Paper short abstract:

This paper defends the methodological interest of associating ethnography and mapping to study the mobilities of transnational religious actors, such as the Hindu Brahman priests who emigrated from India and Sri Lanka to work in Hindu temples founded by the Tamil diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

This paper defends the methodological interest of associating ethnography and mapping to study the mobilities of transnational religious actors. It is based on biographic interviews conducted with Hindu Brahman priests who emigrated from South India and Northern Sri Lanka to work in overseas Hindu temples founded by the Tamil diaspora. I shall argue that such a methodological combination provides information not only about these migrant ritual actors, but also about some important trends and mechanisms of the current transnationalisation of Hinduism that cannot be revealed by other means. On the one hand, ethnography makes it possible to address a major change in Hindu representations of migration. Indeed, it allows us to understand the personal motivations of Brahman priests who work abroad, whereas they have long been forbidden to emigrate due to classical considerations presenting migration out of India as a "polluting" and demeaning activity. On the other hand, mapping these priests' migrations shows how these circulations concretely take place in the main countries of the Tamil diaspora (Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, but also Toronto or Paris), and that these host countries are not isolated from each other but linked by the mobilities of these religious actors. This combination of ethnography and mapping also demonstrates that these priests' migrations fit in transnational social fields and circulatory territories structured by specific places and social networks. In the end, all this bears wider witness to the relevance of such a methodological combination for studying the stakes and concrete modalities of transnational migrations.