor in the Behavioral Sciences Department at De La Salle University Manila. Her research focuses on Filipino migration, international migration to South Korea, the religionmigration nexus and state-civil society relations in the context of migration and the Catholic Church as a mediating structure.

11

Feeling Hindu The Devotional Sivaist Esthetic Matrix and the Creation of a Diasporic Hinduism in North Sumatra Silvia Vignato Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch11 Abstract Based on extensive f ieldwork carried out in Medan and its region in the early 1990s, this chapter considers Hinduism as practiced by the descendants of the Tamils who migrated to North Sumatra in the late nineteenth to twentieth century and illuminates some aspects of the relationship between migration, ethnicity, and religion. I start from the assumption that when divinity is relational, embodied, and immanent (therefore localized), and when its importance and permanence depend on rituality (like in Hinduism) rather than on abstract and personalized constructs such as faith, its migration necessarily rethinks bodies, materials, landscapes, and notions of the self. I first describe how early ritual experiences contribute to the creation of a visual and sensorial universe which links embodied feelings and self-perception to a larger horizon of supernatural power or powers, and turns them into a religious experience. I then pay attention to how rituality enabled the Tamils to think their migratory trajectory before “the migrant” became a trope and a major figure of the modern world and before “diaspora” became an acknowledged civil and political construction. I interrogate sensorial memory and its constitution. Keywords: Hinduism, migration, embodied religion, Indonesia, diaspora, sensorial memory

272 Silvia Vignato

Introduction This chapter analyzes the relationship between migration and the process of personal identification as a civil subject that a migrant consciously carries out through a specific religious practice. By examining the latest stage of an originally colonial migration concerning modern and contemporary Indonesia, that is, the Indian organized human flow to plantations in North Sumatra (late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries), I aim to illuminate some aspects of the relationship between migration, ethnicity, and religion. Between 1991 and 1998, I studied the rather original version of Tamil devotional Hinduism practiced by second- to third-generation Tamil migrants in North Sumatra, Indonesia. I analyzed the criteria which informed its construction and compared them to those which animated the local creation of a new Indonesian Hinduism rooted in traditional Karo religion and doomed to disappear quite soon from the scene. The fundamental question I raised concern over was the tension between local cults and world religions and the shift from the former to the latter as mediated by the Indonesian state (Vignato 2000).1 In this chapter, I return to the subject to focus on early ritual experiences and the creation of a visual and sensorial universe as the ground for an experience which links embodied feelings and self-perception to a larger horizon of supernatural power or powers, and turns it into a religious experience. I argue that when, like in Hinduism, divinity is relational, embodied, immanent, and therefore localized, and when its importance and permanence depend on rituality rather than on abstract and personalized constructs such as faith, its migration necessarily concerns bodies, materials, and landscapes, as well notions of the self. This then implies a big symbolic and reflexive effort for devotees and ritual specialists alike. Ultimately, I look into how migrants gain strength, agency, or self-determination, through involvement in their original relocalized religious categories rather than by dropping them. Thanks to the analysis of the early experiential base of such reflexive effort, I will highlight how through religion and rituality, the Indonesian Tamils have negotiated a specific ethnicity within Indonesian citizenship in the fast-changing urban social environment characterizing late twentieth-century Medan. I shall 1 I carried out my first fieldwork in North Sumatra in 1991 and returned to the field for a period of two years from 1993 to 1995. My stays were equally divided between the Karo Highland and the city of Medan. In the following years, I repeatedly returned to Medan and extended my fieldwork to Penang (Malaysia), in order to look closer into the Malaysian Indian rituals which I was first introduced to by my Indonesian Hindu friends.

Feeling Hindu

273

pay special attention to how religion enables the Tamils to think about their migratory trajectory before “the migrant” becomes a trope and a major figure of the modern world, and before “diaspora” becomes an acknowledged civil and political construction more and more apt to uproot, revert, and differentiate former colonial or North/South unequal relationships. The construction of narratives and counter-narratives of religion as well as the tools which are employed to develop and sustain them are at the core of this chapter. This includes a specific look into the role played by new technologies in enabling transversal communication amongst the diasporic subjects and groups as well as a longitudinal “reconstruction” and reappropriation of memories. I use Ron Geaves’s analytical figure of the “guardian of the border” (2007) and underline that what happened in Sumatra was possible, thanks to the existence of a small group of self-appointed ritual specialists, who were able to mediate between their Tamil and Hindu religious frame and the Indonesian context, including the local Hindu movement, which included conversions and “internal conversions” (Geertz 1973). Speaking of borders, I am constantly dialoguing with Fred Clothey’s (2006) inspiring idea that the Tamil diaspora constructs itself through a constant ritualization of the boundaries between “before” and “now”, between “back there” and “here”, between ancestors and descendants, between migrants and residents, between “us migrants” and “them migrants”, and between “us migrants” and “those still in India”, seeking to construct a “psycho-cultural-religious landscape” which is consistent with what the diasporic subjects are and want to become now. Using the Sumatran example, I conclude that the challenging power of Hinduism lies in its structural inclusive plasticity which allows each specific diasporic construction to be evidently and directly recognized by Hindus as part of a Hinduism while including local, political, and institutional imperatives and characteristics. Despite its groundedness in localities, disparate languages, heavy rituality, and sacred places, and despite the dependence on various categories of priests and ritual experts – in short, all that counters what Thomas Csordas (2009, 4) has defined as “portable practices” – Hinduism has proven a viable religious ideology for migrants.

Tamil Gods in Indonesian Bodies In 1991, I was attending a Hindu celebration in honor of the Goddess Mariyamman at a small plantation temple some twenty kilometers from Medan – as is the custom during the sacred month of aṭi over which she

274 Silvia Vignato

watches (mid-July to mid-August) – when a group of young and helpful Tamils insisted on showing me, a debutant ethnographer, a real, good, fundamental Hindu cult. Beyond the usual morning prayers and food offering, which I had become acquainted with at Medan temples, what they really cared for me to see was the procession of the Goddess taken on a small palanquin around the shrine and then to the nearby river, as well as what they called sakti karakam, the metonymic denomination of a man carrying a formerly consecrated (sakti) vessel (karakam) on his head. On later occasions, I would see sakti karakam performed even when unrelated to any temple ceremony, with a makeshift altar instead of a shrine but mostly during the ceremonies of āti. What caught my attention then, and never failed to impress me at every occasion, was the passion that the women and men put into inviting me to the ceremony. The 1991 procession happened on an afternoon, when half of the devotees had already returned to Medan since Tamils no longer lived at the plantation. The palanquin was carried on four men’s shoulders and followed by a group of devotees chanting and sometimes dancing. A slow movement led the Goddess in front of the other minor shrines within the temple enclosure, positioning “her” eye to eye with the statues of Madurai Viren, Muniyandi, Nagendrin, and a local spirit generically called “datuk”. While the procession was touring, a metal vessel on the river shore was filled with “the five elements” (ind. lima unsur)2 of the universe – water and sand from the river, metal represented by some coins, fire from camphor, and “air” of burning incense – enclosed by a coconut and decorated with a cloth, a canopy of flowers, and incense. Mantras based on Lord Siva’s name were recited aloud and a camphor flame lit on the spot where it was set. A chicken was slaughtered in proximity and then a young man who, as I was told, had undergone a long fast and was tied by a vow, lifted the karakam and put it onto his head; while the people surrounding him chanted “Oṃ sakti” (“Hail the divine female power”), he carried the karakam to the palanquin of the Goddess, which in the meantime had reached the river shore, and together, the two would slowly proceed back to the temple. Trays of offerings (arccanai) were presented by devotees both to the karakam and the palanquin, as well as babies and small children. While 2 My interlocutors mainly spoke Indonesian but often used Tamil in ritual matters. The non-English words used here are Tamil unless specif ied, like here. I use the conventional translitteration of Tamil unless words of Tamil or Sanskrit origin have a commonly accepted translitteration in English. I have left the names of divinities in their Indonesian phonetic transcripts, as I would find them in leaflets and notices and on temple inscriptions.

Feeling Hindu

275

Figure 11.1 A six-year-old boy, his head shaved in mourning, is made to perform the funerary ritual for his dead father. Medan, Indonesia, 1994

Photo by Silvia Vignato

the karakam danced, some of the devotees were seized by a trance and showed signs of being possessed by some kind of divinity or unspecified demon. For example, a man embodying Kali (standing on the blades of two sacrificial knives held by other devotees) talked to several devotees, who listened in awe and amusement, as is typical during such rituals; another one whipped himself and the ground with a long lash, symbolizing Madurai Viren; another roared and cried until he started jumping “like a lion” as people said, symbolizing Singamakali. Young men and boys commented in admiration on the individual who performed the ritual and talked about when they would also have a go at taking on that role. Girls giggled in awe and grown-up women were divided between their wish to be carried away by a possession in the presence of the karakam and the Goddess on the palanquin (they trembled and closed their eyes) and the fulfilling enchantment of a darshan, a vision of the divinity.3 3 The lived importance of darshan in Hinduism is brilliantly explained, for example, in Eck (1998), or Tarabout (1986).

276 Silvia Vignato

Anybody familiar with the popular, non-agamic, non- or little-Sanskritized South Indian devotional Saivism both in India and in the diaspora4 might wonder what was so relevant in such a basic, commonplace devotional display, but in North Sumatra, at the time of my enquiries, it was a rare event. Around the plantation coastal belt, as far as Binjai or Tebing Tinggi, Tamil temples had been built all through the first half of the twentieth century in small towns and within the plantations and had celebrated yearly feasts for the major Hindu dates (Tai Pusam, Pankuni Uttiram, and so on) with a procession and music, dancing, and offerings, as well as sacrifices. By 1990, the community had let go of most larger celebrations. The Japanese occupation and later the troubled times of the 1965 slaughters brought most Tamils away from the plantations into Medan. The main ceremonies were then celebrated exclusively in temples and over concentrated periods of time. There were many reasons why the devotees, who would later become my informants and friends, considered the procession, possessions, and karakam, with their sacrifices, as more meaningful for “Hinduism”5 than the first part of the ceremony, held within the temple. I would like to analyze them from the point of view of devotional emotions. Nancy Scheper-Hughes & Margaret Lock (1987) have insightfully argued that emotions link an intimate embodied self to the social construction of what a body is and, in turn, to the body politics in a given society. The same can be said for religious emotions: they link an intimate sense of embodied identity to larger religious constructs and contestations which rely on how the religious body is defined. Dead bodies and blood play as big a role as dance and ecstasy in the story.

Anger at Injustice It was not a general detachment from collective rituality that made karakam and processions rare, but a political decision. These ritual acts had been prohibited in Sumatra Utara for the Tamils in the name of an Indonesian law which classified ritual practices in two distinct categories. One category included what was considered “only” custom (ind. adat) or “culture” (ind. 4 What I describe is only a fragment of devotional Saivism performed in Sumatra, where the tension toward a transformation described as “agamization” and “Sanskritization” was as strong as in the rest of the Hindu world, both diasporic and Indian (Srinivas 1978; Lee & Rajoo 1987). Reflecting on diasporic cults, Sinha (2006) has recently drawn attention to the uncritical use of these categories and what I underline in this chapter confirms their historical value. 5 On the value of naming their religion for the Indian migrants, see Steven Vertovec (2000, 7-13).

Feeling Hindu

277

kebudayaan), a man-made construct which could be modified and negotiated, and which qualified all Indonesian ethnic groups (ind. suku). And included in a different category were the godly matters which concerned “religion”, agama, pertaining to the domain of unquestionable truth according to one of the five acknowledged faiths with a name, a book, and one God (Islam, Christianism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism) and necessarily characterizing all Indonesian citizens, lest they were to be seen as atheists and therefore, “dangerous” (and endangered) communists (Hefner 1985: 267-9; Steedley 1993: 69-70). On the one hand, this entailed, all across the archipelago, the systematic repression of many categories of possession cults, that is, cults relating each man and social unit to supernatural beings which granted another cosmic order than the ones approved by the state. On the other hand, it meant dividing existing cults into standardized collective religious cults, concerning a transcendent divinity and related to society and state, and personal, private devotions, determined by each individual inclination and unrelated to cosmic truth – and called then “tradition” (ind. adat, tradisi) or “culture” (ind. kebudayaan), or more generally “beliefs” (ind. kepercayaan), including the cult of ancestors as well as divination or “black magic.” Amongst Medan Tamils, such Indonesian religious policy allowed a group of recently enriched – and quite corrupted as it turned out after Suharto’s dismissal in 1998 – “lower-caste”6 families to establish their modernist, purified vision of a bloodless devotion, in tune with a general trend in world Hinduism, and then impose it on the rest of the community alongside the imposition of their patron-client power, which was thus clearly affirmed on a spiritual level. Thanks to the Indonesian definition of religion, bloody sacrifice for Tamil Hindus was officially considered as mere “culture” and contrary to “true” religion. Therefore, sacrifices and symbolic self-sacrifices could not be performed in temples or during other official religious ceremonies because they were heathen acts, animist (ind. animis), or polytheist (ind. politeis). On a couple of occasions, the powerful group was alerted to the performance of a forbidden ritual and succeeded in calling the police and having the devotees jailed for a short time. Besides the enriched elite, there were other important people in the Tamil community, people who were much respected because of their family 6 At the time of my research, caste sensitivity was high but rarely talked about publicly. The Medanese Tamils divided themselves into tamiḻār, “the Tamils”, and “that other race”, or “the paraiyar”. The latter, as it is intrinsic in the hierarchical principle of caste, said that there was a caste system in India but in Indonesia they were all equal.

278 Silvia Vignato

and social position, including their original caste. These “intellectuals”, as I named them in my fieldwork notes because they could read and write Tamil and had actually some books in their homes, considered the banned rituals as backwards, superstitious, and on the edge of “black magic” but would not personally go as far as forbidding them and even took part in them with amused and disdainful detachment. They were more supportive of other aspects of the ban, namely the opposition to having funerary drums (paṛai) played at funerals, an opposition justified in the name of social equality, because no difference should be made in Indonesia between the lower castes – the “paṛaiyār”, drummers, who could handle corpses – and the rest of the Tamil society. Those same funerary drums played an important role in the ceremonies dedicated to the Goddess and to the other major divinity worshipped in Sumatra, like Murugan/Subrahmanyam. They complemented the dances during the procession and, coupled with specific chants, lead the mediums to their possession and divinatory trance. Hence, forbidding them not only affected funerals, but also transformed a main feature of the public celebrations of the Goddess and dispossessed the drummers of a fundamental ritual role. This imposition of new power relationships through rituals generated anger. The devotees who eagerly participated in the illegal processions and sakti karakam were terribly angry (ind. marah) at the dominant elite for dispossessing them of their rituals, as well as angry at being dispossessed on other very practical levels. The man who was identified as the main “evil”, whom I shall call Muniandi, was considered to have unjustly taken over the main Medan temple committee and paid for the temple renovation and school while buying up the temple and cemetery land for little money; he controlled people through handing out jobs in his businesses, tenders in the public administration, and individual loans to the poor who were then forced to be loyal to him. Many Tamils in Medan had been wronged or forced to put up with unwanted conditions of work and life by Muniandi and his clan, and many felt that they had been unjustly excluded from resources by a man who had no legitimate authority. At the fall of the regime of Suharto, Muniandi went through very serious difficulties and his economic empire collapsed, and many of my friends and informants celebrated (many others did not, as they lost their jobs and connections). As we see, social dialogue and confrontation between different parts of the small Hindu community in North Sumatra were carried out through rituals expressing deep feelings. Referring to Louis Dumont’s definition of Hinduism as a “world of relation”, Isabelle Nabokov (2000, 182) argues that, in her original (as opposed to migratory) Tamil Nadu experience,

Feeling Hindu

279

“Tamil rituals have no ‘self- existence’ […], they are not autonomous. They always exist in relation, or more exactly in opposition, to others”. This was the case here. Nabokov underlines that there is a violent action on the self when a ritual calls for a person to expose oneself but then penetrates and shapes one from within even against one’s deeper rebellions. It was not caste dynamics in this case, but the failed attempt of the ruling elite to suppress what seemed vital and powerful, paradoxically represented by the infamous funerary drums. Anger was a feeling of resistance to an attempt to impose a new self on the devotee through ritual change. It was also the confirmation that in a migratory setting, a large part of the community’s power, if only in numbers, resided precisely with those lower castes who were no longer entrenched in a wholly oppressive society but in an indifferent Indonesia and could therefore demand to be acknowledged. Personal anger was both socially and politically meaningful.

Longing for the Immediate Experience of the Divine: Powerlessness and Empowerment Anger was also rooted in its counterpart, passionate desire or longing. The intrinsic symbolic value of the forbidden rituals was not unrelated to the furious reactions of the devotees. My informants talked of how they felt diminished in a fundamental aspect of their devotion, and that was why they insisted so much on involving me, to show me “the real thing” (ind. yang benar). Over time they would show me the whole real thing, that is, the five-day-long ceremony including goat slaughters as well as other variations of it (Vignato 2006), but I would like to focus here on its subjective rather than structural aspects of bringing together the cosmos and making it sacred through proper offerings, and to a lesser extent, words. Blood and bodies were central to the process of ritual cosmogony. If I were to ask about the difference between carrying the Goddess outside and worshipping her inside, literally everyone would say that the two acts were absolutely the same thing – except that when on the outside, one could “see her better” in the karakam, for example, the view of a short person or a child would not be blocked by taller people, and “she” would also see the devotees better. Sakti, the divine female power, was there, visible and available to them in a stronger (ind. lebih kuat), closer (ind. lebih dekat), and more immediate (ind. langsung) way when the devotee appeared as a dancing divinity than when worshipped within the enclosed space of temples.

