Paper short abstract:

The dynamics of the interaction between space, nature and human practice are crucial to define one’s identity. Using the example of an urban temple under a holy tree in India, I will study transformative discourses that produce and contest ideas about locality, nature and religious experience.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I propose to investigate the relationship of nature and sacred place-making with the example of a contemporary Hindu temple in India. The 'Śrī Gurudev Datta Mandir' was established in a public park in the residential area of urban Pune, Maharashtra in the mid-1970s. The temple was built in honor of a devotee's vision of Lord Dattātreya: according to the oral tradition, in the year 1968, the park's gardener found a pair of brass sandals (pādukās) under an Audumbar tree (ficus racemosa), while watering the park's garden. He identified these sandals as Datta's holy footwear. Since then, daily worship has taken place there and after just a few years a sizable temple-complex has been erected with the sanctum sanctorum around the tree, which nowadays has a large number of daily visitors.

The Audumbar tree is considered to be the 'dwelling place of Lord Dattātreya', and wherever such a tree is found the place is considered to be a potential sacred site. The dynamics of the interaction between space, nature/materiality and human practice are crucial to define one's identity. It is at places such as the 'Śrī Gurudev Datta Mandir' that one can study the multidimensional, transforming and transformative discourses that are being articulated and negotiated there, and which produce and contest ideas about locality, nature and religious experience.