Recruiting the ‘Tirupathi’ in Serampore: the policy of Telugu migrants to construct an ethnic and cultural identity for themselves in the face of Bengali domination
Souradip Bhattacharyya
Publication: Volume 1 Issue 4
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to portray and analyze—through ethnographic study of the Tirupathi Puja of the Telugu migrants of Serampore—such processes through which the power-relation between the working-class migrants and the middle-class Bengalis are redefined by the migrants’ strife to assert their ethnic identity and establish a public sense of belonging in Serampore to claim equal rights in its public space.
Keywords: Migration, social space, public space, space-time, neighborhood, religion, practice, construct, power-struggle, middle-class, working-class, Bengalis, ethnic identity, Tirupathi Puja.
Souradip Bhattacharyya (a0123556@u.nus.edu) is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Programme at National University of Singapore. Currently in the final year of research, his doctoral thesis is titled “Rethinking the Neighborhood: Working-Class and Middle-Class communities of Serampore.” It is an anthropological study investigating the various socio-cultural and religious mediums through which the resident communities, comprising of heterogeneous neighbors, interact with one another and the politics that is involved in the production of its social spaces.