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DOI 10.1007/s11407-011-9103-x

International Journal of Hindu Studies 15, 2: 191–207

© 2011 Springer

Temple and Human Bodies: Representing Hinduism George Pati

Indian immigrants have become a remarkable presence in the socio- religious fabric of the United States because of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the door for skilled professionals from India to immigrate to the United States in search of educational opportunities and employment. Another act, passed in 1984, gave prefer- ence to immigrants trying to reunite their families, triggering another surge in immigration by Indians. These Indian immigrants have estab- lished themselves successfully in their new society, in both social and religious realms, by maintaining distinctive identities that are rooted in the faith and culture they brought along with them from India while assimilating into the new society.

For Indian immigrants in the United States (and in other western countries, such as Britain, Canada and Germany), religion has played a particularly important role in maintaining individual and collective identities, but more significantly in representing their traditions as distinct from the native context in India. Religion, for Hindus in the United States, involves construction and deconstruction of boundaries and identities, just as the Hindus themselves illustrate homogeneity and heterogeneity as they maintain and transcend sectarian boundaries. Indian Hindus have instituted temples or cultural centers that play a significant role in the process of creating new forms of transnational religion and identity and that foster a new representation of Hinduism in the United States. In this process, Hindus represent a Hinduism which is

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different as compared with its native context in India. Based on fieldwork for the past three years, this article shows how the

Indian American Cultural Center, a non-profit organization situated in Merrillville, Northwest Indiana, which now has a temple attached to it (the Bharatiya Temple of Northwest Indiana), represents a Hinduism with all its complexity and diversity in the midwestern part of the United States. This article attempts to answer few questions: Why is Hinduism represented the way it is in the United States? What has changed from the native context in India? How does the temple as body merge with the human body, reinforcing the merger between microcosm and macro- cosm? This article is divided into two sections. First, it describes the different sectarian bodies that worship, educate, and organize cultural events at the temple body. Second, it analyzes how the temple and human bodies construct and deconstruct boundaries between divine and human and thus represents Hinduism distinct from its native context in India.

The temple is considered as a body, as Indian temples are traditionally built in the image of the human body (Ramanujan 1973: 19–22). According to the devotional tradition of Hinduism, the temple body, a space for transformative process, fuses the distinction between divine and human bodies: a primary goal of bhakti, a compelling devotional attitude in Hinduism. Although such union is sought between the devotee and deity, the devotee and deity still maintain their own identities, as a result creating a “circle of identities” (20). At the Hindu temple under consideration, the interaction between the temple as body and the human body can be observed to mirror a “circle of identities.”

Adding to numerous theoretical discourses of the body from different disciplines, including religion (Douglas 1966; Waghorne and Cutler 1985; Smith 1989; Sullivan 1989; Kakar 1991; Bell 1992; Kasulis, Ames, and Dissanayake 1993; Law 1995; Coakley 1997; Nelson 1998; Fields 2001; Alter 2004; Mills and Sen 2004; Flood 2006; Holdrege 1998, 2008), this article examines the center as a spatial body that constructs and deconstructs boundaries and identities from a Hindu devotional perspective. As Barbara A. Holdrege (1998) accurately notes, Hindu traditions provide extensive, elaborate and multiform discourses of the body, and sustained investigation of these discourses can con- tribute significantly to scholarship on the body in the study of religions.

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Holdrege delineates the study of body in religion into various categories— ritual body, ascetic body, purity body, Tantric body, and devotional body. For her, body is a “processual body” as body mediates transactions between divine body, cosmos body, human body, and social body. The body as a devotional body embodies the divine and actively participates in a process of the divine and human union, union of the sacred and the mundane.

Hence, a body as a devotional body is a “processual body,” which endorses McKim Marriott’s (1976) term “dividual” in reference to the human body—that is, a human body that is a constellation of substances and processes and that is connected to other bodies through a complex network of transactions (Holdrege 1998: 349). Additionally, a body can be perceived, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) stresses, in subjective terms as “experienced body” and, as Marcel Mauss (1979) describes, as “embodied body.” That is, as Pierre Bourdieu (1977) contends, the body can be perceived as the nucleus for coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience. These concepts of body remain fundamental for the analysis of the Hindu temple as a body and for the interaction between temple body, human body, and cosmos body which represents Hinduism unique in today’s contemporary context in the United States and distinct from its native context in India. Temple Body and Hinduism

