earticle

영어

In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, U.S.A, sits the Sri Venkateswara Temple, the oldest Hindu Temple constructed in the Penn Hills section of Pittsburgh in 1976. Living on the opposite side of the globe, diasporic Indians in Pittsburgh reconstruct their “home” surroundings and rigidly follow the Indian religion, tradition, and culture—especially inside the Sri Venkateswara Temple. In fact, the temple is a small version of “India” itself; things that are experienced in daily lives in India are reproduced and materialized by priests and devotees every day inside the temple. Immigrant Indians often feel alienated from their host society, and attending rituals, music and dance concerts, lectures and language classes in the Sri Venkateswara Temple provide diasporic Indians not only psychological consolation, but an aid to construct their identities as Indian. In Indian traditions, the boundary between “sacred” and “secular” is vague, and diasporic Indians usually express their Indian identities through “performing” their tradition. In this essay, I focus on Indian-Americans’ (especially Hindu Tamils) perceptions of religion and culture by examining a musical performance during a ritual ceremony and a children’s Sunday school session based on field research from 2006 and 2007. I address the following question: What roles do ritual ceremonies and musical practices play in constructing notions of “India” in Pittsburgh? My findings show how essentialized notions of culture are central to identity construction in diasporic communities.