280 Silvia Vignato

Similarly, everybody maintained that a bloody sacrifice was absolutely not necessary because any substitute would do, be it a pumpkin or an inner self-offering. What was indeed different with the actual killing of a victim was, as a priest, medium, and faithful devotee told me, the sensational feeling (ind. rasa) of the actual blood. Despite the emotional and sensory difference, the two levels of devotion were not in contrast, but rather, indispensable steps in the devotional chain which fabricates and appropriates an immanent divinity by allowing it to take embodied and emplaced forms. Single acts are important, but so is the multiplication of symbolic equivalence: a good ceremony has the slaughtered goat, the “slaughtered” pumpkin, the embodied self-sacrificing devotees, and the invisible inner sacrifice through the chanting of mantra. The feeling of longing (ind. kepinging) that devotees often expressed – a longing to experience divinity – is rooted in the body and constantly involves the senses. It has many different aspects, the main one being the transformation of suffering into pleasure and of a weak surrender to the power of sakti. For Southern Indians, writes Clothey, “religion is expressed primordially as performance” (2006, 14). The ritual staged a working body, as underlined by my informants who always referred to their ritual activity as “work” (ind. kerja). Ritual spaces have to be decorated, piles of offerings have to be prepared, coconuts shaved and decorated, mango leaves available by the stack, metal vessels prepared with all the above elements, milk bought and poured out of tetra-packs, rice, sweet rice, and other ritual food cooked, camphor provided, cloths bought and cut, then food must be served and banana leaves displayed and disposed of, and so on. The sacred mixed with the domestic and reverberated beyond the ceremonies. At big Indian temples, priests ran around a lot, as if doing domestic chores in perpetuity, and so did the devotees in the Sumatran popular cults. The ritual staged a wet, sensuous, refreshed, calm, and released body. In order to perform a sakti karakam, people, mostly men, would get down to the river; buckets of yellow-colored water were poured on to devotees before their individual devotion and in case a “bad possession” was seizing them after the karakam started walking. This ritual bath by the bucket was cherished (“it’s so hot it feels good”) as a totalizing experience. People always encouraged me to try it out and even felt sorry for me when I had to forgo for the sake of my camera. The ritual staged a walking body. Of course, a lot of walking takes place in big Hindu processions and the importance of padayatra, pilgrimage on foot, is acknowledged in the whole Hindu world. But because the shared

Feeling Hindu

281

space was so small and processions were forbidden in the cities (not only in Medan, but also in Binjai, Lubuk Pakam, and Tebing Tinggi), the walking was denied of its inclusive strength, and its possibility to create a sacred, sakti-pervaded space. Still, it had to take place. The ritual staged a carrying body. Carrying offerings for the divinity is one of the main, if not the most significant, act of devotion that is performed during big processions all through the Tamil world: most people would carry a pot of milk or other ritual substances (ashes, red powder, and saffron), or their babies, but they can carry anything that they think would “please” the divinity or that they feel they owe the divinity after taking a vow. In the case of Murugan’s mythology, carrying offerings with a yoke is what the god’s servant Idumban does in order to move the two mountains, Sivagiri and Saktigiri. Most Mariyamman devotees are also Murugan’s devotees, and the gesture is extended to the Goddess’s processions. The interplay between the male and the female divine energy often takes the form of a gendered devotion within a gendered space or body (“being” Murugan while walking for the Goddess or carrying a pot of milk in Murugan’s procession). Carrying, a servants’ humble chore, is a deeply devotional Tamil Sivaist act. The ritual stages a wild body. The men had to be bare-chested and the women with loose hair. Besides, the devotees tended to wear specif ic yellow clothes, especially the women, so as to withstand the buckets of water without damaging proper festive attires. “Wildness” is coded as the representation of the ungendered demons, or pēy: disheveled hair, long teeth, protruding tongue, spirited look. Although the demons play around with gender, they tend to be ungendered. Women and men alike moved wildly, before returning to their gendered self. The wet, wild body that was working, walking, and carrying was totally subjugated to the ceremony, and transformed by it. In other words, it is a self-sacrificing body which is already enjoying the renewal in strength and power after the divinity has consumed, introjected her victim. At the end of rituals, many devotees emphasized and described their tiredness, however unequal their tasks or ritual performance, and often added that they did it for “their mother” or “their lady” (amma) or “the divinity” (sāmiṇ). Such self-sacrificing is made more explicit when one looks at some actions of self-immolation characterizing those ceremonies, such as carrying the kavadi, an arch structure decorated with peacock feathers sacred to the god Murugan, but more generally, in Sumatra at the time, the practice called in indonesian cucut lidah, or “piercing one’s tongue”, including piercing one’s

282 Silvia Vignato

tongue, cheeks, forehead, chest with a small needle in the form of a vel, Murugan’s spear.7 These practices illuminate what meaning self-immolation takes in this context. It is not about suffering, as the devotees underline, but it is precisely about the fact that one does not suffer, bleed, or get scarred because one is filled with the “grace” (aruḷ) of the divinity and does not feel pain or bear painful consequences. It is an experience of transformation and empowerment which certainly evokes death and the regeneration of life (Parry 1994) but also experiences a rural body, strong and able to work, walk barefoot, carry things, and then dance. Devotees always mentioned the energy they felt throughout the ritual – what, with hardly any sleep, in this “wild”, “hot” environment. They felt powerful (ind. kuat). The sakti karakam resumed all these figures of powerful bodilyness. Whatever the personal devotion enacted, every devotee could share the icon’s characteristics. By hosting the divine power within his or her body, the karakam multiplied it and made it available to the devotees. Certainly, the limit between feeling powerful during rituals and thus being more able to determine one’s destiny in ordinary life, and experiencing in rituals what one cannot otherwise get in ordinary life is very thin and needs to be constantly reaffirmed; many devotees, especially among the ritual specialists, were leading difficult, poor lives. But as we shall see, for most, the ritual experience was not only about claiming their autonomy from the leading group or reconstructing a feeling of control over the social environment. It concerned a deep cognitive structure which develops all through a Sumatran Tamil devotee’s life, a structure which is ethnic, religious, and overall, sensual. While anger, with its oppositive strength, underlined otherness and a complicated struggle for power, longing emphasized identity in the strict sense of the word: what a person wants to be one with, and how she has learned that this can happen.

The Tamil Subject and Her Demon The sensorial experience that the forbidden rituals allowed, kept alive and elaborated, was linked to other sacred aspects of the devotee’s life, and that is why it was so difficult to renounce. Among the Tamils in Medan, the deep connection between self-sacrifice and devotion deployed itself throughout a person’s life within her family and immediate social surroundings. In fact, the action of handing a baby to the divinity recalled a ritual called patināṛu, 7 For a description of similar rituals in Malaysia, see Clothey (2006) and Willford (2002; 2014, 152-9).

Feeling Hindu

283

“sixteen”, which most babies would go through sixteen days after birth, that is, half a lunar phase, when the baby’s fontanelle was supposed to close and the life soul ( jiva) be steadily encapsulated in the body. It was the first ritual a human being was involved in. Immediately after birth, the mother’s mother-in-law buried the placenta and lit a lamp (kamatciviḷakku, again, a light of the Goddess) which was kept alight for days. This first rite had to be done fast and at dusk, or the evil demon sometimes called Kaatteeri might see the baby and eat it. Sixteen days later, the patināṛu ritual was carried out by women alone. The mother came out of her room, paid homage with a puja to the demon outside the house, or “toward the forest”, where the placenta had been buried, laid half the offerings for it and then came inside and laid down a banana leaf with the complete offerings (special “feminine” food, camphor, incense, and water) on the ground. She placed the naked baby on the leaf, beside the other offerings and the baby amulets, and offered it to the Goddess (sometimes called Periyācciyammaṇ), officiating the puja together with her mother and mother-in-law. Then the baby was picked up and dressed in a gendered way, given apotropaic little black glass bangles and amulets, then finally set in a cradle (the Indonesian ayun-ayun) made of a piece of sari for girls and of vesti for the boys. Finally, the women must eat all the food, leaving nothing “for the demon to eat”. Further versions of this first ritual would be followed both by women and men throughout their lives, either as propitiatory rite while they are children or, for girls, when they get their first menstruation (saṭanku), as an indispensable propitiatory act before marriage. Two main symbolic differentiations start during the patināṛu which will be necessarily repeated in more articulated forms throughout a person’s life. On the one hand, the small individual is taken away from its bare life status, its liminal post-birth uncertainty, very close to the dangerous demon of the forest, and delivered to its social status as a gendered human being within a lineage and a kin group; she would soon receive a name from her maternal uncle (on the 30th day) and then return to her father’s home and be devoted to her family deity which is probably worshipped in a shrine nearby, and then choose a personal deity. On the other hand, through the ritual, the dangerous babyeating demon of the forest is differentiated from the protective Goddess through a sacrifice of the subject needing protection, the baby itself. The more the child grows, the more she develops a devotional subjectivity as she becomes entangled in the relationship to more and more specific divinities, each of them allowing a section of her personal identity to be explored. In a certain way, during a life, the divinity and the individual grow and mature together.

284 Silvia Vignato Figure 11.2 A young mother performs the night prayer outside her mother’s house on the sixteenth day after her baby’s birth (Ritual of Patināṛ u). Medan, Indonesia, 1993

Photo by Silvia Vignato

The patināṛu as well as the saṭanku were considered customary rituals, bordering on the superstitious, and it took time before anyone mentioned them to me. This is precisely the key point of the link between the rites of the individual and the importance of the “forbidden” rituals in migration: the feeling that they allow is not a mature religious feeling, like the space of reflexivity that “praying” to a specific divinity enhances for many devotees – reflecting on their actual life, their job, and their sweetheart – but the embodiment of the process of fabrication and specification of the immanent sacredness through the body and its material relationship with the environment. To a certain extent, the very foundation of devotional Sivaism – the sivasakti, that is, the union of the female energy and the male body and its constant interplay and inversions – was made emotionally possible by such early ritual gendering. The fact that the Tamil considered their rituals as “only custom” also underlines to what extent they were aware, like any Medanese citizen, of customs other than theirs, and how their sacred relational cosmos was played out in space as well as in their devotional, individual relationship to their demon-God.

Feeling Hindu

285

Being Seen: Sacred Space as an Interactive Arena for Ethnic Citizenship A great part of Hindu devotion is about seeing and being seen. If we revert to the details of the procession and the sakti karakam, much of the ritual concerns the exposure of the divine statue and its incarnation in the sakti karakam’s body, as well as its possession of the devotees’ bodies. As already mentioned, the devotees are also seen by the divinity in its many manifestations: they are seen in their space, kin group, and attitude. Beyond the internal mechanism of multiplying the visions, carrying the icons out of the shrines into the public space meant, since the beginning of the migratory times, exposing it to the rest of the non-Hindu, non-Tamil inhabitants. Whenever I told my elderly non-Tamil friends that I was interested in Hindu rituals, I often met with stories of the firewalking or the procession as they took place in the plantations, or of the procession with the chariot through the streets of the (then named) Indian neighborhood (ind. kampung keling, now the name of one of Medan’s most luxurious shopping malls). Part of the quarrel between the powerful reformists and the traditionalists concerned what image the Indians (ind. orang India) or, as they were disparagingly called throughout Southeast Asia, the keling, were presenting of themselves as an ethnic group. In a country where Islam is the main religion, the fact that the Tamils in Medan had (and have) a tendency to abuse alcohol gave them a very bad reputation as drunkards (ind. tukang mabuk) and unreliable people (an empty promise is “a Tamil’s promise”, janjian keling). I was told by one of the main supporters of the reformist regulations, leader of the Medan Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (the official organ presiding over Hinduism), that the ecstasy of the disheveled devotees following the processions and the karakam often actually terminating in alcoholic stupor after the divinity had been safely brought home, did not suit what the Indians wanted the “Indonesians” to think of them at the beginning of their life as Indonesian citizens after Independence. Similarly, as one of the “mild” reformists told me, a funeral where the corpse was carried in the streets “without a proper coffin” and was followed by people playing the drums and dancing would make them look like uncivilized barbarians who did not respect the dead and discriminated against their own kin by publicly exposing them. This public presentation of the Tamils’ difference was precisely what the traditionalists stood for: they wanted to create and own a sacred devotional space within their public habitat, not merely in their homes and backyards. “Resmi”, or “official”, was what they wanted their procession to

286 Silvia Vignato Figure 11.3 A medium-priest performs a ritual of possession in his backyard while the neighbors watch. Medan, Indonesia, 1995

Photo by Silvia Vignato

Feeling Hindu

287

be. In Sivaism, when space is honored like a divinity, given offerings and chanted mantras, it is a form of Siva itself; more precisely, it is a shapeless manifestation of Siva (arupa) (Clothey 1978, 93; Renganathan 2008). As with all divinity, it needs to be seen and repeatedly honored to be kept alive. A well-known medium told me, when I observed that his non-Tamil neighbors were quite amused by the ceremony with possessions and sacrifices that he organized yearly in the little shrine he had built in his courtyard, “people here like us because we are Indians, they know this is our culture and we live here, it is our place!” One of the neighbors, a Muslim woman of Javanese origin commented that “at least, the Indians, we have known them for a long time. Before, there used to be many Indians and they were well behaved. Not like these newcomers (ind. pendatang) from the mountains (ethnic Karo) who come to live here and don’t respect each other’s tradition”. This attitude shows a specif ic interaction which the Hindu Tamils develop in a crucial moment of Indonesian contemporary history. Clothey (2006, 20-1) tells how in other diasporic contexts, the body can symbolize the entire social and cosmic sacred space, but the conditions of migration prevent actual material rituals in the public space. It was not the case here because while being very “alien” to the local populations in many aspects of their religiosity, the Hindu Tamils were nevertheless understandable and entitled aliens. “Respecting the tradition” (ind. menghormati kebudayaan) is an important attitude in multiethnic Indonesia, which can also include a certain degree of disregard for otherness as it certainly did in the case of the Javanese neighbor (their cults “gave her the creeps”, and they were well-known drunkards, etc.) but acknowledges citizenship as constituted by a part of varying tradition and culture and a plurality of religions. Discussing similarity and difference in “culture” was and is a much-practiced habit in multiethnic Medan. The kinship systems were constantly under comparison and sometimes the differences in marriage rules would be more difficult to accept in neighbors than those pertaining to religious belief.8 There was a specific aspect to the neighbor’s acceptance of the Tamils’ rituals. Possession (ind. kemasukan) is well known to many ethnic groups in Medan as in the whole of Indonesia. Non-Tamil neighbors would often comment that like the Tamils, they also had their possessing spirits across religious observance, although they often quickly added that they 8 Sadly, this mutual cautious recognition based on customs rather than on beliefs seems losing ground in contemporary Indonesia. As I am writing, a resurgence of attacks against Christian communities is taking place, with one in Medan.

288 Silvia Vignato

themselves did not really believe in such nonsense because they believed in God. Showing your demons, I was once told, means showing who you are. In sum, through their diverse ritual positioning, the Tamils were discussing in what way their religion would constitute their new citizenship. For the traditionalists, the acknowledgment of the local neighbors came through a mutual acceptance of the existence of localized spirits. An intimate sacred syntax obliged them to claim their Indonesian identity through an embodied and spatialized relationship with well-known, familiar divinities, in rituals which entrusted the “local population” – migrants from the other part of the archipelago – with the capacity to relate to them. Conversely, the reformists’ idea was to adhere to a formal Indonesia imposed by an overarching state and its religious categories. In no case did conversion to dominant religions, such as Islam of course, but given the context of Medan, Christianity as well, appear as an attractive pattern of interaction. Some Tamils were indeed traditionally Christians since their forefathers’ migration, originally Catholic, but in many cases converted to various kinds of Protestantism. Interestingly enough, though, many of them would also follow the “merely customary” early rituals, as to confirm that for the Tamils, Hindu religion and Tamil ethnicity were often overlapping. So much so, that the Catholics often stepped into the Hindu ritual sacred space and took part in the ceremonies and even, although less frequently, organized a sacrifice.

Embodied Memories and Fading Narratives In spite of their affectionate and fierce dedication, at the time of my enquiries, most performers of the forbidden rituals found it hard to say something articulate about the ritual or the Goddess that they were stubbornly defending. What I met in practice was alive and meaningful but only vaguely attached to larger narratives. Hardly anyone had an established narrative to explain and interpret the ritual. The Sumatran Tamils’ ignorance was certainly the consequence of the progressive thinning of traditional knowledge in the time and land of migration. Partly, it depended on the structure of the original migration. Although historically, Tamil merchants were present in Medan since the beginning of the modern city, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by far the large majority of those who were there in the mid-1990s were the descendants of the plantation workers who migrated or were deported to Malaya and Sumatra as well as to South Africa from famine-devastated villages

Feeling Hindu

289

in Tamil Nadu by labor-rapacious British colonizers (Rajakrishnan 1987; Mani 1993). Back in India, the rituals of the local versions of the Goddess had varied according to each village and its larger ritual and mythological affiliation, the latter depending on the influence of the main temples of the region, former political regencies, and their relationship to the colonial power as well as on local events and dynamics. Brahmins and other learned segments of the Tamil rural society did not often migrate and rarely reached Indonesia. Much more than in Malaya, the rituals that were performed in the Sumatran plantations were then put together by the migrant coolies, thanks to the mutual recognition of ritual competences rather than the more articulate forms of knowledge such as village stories or written or sung purana or epopees. For example, a firewalking was performed in the plantation of Bekala for the first time earlier than the major firewalking I became acquainted with in the area of Penang in Malaysia. It was performed9 at the beginning of the twentieth century, and by 1985, had been forbidden. By 1995, not one of the ritual experts active in Medan could say why a firewalking was performed for a Goddess10 beyond the general statement that she is “hot” (she is portrayed in a burning flame). In Malaysia, I was told that firewalking was related to the powerful image of a woman who died at childbirth or killed by a fetus-eating demon. Not everyone knows that but the ritual expert who directs the ritual that I studied does. In Sumatra, ten years after the ritual had stopped in Bekala, elderly ritual experts could still describe step-by-step what was required in order to dig the fire pit properly, what the main ceremony would entail, how to prepare the firewalkers, and how to prepare the other self-sacrificial devotional acts accompanying the walk such as kāvaṭi-bearing. Nobody, though, could mention a story justifying or contextualizing the practice. Furthermore, the people I met were for the most part – and unlike the mildly reformist group who had autonomously attained literacy – illiterate in Tamil. In the absence of a regular narrative, they could not access printed materials – books, leaflets, written temple puranas, and the like – which 9 The Ayer Itam firewalking started in the 1930s and when I enquired with the elderly members of the local community, many said that it was around that time when most northern Malaysian firewalking ceremonies started, although in the estates they were apparently quite common (Clothey 2006; Willford 2014, 137). 10 Originally, in its Indian context, it was probably a fragment of a multiple-day ceremony including textual chanting and representations and a firewalk ritual (see Hiltebeitel 1988; Babb 1977; Vignato 2003, 2006) and it is certainly echoing Angalaparamsevari’s cycle described by Meyer (1986); in Malaysia, as major Malaysian firewalkings do, it more vaguely referred to a Periyachi (“the big woman”) said to have eaten her foetus.

290 Silvia Vignato

were the main source of knowledge besides oral transmission before the digital revolution occurred. Their illiteracy in Tamil was the consequence of the Indonesian policy of national integration, forbidding regular education to be carried out in languages other than Indonesian: neither the local ethnic languages nor, especially, Chinese, was learned at school and no curriculum could be taught in a foreign language.

“The Body” Learns through the Senses and Remembers: The Sivaist Esthetic Matrix as a Process of Retooling Not being acquainted with stories is not an obstacle for the participation in rituals, neither in other migrant communities nor in India. In India, though, most village people are not learned in scriptures, but they live in a constant retelling or reshowing of local and general myths in ceremonies, in ordinary talks, in school books, on TV, during politicians’ talks, and so on. In Sumatra, this whole narrative environment tended to be absent. Still, people “knew” the rituals and found them meaningful. As I said, they had an embodied memory, but, as Carol Kidron has justly underlined (2011), embodied memory needs to be specified in its construction or it becomes too vague a concept. When a specific experience is involved like digging a pit, mixing a colored paste, or doing a dance, embodiment of knowledge clearly goes through imitation and repetition. But where is the sensorial memory lodged in? This is where the construction of the esthetic Sivaist matrix plays a fundamental role. Babies are particularly meaningful in the relationship with self-sacrifice as they are living victims, made more alive (healthier, with a brighter future) by the fact that they are sacrificed while still unable to do it by themselves; at the same time, they embody the transformation of a passive victim into a devotional subject. Kidron has shown that sensorial memory is constructed in liminal moments and reverberates to conscious feelings in unexpected forms, and this happens with babies. A friend of mine explained that you can bring a picture to the temple, but on top of that you also want the baby’s body to be there and be seen, and to feel that she was offered to the divinity as a victim even if she is so small that she will never remember. “Babies enjoy it!” she maintained. Mothers handing their wailing baby to the karakam commented that it cried because it was the first time, then it would get used to it, or it did not cry because it already acknowledged the Goddess. Older babies did not cry, people always commented. Or they cried in fear because they could feel the Goddess’s power – a good sign. I had witnessed a two-year-old girl imitate her medium father’s possession,

Feeling Hindu

291

making the whole neigborhood roar with laughter; still, she mastered the session perfectly well. Whichever way, babies were submitted to rituals to be impregnated with divinity and children were taught to experience the divinity in their body given in sacrifice. Through the constant reference to the sensorial victim body, the “forbidden” rituals expanded the founding esthetic matrix that a person acquired through Tamil Hindu upbringing since their patināṛu and laid a base to the acquisition of a more accomplished, sought for, and conceptualized knowledge – or not. Ann David (2012), who has studied the relevance of ritual ecstatic dance in the British Tamil diaspora, maintains that embodied devotion, involving kinesthetic and sensorial doing rather than more articulate and spoken ritual engagement, is particularly suited to the diasporic or migratory situation because it allows marginalized people and those not literate in Hindu scriptures, to be part of temple rituals and celebrations of the local migrant group that they would otherwise be excluded from. It is the low castes’ revindication, as David (2012) continues inspired by Geaves, of a more individualized devotion regardless the caste, a pure bhakti act which anybody is entitled to.11 Although this bhakti shortcut was certainly true for the Sumatran Tamils, their social revindication did not apply in the same way as what David describes for the Sri Lankan Tamils. The group of ritual activists whom I met had very varied social backgrounds and their knowledge of stories did not depend on that: some were from the “better” group of castes (who, in Medan, called themselves “the Tamils”) and others from the lower castes (whom nobody dared call “the paṛaiyār”, although they were described by the gesture of hitting the drum); some were marginal to their own society, like a well-known drunkard; others were quite learned and respected, or were acknowledged traders or workers. Performing the forbidden selfsacrifices was not so much an equalizing gesture of marginal, illiterate people claiming their place in a devotional universe, as a claim to a ritual responsibility bestowed on them by the insensate decision of the reformists. If they did not perform the sacrifices, who would do it? Jaya, one of the mediums, said he felt “strange” (ind. aneh) to be sitting side by side with the very low-caste butcher Supiah, chanting mantras, and begging even lower-caste gravedigger (veṭṭiār) to teach him how to go about a ritual. That was what his father’s migration had bestowed on him, he said, and he had to accept the burden. 11 Bhakti, “devotion”, is the theistic attitude in Hinduism which allows any individual to attain salvation through proper devotion to the main divinities, Siva and Visnu, and their avatars, regardless of their social status.