The Indian American Cultural Center in Merrillville, Indiana, opened on March 9, 2002, fulfilling the goal of building a cultural center in Northwest Indiana. Hindus gather here and use the space for religious and cultural purposes. This rectangular building has a large glass door entrance that leads to a foyer, and as one enters through the doorway, on the left is the room for shoes and coats. On the wall of the foyer to the left, a visitor can see a huge picture of Mahåtmå Gandhi, his spinning wheel, and a dove symbolizing peace—a Christian symbol. All these pictures represented in the temple embrace the idea of unity in diversity, an ideal the center promotes, which is distinct from the native context. On the right side of the foyer, a door leads to an auditorium used for religious activities and cultural programs. On the west side of the audito- rium are small classrooms for children’s education. One can see the

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enculturation process going on as teachers blend American holidays with Hindu teachings. This auditorium is often rented out to non-Indians in the community for wedding receptions and party gatherings. The merging of Indian and American identities can be observed in occasional rummage sales, karaoke nights, and a long list of cultural programs at the center.

When I started visiting the center, plans were underway to expand the center and to construct a permanent shrine for worship that would help build the community and make its presence even more prominent in the area. Diana L. Eck asserts, “For Hindu immigrants to America, the process of building a temple is simultaneously the process of building a community” (2000: 221). In the case of the center, the building of a temple has drawn a large number of volunteers to work towards the fruition of their dreams. As the center president’s message reads, “We have a great deal of work ahead of us and many dreams to realize. We all have to work together to make that happen” (Shah 2009: 1). The process of working together has resulted in the establishment of the Bharatiya Temple, and on June 18, 2010, the mahåkumbhåbhi‚ekam, or consecra- tion of the temple, took place. A group of Bråhma~ priests from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in India, along with the current temple priest, Prabhakaran Namboodiri Kunnath of Kerala, performed the consecration rituals for three consecutive days as hundreds of devotees stood there offering prayers and receiving blessings from the deities at the temple.

The establishment of the Bharatiya Temple, a space for regular worship, education and cultural events, creates a clear presence. This space facilitates representing Hinduism, “unified Hinduism,” in the United States, a group that transcends boundaries between various Hindu sectarian groups while maintaining those boundaries as debates continue regarding how much the temple can accommodate in terms of various sectarian groups. This dual stance becomes evident as one understands the temple complex and the position of the deities placed in the temple. While Hindu/Indian identity refers to an identity that transcends religious and cultural boundaries, Sikhs and Muslims from India have their own gurdwårå and mosque on Colorado Street, Crown Point, Indiana. One significant reason for the temple’s growing popularity is the ecumenical vision of the center, which houses worship services of four different Hindu groups, as well as Jains. In this regard, the temple represents Hinduism distinct from its native context as different temples are estab-

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lished for different deities and for Jains as well. In other words, different sectarian groups of Hinduism worship in different temples. Here, the temple embodies a Hinduism that is ecumenical in nature.

As one enters the temple from the north side, immediately to the right one can see a large room with shrines of different deities arranged at the far end. The image of Lord Råma (one of the incarnations of Vi‚~u), his wife S tå, and his brother Lak‚ma~a take the center position, while on their left is Lord Ve kateçvara, another form and name of Vi‚~u, and on the right stands Lord K®‚~a and his consort Rådhå. These images are set on an elevated platform; immediately below in front of the image of K®‚~a and Rådhå is the aniconic image of Lord Çiva. Towards the right side wall there are small shrines for the goddess Durgå, a copy of the Bhagavad G tå, Lak‚mi, the goddess of wealth, and Sarasvat , the goddess of learning. On the left side from the center stage stands a shrine for Ga~eça, the remover of obstacles, and the Jain t rtha kara Mahåv ra. When I inquired about establishing the Çiva-li gam below the elevated center stage, the Namb¨diri temple priest replied, “This is how it all turned out to be.”

During my subsequent visits to the temple, I probed regarding the establishment of the Çiva-li gam below the other deities at the temple. The priest explained: “The majority of the devotees who worship at the temple are from North India and do not perform abhi‚ekam. As a result, when planning was underway for the temple they did not think about abhi‚ekam or the necessity of a drainage system on the altar. Hence, the best option was to place the Çiva-li gam in a position suitable to construct a drainage system.” This has caused some discontent among Çaiva devotees who worship at this temple. Harold Coward (2000: 156) observes a similar situation at the Vishnu Mandir in Toronto; though the temple is extremely successful, debates continue as to the extent to which it can accommodate Hindu devotees from myriad ethnic backgrounds while keeping the traditionalists involved.

