Paper short abstract:

Taking contrasting examples of street-shrines found in Pune city this contribution seeks to theorize how street-shrines contribute to the construction of a sense of belonging to particular communities and to certain localities by examining several social dynamics besides religiously motivated ones.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the results from a multi-disciplinary research conducted in 2016 in the city of Pune. The research focuses on urban street-shrines where everyday religious discourses are articulated, and hence, form a fruitful field for the research of the ritual, political and socio-cultural processes in contemporary South Asia. The paper investigates to which extend these informal shrines are important sites for, both, the individual sense of belonging to particular localities as well as to particular communities. It aims at theorizing these shrines and at answering what religious discourses are articulated through these shrines and what are the ritual, economic and political dynamics at play in the creation and maintenance of these shrines? It will also examine the role that urban conditions have been playing in fuelling identity-based conflicts and the identity formation of diverse social groups and how social actors forge connections between localities across national borders that increasingly sustain new modes of politics, economics and culture.