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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’.
“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
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
Appendices
Glossary
Index