{"title":"Priya Swamy","description":"\u003cp\u003ePriya Swamy's works offer insightful explorations into cultural identity, religious spaces, and community dynamics. Her writing thoughtfully examines how tradition and modernity intersect within diverse social contexts, making her books a valuable resource for readers interested in cultural studies and education.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith a focus on topics like sacred spaces and their significance, Swamy's scholarship combines rigorous research with accessible narrative. Her contributions are essential reading for those seeking a deeper understanding of contemporary religious and cultural landscapes.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"struggles-for-hindu-sacred-space-in-the-netherlands-by-priya-swamy-9781350372566","title":"Struggles for Hindu Sacred Space in the Netherlands","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis book asks us to consider what is absent, rather than what is present, when studying religions. Priya Swamy argues that absent religious spaces are in themselves abstract locations that painfully memorialise feelings of shame, oppression and marginalisation. She shows that these ‘traumas of absence’—the complex, entwined and emotional responses to absent spaces—can be articulated through mob violence and destruction, but also anticolonial struggles or human rights issues.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis study focuses on the absence of temples across the global Hindu diaspora, taking the tumultuous narrative of the Devi Dhaam community in Amsterdam Southeast as a central location to detail the over thirty-year struggle to build a Hindu temple in a neighbourhood of vibrant mosques and churches. In 2010, their makeshift space was pulled away from them, provoking tears among elderly devotees, rage among board members and devastation in the wider community. Leaving their goddess with no place to live, some devotees feared for the dangerous repercussions that would follow from uprooting a divine presence from its home.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy exploring the ways in which the trauma of absent religious spaces has become a formative aspect of localised but also globalised Hindu identity, \u003cem\u003eStruggles for Hindu Sacred Space in the Netherlands\u003c\/em\u003e rethinks the way that empty lots, piles of rubble and abandoned buildings around the world are themselves powerful monuments to the trauma of absent temple spaces that mobilise campaigns for Hindu spaces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47934251958508,"sku":"9781350372566","price":132.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781350372566-struggles-for-hindu-sacred-space-in-the-netherlands.jpg?v=1783907971"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/priya-swamy.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}