Vineeta Sinha is Professor and teaches at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include Hindu religiosity in the diaspora, intersections of religion, commodification and consumption processes, interface of religion and materiality, religion-state encounters in colonial and post-colonial contexts, Eurocentric and Androcentric critique of social science disciplinary canons, and producing decolonial pedagogies.

Prof. Sinha will be speaking to us about her latest book, Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia (2023). The book presents a textured tale of the complex ties between labour, mobility and piety. It uses the history of colonial railway construction in British Malaya to narrate the interlocking accounts of Indian, Hindu labour migrations into British Malaya and the sacralization of these landscapes by labouring communities in building shrines and temples for Hindu deities in the vicinity of labour lines, railway stations, locomotive sheds, railway workshops and simply along the railway tracks. 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 event is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the South Asia Studies Department