292 Silvia Vignato

The responsibility they felt concerned their group and themselves as individuals but also a feeling of necessity (ind. “mesti dibuat, mesti betul betul mesti”, said Gundu, “it has, really really has to be done”) which I think is related to the cosmic value of many parts of the ritual. The karakam is a matrix of the cosmos, with its five elements, but also the archetypical man (the vessel is the body, the coconut the head, as is common knowledge). It is “stable and mobile, human and divine, solid and fluid” (Clothey 2006, 52). While ceremonies in temples and homes echo a larger, more complex and layered Hindu cosmos and pantheon, devotional acts by the river recreate the world where the world began for many of them: in the plantations. As Strathern & Stewart underline (2011, 397), embodiment is always emplacement and the karakam was happening in a plantation where no Tamil lived any longer, performed by urbanites who thus remembered and celebrated their beginnings as migrants at the same time as their premigration descendance as Tamils. It was then a specific celebration of their appropriation of the foreign land carried out through work and devotion and not, or to a far lesser extent, the reconstruction of some of the Hindu complexity, as it happened in towns through the construction of proper temples. Not only, as Andrew Willford (2014, 39) shows for the Malaysian former plantation workers, were the plantations “a site of nostalgia and positive identification”, they were also the fertile margin where an important transformation took place for the whole community. Steven Vertovec (2000, 5) calls this active resettlement within the religious universe a process of “retooling”, underlining how it implies the identification and development of what is ritually most effective in the new context.

Border Guardians and Technologies of Diasporic Awareness The Hindu universe cannot do without stories, deities, texts, chanting, and a burgeoning fabrication of images. Speaking of the group of ritual traditionalists, I do not want to convey the idea of some bacchic devotees who are mute and aniconic, uninterested in stories and myths. The devotees complained about their lack of narrative and narrated knowledge and tried to fill the gap as much as they could. Some would sew together fragments of myths as well as of TV shows or even whatever information I might provide through my studies until they came up with good stories, but they often expressed frustration. It is interesting to remark, though, that none of the “traditionalists” was interested in becoming an expert of narration. Some of the medium priests

Feeling Hindu

293

I was attached to accused each other of “being wrong” and doing things incorrectly as a consequence of their “knowing nothing” and most people had their own straight version of why certain things had to be done in such and such a way, but the multiplication of stories bothered nobody. Turner speaks of the “block of exegesis” (1967) when the researcher finds no explanation for a ritual act and I met such a block in the form of the multiplication of personal interpretations in the absence of a shared, or authoritative, narrative memory. When the technological revolution stepped in, it was not put to the service of narration either. When I carried out my main fieldwork, in the early 1990s, modern visual technologies were at their beginning. Internet hardly existed but videotapes and videorecorders were starting to be common instruments. Right at the moment when India faded away as a direct memory, a diasporic construction began under my eyes and it was not a narrated construction, but one that relied on images. Any source would do. My own video recordings, a rare technological achievement at the time, were played over and over to detect “mistakes” in recent celebrations. Indian stories crept in when Indonesian TV started screening Indian films which everybody watched and loved. Being Indian was no longer confined, as it had been in Medan, to being a black drunken semi-slave drifted to town from the plantations. Images of a larger, richer, desirable India were suddenly in circulation. If until very recently Malaysia had been the richest Hindu world that only some Medanese could travel to, India was suddenly available to everyone. The result was an effort to make the rituals look less provincial and more precious, modern, technological – in a word, as people said, more beautiful (ind. cantik). It was an esthetic effort in a strict and large acceptation; it involved the senses and tended to beauty. In 1991, in Tanah Hitam, I sat for hours with two 25-year-old sons of long-dead temple priests who debated on the right pattern to decorate a karakam. In 1995, films had inspired the two young men to consider luxurious ideas of patterns and fancy glittering decorations and when I looked at one of their Facebook pages, I can see that the whole ceremony has gained in detail. As far as the stories were concerned, the massive exposure to what the Medanese Tamil called the “kaset sāmiṇ”, or sacred videotapes, allowed most people to choose the stories they loved best. Certainly, a total anarchy in ritual might have happened consequent to this sudden richness of screened stories, but it did not. The notion of “border guardian” that Ron Geaves has elaborated when reflecting on Saivism in the diaspora becomes an interesting key to understand the transformation that the Medan community was undergoing. “He or she

294 Silvia Vignato Figure 11.4 The blood of the sacrificed goat is poured onto the offerings and the amulets at the foot of the ritual pole. Medan, Indonesia, 1993

Photo by Silvia Vignato

is a charismatic figure in a Weberian sense and often answers to no institutional nor dynastic authority. They might not consider they are the authority, but both they and their community know no other source […]. Innovative, intensely counter-intuitive, they creatively guard the border terrain” (Geaves 2007, 3).12 Jaya, Gundu, Supiah, and Parmes (a female medium), just to quote a few of the ritual-performing traditionalists, played that role in Medan when the group of second-generation migrants upgraded themselves to diasporic Indians. They were smart enough to use technologies in order to fuel the esthetic transformation of self-sacrificing devotional acts and thus police the borders of devotional Hinduism in Medan, preventing it as much from becoming an archaism no longer corresponding to the devotees’ sensibility as from becoming a purified formalistic religion imposed from above. They also discouraged people, often very young people, who would be inspired by films to do very original ritual performances, like being possessed by film stars or dancing specific choreographies. Trips to nearby Penang, in 12 The idea that religion in migration needs attention to its borders, which need negotiation and sharp rituality in order to avoid both conflicts and oppression, is very interestingly developed for the Malaysian Hindu case by Clothey (2006).

Feeling Hindu

Figure 11.5 A medium-priest prophesizes while possessed. Two men hold the sacrificial knife he is standing upon. Medan, Indonesia, 1994

Photo by Silvia Vignato

295

296 Silvia Vignato

Malaysia, were more and more frequent. There, the “border guardians” would buy tools, decorations, cassettes, and booklets, and they would participate in rituals, listen to talks, and then come back with their own interpretation of their new acquisitions, which they often criticized but which gave them authority. Their dream to visit India and access the main source of Hinduism while being sanctified by a major pilgrimage, would come true after Air Asia introduced cheap and easy direct flights from Kuala Lumpur to Chennai. Blood sacrifice was also influenced by technological transformation. While certainly, the goat could not be slaughtered in many different ways, the local spirits, demons (pēy), non-Sanskritized divinities of half-human origin, and the blood-drinkers that would receive the offering of the victims, benefitted from the new flow of images. Vague memories of these deities, often contrasting one with another – domestic memories of one village did not coincide with those of another village – were fitted into more standard divine personalities. For example, Kāttēri, the demon-like, fetus-eating goddess who protected children was promptly substituted by Periyācciyammaṇ, a more or less widely accepted lower divinity with the same characteristics. Periyācciyammaṇ statue is often present in Malaysian Tamil temples which have been redecorated by Tamil artisans directly hired from India; although a local divinity, she has acquired a standard image. As I said, the guardians were not simply chasing a richer or better version of their own religious culture. They were selective and showed a specific pride in putting forward whatever little information they had learned from their forefathers: they wanted to contribute to the diaspora, not to replicate the largely dominant Malaysian Indian identity. I heard Jaya despise “the Malaysian Indian way” more than once, claiming that he had better knowledge, and would one day go back to his father’s village to establish the “original Hindu Medanese from India” version. It must finally be added that this effort of owning their own rituals and keeping knowledge within the community was also carried out by the reformists who were in charge of the main temples in Medan. In this regard, the two groups reunited easily.

Interconnections: Keeping the Hindu in a Multiethnic and Multireligious State The technological boom and the sudden rise in connectivity brought about changes at all levels of the Hindu community in Sumatra. Indian priests could be hired at a few city temples, who had been guided by a sort of

Feeling Hindu

297

Figure 11.6 The act of sacrifice. Medan, Indonesia, 1993

Photo by Silvia Vignato

Brahman agamic academia for diasporic Tamil Hindu in Pillayarpatti, in Tamil Nadu (Fuller 1999). A few teachers of Bharathanatyam appeared for short periods and some girls attended their classes, which were then furthered through the study of videos. Vegetarianism spread among the reformists as well as ordinary devotees, including some who would participate in the ceremonies staging sacrifices. In the early 1990s, another movement interested the Sumatran Hindus. While the Tamil Hindus were creating their diasporic condition as opposed to their former migrant one, they also gained inclusion in the larger “Hindu” world of Indonesian Hinduism. Ruled and largely dominated by the Balinese, who had fabricated it through their “internal conversion”, the Indonesian Hindu world included many ethnic groups who had converted to Hinduism as they claimed their ancient Hinduization so as to preserve those cults to local divinities that major religions would otherwise forbid (Ramstedt 2005). In Sumatra, some Karo had joined the movement and the Tamils, whose Hinduism could not be questioned even compared to the Balinese, had been required by the central direction of the Parisadha Hindu Dharma Indonesia to teach them “proper” cults (Steedley 1993: Vignato 2000). Like the Tamil donor of the only Karo Tamil Hindu temple ever built in Sumatra once told me, in his view, the only way to fill that temple with devotees would be to

298 Silvia Vignato

bring in some Tamils; to him, like to most other Hindu Tamils, there was no difference between his ethnicity and his religion, and his religion included the Sivaist embodied esthetic matrix. So for the Karo to become Hindu, they had to become Indian. In fact, by year 2000, the Hindu Karo had all converted, mainly to Christianity, and the initiator of the conversions, a former communist, had sadly been buried in a Christian grave. The Tamils participated in further larger movements because they were not entirely of Hindu faith. Many formerly lower-caste Tamils were Catholic even before migration and had their own ethnic church. In Sumatra, a minority of them had then converted to some millenarist Protestant faiths, particularly Pentekosta and Advent, which catered for a mixed ethnic group of faithful. But because in North Sumatra, caste sensitiveness still existed as far as marriage was concerned, the Hindus of the Tamiḻār group would keep the delineating border of their Hindu group well watched without even considering religious matters. Vice versa, as we saw, many historic Catholic Tamils participated in the sacrificial rituals and performed the ceremonies of the person to babies, children and young persons, so they were not really threatening for their Hindu cousins and intermarriage would often take place rather shifting to plastic Hinduism, requiring no official abjure of former allegiance than to Catholicism, with its clear-cut baptism rite.

Conclusion: Portable Religions and Global Space In this chapter, I have focused on a particular moment in the construction of Indonesian Tamils’ positioning within the worldwide Tamil diaspora. In the early 1990s, when I became acquainted with them, the Tamil Hindus in Sumatra presented a migratory tale of progressive weakening of the original culture due to the fragmentation of the migrating society and its submission to the hosting country. They no longer read and wrote, but often spoke, in their language; they were cut off from their genealogic links and had no communication with the original village, unknown to most of them. In the process of transformation of their religiosity, they appropriated and used an Indonesian nation-building process which operated through a legal framework for religious activities and the policed enforcement of it in order to deal with their own group as a specific social unit. We saw how a group of resistant “traditionalists” could perfect a counter-narrative of religiousness and rituality, based on the entitlement to a self-acknowledgement through some specific devotional acts as they were supposed to be before migration, but certainly since the arrival in the new land. Emotions such as anger and

Feeling Hindu

299

longing appeared as fundamental objects of analysis in the understanding of this dynamics. I have shown how the Tamils remembered and reworked their ethnic and personal identity through rituals of self-sacrifice and how this empowered them as individuals and as Tamils in the Medanese and coastal Sumatran society. My argument emphasizes how the sensorial Tamil Sivaist esthetic matrix constructed through personal rites and expanded in the self-sacrifice rituals becomes particularly meaningful to the devotees because it provides them with a relational power both concerning their neighbors and divinities. I have also underlined how the need to perform the village rituality is lived as a responsibility toward the group as a whole which is, in itself, an empowering feeling. On the whole, I have given multiple examples of the “ritualizing on the boundaries” that characterizes the construction in Sumatra of a Hindu practice more and more actively belonging to the Hindu diaspora throughout the world while engaging in detail in the small local dynamics of ordinary life and citizenship. The “border guardians” have appeared as central characters in the process, as they are actively engaged in fashioning both rituality and narratives which can be accepted and acknowledged as Hindu at a local as well as a global level. To conclude, I would like to return to Csordas’s idea of portable religions. Because Indians travel, Hinduism has traveled since its early formulations, although it no longer seduces newborn states to gain strength through its visions. While the religions of the book, which postulate a transcendent divinity as the only and ultimate reference of the devotee, are evidently good travelers’ companions, an immanent and relational divinity as in devotional Hinduism seems too complicated to be easily transplanted. Nevertheless, literature shows that the same village rituals that the Indonesian Tamils stood for became particularly meaningful across the Tamil diaspora which expanded through the world during the plantation boom, and started being acknowledged as the main “diasporic rituals” in more recent years (Clothey 2006; Willford 2007, 2014). It seems evident that the vitality of “popular” Hindu rituals in a situation of migration does not only reside in their power of individuation, but also, and perhaps mainly, in their plasticity in dealing with the new social context of migration, thanks to the structural plasticity of their larger imaginaries. The principle of meaningful equivalences, carefully checked by guardians, which we have seen animate the bhakti rituals here described recreates and emplaces the Hindu cosmos in any new place through a material dialogue with it. It is not surprising that migrants all through the diaspora cling on to these rituals as a means to strengthen their personal and social identity in their non-Indian contexts.

300 Silvia Vignato

References Babb, Lawrence.1977. “Hindu Mediumship in Singapore”. Southeast Journal of Social Science 2 (1-2). Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Clothey, Fred W. 1978. The Many Faces of Murukan: The History and Meaning of a South Indian God. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. —. 2006. Ritualizing on the Boundaries: Continuity and Innovation in the Tamil Diaspora. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Csordas, Thomas, ed. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. David, Ann R. 2012. “Embodied Migration: Performance Practices of Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Communities in London”. Journal of Intercultural Studies 33 (4): 375-94. Eck, Diana L. 1998. Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. New York: Columbia University Press. Fuller, Christopher J. 1999. “Priestly Education and the Agamic Ritual Tradition in Contemporary Tamilnadu”. In The Resources of History: Tradition, Narration and Nation in South Asia (Etudes thématiques 8), edited by Jackie Assayag, 51-61. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient. Geaves, Ron. 2007. Saivism in the Diaspora: Contemporary Forms of Skanda Worship. Oakville: Equinox. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Internal Conversion in Bali”. In The Interpretation of Cultures, 170-90. New York: Basic Books. Kidron, Carol A. 2011. “Sensorial Memory”. In A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment, edited by Frances E. Mascia-Lees, 451-66. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Kumar, Pratap P. 2000. Hindus in South Africa: Their Traditions and Beliefs. Durban: University of Durban-Westville. Mani, A. 1993. “Indians in North Sumatra”. In Indian Communities Southeast Asia, edited by K.S. Sandhu & A. Mani, 47-97. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). Meyer, Eveline. 1986. Ankalaparamecuvari: A Goddess of Tamilnadu, Her Myths and Cult. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden. Nabokov, Isabelle. 2000. Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parry, Jonathan. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rajakrishnan, Ramasamy.1987. A Subculture of Povery among Indians in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malayia Press.

Feeling Hindu

301

Ramstedt, Martin. 2005. Hinduism in Modern Indonesia. London/ New York: Routledge. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, & Margaret Lock 1987. “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series 1 (1): 6-41. Steedly, Mary M. 1993. Hanging without a Rope: Narrative Experience in Colonial and Postcolonial Karoland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stewart, Pamela J., & Andrew Strathern. 2003. Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. —. 2011. “Personhood”. in A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment edited by Frances E. Mascia-Lees. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Tarabout, Gilles. 1986. Sacrifier et donner à voir en pays Malabar: les fêtes de temple au Kerala (Inde du Sud): étude anthropologique. (To Sacrifice and to Expose in the Malabar Country: Temple Festivals in Kerala [South India]. An Anthropological Study.) Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient. Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2000. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London/ New York: Routledge. Vignato, Silvia. 2000. Au nom de l’hindouisme: reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie. (In the Name of Hinduism: Ethnic Reframing Amongst the Tamils and the Karo in Indonesia). Paris: L’Harmattan. —. 2003. “The Ritual Struggle of the Tamil and the Karo within Hinduism in North Sumatra”. In Hinduism in Modern Indonesia, edited by Martin Ramstedt, 242-54. London/ New York: Routledge. —. 2006. “Sakti karakam en Indonésie et en Malaisie. L’évolution de deux fêtes à la Déesse dans la diaspora tamoule” (Sakti Karakam in Indonesia and Malaysia. The Evolution of Two Rituals for the Goddess within the Tamil Diaspora). Purusārtha 25: 237-69. Willford, Andrew C. 2002. “‘Weapons of the Meek’: Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia”. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 9 (2): 247-80. —. 2014. Tamils and the Haunting of Justice. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

About the author Silvia Vignato is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Department of Human Science for Education “Riccardo Massa”, Università di MilanoBicocca. She teaches undergraduate and graduate students and supervises

302 Silvia Vignato

MA and PhD theses focused on Southeast Asia. Her actual research interest is on subjectivity as related to gender, evolving structures of families (with a focus on matrilocality), and children in Indonesia (Aceh) and Malaysia. She examines marginal environments and considers issues of work and unemployment. Beside a monograph about Indonesian Hinduism (Au nom de l’hindouisme. Reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), she has published articles about Malaysian factory workers and manpower agents for migrants and about post-conflict and post-disaster young Achenese people (children, teenagers, young parents). She recently edited the volume Dreams of Prosperity: The Process of Integration in Southeast Asia, Silkworm (forthcoming).

