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The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Temple Tracks critically outlines the interlink of railway construction in colonial and post-colonial Asia, as well as the anthropology of infrastructure and transnational mobilities with religion. In Malaysia and Singapore, evidence of religion-making and railway-building from a colonial past is visible in multiple modes and media as memories, recollections and ‘traces’.
“This is a text that meditates and demonstrates deeply on the relationship between history and anthropology (278) studying how they draw from each other but showing readers how productive these con- versations are…Sinha’s detailed and sophisticated analysis of religionmaking and understanding of infrastructure as sacred sites allows us to see immigrant struggles in an intimate sense —the result is a book that is as exhilarating as the train journeys that inspired the book. It deserves the widest possible readership among scholars of migration and diaspora, religion, infrastructure, and railway studies, and beyond.” • Asian Journal of Social Science
“Vineeta Sinha’s book is a truly original and compelling study which combines railway studies, labour history and Hindu diaspora studies to tell a fascinating story about colonial railway building, Indian labour migration and Hindu religion-making in Malaysia and Singapore.” • Knut A. Jacobsen, University of Bergen
“Vineeta Sinha pioneers an inspiring new direction in the anthropology of diaspora. In this ethnographically rich, consistently insightful book, Sinha shows that the sacred landscapes forged by Indian migrant railway workers in Malaysia and Singapore have in many cases outlasted the colonial infrastructures that the labourers went to build.” • Sunil Amrith, Yale University
Vineeta Sinha is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. Her publications include A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore (2005) and Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (with S.F. Alatas, 2017).
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Methodological Musings, Analytical Signposts
Chapter 1. Retelling Railway Histories: Centring Labour
Chapter 2. Constructing Colonial Railway Networks in Malaya
Chapter 3. Work and Living Spaces of Railway Labour
Chapter 4. Mapping ‘Railwaymen Temples’ in Singapore and Malaysia
Chapter 5. Sojourneying with Muṉīsvaraṉ the ‘Railway God’
Chapter 6. Railways and Religion: Negotiating Colonial and Post-colonial Modernities
Conclusion: Sedimented, Intertwined Histories
Glossary
Index