Before the construction of the temple, through weekly gatherings, different groups of Hindus engaged in devotion, education and services at the center. There were three groups that met at different times regularly at the center: the Chinmaya Mission Group, the Arati Puja Group, and the Ammachi Bhajan Group (disciples of Måtå Am®tånandamay ). The Chinmaya Mission Group continues its weekly worship at the center

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every Sunday from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, whereas the other groups meet at the temple and are more involved in daily evening p¨jås and årat s, supra- bhåtam every Saturday, and abhi‚ekam conducted every Sunday for different deities from 9:00 to 10:00 am: first Sunday for Lord Vinåyaka, second for Lord Ve kateçvara, third for Lord Råma, and fourth for Lord Çiva. On the first Sunday of every month, from 10:00 to 11:00 the Ammachi Bhajan Group meets for a time of singing devotional songs, bhajans. On the second and fourth Sundays, the Jain satsa g (congrega- tional worship) takes place from 11:00 to 12:30 pm; and on the third Sunday, the Gujarati satsa g meets from 10:00 to 11:00.

The newly renovated cultural center is not only the venue for the Chinmaya Mission Group to meet for worship, but a venue for many cultural programs as well as wedding and gala dinners for Indians and other members of the public, including a yoga class conducted every Saturday morning. The majority of the families that come here to worship immigrated to the United States in the 1970s, and they reside primarily in the Northwest Indiana communities of Merrillville, Schererville, Munster and Valparaiso. The majority of the devotees belongs to the three upper castes of the Indian caste system, Bråhma~, K‚atriya and Vaiçya, and the majority of them practice medicine and are financially sound. The primary purpose for which these immigrant families come to the temple is educa- tion, devotion, and fellowship.

A typical Sunday includes worship by different sectarian groups, and devotees attend bhajans or satsa gs or abhi‚ekams conducted by different groups transcending sectarian boundaries. On Sundays at 4:00 a few children attend bålvihår—instruction about Hindu culture and creed, similar to Christian Sunday school—in small classrooms. The classes are divided according to grade levels. During this time children are taught lessons from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad G tå, and they make craft items based on those lessons and in relation to American practices. For example, on the Sunday after Valentine’s Day, I saw children holding heart-shaped craft items with Hindu ideals such as “love parents” or “love and respect for all” written on them. Such pedagogy of educating children in the Hindu faith remains active in the summer camps and retreats organized by Hindu temple groups all across the United States. For example, in New Jersey, “summer camps and retreats for children and young people supplement the Sunday schools. These camps are

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intended to help parents convey Hinduism to their children and, in doing so, to preserve, protect, and pass on the spiritual heritage of India” (Mann, Numrich, and Williams 2008: 75). Children also learn the art of reciting verses from the Bhagavad G ta and singing bhajans during worship. Simultaneously, in the foyer behind a screen partition, a group of adults (around ten) study the G tå under the guidance of Svåm Çara~ånanda, who travels here regularly from Chicago. The Svåm and the adult group read verses from the G tå and reflect on those verses, relating them to the contemporary global situation and discussing how one should lead a life based on the moral values emphasized in the Bhagavad G ta.

As the education hour progresses, more families arrive to attend the worship service, which begins at 6:00 in the auditorium. In the worship room, its air filled with the aroma of incense, children and women, most of them wearing bright colored çalvår qam z or så® , sit on the floor singing and reciting verses from the Chinmaya Mission book, H®di Bhåvayåmi, while men, all of them wearing Western-style clothes, sit on the chairs neatly arranged in rows at the back of the room and join the singing and recitation. All the worshippers face the far end of the room where a temporary shrine has been built on a table neatly draped with red brocade cloth. The shrine houses small stone-carved images of Rådhå- K®‚~a, Ga~eça, and a framed image of Cinmayånanda Svåm , founder of the Chinmaya Mission. Other items on the table include fruit and sweet offerings, a bell, and small votive candles lit during the worship service. Beside this temporary shrine, the Svåm , wearing saffron dhot (loin cloth) and kurtå (tunic), remains seated on a chair.