12 Afterword What Makes Asian Migrants’ Religious Experience Asian? Janet Alison Hoskins Brown, Bernardo E. & Brenda S.A. Yeoh (eds), Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018 doi: 10.5117/9789462982321/ch12

Many of the most important studies on religion and migration published at the turn of the 21st century focused almost exclusively on European and American experiences – José Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), Thomas Tweed’s Crossing and Dwelling (2006), and Manuel Vasquez’s More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (2011). Although some of these studies do include mention of Asian immigrants in Europe or the Americas, they do not look at the specific features of migration within Asia, from one Asian country to another, or the ways in which Asian notions of religion are different from those most widespread in Euro-America. This volume thus provides a series of case studies which focuses on these subjects, and also (as a whole) emphasizes the potential for creativity, agency, and reinvention on the past of migrants who are often seen primarily as victims – displaced, discouraged, and disabled once they are separated from their home terrain. As the editors have noted, this volume tries to move beyond a stereotype of the migrant, desperately clinging to a culture and religion which no longer make sense in the new context. Instead, they hope to focus on how a new setting can provide an opportunity for doctrinal innovation, religious revitalization, and ritual elaboration. Asia presents quite a different religious field from Europe or the Americas, because Asian religions have traditionally been much more fluid and less exclusionary than the monotheistic creeds of the Abrahamic lineage (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Before European colonial conquest and the related missionary invasion, Asians often followed a teacher or a creed without feeling that it was necessary to renounce other teachers or creeds. It was only during the nineteenth century that European scholars made the teachings of

304 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu into “isms” (Masuzawa 2005). For well over a thousand years, the teachings of these three figures blended more or less seamlessly in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, although there were periods where one tradition was clearly ascendant over the others (Duara 2015, 8-9). The language of religious pluralism in both Europe and Asia emerged at the same time when a secular orientation became dominant in national politics and policies. Movements to modernize and rationalize Buddhism and Hinduism were influenced by secular critiques and values, as well as by ways in which the notion of “religion” came to be defined by European scholars. The “confessional nationalism” of the religious wars of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe influenced related notions of a “chosen people”, which have surfaced in modern nationalist movements, from Zionism in Israel (Boyarin & Boyarin 2002), to Caodaism in Vietnam (Hoskins 2012, 2014, 2015), and to Taiping in China (Duara 2015). The chapters in this volume that deal with the aspirational nationalism of the Karen in Burma and the Naga in India are deeply infused with this fusion of visions of nation and religious community (Horstmann, this volume; Longkumer, this volume). Talal Asad (1993) and others (van Der Veer 2013; Goossaert & Palmer 2011) have argued that religion and secularism are “twinned” phenomenon, which have both emerged in parallel developments throughout the twentieth and 21st centuries, in dialogue with each other. In Asia, this dialogue has been complicated by the emergence of strong, avowedly atheist political regimes in China, Vietnam, and North Korea (Ngo & Quijada 2015), and the spread of evangelical Christianity in many other areas. The growing antagonism between atheist regimes and devout populations has pushed some groups – like the Catholics of Vietnam – to leave their homelands as refugees, motivated as much as by religious reasons as by political ones (Ninh 2014). Asian experiences of Christianity have also often been overshadowed by their experiences of Western conquest and colonialism that made the presence of Christian missions possible. Ambivalence to negative reactions to the presence of European rulers has hence colored the hostile relationship between Christian religious organizations and many Asian states. Paradoxically, it is precisely because of their own difficult relationship with these same Asian nation states that many minority populations (including the Naga and Karen in this volume, and also many other hill-tribe groups in Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia) have been drawn to convert. Christian humanitarian institutions have proved a valuable ally for weak and marginalized populations, like the people of East Timor, seeking independence from a hostile, largely Muslim-dominated state.

Af terword

305

A new exclusionary approach to religious difference might seem “unAsian” in historical perspective, and in most countries in Asia, there were few Christians until the twentieth century (Hoskins 2014). A few exceptions – most of the Philippines, and parts of India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Vietnam – had long-standing communities dating back several centuries. But most Asian Christians today are either first- or second-generation converts. It is clear that the “zeal of the convert” should not be underestimated in many Asian countries. The fact that conversion to certain forms of Christianity requires a radical disjuncture from earlier ways of life may have, in fact, only increased the commitment of many of those who have chosen to make this switch. Several chapters in this volume detail the passionate commitment to Christianity of the Naga people of northern India, the Karen of Thailand and Burma, the Kerala of southern India, and the Filipinos in Korea and Italy. Most of these groups live as religious minorities in both their homelands and their host communities. Religious minorities seem to be more likely to migrate, since the marginalization they feel at home may in turn serve to motivate their desire to travel to another country, sometimes simply to seek their own fortunes, but often also to spread their faith in a new environment. The complexities involved for Asian Catholics, who travel to Italy to be closer to the center of their adopted religion only to find that religious devotion is relegated to a smaller sphere in that highly secularized society than it is at home, are revealed in the chapters by Brown and Gallo. So I think it is interesting to ask how Asian migrants may have different forms of religious experience from other migrants. These chapters show how migration has served to revitalize aspects of religious experience for both followers of “traditional”, localized Asian religions (even when included in what Westerners call “the world religions”), and the “religions of the book” in the Abrahamic tradition. Older Asian religious orientations are often tolerant and inclusive in their rituals. In new geographical contexts, they have become meaningful in new ways to migrants. Modernization, and the mobility of both new media and migration, have not caused them to be replaced by the Abrahamic religions, with their greater emphasis on transcendence and proselytization. Dean’s account of the “portability” of southeast Chinese Daoism, Vignato’s account of the “plasticity” of revitalized Hinduism in Muslim-majority Sumatra, and Pathirage’s account of readjusting the boundaries of the sacred and the profane for Sri Lankan Buddhist rituals in Australia are all illustrations of this phenomenon. Christianity aspires to transform both its converts and religious landscape, but the chapters in this volume show both that this transformation can take a wide variety of different forms and that its rewards are

306 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

inconsistent. Catholics from Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines may all feel somewhat disappointed by the lack of everyday religious ritual in the shadow of the mother church in Rome. Karen and Naga Christians may want to see their religious devotion as part of a pathway to national independence, hoping that both the international connections and the fundraising potential of religious organizations will help them to realize their political goals. Undocumented Filipino workers in South Korea may be seeking instead a kind of solace from religious practice, and also a way to become visible in a society where they are often invisible. The issues addressed by these chapters cluster into groups by the type of religious communities that they examine. The chapters on Chinese religions have to address the relationship between religious practices and the state. The chapters dealing with Sri Lankans in Italy and Australia, as well as Christian Filipinos in South Korea, encourage us to problematize notions of multiculturalism. Horstmann and Lucia both deal with American “exports” – the first, a form of militarized evangelical recruitment which calls itself “humanitarian”, and the second, a bodily practice branded as Hindu but operating as a form of movement therapy rather than as a religious ritual. Longkumer and Gallo deal with the missionary impulse, and the factors which make participation in often dangerous and difficult foreign missionaries desirable. Finally, Vignato looks at how the “plasticity” of Hinduism is refashioned by Tamil migrants to Sumatra, Indonesia, both during a period of relative religious impoverishment due to great distances from the homeland and later when modern media have permitted a reinfusion of religious imagery with video broadcasts to migrants who have now come to see themselves as “diasporic Indians”. Both of the chapters on Chinese religions and how they travel have to grapple with the fact that religion in China can be perceived by the current government as a “threat” (because of its historical link to protest movements like Taiping) and as “social capital” (because it can buttress cultural heritage and offer social services) (André Laliberté 2013). During the decades that religion was primarily regarded as “superstition” by the Marxist regime, many localized, popular religious practices “migrated” to Southeast Asia (Dean, this volume), and Buddhist organizations retreated into quiescence. Now the “gods of Southeast Asia” who migrated to places like Singapore are reconnected to their homelands, and new ritual specialists may be initiated in Singapore and travel back to China to revive once-suppressed ceremonies. Taiwanese businessmen practicing Tzu Chi’s brand of this worldly charitable Buddhism have managed to attract many local Chinese to join this lay organization, building the foundations for further expansion (Huang, this volume).

Af terword

307

Dean examines the ways in which Daoist practices are “portable” in Thomas Csordas’s sense of traveling across borders easily. They “can fit in a wooden trunk, or be contained within a talisman kept in a pouch hung around the neck”, and the gods themselves can serve new communities in new localities through networks of circulatory flows where not only sacred objects, but also ritual texts, knowledge of divination techniques, and technical expertise are circulated and exchanged. Huang argues that the appeal of Tzu Chi to Chinese citizens shows “the overriding of ethnic divisions through religious affiliations”. However, treating the difference between Taiwanese and Chinese Buddhists as an “ethnic division” seems inappropriate to me. What seems to be overridden are differences in national origins, not in “ethnicity” as it is usually understood by anthropologists and sociologists. Entrepreneurial immigrants who establish new businesses in China are subject to different regulations than Chinese citizens, and the brand of religion which they promote is appealing because it is cosmopolitan and linked to economic elites, in addition to modeling ecological conservation and charitable social work. Since Huang documents the fact that most of these Taiwanese business families intend to return to Taiwan to retire, they do not seem to qualify to me as an “ethnic group” within China, but are (in the classic terminology) sojourners rather than settlers (Reid 2001). Multiculturalism is analyzed as problematic in each of the chapters dealing with Sri Lankans overseas: in Italy, Sri Lankan priests are encouraged to arrange performances of colorful ethnic customs, but it is not appreciated if they want to go beyond an essentialized notion of culture to help in revitalizing the Italian church. In Australia, meat, fish, and sexy Bollywood dancing are found inside the sacred space of a temple, although they would be excluded from this space in Sri Lanka. While participants find this unsettling, they seem to think that it does not keep them from remaining faithful to the goal of replicating ritual in the homeland as closely as possible. Asor’s chapter on Filipino Christians in Korea also works at the edges of the issue of multiculturalism, arguing that religious networks can empower migrants in trying circumstances. Undocumented people who need to be invisible in other places can be visible in the church. Volunteers help maintain a collective moral responsibility through ethical behavior. Asor looks at how the Catholic Church provides opportunities for migrants to help out each other and achieve a sense of agency and of community in a confusing and often hostile new environment. Horstmann’s examination of the Free Burma Rangers in this book looks at them as a transnational organization which describes its aims as

308 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

“humanitarian relief”, while led by an American former special services officer and his family. Horstmann appropriately questions whether this armed evangelical group should present itself as simply “humanitarian”, when it has clear political goals, and when these goals could also endanger the populations that they purport to help. While offering medical treatment and gifts, they are also recruiting young men to serve as trained soldiers against the Burmese state. It might perhaps be appropriate to further problematize the position of (primarily American-funded) Christian missionaries in a primarily Buddhist country already torn apart by religious and ethnic differences. Lucia (this volume) argues that American yoga activists have adopted a “missionary model” to export yoga (once seen as “India’s gift to the world”) to other impoverished and politically struggling countries in the Global South. There is something of a disconnect, however, between her account of the motivations of the Hindu modernizers who brought yoga to the West and the Western “spiritual seekers” who want to spread it further. The Indian teachers who innovated and developed the modern sequences of postural yoga (including B.K.S. Iyengar and Patabhi Jois) saw it as universal and accessible to anyone with a strong commitment to practice. They themselves sanctioned a view of yoga as a “portable practice” which could be detached from its cultural heritage. Invoking the “hierarchical relativism” of people like Swami Vivekananda, they expressed a great tolerance for all other religious paths, but saw them as inferior to the more encompassing Hindu philosophy (van der Veer 2013). American yogis do not have the same perspective on the practice, which they see as a path to personal transformation detached from any loyalty to particular cultures or heritages. In fact, one of the most frequent assertions made by almost all American yoga teachers is that “yoga is a practice, not a doctrine or belief”. Perhaps the most important aspect of both Protestant and Catholic missionary teachings is the fact that Christianity requires exclusive loyalty, and hence requires converts to denounce their earlier faiths and rituals. Without this exclusionary requirement, the “missionary model” of American yogis is not convincingly religious as opposed to secular, and its vague, well-intentioned charitable interventions can never have the same transformative effect on local worlds. Americans who identify as yogis embrace the modern concept of “spirituality”, freed from institutional control by clerics (van der Veer 2013). While I agree that it is possible to see some elements of paternalism and cultural insensitivity in this effort to “export yoga to the needy”, it follows a more therapeutic model, in which the spiritual element is given less importance than the use of yoga for medical and fitness reasons. Encouraging troubled or traumatized people to exercise

Af terword

309

is quite different from encouraging them to convert to a foreign religion, and I doubt that it can be anywhere near as harmful to local values and beliefs. Both Longkumer and Gallo deal with the missionary impulse, and trace its appeal to a sense of inferiority or marginality. Longkumer describes the aspirations of a northern Indian Christian minority group to become its own nation with a theocratic Christian orientation and a commitment to missionize the rest of Asia. A covenant has been established with God, according to Naga teachings, which will reward devotion to the cause by the creation of a new state ruled by the Holy Spirit with the Bible as its constitution. Without the funding to support their mission, Naga believers go on often dangerous missions by passing themselves off as economic migrants and trying to secretly evangelize others in their commercial networks. Asian Catholic migrants in Italy, in contrast, are affiliated with a wealthy sponsor in Rome, but feel inferior and de-masculinized due to their work in home care and domestic service. They aspire to preach “The Way” back in the Philippines or India to turn their faith into tickets to activism in transforming and expanding Asian Catholicism. The “plasticity of Hinduism” is the subject of Vignato’s chapter, which perhaps reflects most directly on the contrasts between the Abrahamic religions that have converted many Asians and the more localized, older Asian traditions that have also been modernized through modern media and migration. This plasticity has made Hinduism “portable” in spite of the many signs of its groundedness in India. Tamil Hinduism seems to live through ritual actions, even if there is relatively little reflection or exegesis about what particular rituals mean or why they are performed. The performance of forbidden rites by lower-caste people (like the drummers) is compelling since it evokes more vividly the sensual qualities of the homeland than other permitted public rituals which fit Indonesian models of multiculturalism. Their embodied memories of rituals were not accompanied by narrative explanations, but their placement on the sites of former plantations brought the ritual actors back to the area where Tamils were first brought to labor in Sumatra. The transformations wrought when these “second-generation migrants upgraded themselves to diasporic Indians” (Vignato, this volume) at the beginning of the 21st century are fascinating, since media images of Indian rituals now inspire new ritual forms in the diaspora. But, even these new forms need to be localized, made meaningful to the Hindu community in Sumatra, and imbued with local historical experience. The “plasticity of Hinduism” can come to embrace many different forms, but local actors are needed to endow these forms with local meanings.

310 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

The “syncretic and accomodationist traditions of Asia”, as Duara (2015, 9) calls them, are now in dialogue with both secular “spiritualities” and expanding Christian and Islamic religiosities. Communities of Asian migrants are important sites for these dialogues, which of course occur both inside the communities, as some members articulate particular visions of religious commitment that others may not share, and outside them – in encounters with other cultures and practices in the lands where they are now settled. The “traffic” between religious and secular spheres has included not only the ways in which religion has infused notions of national destiny (for the Naga and the Karen), but also gendered roles (Gallo, this volume), business models (Huang, this volume), leisure activities (Lucia, this volume), and the appropriate behavior of the clergy (Brown, this volume; Asor, this volume). What the chapters in this volume show us is that migration is not merely a form of displacement, distress, or disability, in which people are generally seen as victims, traumatized by their loss of country. While I do not intend to downplay the very considerable suffering often experienced by the refugees and migrants, I do want to move us away from this single-mindedly negative view of migration to suggest that it can also be narrated in ways that are much more creative and empowering. A diaspora framework starts by studying migrants as people with lives before they left their countries (i.e. before they became “migrants”), and also looks at how they continue to have ties across borders even after they have settled down in a new nation. People can be not only “in diaspora”, (the negative sense of all these “dissing” words), but also “of diaspora” – agents who see their movement as a spatial resource, a new flexibility, a multiplicity of perspectives, and an experience which provides them with new possibilities (Hoskins 2015, 231-4). As Lin Weiqiang and Brenda Yeoh note in their chapter in the edited volume on Transpacific Studies (2014, 51), Asian migrants have often been stereotyped as “the targets of global victimization” or “the exploiters of Western societies”. In the existing scholarship, elite “flexible citizens” who strategically collect multiple passports are opposed to hapless refugees and migrant workers with little choice of where they go (Ong 1999, 2003). Vietnamese migrants, in particular, have been depicted as “good refugees” as part of a narrative crafted by Americans who wanted to turn the Vietnam War into a “good war” – necessary, moral, and successful – which rescued people “fleeing from communism” and granted them “the gift of freedom” (Espiritu 2014a, 2014b; Mimi Nguyen 2012). This narrative has tended to privilege portraits of abject victims, grateful for the assistance given to them by relief organizations, and erasing the role

Af terword

311

that the American war played in creating the refugee crisis in the first place (Espiritu 2014a, 221). While refugees do leave under duress, they are also agents who had their own versions of why they wanted to leave. Many refugees in their 20s and 30s, for example, hoped to study in the United States, and indeed later took advantage of opportunities to do so (Hoskins 2015, 60, 159-60). Seeing religious migrants as “of diaspora” allows us to see them as creatively using their multiple global locations to create a new virtual community of believers (Vignato, this volume), forge new political visions of nationhood (Longkumer, this volume; Horstmann, this volume), innovate with new ritual forms (Pathirage, this volume; Dean, this volume; Huang, this volume), and seek new forms of religious engagement with the community (Brown, this volume; Asor, this volume). The gaps that emerge in space and time or memory can be perceived as losses or alternatively as strategic resources, or opportunities to reflect and reevaluate, which then become positive and empowering. Asian culture itself has never been static, and the bits of Asian culture “exported” along with these migrants are also dynamic and fluctuating, creating the basis for new creative exchanges and interactions. Writing about Israel and the Jewish diaspora, Jonathan Boyarin & Daniel Boyarin (2002, 5) argue that diaspora should be re-conceptualized as a “positive resource in the necessary rethinking of models of polity”, since it models new forms of belonging, alternatives to the state. Diasporic peoples establish fluid but effective communities with distinctive ways of life that cross national boundaries and networks that may prove useful in the modern world system. They can work around an uncooperative state (as in Huang’s discussion of Chinese restrictions on Buddhism) and become a source of power and strength. Diasporas “offer an alternative ground to that of the territorial state for the intricate and always contentious linkages between cultural identity and political organization” (ibid. 10). Rather than seeing the scattering of people as a condition of helplessness and a pathology to be overcome, diasporas can build new forms of religiosity in new contexts. The transformation of “hapless migrants” into “diasporic citizens” is, of course, not assured in any single situation, and can have many complex ramifications. But the essays in this volume show us a number of ways in which diasporic distance can be a resource and an advantage, and they encourage us to explore this idea even further. Asian migrants have their own distinctive forms of religious experience, which are both incredibly diverse and increasingly significant.

