Religious Ritual in a Scientific Space: Festival Participation and the Integration of Outsiders

Abstract

An ethnographic approach to the South Indian festival Ayudha Puja reveals that the celebration plays a role in the construction of scientific communities. Ayudha Puja has the ability to absorb westerners, non-Hindus, and non-Brahmins into Indian science and engineering communities and is thus widely practiced in South Indian industry and academia. The practice of Ayudha Puja thus parallels what M. N. Srinivas labels “Sanskritization.” Within India, the process of Sanskritization refers to the adoption of high-caste habits and diet by upwardly mobile lower-caste communities. While not actually an example of Sanskritization, participation in Ayudha Puja is analogous to that process: by joining a Hindu rite within the scientific and professional workspace, outsiders become part of local laboratory, department, or office culture. Such practices reveal the need for scholars to investigate scientific community building outside the domain of how scientists reveal new facts about the world.

Brahmins as scientists and science as Brahmins’ calling: Caste in an Indian scientific research institute

“…At IISc, the scientists celebrate all the major Hindu festivals (Geraci, 2018, 2019; Thomas and Geraci, 2018). The dominant group has already shaped the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of the place.…”

Temple as Place: The Pathars and Their Devasthanam as a Unit of Analysis

“…Brahmins of south Indian descent in domestic spheres (Sankar, 2011). The Pathars also observe Ayudha Puja towards the end of Navarathri festival which directly signify the function of this community only temple and allows us to understand how the specific cultural practice by the Pathars provide a functional mechanism by which these goldsmiths adapt and adopt technologies to establish relationship with their work and to deal with it in a manner that suits them (Geraci, 2019). Collectively, these religious observances with human predispositions, feel friendly, offer spatial definition, be occupiable in a way that the visitors subconsciously behave and see.…”