The worship begins with everyone greeting each other, “Hari O .” The Svåm leads the worship service, which typically includes the children reciting çlokas (verses) from the Bhagavad G tå and a short moral lesson they learned in class. The service concludes with a ritual called årat . During that time, the Svåm offers the prasåda, a food offering, to the deity, and this offering is later distributed to the devotees outside the worship space. Before anyone makes an announcement, they first prostrate before the Svåm , receive his blessing, and then begin by saying “Hari O .” At the conclusion of the service, people form a line to pay their respects, first to the host of deities and Cinmayånanda’s image, and second to the Svåm by prostrating before him and receiving his blessings.

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While the Chinmaya Mission Group worship progresses at the center, at the temple regular p¨jås led by the Namb¨diri priest take place. On one such occasion, I asked a Çr Vai‚~ava devotee originally from South India how he perceives all deities established in one room and if he ever feels the desire to sing some Çr Vai‚~ava bhajans in his own language of Tamil at the temple. He responded, “We try to include everyone when it comes to languages and devotees, because there are people from North India and other language and regional groups who worship with us.” Moreover, his wife expressed her willingness to learn about the Çaiva tradition because when she grew up in India, as a member of a Çr Vai‚~ava family, she was deterred from learning anything about the Çaivism. This highlighted the tensions that existed between the Çaiva and Çr Vai‚~ava devotional sectarian groups in India going back to the medieval period. In such instances, one can observe how Hindu immi- grants, with their variant regional and sectarian traditions, become more inclusive while also maintaining their distinctiveness, as they worship in different groups. More importantly, one Saturday, I observed a couple first pay their respects to the Hindu deities and then to Lord Mahåv ra before leaving the temple. Temple life in Northwest Indiana is multi- layered. As Eck states, “Hindu temple life is but part of the diverse and textured life of the Hindu tradition. In the United States, as in India, the topography of Hinduism is highly nuanced” (2000: 223).

The Bharatiya Temple, which houses diverse groups of Hindus repre- senting ecumenical Hinduism (Vertovec 2000: 162–64; Williams 1988, 1992: 238–40), becomes a space for representing Hinduism in a way distinct from its native context in India where all sectarian groups would hardly come together to worship under one roof. Fred W. Clothey, in his study conducted during 1991–92 of the Tamil migrants in Singapore, classified their temple construction into five stages. The first stage involves the creation of a makeshift space and representation of a deity, such as a picture or a portable shrine, and the establishment of a “cultural center,” which presents a sense of “liminality or marginality” in the new society. In the second stage the community begins to perform more formal Ågamic rites and funds become available for the construction of a permanent shrine and the installation of permanent deities. The third stage includes the installation of a Bråhma~ priest and the attempt to enlarge or update the temple in a way that is as consistent as possible

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with an authentic Indian temple. The temple reaches a fourth stage when all of the necessary religious elements of the temple are present and spaces are also available for subsidiary events such as weddings and other cultural events. The fifth stage occurs when a temple becomes an international pilgrimage center (Clothey 2006: 58–77).

Based on Clothey’s classification, with the establishment of the temple, the Indian American Cultural Center stands at the fourth stage: it presents all the religious elements of the temple and also makes some spaces available for subsidiary events such as weddings and other cultural gatherings. The community’s desire to present and attain authenticity remains strong. This became apparent while I was conversing with an immigrant worshipper of the Chinmaya Mission Group, who also worships at the temple. “We are doing our best to present the authentic religion and culture in the Northwest Indiana region as well as to our kids.” In a subdued voice he added, “None of the young adult children come to the center for worship; they say they feel bored, while many come more often to attend cultural events than religious events.” For the devotee, authenticity meant presenting how rituals are performed in the native context in India. This assertion of the devotee to a certain extent was true, but the community’s use of temple space challenged the “authenticity” of temple worship in India as the various sectarian groups have separate temples. Similar use of space can be observed in temples across the United States, especially near Northwest Indiana. For example, both the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in Lemont, Illinois and the Sri Venkatesvara Swami (Balaji) Temple in Aurora, Illinois, have gone through similar stages before being established in their present state. Additionally, these Hindu temples have established themselves by accommodating and assimilating into their new environs. It is clear that these temples represent Hinduism distinct from its native context.