312 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

References Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Boyarin, Jonathan, & Daniel Boyarin. 2002. Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Casanova, Jose. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Duara, Prasenjit. 2015. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Espiritu, Yến Lê. 2014a. “Militarized Refuge: A Critical Reading of Vietnamese Flight to the United States”. In Transpacific Studies: Framing an emerging Field, edited by Janet Hoskins & Viet Thanh Nguyen. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. —. 2014b. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Goossaert, Vincent, & David Palmer 2011. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hoskins, Janet Alison. 2012. “‘God’s Chosen People’: Race, Religion and Anti-colonial Resistance in French Indochina”. Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series No. 189, September, National University of Singapore. —. 2014 . “An Unjealous God? Christian Elements in a Vietnamese Syncretistic Religion”. Current Anthropology: Special Issue on the Anthropology of Christianity 55 (10): S302-S311. —. 2015. The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Hoskins, Janet, & Viet Thanh Nguyen. 2013. Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii. Lin, Weiqiang, & Brenda S.A. Yeoh 2013. “Transpacific Studies: The View from Asia”. In Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field, edited by Janet Hoskins & Viet Thanh Nguyen. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Ngo, Tam T., & Justine Quijada 2015. Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents: A Comparative Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Nguyen, Mimi Thi. 2012. The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt and Other Refugee Passages. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Af terword

313

Ninh, Thien Huong. 2014. “Colored Faith: Vietnamese American Catholics Struggle for Equality within Their Multicultural Church”. Amerasia Journal: Special Issue on “Asian American Religions in a Globalized World” 40 (1): 80-96. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationaltiy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship and the New America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Reid, Anthony 2001. Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii. Tweed, Thomas. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. van der Veer, Peter. 2013. The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and Secular in China and India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vasquez, Manuel. 2011. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

About the author Janet Alison Hoskins is Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Southern California. Her research interests are def ined around several overlapping themes, each of which draws on a separate set of interdisciplinary connections: 1) indigenous representations of the past and of time; 2) the relation between gender, exchange, and narrative; and 3) colonial and postcolonial theory, with specific reference to Caodaism, a new universal religion born in French Indochina in 1926. Her first book The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange (winner of the 1996 Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies) was both an ethnographic study of the politics of time in an Eastern Indonesian society and a theoretical argument about alternate temporalities in the modern world. Based on more than three years of fieldwork with the Kodi people of Sumba, it examined indigenous calendars, historical narratives, and new symbols of nationalist unity to show how a complex ancestral heritage has been changed in the contemporary context. Her second book, Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia (1996), continued this interest in history and anthropology by examining the reasons why headhunting rituals are still performed in the postcolonial era, several generations after pacification. These new instances suggest that headhunting is a powerful symbolic trope that resonates throughout the region, pitting a heritage of violent raids against new anxieties about domination by external political

314 

Jane t Alison Hoskins

forces. Her third book Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives (1998) explores the relationship between persons and their possessions, and in particular the ways in which both men and women may choose to tell their own life histories by using a domestic object as a pivot for narrative articulation. It draws on the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, literary analysis, and exchange theory, and opposes forms of biographic identification to the different forms of materialism in Western consumerism. Her latest book, The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism (2015), looks at the changing historical contexts of a new millenarian religion that articulated an Asian synthesis of world religions in the context of anticolonial resistance, the American war in Vietnam, and the post-1975 diaspora. She has also edited, with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (2014), which develops a new perspective on relations between Asia, AsianAmerican diasporas, and transnational communities.

References Adogame, Afe, & Shobana Shankar. 2012. Religion on the Move!: New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World. Leiden: Brill. Adogame, Afe. 2012. The African Christian Diaspora. London: Bloomsbury. Ahmed, Sarah. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge. Alba, Richard. 2005. “Bright vs. Blurred Boundaries: Second Generation Assimilation and Exclusion in France, Germany and the United States”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (1): 20-49. Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage. New York: Oxford University Press. Allievi, Stefano, Jørgen Nielsen, eds. 2003. Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe. Leiden: Brill. Ambrosini, Maurizio. 2015. “Protected but Separated: International Immigrants in the Italian Catholic Church”. Paper presented at Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism, Middlesex University, London, February 2014. —. 2007. Gli immigrati e la religione: Fattore di integrazione o alterità irriducibile? (Immigrants and Religion: Questions of Integration or Unescapable Diversity?) Palermo: Fondazione Ignazio Buttitta. American Marketing Association [AMA]. n.d. “About AMA”. Last accessed 28 June 2015. www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Definition-of-Marketing.aspx. Anderson, Bridget, & Michael Keith. 2014. “Introduction”. In Migration: A COMPAS Anthology. Oxford: COMPAS. Andall, Jacqueline. 1998. “Catholic and State Construction of Domestic Workers”. In The New Migration in Europe. Social Constructions and Social Realities, edited by K. Koser & H. Lutz, 124-41. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Annuario Pontificio. 2013. Annuario pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Ao, Alem Meren. 1983. Our Covenant with God for World Evangelization. Mokokchung: CYE Press. —. 2012. History of Revival, Evangelism and Mission. Dimapur: Western Printing Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Aravamudan, Srinivas. 2006. Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

316 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Argüello, Kiko, & Carmen Hernandez. 2008. Neocatechumenale Iter Statuta. Roma: Edizioni San Paolo. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Associated Press. 2015. “Millions across India, World Take Part in Yoga Day Exercises”. June 21. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/06/20/ world/asia/ap-as-india-yoga-day.html. Austin-Broos, Diane. 2003. “The Anthropology of Conversion”. In The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, edited by Andrew Buckser & Stephen D. Glazier, 1-12. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Babb, Lawrence.1977. “Hindu Mediumship in Singapore”. Southeast Journal of Social Science 2 (1-2). Baggio, Fabio. 2013. “Missionaries”. In The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness. London: Wiley Blackwell. Bakewell, Oliver. 2010. “Some Reflections on Structure and Agency in Migration Theory”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (10): 1689-708. Barker, John. 2014. “The One and the Many: Church-Centered Innovations in a Papua New Guinean Community”. Current Anthropology 55 (S10): S172-81. Baruah, Sanjib. 2003. “Confronting Constructionism: Ending India’s Naga War”. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No.3 (May): 321-338. Basch, Linda G., Nina Glick-Schiller, & Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon & Breach. Basu, Paul, and Simon Coleman. 2008. “Introduction: Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures”. Mobilities 3(3): 313-30. Baumann, Martin. 2009. “Templeisation: Continuity and Change of Hindu Traditions in Diaspora”. Journal of Religion in Europe 2 (2): 149-79. —, & Kurt Salentin. 2006. “Migrant Religiousness and Social Incorporation: Tamil Hindus from Sri Lanka in Germany”. Journal of Contemporary Religion 21 (3): 297-323. Baumann, Gerd. 1998. “Body Politics or Bodies of Culture? How Nation-State Practices Turn Citizens into Religious Minorities”. Cultural Dynamics 10 (3): 263-80. Bautista, Julius. 2016. “Export-Quality Martyrs: Roman Catholicism and Transnational Labor in the Philippines”. Cultural Anthropology 30 (3): 424-47. Bebbington, David. 1989. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Beck, Ulrich. 2006. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge/ Malden: Polity Press. Becker, Gary. 1964. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

References

317

Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Bender, Courtney, Wendy Cadge, Peggy Levitt, & David Smilde, eds. 2012. Religion on the Edge: De-centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. Berger, Peter. 1999. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Washington, DC: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Beyer, Peter. 1994. Religion and Globalization. London: Sage Publications. —. 2003. “De-centering Religious Singularity: The Globalization of Christianity as a Case in Point”. Numen 50: 357-86. —. 2006. Religions in Global Society. London: Routledge. Bhakti Yoga Shala. n.d. “Yoga Teachers and Kirtan Guides”. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www.bhaktiyogashala.com/bios/govindas.html. Bonifacio, Glenda Tibe, & Vivienne Angeles, eds. 2010. Gender, Religion and Migration. Pathways of Integration. Lanham: Lexington Books. Briones, Leah. 2009. Empowering Migrant Women Why Agency and Rights Are Not Enough. Aldershot: Ashgate. Brubaker, Rogers. 2001. “The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (4): 531-48. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —. 1977. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”. In Power and Ideology in Education, edited by J. Karabel & A.H. Halsey, 487-511. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boyarin, Jonathan, & Daniel Boyarin. 2002. Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Brown, Bernardo. 2018. “Unlikely Cosmopolitans. An Ethnographic Reflection on Migration and Belonging in Sri Lanka”. Anthropological Quarterly 91(1). —. 2017. “In Search of the ‘Solemn’ with Sri Lankan Migrant Priests”. TAJA- The Australian Journal of Anthropology 28(2): 180-194. Brown, Candy Gunther. 2013. “Declaration”. Sedlock v. Baird. Last accessed 31 October 2016. www.nclplaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DECLARATION-OFCANDY-BROWN-FINAL.pdf. Cannell, Fenella. 2006. “Introduction”. In The Anthropology of Christianity, edited by F. Cannell, 1-24. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cao, Nanlai, & Sin Wen Lau. 2013. “Reconstituting Boundaries and Connectivity: Religion and Mobility in a Globalising Asia”. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (1): 1-7.

318 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

—, eds. 2014. Religion and Mobility in a Globalising Asia: New Ethnographic Explorations. London: Routledge. Caritas Dossier Statistico Immigrazione. 2013. XXIII Rapporto sull’Immigrazione. Rome: IDOS. Carrette, Jeremy, & Richard King. 2005. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. New York: Routledge. Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. —. 2001. “Religion, The New Millennium, And Globalization”. Sociology of Religion 62 (4): 415-41. —. 2007. “Immigration and the New Pluralism. A European Union/United States Comparison”. In Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, edited by Thomas Banchoff, 59-84. London: Oxford University Press. Casarella, Peter J. 2008. “Recognizing Diversity after Multiculturalism”. New Theology Review 21 (4): 17-28. Casiño, Tereso C. 2005. “Bahala Na: A Critique on a Filipino Paradigm of Folk Spirituality”. Asia Pacific Journal of Intercultural Studies 1 (1): 145-60. Caritas Dossier Statistico Immigrazione. 2013. (33rd Report on Immigration) XXIII Rapporto sull’Immigrazione. Rome: IDOS. Carrette, Jeremy, & Richard King. 2005. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. New York: Routledge. Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. The Information Age: Economy Society and Culture. Volume 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Castles, Stephen, Hein de Haas, & Mark Miller. 2014. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2010. “Understanding Global Migration: A Social Transformation Perspective”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (10): 1565-86. Champagne, Elaine. 2014. “Power, Empowerment and Surrender in the Context of Paediatric Spiritual Care”. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 19 (3): 150-63. Chang, Kimberley, & Julian McAllister Groves. 2000. “Neither ‘Saints’ nor ‘Prostitutes’: Sexual Discourse in the Filipina Domestic Worker Community in Hong Kong”. Women’s Studies International Forum 23 (1): 73-87. Chao, Adam. 2008. Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chen, Carolyn. 2008. Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Choi Chi Cheung. 2007. “Yinyang Guodu: 2004 Nian Xinjiapo Jiulidong Fengjia Pudu zhong de Liyi yu Juchang” 陰陽過度:2004 年新加坡九鯉洞逢甲普度中

References

319

的儀式與劇場 (The Passage from Yin to Yang: The Ritual and Theatre of the 2004 Singapore Nine Carp Cavern Temple Fengjia Pudu [universal deliverance rites]),《南洋學報》Nanyang Xuebao 61: 1-9. Choo, Hae-yeon. 2011. “Citizenship at the Margins: Filipina Migrant Women and the Paradox of Rights in South Korea”. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chu, Julie. 2010. Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). n.d. Last accessed . http://cara.georgetown.edu/index.html. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clothey, Fred W. 1978. The Many Faces of Murukan: The History and Meaning of a South Indian God. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. —. 2006. Ritualizing on the Boundaries: Continuity and Innovation in the Tamil Diaspora. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Connell, Raewyn W., & James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”. Gender & Society 19 (6): 829-59. Connor, Phillip, & Matthias Koenig. 2013. “Bridges and Barriers: Religion and Immigrant Occupational Attainment across Integration Contexts”. International Migration Review 47 (1): 3-38. Constable, Nicole. 1999. “At Home but Not at Home: Filipina Narratives of Ambivalent Returns”. Cultural Anthropology 14 (2): 203-28. Cook, David. 2002. “Forty Years of Religion across Borders: Twilight of Transnational Field”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 51-74. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Corn, Seane. 2015. “Dos and Don’ts of International Service”. Conference call, 6 April. —. 2017. “Body Prayer: The Body and Beyond”. Last accessed 4  March 2017. www.codyapp.com/plans/the-body beyond?utm_source=coachinstagram​ &utm _campaign=bodybeyond _launch&utm _medium=social&utm _ content=bodybeyond_coachinstagram_seane_022017. Csordas, Thomas. 2007. “Global Religion and the Re-enchantment of the World: The Case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal”. Anthropological Theory 7 (3): 295-314. —. 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2014. “Fractal Pluralism”. Society 51 (2): 126-30.

320 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Daily Herald. 2003. “God Bless the Broken Road – Nagaland’s War for Christ”. 5  May. Last accessed 24  October 2011. http://penandpassport.wordpress. com/2009/08/21/god-bless-the-broken-road-nagalands-war-for-christ/. David, Ann R. 2012. “Embodied Migration: Performance Practices of Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Communities in London”. Journal of Intercultural Studies 33 (4): 375-94. Dean, Kenneth. 2017. “Whose Orders? The Chinese popular god temple networks in Southeast Asia and the rise of Chinese Buddhist Mahayana monasteries”. In Orders and Itineraries in Southeast Asia, edited by Anne Blackburn & Michael Feener. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press (in press). —. 2015. “Parallel Universe: The Chinese Temples of Singapore”. In Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century edited by Peter van der Veer, 317-340. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2011. “Ritual Revolutions: Temple and Trust Networks Linking Putian and Southeast Asia”. In Religious Networks in Asia and Beyond, special issue of Encounters: An international journal for the study of culture and society 4, edited by Peter van der Veer, 17-41. — & Zheng Zhenman. 2010. Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. 2 vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill. —. 2010. “The Return Visits of Overseas Chinese to Ancestral Villages in Putian, Fujian”. In Faiths on Display: Tourism and Religion in Contemporary China, edited by Tim Oakes & Donald Sutton. London: Routledge: 254-75. —. 2003. “Local Communal Religion in Contemporary Southeast China”. China Quarterly 173: 336-358. —. 1998. Lord of the Three in One: The spread of a cult in Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 1989. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DeBernardi, Jean. 2004. Rites of Belonging: Memory, Modernity and Identity in a Malaysian Chinese Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Della Dora, Veronica. 2009. “Taking Sacred Space out of Place: From Mount Sinai to Mount Getty through Travelling Icons”. Mobilities 4 (2): 225-48. De Mola, Patricia Fortuny-Loret. 2002. “The Santa Cena of the Luz Del Mundo Church”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 15-50. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. —. 2006. The Way that Lives in the Heart: Chinese Popular Religion and Spirit Mediums in Penang. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DeMichelis, Elizabeth. 2005. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

References

321

Deng, Jian-bang. 2008. “The End of National Belonging? Future Scenarios of National Belonging from Migration Experience for Taiwanese Entrepreneurs in Shenzhen”. Journal of Future Studies 13 (2): 13-30. Deslippe, Phillip. 2014. “The Hindu in Hoodoo: Fake Yogis, Pseudo-Swamis, and the Manufacture of African American Folk Magic”. Amerasia Journal 40 (1): 34-56. Dierckx, Danielle, & Sylvie Van Dam. 2014. “Redefining Empowerment Interventions of Migrants Experiencing Poverty: The Case of Antwerp, Belgium”. British Journal of Social Work 44: 105-22. Downs, Frederick. 1983. Christianity in North East India. New Delhi: ISPCK. Duara, Prasenjit. 2015. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dudley, Sandra. 2010. Materializing Exile. Material Culture and Embodied Experience among Karenni Refugees in Thailand. Oxford/ New York: Berghahn. Durkheim, Emile. 1982 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin. Eade, John, & David Garbin. 2007. “Reinterpreting the Relations between Centre and Periphery: Pilgrimage and Sacred Spatialisation among Polish and Congolese Communities in Britain”. Mobilities 2 (3): 413-24. Ebaugh, Helen Rose, & Janet Chafetz, eds. 2002. Religious across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Eck, Diana L. 1998. Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. New York: Columbia University Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1958. Patterns in Comparative Religion. London: Sheed & Ward. —. 1960. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. New York/ London: Harper Torchbooks. Ernst, Carl. 2013. “Muslim Interpreters of Yoga”. In Yoga: The Art of Transformation, edited by Debra Diamond, 59-68. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Ertimur, Burçak, & Gokcen Coskuner-Balli. 2014. “Market Evolution Through Shifts in Institutional Logics”. Vol. 42 of NA – Advances in Consumer Research, edited by June Cotte & Stacy Wood, 123-9. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research. Espiritu, Yến Lê. 2014a. “Militarized Refuge: A Critical Reading of Vietnamese Flight to the United States”. In Transpacific Studies: Framing an Amerging Field, edited by Janet Hoskins & Viet Thanh Nguyen. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. —. 2014b. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC). 2015. Join FEBC in Taking a Look into the 10/40 Window. Last accessed 29 July 2015. Promotional pamphlet is available via email request from http://info.febc.org/1040-window-resource-guide-google​

322 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=1040resource&gcl id=CNfd94T5_8YCFULmwgodcycEPw. Fassin, Didier. 2011. Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ferrari, Luisa. 2006. “The Vatican as a Transnational Actor”. In The Catholic Church and the Nation-State. Comparative Perspectives, edited by P.C. Manuel, L.C. Reardon, & C. Wilcox, 33-49. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. Feuerstein, Georg. 2003. The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice. Boston, MA: Shambala. Firstpost. 2015. “No Compromise on Surya Namaskar: Sadhus Threaten Protests If It Isn’t Included in Yoga Day Event”. June 9. Last accessed 3 July 2015. www. f irstpost.com/india/no-compromise-on-surya-namaskar-sadhus-threatenprotests-if-it-isnt-included-in-yoga-day-event-2287476.html. Fitzgerald, James L. 2012. “A Prescription for Yoga and Power in the Mahābhārata”. In Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White, 43-57. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Foley, Duncan. 1986. Understanding Capital: Marx’s Economic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Forrest, Ana. 2011. Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit. New York: Harper One. Frederiks, Martha. 2009. “World Christianity: A Training School for Multiculturalism”. World Christianity 38 (1): 3-20. Freston, Paul. 2001. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frost, Mark R. 2005. “Emporium in Imperio: Nanyang Networks and the Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819-1914”. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36(1): 29-66. Fuller, Christopher J. 1999. “Priestly Education and the Agamic Ritual Tradition in Contemporary Tamilnadu”. In The Resources of History: Tradition, Narration and Nation in South Asia (Etudes thématiques 8), edited by Jackie Assayag, 51-61. Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient. Gallo, Ester, ed. 2014. Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. — & Francesca Scrinzi. 2016. Men of the Home. Migration, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan —. 2014. “Introduction: South Asian Migration and Religious Pluralism in Europe”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by E. Gallo, 1-27. Farnham: Ashgate. . —. 2014. “A Suitable Faith: Catholicism, Domestic Labor and Identity Politics among Malayalis in Rome”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative

