The Indian Diaspora: Hindus and Sikhs in Australia
Contents: Foreword/Martin Baumann. Preface. Introduction. 1. Transglobalism of Hindus and Sikhs in Australia/ Purushottama Bilimoria. 2. Hinduism and the historical roots of Hindus in Australia/Purushottama Bilimoria and Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat. 3. Hindu practices and Hindu organisations in Australia/Purushottama Bilimoria and Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat. 4. Temple architecture: a brief overview and its symbolism/Purushottama Bilimoria. 5. Religious maintenance and adaptation: an example from the South Australian Hindu diaspora/Heather Foster. 6. A statistical profile of the Hindu community in Australia/Philip Hughes. The Sikh community in Australia. 7. Sikh history and migration/Carmen Voigt-Graf. 8. It’s a small world: two graves/Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat and Manpreet Kaur Singh. 9. Sikh practices and Gurdwara in Australia/Carmen Voigt-Graf with Purushottama Bilimoria. 10. A statistical profile of the Sikh community in Australia/Philip Hughes. General Reflections on the Indian Diaspora in Australia (Comparative Case Studies: Women and Students’ Identities). 11. Diversity of Indian identity in multicultural Melbourne/Salim Lakha, Michael Stevenson and Surjeet Dhanji. 12. Religiosity in a new land: women’s strategies for daily living/Selena Costa-Pinto. 13. Indian students in Australia/Margaret Kumar and Purushottama Bilimoria. 14. Changing attitudes towards the Hindu and Sikh communities among Australians/Philip Hughes. 15. Concluding reflections: Indian religious diaspora in the post-secular era/Purushottama Bilimoria, Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat and Philip Hughes. Appendices. Conclusion. Index.
Since the late 1990s, the Indian community in Australia has grown faster than any other immigrant community. The Indian Diaspora has made substantial contributions to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious diversity within Australia. The growth of Hinduism and Sikhism through gurus, temples, yoga and rituals of many kind has brought new colours, images, customs and practices to the profile of Australian religion, and the Australian landscape more widely. At the same time, Hinduism and Sikhism have themselves been transformed as Hindus and Sikhs from different parts of India as well as Fiji, Malaysia and other parts of the world have come together to establish a pan-Indian ethos. Hindus and Sikhs here have also interacted with other sectors of the Australian population and with religions from the Western world. This is the theme of this book.
The Indian Diaspora covers the theory of diaspora, the historical development of the Indian communities in Australia since the late 19th century to the present times, current practices and statistical profiles of Hindus and Sikhs in Australia, and interactions between Hindus and Sikhs with the wider Australian community. There are case-studies of the Indian students and women in the Australian community, of Indian communities in Melbourne and South Australia and of temple building and the Sikh Gurdwara.
The book has been edited by and contains contributions from Purushottama Bilimoria, an internationally-known scholar of philosophy and religion, Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat, one of Australia’s most senior Hindu priests and a scholar of Hinduism, and Philip Hughes, a leading analyst of the religious profiles of the Australian people. It also contains contributions from several other prominent scholars. Included are special essays on the importance of diaspora by the late Ninian Smart and on the 19th century Afghan cameleers and Indian hawkers.