The response of the devotee above points us to a generational gap between immigrant parents and their American-born children. Even though during the Chinmaya Mission Group’s weekly gatherings, hardly any adolescents were present at either the bålvihår or the worship service, the temple can still be considered a bridge that enables immigrant Indian/Hindu families to mediate between India and America, between the traditional and the modern, while bringing together various traditions of Hinduism as one Indian community in Northwest Indiana. More

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importantly, as Joanne Punzo Waghorne observed in the case of urban middle-class Hindus in the UK, the desire to present authentic Indian identity and to preserve Indian heritage becomes a way to build a “systematic framework for Hinduism,” and as Hinduism achieves this framework it would become a “religion surpassing other religions with its true universality” (2004: 227). Desire for such universality could be the reason why the Indian American Cultural Center has chosen to display a huge picture of Gandhi, his spinning wheel, and a dove symbolizing peace: a universal message. Temple and Human Bodies

The installation of Hindu and Jain deities in the same temple makes the Bharatiya Temple a space where the interaction of temple and human bodies takes place. Here Hinduism represents its homogenous and hetero- geneous characteristics, and construction and deconstruction of bodies takes place at two levels. As Hindus and Jains come together to worship in the same space, they represent a conjoining of temple bodies. Such joining also happens when Hindu devotional sectarian bodies including Vai‚~ava, Çaiva, and Çåkta come together for worship. Although some worship only one deity, other Hindus and Jains worship all the deities present, thereby emphasizing the ecumenical character of their religiosity and simultaneously reinforcing the heterogeneity of the tradition that we know as Hinduism. As identities merge they simultaneously create new identities and finally an ecumenical Hindu identity. As John Stratton Hawley suggests, the religiosity of devotees conjoined within the space represents “a terrain of interlocking religious themata” with the “over- arching theme of bhakti” (2001: 224). Here, temple space reinforces itself as a nexus of various experiences including the construction and deconstruction of bodies and identities.

But such construction and deconstruction of temple and human bodies extends beyond the terrestrial realm, transcending boundaries of time and space. In this, the temple body reinforces both the Sanskrit words for “body”: çar ra and deha. Çar ra from the root verb ç® means “that which is easily dissolved or destroyed,” and deha from the root dih “to anoint, smear, plaster” means something moulded as from plaster (Monier-Williams 1988: 1057, 480, 496). These meanings of the body

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are exemplified through the temple’s roles: individual and sectarian bodies as çar ra are transcended in the temple when everyone comes together to worship.

In this way, the body is engaged in a process, a process of disintegration and embodiment—that is, disintegration of the self and embodiment of the divine and human union. In other words, the body as a processual body is also a physical space for divine and human union; as Kapila Vatsyayan (1991: 318) explicitly argues with regard to space, the inner space of the heart (h®dyåkåça) and outer physical space (bh¨tåkåça) are in communion. In a temple, the temple as body and as human body is a space that reintegrates and reaffirms the relationship of the micro-macro, terrestrial and celestial. As K®‚~a refers to the “body as field” (Bhagavad G tå 13.2), the temple serves as a bodily complex. It is a space for an individual’s experience and embodied practice. In this light, during temple worship the human body becomes an arena of symbolic impression as well as an arena embodying an individual’s experience and self- formation.

The rituals performed at the temple and the participants involved emphasize the intertwining of the cosmic, temple, and human bodies. The Namb¨diri priest on a regular basis performs p¨jå, which follows the Tantric school commonly practiced in Kerala. This affirmation of the Namb¨diri priest reinforces Gavin Flood’s (1996: 171) observation about the importance of Tantrism in the general temple culture and the way it is integrated into daily rituals in Kerala. The advaita concept underpins his devotion as he invites the deity to possess him, åveça måm, that is, to enter him. Such possession asserts divinization of the individual body of the priest and in an extended sense with the temple. This blurs the distinc- tion between Tantric and devotional practices of Hinduism. Additionally, the majority of the devotees who are from North India perform årat and arcanå at the temple and they reinforce the dvaita concept. The priest performs the årat , and the devotees engage in arcanå. The devotees and the priest devote more time to the p¨jå of Lord Råma and his family as the central deity of the temple.