References

323

Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by Ester Gallo. Farnham: Ashgate. —. 2006. “Italy Is Not a Good Place for Men: Narratives of Place, Marriage and Masculinity among Malayali Migrants in Rome”. Global Networks 6 (4): 159-74. Garau, Eva. 2010. “The Catholic Church, Universal Truth and the Debate on National Identity and Immigration”. In Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe, edited by A. Mammone & G.A. Veltri, 158-69. London: Routledge. Garbin, David. 2014. “Regrounding the Sacred: Transnational Religion, Place Making and the Politics of Diaspora among the Congolese in London and Atlanta”. Global Networks 14 (3): 363-82. Garelli, Franco. 2014. Religion Italian Style: Continuities and Changes in a Catholic Country. Farnham: Ashgate. Geaves, Ron. 2007. Saivism in the Diaspora: Contemporary Forms of Skanda Worship. Oakville, ON: Equinox. Giordan, Giuseppe, & Linda Woodhead, eds. 2013. Prayer in Religion and Spirituality. Leiden/ Boston: Brill. Geertz, Clifford. 2005. “Shifting Aims, Moving Targets: On The Anthropology of Religion”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (1): 1-15. —. 1973. “Internal Conversion in Bali”. In The Interpretation of Cultures, 170-90. New York: Basic Books . Gen, Shu 耿曙. 2002. “‘Zixu Ren’ Yihuo ‘Waiwan Ren’? Da Shanghai Diqu Gao Keji Tai Shang de Quojia Rentong”, “‘資訊人’ 抑或 ‘台灣人’? 大上海地區高科技台 商的國家認同”, “第二屆政治與資訊” 研討會. 宜蘭: 佛光人文社會學院政治 研究所. [Being Information People or Being Taiwanese? The National identity for Taiwanese High-Tech Business in Great Shanghai], the Second Conference on Politics and Information. Yilan: Foguang Renwen Shehui Xueyuan Zhengzhi Yanjiu Suo. 宜蘭: 佛光人文社會學院政治研究所.Place? Publisher? George, Sheba. 2005. When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Guevara, Anna. 2006. “Managing ‘Vulnerabilities’ and ‘Empowering’ Migrant Filipina Workers: The Philippines’ Overseas Employment Program”. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture 12 (5): 523-41. Glick-Schiller, Nina, & Georges Eugene Fouron. 2001. Georges Woke up Laughing: Long Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home. London: Duke University Press. —. 2011. “Localized Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism and Global Religion: Exploring the Agency of Migrants and City Boosters”. Economy and Society 40(2): 211-238. Godrej, Farah. 2016. “The Neoliberal Yogi and the Politics of Yoga”. Political Theory (April): 1-29. Goh, Daniel. 2015. “In the place of ritual: Global City, Sacred Space, and the Guanyin Temple in Singapore”. In Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and

324 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Urbanization in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Peter van der Veer, 21-36. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Goossaert, Vincent, & David Palmer. 2011. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gregoire, Carolyn. 2013. “How Yoga Became a $27 Billion Industry – And Reinvented American Spirituality”. Huffington Post, 16 December. Last accessed 4 March 2017. www.huff ingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/how-the-yoga-industrylos_n_4441767.html. Groth, Cody. 2016. “Why Everyone Can and Should Do Yoga”. Yoga Digest. Last accessed 30 January 2016. https://yogadigest.com/why-everyone-can-should-do-yoga. Gray, Breda, & Ria O’Sullivan Lago. 2011. “Migrant Chaplains: Mediators of Catholic Church Transnationalism or Guests in Nationally Shaped Religious Fields?” Irish Journal of Sociology 19 (2): 94-110. Grillo, Ralph D. 2010. “British and Others: From ‘Race’ to ‘Faith’.” In The Multiculturalism Backlash. European Discourses, Policies and Practices, edited by S. Vertovec and S. Wessendorf, 50-71. London: Routledge. Groth, Cody. 2016. “Why Everyone Can and Should Do Yoga”. Yoga Digest. Last accessed 30 January 2016. https://yogadigest.com/why-everyone-can-should-do-yoga. Guest, Mathew. 2007. “In Search of Spiritual Capital: The Spiritual as a Cultural Resource”. In A Sociology of Spirituality, edited by Kieran Flanagan & Peter C. Jupp, 181-200. Farnham: Ashgate. Hackett, Rosalind. (2008) 2014. “Revisiting Proselytization in the Context of Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars”. In Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars, edited by Rosalind Hackett, 1-34. New York: Routledge. Hagan, Jacqueline. 2008. Migration Miracle. Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. 2002. “Religion and the Process of Migration”. In Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh & Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 75-91. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Han, Ju Hui Judy. 2010. “Reaching the Unreached in the 10/40 Window: The Missionary Geoscience of Race, Difference and Distance”. In Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions, edited by Jason Dittmer & Tristan Sturm. Farnham: Ashgate. Hanciles, Jehu. 2014. “‘Africa is our Fatherland’: The Black Atlantic, Globalization, and Modern African Christianity”. Theology Today 7(2): 207-220. —. 2008. Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration and the Transformation of the West. New York: Orbis Books.

References

325

—. 2013. “Migrants as Missionaries, Missionaries as Outsiders: Reflections on African Christian Presence in Western Societies”. Mission Studies 30 (1): 64-85. —. 2006. “Transformations within Global Christianity and the Western Missionary Enterprise”. Mission Focus 14: 4-27. Hannam, Kevin, Mimi Sheller & John Urry. 2006. “Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings”. Mobilities 1(1): 1-22. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hearn, Jeff, & Marina Blagojević. 2013. “Introducing and Rethinking Transnational Men”. In Rethinking Transnational Men: Beyond, Between and Within Nations, edited by J. Hearn, M. Blagojević, & K. Harrison, 1-25. New York: Routledge. Herbert, John. 2008. “Masculinity and Migration”. In Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain, edited by L. Ryan & W. Webster. Aldershot: Ashgate. Herzfeld, Michael. 2009. Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Hibbins, Raymon, & Bob Pease. 2009. “Men and Masculinities on the Move”. In Migrant Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience, edited by M. Donaldson, R. Hibbins, R. Howson, & B. Pease, 1-20. London: Routledge. Himes, Kenneth. 2006. “Vatican II and Contemporary Politics”. In The Catholic Church and the Nation State: Comparative Perspectives, edited by P.C. Manuel & C. Wilcox, 16-31. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Hinnells, John. 2007. “Introduction”. In Religious Reconstruction in the South Asian Diaspora: From One Generation to Another, edited by J.R. Hinnells, 1-12. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Holy Yoga. 2015. “Instructor FAQ”. Last accessed 9 April 2015. https://holyyoga.net/ become-an-instructor/faq. Horstmann, Alexander. 2016. “The Culture and Landscape of a Humanitarian Economy among the Karen of Southeast Myanmar and Northwestern Thailand”. In Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes: Local Practices, BoundaryMaking and Figured Worlds, edited by Su-Ann Oh, 171-90. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). —, & Jung Jin-heon, eds. 2015. Building Noah’s Ark for Refugees, Migrants and Religious Communities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. 2011. “Ethical Dilemmas and Identif ications of Faith-Based Humanitarian Organizations in the Karen Refugee Crisis”. Journal of Refugee Studies 34 (3): 513-32. Hoskins, Janet Alison. 2015. The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.

326 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

—. 2014. “An Unjealous God? Christian Elements in a Vietnamese Syncretistic Religion”. Current Anthropology 55 (S10): S302-11. — & Viet Thanh Nguyen. 2013. Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i. —. 2012. “‘God’s Chosen People’: Race, Religion and Anti-colonial Resistance in French Indochina”. Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series No. 189, September, National University of Singapore. Huang, Weishan. 2014. “Buddhist Cosmopolitanism and Public Sphere”. In Cosmopolitanism, Religion and The Public Sphere, edited by Maria Rovisco & Sebastian Kim, 15-31. London: Routledge. Hughes, Jennifer Scheper, James Kyung-jin Lee, Amanda Lucia, & S. Romi Mukherjee. 2015. “Take it Outside: Practicing Religion in Public”. BOOM: The Journal of California 5 (4): 54-63. Hurh, Won Moo, & Kwang Chung Kim. 1990. “Religious Participation of Korean Immigrants in the United States”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (1): 19-34. Hüwelmeier, Gertrud & Kristine Krause. 2010. “Introduction”. In Travelling Spirits. Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, edited by G. Huwelmeier & K. Krause, 1-16. London: Routledge. —. 2013. “Bazaar Pagodas – Transnational Religion, Postsocialist Marketplaces and Vietnamese Migrant Women in Berlin”. Religion & Gender 3 (1): 76-89. —. 2014. “‘Our Future Will Be in India’: Travelling Nuns between Europe and South Asia”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by Ester Gallo. Farnham: Ashgate. Inden, Ronald. 2006. “Orientalist Constructions of India”. In Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History, 13-60. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2011. “IOM Resettles 90,000 Refugees from Thai Camps”. 16  June. www.iom.int/news/ iom-resettles-90000-refugees-thai-camps. ISTAT. 2013. Statistiche sulla previdenza e assistenza sociale (Statistics on welfare and social assistance). Rome: ISTAT. Iyengar, B.K.S. 1976. Light on Yoga. New York: Schocken Books. Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States (IYNAUS). n.d. “Iyengar Yoga”. Last accessed 6 March 2017. https://iynaus.org/iyengar-yoga. Jackson, Michael. 2013a. The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Well-Being. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2013b. Life Worlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago University Press.

References

327

Jacobsen, Knut, & Selva Raj. 2008. “Introduction: Making an Invisible Diaspora Visible”. In South Asian Christian Diaspora, edited by K. Jacobsen & S.J. Raj, 1-16. Farnham: Ashgate. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. New York: Columbia University Press. Jain, Andrea R. 2015. Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2006. The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. New York: Oxford University Press. Jocano, F. Landa. 1981. Folk Christianity: A Preliminary Study of Conversion and Patterning of Christian Experience in the Philippines. Quezon City: Trinity Research Institute. Johnson, Mark, & Pnina Werbner. 2010. “Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys: Ritual, Normativity and the Religious Imagination among International Asian Migrant Women”. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11 (3-4). Jones, Arun W. 2014. “Scholarly Transgressions: (Re)writing the History of World Christianity”. Theology Today 71 (2): 221-32. Kahl, Werner. 2014. “Migrants as Instruments of Evangelization: In Early Christianity and in Contemporary Christianity”. In Global Diasporas and Mission, edited by Chandler H. Im & Amos Yong. Oxford: Regnum Books International. Kidron, Carol A. 2011. “Sensorial Memory”. In A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment, edited by Frances E. Mascia-Lees, 451-66. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Kilkey, Mayella, Diane Perrons, Ania Plomien, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo, & Hernan Ramirez. 2013. Gender, Migration and Domestic Work. Masculinities, Male Labour and Fathering in the UK and USA. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. —, Helma Lutz, & Ewa Palenga-Mollenbeck. 2010. “Introduction”. Social Policy and Society 9 (3): 379-84. Kitiarsa, Pattana. 2010. “Buddha‐izing a Global City‐State: Transnational Religious Mobilities, Spiritual Marketplace, and Thai Migrant Monks in Singapore”. Mobilities 5 (2): 257-75. Kling, David. 2004 “The New Divinity and the Origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions”. In North American Foreign Missions, 1810-1914, edited by Wilbert R. Shenk. Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

328 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Krummel, Sharon. 2012. “Migrant Women: Stories of Empowerment, Transformation, Exploitation and Resistance”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (7): 1175-84. Kollman, Paul. 2014. “Understanding the World-Christian Turn in the History of Christianity and Theology”. Theology Today 71 (2): 164-77. Kuah-Pearse, Khun Eng, 2000. Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Kuhn, Philip. 2008. Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kumar, Pratap P. 2000. Hindus in South Africa: Their Traditions and Beliefs. Durban: University of Durban-Westville. Kurien, Prema. 2007. A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kwee Hui Kian. 2013. “Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A Longue Duree Perspective”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5: 5-34. —. 2007. “Pockets of Empire: Integrating the Studies on Social Organizations in Southeast China and Southeast Asia”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol.27.3: 616-32. Lausanne Movement. n.d. “Lausanne I: The International Congress on World Evangelization 16 Jul 1974-25 Jul 1974”. Last accessed 29 July 2015. www.lausanne. org/gatherings/congress/lausanne-1974. Leichtman, Mara A. 2013. “From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar and Back Again: Transnational Religion and Politics among Lebanese Christians in Senegal.” Anthropological Quarterly 86 (1): 35-76. Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —, Kristen Lucken & Melissa Barnett. 2011. “Beyond Home and Return: Negotiating Religious Identity across Time and Space through the Prism of the American Experience”. Mobilities 6 (4): 467-82. —. 2008. “Religion as a Path to Civic Engagement”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (4): 766-91. —. 2007. God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing Religious Landscape. New York: The New Press. —. 2004. “Redefining the Boundaries of Belonging: The Institutional Character of Transnational Religious Life”. Sociology of Religion 65 (1): 1-18. — & Nina Glick-Schiller. 2004. “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society”. International Migration Review 38 (3): 1002-39.

References

329

Lin, Ping 林平. 2009. “Cong Juzhu Kongjian Kan Taiwan Ren Dui Dalu Dangdi de Renting” 从居住空间看台湾人对大陆当地的认同 [Do They Mix? The Residential Separation of Taiwanese People in China]. 台灣政治學刊 [The Taiwanese Journal of Political Science] 13 (2): 57-111. Lin, Weiqiang, & Brenda S.A. Yeoh 2013. “Transpacific Studies: The View from Asia”. In Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field, edited by Janet Hoskins & Viet Thanh Nguyen. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Lockard, Craig A. 2010. “‘The Sea Common to All’: Maritime Frontiers, Port Cities, and Chinese Traders in the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce, ca. 1400-1750”. Journal of World History. Vol: 21.3: 219-47. Lotha, Abraham. 2009. Articulating Naga Nationalism. PhD diss., City University of New York. Lorentzen, Lois Ann, & Rosalina Mira. 2005. “El Milagro Está en Casa: Gender and Private/Public Empowerment in a Migrant Pentecostal Church”. Latin American Perspectives 32 (1): 57-71. Lucia [Huffer], Amanda. 2011. “Hinduism without Religion: Amma’s Movement in America”. CrossCurrents: Special Issue: Religion in Asia Today, 61(3): 374-398. Lucia, Amanda. 2014. Reflections of Amma. Devotees in a Global Embrace. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Madsen, Richard. 2007. Democracy’s Dharma. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Mallinson, James. 2011. “Haṭha Yoga”. Vol. 3 of Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism, edited by Knut Jacobsen, 770-81. London: Brill. Mani, A. 1993. “Indians in North Sumatra”. In Indian Communities Southeast Asia, edited by K.S. Sandhu & A. Mani, 47-97. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS). Marcus, Paul, & Alan Rosenberg. 1995. “The Value of Religion in Sustaining the Self in Extreme Situation”. Psychoanalytic Review 82 (1): 81-105. Marx, Karl. 1970. Capital. London: Dent. Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Mayblin, Maya. 2010. Gender, Catholicism and Morality in Brazil. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. McAllister, Elizabeth. 2005. “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (3): 249-55. McKean, Lise. 1996. Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

330 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

McKeon, Adam. 2001. Chinese Migrant Networks and Culture Change: Peru,Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago. McLoughlin, Seán, 2013. “Religion, Religions, and Diaspora”. In A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, edited by Ato Quayson & Girish Daswani, 125-138. London: Wiley Blackwell. Medlock, Stephanie. n.d. “Go Give Yoga Haiti Mission: A Need for Yoga”. Last accessed 23 August 2016. www.gogiveyoga.org/impact-statements. Meissner, Fran, & Steven Vertovec. 2015. “Comparing Super-Diversity”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (4): 541-55. Menjivar, Cecilia. 1999. “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism: A Case Study of Catholic and Evangelical Salvadorian Immigrants”. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12 (4): 589-611. Meyer, Eveline. 1986. Ankalaparamecuvari: A Goddess of Tamilnadu, Her Myths and Cult. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden. Migration Policy Institute. 2008. “Top 10 Migration Issues of 2007: South Korea Opens Its Arms”. Last accessed 14 February 2014. www.migrationinformation. org/Feature/display.cfm?id 663. Miller, Amara. 2016. “Eating the Other Yogi: Kathryn Budig, the Yoga Industrial Complex, and Appropriation of Body Positivity”. Race and Yoga Journal 1 (1). Modood, Tariq. 2013. Multiculturalism. Cambridge: Polity. Morawska, Ewa. 1994. “In Defense of Assimilation Model”. Journal of American Ethnic History 13 (2): 76-87. Muehlebach, Andrea. 2013. “The Catholicization of Neoliberalism: On Love and Welfare in Lombardy, Italy.” American Anthropologist 115 (3): 452-65. Munasinghe, Viranjini. 1997. “Culture Creators and Culture Bearers: The Interface between Race and Ethnicity in Trinidad”. Transforming Anthropology 6 (1-2): 72-86. Nabokov, Isabelle. 2000. Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagaland Missions Movement (NMM). 2008. Annual Report. Dimapur: Nagaland Baptist Church Council. Nair, Dipti. 2015. “How the $80 Billion Business of Yoga is a Win-Win Game for Mind and Pocket”. YourStory, 21 June. Last accessed 4 March 2017. https://yourstory. com/2015/06/international-yoga-day. Nanko-Fernandez, Carmen. 2006. “We Are Not Your Diversity, We Are the Church! Ecclesiological Reflections from the Marginalized Many”. Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Papers Series 10: 81-105. Napolitano, Valentina. 2016. Migrants Hearts and the Atlantic Return. Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Fordham University Press.

References

331

—. 2007. “Of Migrant Revelations and Anthropological Awakenings”. Social Anthropology 15 (1): 71-87. Nausner, Michael. 2014. “A Spirituality of Migration?” In Migration: A COMPAS Anthology, edited by Bridget Anderson & Michael Keith. Oxford: COMPAS. Ng, Chin-keong, 1983. Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, 1638-1735. Singapore: University of Singapore Press. Ngo, Tam T., & Justine Quijada. 2015. Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents: A Comparative Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Nguyen, Mimi Thi. 2012. The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt and Other Refugee Passages. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nieswand, Boris. 2011. Theorising Transnational Migration: The Status Paradox of Migration. New York: Routledge. Ninh, Thien Huong. 2014. “Colored Faith: Vietnamese American Catholics Struggle for Equality within Their Multicultural Church”. Amerasia Journal: Special Issue on Asian American Religions in a Globalized World 40 (1): 80-96. Nussbaum, Martha. 2009. The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. O’Driscoll, Sean. 2003. “Religious Fervor May Dominate Emerging Indian State of Nagalim”. Washington Diplomat. Off the Mat Into the World [OTM]. n.d. “Seva Challenge”. Last accessed 6 March 2017. www.offthematintotheworld.org/seva-challenge. Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —. 1997. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (co-edited with Donald Nonini). New York: Routledge. Oommen, Ginu Zacharia. 2015. “Transnational Religious Dynamics of Syrian Christians from Kerala in Kuwait: Blurring the Boundaries of Belief”. South Asia Research 35 (1): 1-20. Orloff, Judith. 2014. The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Surprising Ways Letting Go Can Empower Your Life. Nevada City, CA: Harmony Books. Orsi, Robert. 2006. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pande, Amrita. 2012. “From ‘Balcony Talk’ and ‘Practical Prayers’ to Illegal Collectives: Migrant Domestic Workers and Meso-Level Resistances in Lebanon”. Gender & Society 6 (3): 382-405. Parry, Jonathan. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

332 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

—. 1985. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Palmisano, Stefania. 2010. “Spirituality and Catholicism: The Italian Experience”. Journal of Contemporary Religion 25 (2): 221-41. Pan, Lynn. 1998. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parreñas, Rhacel. 2011. Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pennington, Brian. 2005. Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Pew Research Center. n.d. “Christians”. Last accessed 10 February 2017. www. globalreligiousfutures.org/religions/christians. Phan, Peter. 2005. “A New Christianity, But What Kind?” Mission Studies 22 (1): 59-83. — & Elaine Padilla. 2016. Christianities in Migration – The Global Perspective. London: Palgrave. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piper, Nicola. 2004. “Gender and Migration Policies in Southeast and East Asia: Legal Protection and Sociocultural Empowerment of Unskilled Migrant Women”. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25 (2): 216-31. Pokazanyeva, Anna. 2015. “Here Comes the Yogiman: Tales of Enlightenment and (Super)power with Particular Reference to the Life and Work of Paramahansa Yogananda”. PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara. Pontifical Council. 2014. “Instruction: Erga migrantes caritas Christi (The Love of Christ towards Migrants)”. Last accessed 20 April 2014. www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/pontif ical_councils/migrants/documents/rc_pc_migrants_ doc_20040514_erga-migrantes-caritas-christi_en.html. Pope Paul VI. 1964. “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church – Lumen Gentium”. Last accessed 28  October 2016. www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. Portes, Alejandro, & Zhou Min. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants”. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (1): 74-96. —, Luis E. Guarnizo, & Patricia Landolt. 1999. “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 217-37. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pratt, G., & Brenda S.A. Yeoh. 2003. “Transnational (Counter) Topographies”. Gender, Place and Culture 10 (2): 156-66.

