Paper short abstract:

The donors’ plaque in the religious architecture is the sign whose visit is present in absence. The writings on the stone slab, as visual provoke a dialogue that allow the dead (in whose name donation is made) and the donor to be launched into a discourse. The paper discusses the ethnography of memory in relation to the researcher, the donor, the dead person, viewers and so on.

Paper long abstract:

The donors' plaque in the contemporary Bengali religious architecture in India is the sign which acknowledges the two persons in their absences - the dead relative (in whose name the money is donated) and the donor.

This paper probes such donor plaques in Karcha Kobi Govida Dham, West Bengal state, India. The architecture was built by the migrant bengalis from Bangladesh in 1980s with the support of the ruling communist government. The first part of the paper investigates the dual identity of the architecture. It traces how the management of the building and users maintain double consciousness toward the Govinda Dham, vacillating between belief and hard-headed materialism and address the functionality of the architecture in between cultural centre and temple. The second part of the paper deals with discourses developed around the donor plaque - what kind of memory drives the person to donate money and put a plaque in the name of a dead person? Why and in what extent does the donor desire to mention his / her address in the plaque? Why does he / she want to put other family members' names in the plaque? When does the person decide to bring up the amount of donation in the plaque, simultaneously in general public? What kind of relation these plaques share with the architecture aesthetically? The third part of the paper discusses the ethnography of memory in relation to the researcher, the donor, the dead person, the plaque maker, the daily user and viewer.