No matter what p¨jå is performed by the priest or devotees, the concept of body as experienced body, then, challenges René Descartes’s notion of body. Descartes conceives body in terms of its appearance and not from an experiential perspective (2:17). Here, the body becomes the

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uniting metaphor of various systems and processes at the level of practice and demonstrates a shared substrate of ritual and cosmology in spite of divergent metaphysical claims (Flood 2006: 28). Such ritual meaning of space is affirmed through the movement in this temple; Indic cosmologies, as Don Handelman and David Shulman (1997: 46) observe, emerge as a process of interaction and internalization, erasing differences and distinc- tions and returning to the holism of more homogenous encompassment. As the priest performs the ritual and the devotees are involved, the entirety of the cosmic self happens, which is recorded in the ¸g Veda 10.129.2: “There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond” (O’Flaherty 1981: 25). Mircea Eliade (1959: 59) states that temples continually resanctify the world, because they simultaneously represent and contain it and because the temple is an imago mundi and earthly representation of the transcendent. Hence, a temple represents the transcendent and the immanent and becomes transformative in itself.

The temple body, then, reintegrates and reaffirms the relationship of the micro-macro, terrestrial and celestial, affirming it to be a pilgrimage place, a t rtha-sthåna, a crossing place, where the ordinary and mundane become sacred and the sacred becomes detached from the ordinary mundane existence temporarily transcending boundaries and identities. The temple body becomes the uniting metaphor of various systems and processes at the level of practice, demonstrating a common ground of ritual and cosmology homologous with the human body (Flood 2006: 28). The temple and devotee bodies, then, constantly engage in a trans- formative process or a constructive and destructive process of self-identity: constructing new amalgamated identities while deconstructing their sectarian identities by transcending boundaries.

The rituals at the temple emphasize the exchange between the body and cosmos, asserting it to be a “processual body” because “whenever the cosmos is created, the body is destroyed, and…whenever the body is created, the cosmos is destroyed” (Lincoln 1986: 33, cited in Handelman and Shulman 1997: 45). Such a mode of construction and deconstruction of temple bodies and identities reinforces “sacramental natural ontology” as Eck (1981: 336) explains, with regard to sacred geography, in which the symbols constitute the whole (rather than the Holy). More importantly,

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it functions as a nexus of rejecting and affirming sectarian identities. The consolidation of the community represents a unique identity/identities as these rituals not only express social solidarity, but also produce relation- ships and identities.

Participation in such a dynamic process by the devotees, then, represents contact and shared affinities, as Stanley J. Tambiah (1990: 107) contends. Therefore, the temple body continuously negotiates distinctions between the body, the cosmos, the divine, and the human. As Catherine Bell asserts, ritual activities are “constantly differentiating and integrating, establishing and subverting the field of social relations” (1992: 130). In Conclusion Religion plays an important role in the life of Hindu/Indian immigrant communities, as they desire to become part of American society while also maintaining some of their distinctiveness (Kurien 2007: 6). Clifford Geertz (1973: 113) described religion as a system of symbols that estab- lishes powerful, pervasive, and longlasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence. Worshipping at the temple body enables the Hindus to draw historical continuity and reflect homogeneity and heterogeneity. The Bharatiya Temple of Northwest Indiana represents Hinduism in a way where such historical continuities are drawn and which gives them a general order of existence.

The temple body, a processual body, personifies the body as microcosm of the macrocosm, transcending the distinctions between the body, the embodied self and the universe. In other words, the temple body as a pilgrimage centre is an abode of the divine, and it actively engages in a journey towards union with the divine: a process of transformation. As A.K. Ramanujan asserts, “Ritual, superstition, sacred space and sacred time, pilgrimage and temple going, offerings to god and priest, prayers and promises— all forms of ‘making’ and ‘doing’— all of them are performed to get results, to manipulate and manage carefully the Lord’s universe to serve one’s own purposes, to save one’s soul or one’s skin” (1973: 30). This “making” and “doing” is transformative. Hence, the temple serves to create and dissolve bodies and identities through time and space, transcending binary categories of time and space, celestial and terrestrial, and emphasizing the agency of body. The body as experienced

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body is an essentially active being in an environment. In this active ritual purification process, all distinctions are integrated—the body, the mind, the soul, the divine, the human, and the cosmos. Acknowledgment

Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Body and Religion session of the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting 2010 and the Conference on The Public Representation of a Religion called Hinduism: Ecumenical Hinduism and Umbrella Organizations, University of Manchester/Wabash College, 2009. I wish to thank Vasudha Narayanan for her response and all copanelists for their discussion. I am grateful to Gino Issac for his invaluable assistance.

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GEORGE PATI is Assistant Professor of Theology (South Asian Religions), and the Surjit S. Patheja Chair in World Religions and Ethics, at Valparaiso University, Indiana.

[email protected]

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