References

333

Ptak, R. 1990. China’s Seaborne Trade with South and Southeast Asia (1200-1750). Aldershot: Ashgate. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rahula, Walpola. 1974. What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada. New York: Grove Press. Rajakrishnan, Ramasamy.1987. A Subculture of Poverty among Indians in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaysia Press. Ramstedt, Martin. 2005. Hinduism in Modern Indonesia. London/ New York: Routledge. Redfield, Peter. 2006. “A Less Modest Witness”. American Ethnologist 33(1): 3-26. Reid, Anthony. 1988: Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, Vol. 1: The Lands below the Winds. New Haven, CT/ London: Yale University Press. —. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680, Volume 2: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. —. 2001. Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii. Remski, Matthew. 2015a. “Kino’s Hip: Reflections on Extreme Practice and Injury in Asana”. Yoga International, 13 July. Last accessed 13 July 2015. https://yogainternational.com/article/view/kinos-hip-reflections-on-extreme-practice-andinjury-in-asana/. —. 2015b. “WAWADIA Update #10// ‘Lazy People Can’t Practice’: Thoughts on a Yoga Meme”. Last accessed 28 June 2015.www.matthewremski.com/wordpress/ wawadia-update-10-lazy-people-cant-practice-thoughts-on-a-yoga-meme. Riesebrodt, Martin. 2010. The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Robertson, Roland. 1992. Globalization. London: Sage. Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming Sinners. Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rocklin, Alexander. 2016. “‘A Hindu Is White Although He is Black’: Hindu Alterity and the Performativity of Religion and Race between the United States and the Caribbean”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (1): 181-210. Rodelli, Luigi. 1992. “Il Kerala é vicino. A Proposito della tratta delle suore Indiane” (Kerala Is Close By: On the Trafficking of South Indian Nuns). Terzo Mondo 10: 7-10. Rowe, William. 1989. Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796-1895. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rytter, Karen, & Mikkel Olwig. 2011. Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls: Family, Religion & Migration in a Global World. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

334 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Sadan, Elisheva. 2004. Empowerment and Community Planning: Theory and Practice of People-Focused Social Solutions. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. Sahlins, Marshall. 1988. “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of ‘The World System’”. Proceedings of the British Academy 74: 1-51. —. 1993. “Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History”, Modern History 65. Sandoval, Efren. 2001. “Catholicism and Transnational Networks. Three Cases from the Monterrey-Huston Connection”. In Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by H.R. Ebaugh & J.S. Chafetz, 93-109. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Sangren, P. Steven, 1984. “Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship”. The Journal of Asian Studies 43(3): 1984: 391-415. —. 1987 History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sanneh, Lamin. 2008. Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saravia, Clara. 2008. “Transnational Migrants and Transnational Spirits: An African Religion in Lisbon”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (2): 253-69. Sassen, Saskia. 1988. The Mobility of Labor and Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, & Margaret Lock 1987. “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology”. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series 1 (1): 6-41. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed. New Have, CT: Yale University Press. Scrinzi, Francesca. 2010. “Masculinities and the International Division of Care: Migrant Male Domestic Workers in Italy and France”. Men and Masculinities 13 (1): 44-64. Seol, Dong-hoon. 2000. “Past and Present of Foreign Workers in Korea 1987-2000”. Asia Solidarity Quarterly 2: 6-31. Sheller, Mimi, & John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm”. Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207-26. —. 2016. “Mobilizing the New Mobilities Paradigm”. Applied Mobilities 1 (1): 10-25. —. 2011. “Mobilities”. In Sociopedia.isa. www.sagepub.net/isa/resources/pdf/ Mobility.pdf. Shinozaki, Kyoko. 2015. Migrant Citizenship from Below: Family, Domestic Work and Social Activism in Irregular Migration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.

References

335

Sinha, Vineeta. 2006. A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. —. 2010. Religion State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore. City?: Springer. Skeggs, Beverly. 2004. Class, Self and Culture. London: Routledge. Skinner, William G. 1996. “Creolized Chinese societies in Southeast Asia”. In Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, edited by Anthony Reid, 50-93. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1987. To Take Place. Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Smith, G.G., & Stanislaw Grodz. 2014. Religion, Ethnicity and Transnational Migration between West Africa and Europe. Leiden: Brill. Steedly, Mary M. 1993. Hanging without a Rope: Narrative Experience in Colonial and Postcolonial Karoland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stewart, Pamela J., & Andrew Strathern. 2003. Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press. —. 2011. “Personhood”. In A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment, edited by Frances E. Mascia-Lees. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Stirrat, R.L. 1992. Power and Religiosity in a Post-Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Timothy. 1978. “Religion and Ethnicity in America”. American Historical Review 83(4): 1155-85. Smith, Christian & Davidson, Hilary. 2014. The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose. New York: Oxford University Press. Steimel, Sarah. 2011. “Negotiating Tensions across Organizational Boundaries: Communication and Refugee Resettlement Organizations”. Unpublished PhD diss., University of Nebraska. Strauss, Sarah. 2005. Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Suri, Manil. 2015. “India and The Politics of Yoga”. New York Times, 19 June. Last accessed 3July 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/opinion/india-and-thepolitics-of-yoga.html?_r=0. Tagliacozzo, Eric & Wen-Chin Chang, eds. 2011. Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tanaka Issei. 1993. Chugoku fukei engeki kenkyu. 中国巫系演劇硏究 (Shamanistic theatre in China). Tokyo: Univeristy of Tokyo Press. 東京 : 東京大学出版会. Tan Chee Beng. 2015. After Migration and Religious Affilation: Religions, Chinese Identities and Transnational Networks. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

336 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Tarabout, Gilles. 1986. Sacrifier et donner à voir en pays Malabar: les fêtes de temple au Kerala (Inde du Sud): étude anthropologique. (To Sacrifice and to Expose in the Malabar Country: Temple Festivals in Kerala [South India]. An Anthropological Study.) Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Mark. 2001. The Moment of Complexity. Emerging Network Culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Thobani, Sitara. 2014. “A Universal Hinduism? Dancing Coloniality in Multicultural London”. In Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences, edited by E. Gallo, 29-43. Farnham: Ashgate. Tilly, Charles. 2010. “Trust Networks in Transnational Migration”. Sociological Forum 22(1): 3-25. —. 2005. Trust and rule. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tizon, Al. 2008. Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Triandafyllidou, Anna. 2006. “Religious Diversity and Multiculturalism in Southern Europe”. In Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship, edited by T. Modood, A. Triandafyllidou, & R. Zapata-Barrero. Abingdon: Routledge. Trzebiatowska, Marta. 2010. “The Advent of the ‘EasyJet Priest’: Dilemmas of Polish Catholic Integration in the UK”. Sociology 44(6): 1055-72. Tu Wei-ming. 1991. “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center”. Daedalus 120, The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today:1-32. Turner, Victor. 1969. Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 1966). Chicago, IL: Aldine Pub. Co. —. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tsujimoto, Toshiko. 2014. “Negotiating Gender Dynamics in Heteronormativity: Extramarital Intimacy among Migrant Filipino Workers in South Korea”. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 21 (6): 750-67. Tweed, Thomas A. 2002. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. 2011. “Theory and Method in the Study of Buddhism: Toward ‘Translocative’ Analysis”. Journal of Global Buddhism 12: 17-32. Ueno, Kayoko. 2013. “Love Gain: The Transformation of Intimacy among Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore”. Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 28 (1): 36-63.

References

337

Umut, Erel. 2009. Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship: Life Stories from Britain and Germany. Aldershot: Ashgate. Urban, Hugh. 2015. Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Urry, John. 2003. Global Complexity. New York: Polity Press. van der Veer, Peter. 2015. Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. —. 2013. The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2009. “Global Breathing: Religious Utopias in India and China”. In Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization, edited by Thomas Csordas, 263-78. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —. 2002. “Transnational Religion: Hindu and Muslim Movements”. Global Networks 2 (2): 95-109. —. 2001. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Vasquez, Manuel. 2008. “Studying Religion in Motion: A Networks Approach”. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20: 151-85. —. 2011. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. — & Josh DeWind. 2014. “Introduction to the Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: A Transnational and Multi-sited Perspective”. Global Networks 14 (3): 251-72. — & Kim Knott. 2014. “Three Dimensions of Religious Place Making in Diaspora”. Global Networks 14 (3): 326-47. — & Marie F. Marquardt. 2003. Globalizing the Sacred: Religion across the Americas. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Vaughan, Leslie. 1991. “Cosmopolitanism, Ethnicity and American Identity: Randolph Bourne’s ‘Trans-National America’”. Journal of American Studies, 25(3): 443-460. Veblen, Thorstein. 1904. The Theory of Business Enterprise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. —. 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan. Verter, Bradford. 2003. “Spiritual Capital: Theorising Religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu”. Sociological Theory 21 (2): 150-74. Vertovec, Steven. 2003. “Migration and Other Forms of Transnationalism: Towards Conceptual Cross-Fertilization”. International Migration Journal 37(3): 641-665.

338 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

—. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024-54. —. 2000. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London: Routledge. —. 1997. “The Meanings of ‘Diaspora’ as Exemplified by South Asian Religions”. Diaspora 6 (3): 277-300. Vignato, Silvia. 2000. Au nom de l’hindouisme: reconfigurations ethniques chez les Tamouls et les Karo en Indonésie. (In the Name of Hinduism: Ethnic Reframing Amongst the Tamils and the Karo in Indonesia). Paris: L’Harmattan. —. 2003. “The Ritual Struggle of the Tamil and the Karo within Hinduism in North Sumatra”. In Hinduism in Modern Indonesia, edited by Martin Ramstedt, 242-54. London/ New York: Routledge. —. 2006. “Sakti karakam en Indonésie et en Malaisie. L’évolution de deux fêtes à la Déesse dans la diaspora tamoule” (Sakti Karakam in Indonesia and Malaysia. The Evolution of Two Rituals for the Goddess within the Tamil Diaspora). Purusārtha 25: 237-69. Vivekananda, Swami. 2003. “My Master”. Vol. 4 of Lectures and Discourses, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press & Bookshop. Vogel, Erica. 2014. “Predestined Migrations: Undocumented Peruvians in South Korean Churches”. City & Society 26 (3): 331-51. Waghorne, Joanne Punzo. 2009. “Global Gurus and the Third Stream of American Religiosity”. In Political Hinduism: The Religious Imagination in Public Spheres, edited by Vinay Lal, 122-49. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Walls, Andrew. 2002. “Mission and Migration: The Diaspora Factor in Christian History”. Journal of African Christian Thought 5 (2): 3-11. —. 1982. “The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture”. Faith and Thought 108: 39-52. Walter, Nicholas, Philippe Bourgois, & Margarita Loinaz 2004. “Masculinity and Undocumented Labour Migration: Injured Latino Day Labourers in San Francisco”. Social Science & Medicine 59: 1159-68. Wang Gongwu, 1990. “Merchants without Empires: The Hokkien Sojourning Communities”. In The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, edited by James D. Tracy, 400-422a. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warner, Stephen, & Judith Wittner, eds. 1998. Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Watson, James. 1985. “Standardizing the gods: The promotion of T’ien-hou (“Empress of Heaven”) along the South China coast, 960-1960”. In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by D. Johnson. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

References

339

—. 2007. “[Response] Orthopraxy revisited”. Modern China 33.1: 154-8. Werbner, Pnina. 2002. Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims: The Public Performance of Pakistani Transnational Identity Politics. Oxford: James Currey. —. 2003. Pilgrims of Love. The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. London: Hurst. Willis, Katie, & Brenda Yeoh. 2000. “Introduction”. In Gender and Migration, edited by K. Willis & B. Yeoh, i-xxxii. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. White, David Gordon. 2009. Sinister Yogis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. —. 2014. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. White, Anne. 2010. “Mircea Eliade’s ‘The Scared and the Profane’: Identifying and Solving the Human Problem of Environmental Decline”. The International Journal of the Humanities 8 (4): 108-15. Willford, Andrew C. 2002. “‘Weapons of the Meek’: Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia”. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 9 (2): 247-80. —. 2014. Tamils and the Haunting of Justice. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Williams, Catharina P. 2008. “Female Transnational Migration, Religion, and Subjectivity: The Case of Indonesian Domestic Workers”. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 49 (3): 344-53. Willis, Brad (Bhava Ram). 2013. Warrior Pose: How Yoga (Literally) Saved My Life. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books. Wong, Diana. 2014. “Time, Generation and Context in Narratives of Migrant and Religious Journeys”. Global Networks 14 (3): 306-25. — & Peggy Levitt. 2014. “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa among the Tablighi Jamaat and Foguangshan in Malaysia”. Global Networks 14 (3): 348-62. Woodhead, Linda. 2007. “Gender Differences in Religious Practice and Significance”. In The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, edited by James Beckford & N.J. Demerath III, 550-70. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Yamanaka, Keiko, & Nicola Piper. 2005. Vol. 11 of Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia: Policies, Actions and Empowerment. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Yen, Ching Hwang. 1986. A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800-1911. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Yeoh, Brenda S.A. 1996. Contesting Space: Power Relations and the UrbanBbuilt Environment in Colonial Singapore. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

340 

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

—, P. Teo & S. Huang. 2002. Gender Politics in the Asia-Pacific Region. London: Routledge. — & Peggy Levitt. 2014. “Travelling Faiths and Migrant Religions: The Case of Circulating Models of Da’wa among the Tablighi Jamaat and Foguangshan in Malaysia”. Global Networks 14 (3): 348-62. Yoga Journal & Yoga Alliance. 2016a. The 2016 Yoga in America Study. Last accessed 19  January 2016. www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016%20Yoga%20in%20 America%20Study%20RESULTS.pdf. —. 2016b. “The 2016 Yoga in America Study conducted by Yoga Journal & Yoga Alliance”. 13 January. Last accessed 4 March 2017. www.yogaalliance. org/2016YogaInAmericaStudy. Yung Sai-Shing. 1997. Xiqu Renleixue Chutan: Liyi, Juchang he Shegun. 戲曲人類學 初探：儀式、劇場和社群 (Anthropology of Chinese Drama: Ritual, Theatre and Community). Taipei: Rye Field Publishing Company 麥田出版社. Reprinted in 2003 by the Guangxi Shifandaxue Press 廣西師範大學出版社 Zehner, Edwin. 2005. “Orthodox Hybridities: Anti-syncretism and Localization in the Evangelical Christianity of Thailand”. Anthropological Quarterly 78 (3): 585-617. Zheng, Zhenman. 2001. Family and Lineage Organization and Social Change in Ming-Qing Fujian, translated and with an introduction by Michael Szonyi. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Županov, Ines. 2005. Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India, 16th-17th Centuries. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Index ABAM/Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang 162-163 ABFMS/American Baptist Foreign: Missionary Society 159-69 Abhayadanya 107 Abrahamic 303, 305, 309 Activism 43, 160, 187, 231, 249, 268, 309 Adat 276-77 Adoniram Judson 159, 211 Advent 241, 298 Africa 43, 97, 131, 155-56, 174, 198, 223, 229-30, 240, 288, 300 Agama 277 Agrarian 213 Alem, Meren 161, 171 Allan, Eubank 204-05, 208 American 22-24, 35-69, 98, 157-66, 170-75, 179-80, 197, 201-09, 211-17, 222, 240, 244, 268-69, 303, 306, 308, 311, 313-14 American Baptists 159 American Front 204 Amish 46 Amma 28, 70, 281 Aneh 291 Angalaparamsevari 289 Anglican 159 Animis 277 Animism 167, 215-16 Ansan migrant community 261 Arbella 53-54 Arccanai 274 Aruḷ 282 Arunachal Pradesh 158 Asian Christianity 180 Assam 158-59 Ātman 61 Aung San, Suu Kyi 203 Australia 17-18, 24, 39, 57, 101, 103, 106-08, 117, 119, 122-24, 126, 202, 227, 305-07 Avaasageya 118 Avatar-gurus 62 Awa ng Diyos 250-51 Ayer Itam 289 Bahala na ang Diyos 243, 251 Bahala Na Si Lord 250-51 Balinese 297 BAM/Business as Mission 154, 166 Bangladesh 156, 158 Baoshan 137, 145 Baosheng Dadi 82 Basilica 187, 234 Bastos 251 Bebbington Quadrilateral 160, 173 Bekala 289 Belize 39-41

Beyer, Peter 131, 150, 178, 196 Bhagavād Gītā 61 Bhagwat Gauthama Buddha 108 Bhakta 52 Bhakti 38, 47n9, 49-57, 66, 291nn11, 299 Bhakti Fest 49n13, 51-52, 54, 55nn19-20 Bhakti rituals 299 Bharathanatyam 297 Bible 62, 153, 156, 160, 166, 170, 207, 214, 216, 240, 253-54, 309 Biblicism 160 Binjai 276, 281 Biyaya ng Diyos 251 Bodily transcendence 56 Border Consortium 211-12 BPHWT/Back Pack Health Worker Team 207 Brahman 61, 297 Brahmins 289 British 76-77, 98, 157, 159, 196, 267, 289, 291 Bronson, Miles 159 Brown, Nathan 159 Buddha 28, 54, 68-69, 108-09, 112, 118, 217, 304, 313 Buddhism 16, 18-19, 58, 64, 103, 110, 112, 117, 126, 136, 139-40, 142-43, 148-49, 170, 216, 277, 304, 306, 311 Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation 129-30, 135-36, 145 Burma 156, 158-59, 162, 201, 203-05, 207, 211-14, 304-05, 307 Cambodia 82, 154, 157, 162, 164-65 Canada 124, 126, 202, 231 Canon Law 255 Caodaism 28, 97, 304, 312-14 Capellania Cattolica Filipina 187 Capitalism 69, 75-78, 81-82, 98 Casanova 27, 131-32, 150, 222, 239, 244, 267, 312 Castells, Manuel 131, 150 Catholic Asian masculinity 185 Catholic Church 20, 179, 182n1-2, 183-84,188nn45, 190, 195-98, 221, 223, 225, 227-29, 231n8, 232, 236, 238, 240-47, 257-58, 261, 264, 269, 307 Catholic piety 238 Catholic purity 194 CEI/Italian Episcopal Conference 183, 230 CFC/Couples for Christ 256-57 Chennai 296 China 10, 16, 27, 69, 71, 73, 76, 79-86, 96-100, 12945, 148-51, 154-69, 190, 304, 306-07, 312-13 Chinese Chambers of Commerce 77 Chinmayananda 59 Christendom 158, 161, 174, 240 Christianity 22, 30, 78, 80, 103, 134, 157-66, 170, 172, 174, 180, 185, 191-96, 201-02, 210-11, 215, 217, 221-22, 236, 238-41, 267, 288, 298, 303-08, 312 Christian Sgaw 211

342  City God temples 80 Colombo 126, 231-32 Columban Missionary House 250 Compassion International 208 Confessional Nationalism 304 Confucius 304 Contradistinction 44 Cosmopolitanization 141 Costa Rica 39-41, 57 Csordas, Thomas 20, 23, 26, 67, 169, 273 Cuba 39, 41, 209 Cultural Revolution 79, 82 CUM/Catholic Center for Missionary Cooperation 230 Da Jue Temple 130 Daoism 66, 100, 305 Darshan 275 Darwin 19, 24, 101, 103-04, 106-20, 122, 124, 126 Datuk 274 Decolonization 222 Democratic Karen Buddhist Army 207 Deterritorialized 132, 150 Dharma 24, 53, 59, 108-12, 114, 117-20, 140, 143, 150, 285, 297 Dharma Desana 24, 109-10, 112, 114, 117-20 Diaspora 22-23, 27-30, 73-74, 94, 97-99, 105, 124-125, 173, 175, 178, 180, 188, 194, 197-99, 202, 209-10, 219, 269, 271, 273, 291, 293, 296, 298-01, 309-14 Diasporic communities 18-19, 74 Dimapur 160, 173, 175 Divine Providence 251-52 Domestic workers 16, 27, 29, 181, 184, 187, 192, 195, 198, 230, 248, 251-52, 268 Dongguan 133 Dong-hoon Seol 248, 268 Durkheim, Emile 120, 125 Durkheimian sense 254 East Indies 77 East Timor 304 Eastern Catholic Churches 182, 188n4 Edwards, Jonathan 160, 173 Eliade, Mircea 120, 125 Elisheva, Sadan 245, 268 Elite 37, 60-61, 77-78, 82, 149, 211, 277-79, 310 Emperor Liang (Wudi) Precious Scripture 89-91 England 54, 161, 202 EPS/Employment Permit System 248 Érchomai 45 Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi 224, 241 Ethnic 14, 17-18, 28, 30, 44, 74, 103, 110, 114, 120, 125-26, 132-34, 136-37, 145-51, 177, 180-91, 194-95, 204-08, 210-13, 216, 221-23, 225, 230-31, 235, 241, 245, 266-68, 277, 282, 285, 287, 290, 297-99, 301, 307-08 Eubank, David 204-07, 215 Existentialism 101

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Facebook 56, 244, 263, 293 FBR/Free Burma Rangers 203-09, 212-16 FEBC/Far East Broadcasting Company 155, 174 Feminizing 184-85 Fengjia Pudu 184-85 Filipino migrants 85, 92, 96 FKSA/Filipino Korean Spouses Association 256 Fo Guang Shan 135, 150 Foreignness 225 Frederiks, Martha 223, 238-39 Freston, Paul 171, 174 Fujian 71-72, 74-76, 82, 95, 97, 100 Gangnam 248 Garelli 223, 227, 229, 231, 239 Gata 118 Geaves, Ron 291, 293-94, 300 Genealogies of Religion 195, 214, 217, 312 Ghatashi group 170-71 Glick-Schiller, Nina 11, 14, 28, 102, 125, 131, 150, 223, 239 Global Catholicism 185, 194, 229 Global Tzu Chi Day 135 Globalization 9, 21, 26-28, 30, 35, 39-41, 57, 67, 69, 74, 80, 100, 104-05, 125, 130-32, 150-51, 174, 196, 201, 217, 225, 240-41, 300 God 28-29, 43, 52, 54, 61-62, 64, 74, 80-82, 91, 95-98, 121, 154, 157, 162-65, 168, 170-74, 192, 204-07, 210, 217, 243-44, 251-55, 257, 260, 264, 277, 281, 288, 300, 309, 312 Goddess Mariyamman 273, 281 Good Life Club 207, 209, 212, 214, 216 Guangze zunwang 82, 96 Gundu 292, 294 Habitus 46, 48, 64 Haiti 39-40, 42, 68 Hanciles, Jehu 161, 174 Hare Krishnas 62 Harlem, New York 28, 209, 217 Harvard International Human Rights Clinic 213 Heresies 37 Hernandez, Carmen 189-90, 195 Hierarchical relativism 19, 63, 76, 85, 92, 191, 232, 277, 308 Himalayan 156, 158, 165 Hinduism 36, 58-59, 63-64, 68-70, 103, 170, 189, 198, 271-73, 275-78, 285, 291, 294, 296-99, 304-06, 309 Holy Communion 255 Huiguan 75-76, 81, 96 Humanistic Bodhisattva 141-44 Humanitarianism 129, 136, 146-48, 201, 203-04, 209, 216 Hybridities 30, 43 Hybridized 41, 226 Hyehwa 250, 252, 254, 261 Hyehwa Catholic Community 254 Hyehwa Filipino Catholic Church 261

Index

Hypermobility 35, 37, 39, 41, 58, 65 Hypermobilized 53, 55 IDRL/International disaster response laws, rules and principles 179-80, 183 Impur 162, 165 India 19, 35-39, 43, 57-61, 65-70, 75, 78, 99, 15658, 164-65, 167, 170, 174-75, 180, 182, 184, 188, 190, 192, 199, 226, 229, 231-41, 273, 276-77, 285, 289-90, 293, 296, 300-06, 309, 313 Indonesia 19, 25, 71, 73, 75, 82, 88, 95, 155, 271-72, 275, 277-79, 284-89, 294-95, 297, 301-02, 304, 306 International Conference on World Evangelization 155 IOM/International Organization for Migration 202, 217 Italian Catholicism 187-88, 222-23, 227 Italian Catholics 223 Italian clergy 221, 223, 230, 234 ITTP/Industrial and Technical Training Program 248 Jainism 58, 64, 170 Jakarta 72-73, 80, 88, 94 Janjian keling 285 Japan 30, 82, 140, 156, 170, 190, 241, 304 Jaya 291, 294, 296 Jerusalem 186 Jiading 137, 145 Jing School Education Societies 135, 238 Jingzong Xuehui 135 Johor Bahru 73 Judson, Ann 159, 211 Kaatteeri 283 Kaloob ng Diyos 251 Kamatchiviḷakku 283 Kandy 107, 223 Karagam 275-76, 290, 292 Karen 22, 159, 166-67, 201-17, 304-06, 310 Karen monasteries 202 Karen National Liberation Army 205, 212 Karen state 201, 203 Karma Yoga 48 Karo 272, 287, 297-98, 301-02 Karo Highland 272n1 Karo Tamil Hindu temple 297 Kaset sāmiṇ 281, 293 Katina 24, 108-15, 122 Katina perahara 112 Katina siwura 111 Katinacheevaraperahara 109 kebudayaan 277, 287 Keling 285 Kemasukan 287 Kepercayaan 277 Kerala 126, 180, 183, 186, 189, 192, 198-99, 301, 305 Kesaran 73

343 KHRG/Karen Human Rights Group 212-13 Kidron, Carol 290, 300 Kiko, Argüello 189-90, 195 Kingdom of God 210 KIO/Kachin Independence Organization 211 Kiribath 110 Kiruba Island 114, 116 Kisaran 80 Klang 73 Kling, David 160 KNLF/Karen National Liberation Front 211 KNU/Karen National Union 211 Kohima 155, 160 Korea 15, 29, 190, 243-45, 248-57, 261, 264, 266-69, 304-07 Korean 30, 125, 204, 206, 210, 233, 247-52, 254, 256, 259-61, 263-66 Kuala Lumpur 73, 80, 99, 296, 300 Kuat 279, 282 Kuching 73, 80 Lahu 164, 166 Langsung 279 Lanu 162-63, 167-68 Lao Song 205 Lao Tzu 304 Laos 154, 157, 162, 164-67, 205, 304 Lausanne I International Congress on World Evangelization 160 Lausanne II Conference 155 Lebih dekat 279 Lebih kuat 279 Lectio Divina 253 Levitt, Peggy 11, 17, 26-28, 30, 74, 98, 105, 125, 151, 178, 185, 197, 202, 217 Lima unsur 274 Lock, Margaret 276, 301 London 27, 29, 67-69, 97-99, 102, 125-26, 150-51, 173, 175, 195-198, 218, 241, 267, 269, 300-01 Lubuk Pakam 281 Madsen, Richard 149-50 Malacca 73, 96 Malaya 99, 288-89 Malayali 16, 23, 180-86, 189, 193, 196 Manggugulang 251 Manipur 158 Marah 278 Maria Yi Center 264 Marian devotions 238 Marx, Karl 175 Masculinity 16, 177-79, 181-82, 185, 188-89, 192, 195-98 Master Cheng Yan 140, 143 Master Jingkong 135 Mazu 73, 80, 82 Medan 73, 80, 271-78, 281-82, 284-89, 291, 293-97 Medan temples 274, 278 Medanese 277, 284, 293, 296, 299

344  Mediated empowerment 243, 247, 250, 255, 258, 263 Meghalaya 158 Menghormati kebudayaan 287 Mexico 41-42 Migrant 9, 11-30, 71-72, 74, 78, 83, 92, 98, 101-03, 106, 113, 122, 124, 132, 148, 151, 154, 165, 172, 177-89, 191-99, 208, 210, 217, 221-29, 230-91, 297, 303, 310 Migrantes 224, 230, 241 Migrant agency 243, 265-66 Migrant Chaplaincy 221, 223-24, 229, 233 Migrant empowerment 243, 246, 248 Migrant religion 11, 17, 30, 125, 312, 148, 151, 197, 244-45, 239 Migration 9, 11-41, 58, 71-72, 74, 94, 99, 101-02, 104-05, 125-26, 129-30, 132-33, 134, 137, 148-51, 153-54, 157, 164, 169, 172-79, 181-83, 186, 19499, 201-02, 209, 217-18, 226, 229, 236, 239-51, 255, 257-58, 261, 265-69, 271-72, 284, 287-88, 291-92, 294n12, 298-99, 303, 305, 309-10 Milan 233, 236 Minbei-dialect 72 Minnan 72, 74-75, 80, 82, 95 Missiological patterns 35, 40, 43 Mission 16, 23, 39, 42, 57, 68, 135, 138, 144-46, 149, 153-57, 159-75, 189-93, 201, 203-04, 208, 210-11, 214, 221, 225-26, 229, 235, 239-40, 246, 255-58, 261-62, 309 Missionaries 12, 16, 23, 41-42, 50, 53, 65, 136, 153-73, 202, 205, 207-08, 210-11, 216, 226, 229, 235, 240, 306, 308 Missionary movement 161-62, 171 Missionary voyages 12 Missionize 42, 65, 159, 172, 309 Mizoram 158 Mobilities 12-13, 27-29, 31, 45, 74, 174, 179, 196-97 Mobilizable resources 169 Modus operandi 47 Mongolia 156, 164, 169 Monistic 59 Muehlebach 227, 240 Multicultural 14, 19, 68, 114, 198, 221, 223-28, 237-38, 249, 256, 260-61, 313 Multiculturalism 20, 28, 116, 123, 196, 198, 221, 223-26, 238-41, 248-49, 306-07, 309 Muniyandi 274 Naga American Council 171 Naga Baptists 153 Nagaland 16, 153-65, 169-72, 175 Nagaland Congress on World Evangelization 160 Nagaland Covenant 160 Nakhon Pathom 205 Napolitano 178, 184, 198, 223, 225, 227, 240 Nasrani Qurbana 186 National Episcopal Conferences 182n1, 190 Nationalism 35-37, 60, 67, 69, 77, 125, 144, 170-72, 174-75, 202, 304

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

NBCC/Nagaland Baptist Church Council 160, 162, 165 NCW/NeoCatechumenal Way 189, 190-93 New World 77, 101, 192 Njana Snanam 186 NMM/Nagaland Missions Movement 154, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 171 NNC/Naga National Council 154, 170 Noah’s Ark 202, 217-18 North African 184 North Americans 39, 61 North Sumatra 271-72, 276, 278, 298, 300-01 Northeast India 158, 167, 175 Norway 202 NSCM-IM/National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak Muivah 164 Oahu 52 Oṃ sakti 274, 278-80, 282, 285, 301 Organizations 13, 26, 36, 42, 97, 106-07, 131, 155, 157, 182, 202-03, 205, 208, 211-13, 216-17, 230, 243, 246-49, 258-64, 266, 268, 304, 306, 310 Orsi, Robert 15, 18, 28, 207, 209, 217, 240 Palestine 41 Palm Sunday 237 Palmisano 240 Paparazzis 250 Paraiyar 277 Parang sugal lang 251 Paraphernalia 23, 37 Parinig 263 Parisadha Hindu Dharma Indonesia 297 Parmes 294 Pastorale dei Migranti 233 Patināṛu 282-84, 291 Penang 97, 272, 289, 294 Pentekosta 298 Pew Foundation 130 Piazza Venezia 234 Pidusingawadeema 109 Pillayarpatti 297 Pirikara 111-12, 119 Pontifical Institute San Giovanni Damasceno 182 Pope Francis 182 Postural yoga 35-42, 44, 47-49, 57, 59-65, 308 Povinelli, Elizabeth 223, 225-26, 240 Prakṛti 61 Prānayāma 49 Proselytism 45 Proselytization 35, 37, 40, 43-45, 48, 50, 54, 58, 65, 67, 305 Protestantism 53, 288 Puja 283 Puritans 53-54 Puruṣa 61 Putian 71-73, 80, 87, 92-95, 97, 100 Putuo district 138 Puxian dialect 72, 86, 88

Index

Qiaoxiang 73, 80 Qingshui zushi 82 Raja Yoga 59, 61 Redemptoris Mater 190 Reformed Catholicism 177 Religion 9, 11-46, 54, 60-70, 74, 77, 96-106, 108, 120-26, 130-35, 138, 142, 148, 150-51, 161, 167, 170, 172, 174-75, 177-81, 184-85, 187, 190, 192, 194-99, 201-05, 207, 209-10, 214-15, 217-18, 221-22, 226, 238-41, 243-45, 250, 253, 257, 267-68, 271-73, 276n5, 277, 280, 285, 288, 294n12, 298, 300, 303-14 Religious Bureau 136 Religious Practice 13, 15, 17-20, 22, 24n6, 26, 39, 102, 106, 121-22 Re-masculinization 183 Resmi 285 Reterritorialize 17 Reverse mission 172, 221, 235 Rishikesh 59 Ritual 18, 24, 29, 36-37, 48, 71-101, 106, 108-14, 117, 122-24, 207, 209, 217, 271-89, 291-94, 300-03, 306-07, 309, 311 Ritual events 71-72, 83-85, 88 Robertson, Roland 151, 333 Roman Catholics 159, 226 Rome 177, 180-93, 196-97, 224, 227-28, 230, 233-34, 237, 239-40, 306, 309 Sacralization 46 Sacred space 19, 97, 102, 119, 121, 196, 285, 287-88 Sacro Cuore 184 Sādhaka 62 Sainthood 258 Sakti 274, 278-80, 282, 285, 301 Salvation Army 64, 69, 91, 159, 169, 291 Sāmiṇ 281, 293 Sanatana dharma 59 Sangha 46, 50, 53 Sanneh, Lamin 222, 229, 238, 241 Santa Prudenziana 187 Santo Niño de Cebú 187-88 Santo Stefano Maggiore 233, 236 Sanzhong 96 Saṭanku 283-84 śavāsana 52 Scott, James 159, 175, 213 Secularism 35, 228, 238, 304, 312 Secularized 36, 64, 185, 235, 305 Semerang 80 Sentro Pilipino 187 Seoul 15, 249-50 Seremban 73 Sevā 35, 37, 42-45, 50, 57 Shakti Fest 38, 52, 56 Sheba 186, 193, 196 Shuixian miao 96 Sibu 73

345 Siliguri 158 Singamakali 275 Singapore 9, 28-31, 71-73, 80, 82, 84-85, 87-88, 93-100, 124, 217, 241, 268, 300, 306, 312 Sinhalese 103, 226, 230, 233-37 Sivaist 271, 281, 290, 298-99 Sivasakti 284 Sociohistorical 66 South Korea 15, 29, 190, 243-45, 248-53, 257, 264, 266-69, 305-06 Southeast Asia 10, 17, 25, 29-30, 71-82, 95, 97-100, 156, 158-59, 164, 166-67, 217-18, 241, 268-69, 285, 300, 302, 305-06, 313 Sovereignty 153-54, 169-70, 172-73, 202 Spanish 54, 157, 233 Spiritual capital 54, 157, 233 Spiritual migration 153, 157 Spiritual nationalism 35-36 Spirituality 15, 17, 19, 26-27, 35-38, 48, 54, 56, 59, 61, 64-67, 69-70, 85, 172, 174-75, 240, 244, 257-58, 261, 267, 308 Spiritual Capital 153-54, 169, 172, 174-75 Sri Lankan 17-18, 101, 103, 106-10, 112-18, 120, 122-24, 126, 221-300, 305, 307 Sri Lankan Chaplaincy 225 Suharto 278 Suku 277 Sumatran 95, 273, 280, 282, 288-89, 291, 297, 299 Supiah 291, 294 Surya namaskār 62 Suwerte 251 Syrian 126, 186, 188 Syro-Malabar Catholic Church 188n4 Syro-Malankara 183 Tagalog 233, 243 Taiban 138 Taiwan 82, 129-30, 132-34, 136-41, 143, 145, 148-50, 307 Talako 205 Tamil 19, 25, 27, 78, 103, 124, 230-31, 234, 272-74, 276-79, 281-82, 284, 288-93, 296-301, 306, 309 Tamil Nadu 19, 25, 278, 289, 297 Tanah Hitam 293 Tantrism 66 Tebing Tinggi 276, 281 Temples 24, 73-82, 84, 87-88, 94-97, 100, 107, 117, 139, 170, 274, 276-77, 279-80, 289, 292, 296 Temsu 165-66 Thailand 30, 57, 82, 154, 156-57, 162-64, 166-67, 169, 202, 205, 207-08, 211, 216-17, 305 Theravada Buddhists 17-19, 24, 114, 207 Tweedm Thomas 15, 21, 26, 102, 202-03, 207 Tianhou 80, 82 TLBC/Thailand Lahu Baptist Convention 164 Translocative 25, 73, 79, 102, 126 Transmigrants 133, 138 Transnational 11-23, 26-29, 31, 44, 67, 69-72, 74-78, 80-81, 87, 94, 99, 102-08, 110, 113,

346  119-27, 129-33, 137-38, 140-41, 150, 154, 160-61, 164, 177-89, 194-98, 202-03, 214, 217, 221, 225, 229, 236, 243, 256, 265-66, 300, 307, 314 Transnational migration 12, 15, 120, 129-30, 132, 198, 236 Transnationalism 11, 19, 25, 30, 70, 98, 101-02, 104-05, 108, 129, 177, 195, 197-98, 239-40 Transregional 75, 80 Tripura 158 Tukang mabuk 285 Tzu Chi humanitarianism 146-47 Tzuchians 133, 138, 140-41, 143-46 U Thuzana 207 UFWCD/United Filipinos Worldwide for Community Development 256 UN High Commissioner for Refugees 204 United States 9, 17, 20, 24, 26, 35-40, 57, 61, 63, 68-69, 125, 137, 171, 186, 202-07, 222, 232, 238, 256, 266-67, 269, 311-12 Universalization 36 Vas kalaya 112 Vasquez, Manuel 24, 26, 29, 37, 69, 121, 126, 198, 203, 218 Vatican 182, 187-91, 196-97, 224, 228, 238, 241, 268 Vegetarianism 19, 297 Veṭṭiār 291

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience

Vietnam 9, 74, 82, 304-05, 310, 312, 314 Vinaya 112 Vinyāsa 60, 62 Virgin Mary 238, 253 Welsh Presbyterians 159 Weltspiegel 208 West Bengal 158 Western Europe 292, 301 Xianyou 71-73 Xinyun 135 Xinyun Cultural Education Center 135 Xuhui 145 Yixing 135 Yoga 17, 24, 35-36n3, 37n3, 38-39n4, 48-49n4, 50, 52-56nn24-25, 57-61, 62n32, 63n33, 64-70, 308 Yoga Alliance 39n4, 40, 70 Yoga sevā 35, 37 Yunnan 165-66 Zhigong 136 Zionism 304 Zomia 159, 167 Zuting 135