Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T10:32:32.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Technophany and Its Publics: Artisans, Technicians, and the Rise of Vishwakarma Worship in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2022

Kenneth M. George Open the ORCID record for Kenneth M. George [Opens in a new window]  and
Kirin Narayan Open the ORCID record for Kirin Narayan [Opens in a new window]
Kenneth M. George*
Affiliation:
ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The worship of Vishwakarma, a god long associated with India's hereditary artisans and their tools, has achieved new relevance with the rise of industrial capitalism in South Asia. No longer moored solely to artisanal caste interests, worship of the god heralds a range of publics in which technē (crafting, fabricating, or making) is an exalted activity and public concern. Using “technophany” as a conceptual framework, we argue that deifications of technology and technicity sit at the core of Vishwakarma worship. Rather than treat religion and technology as ontologically distinct modalities of being-in-the-world, we use this framework to show how artisans, technicians, mechanics, and engineers use Vishwakarma worship to bring industrial technologies into alignment with the cosmos. Drawing on historical and ethnographic materials, we push beyond earlier scholarship that has treated Vishwakarma worship as a holdover from peasant culture or as a set of practices pitted against industrial capitalism.

Keywords

artisansHindu festivalsIndiaindustrializationlabortechnicianstechnicitytechnologypublic religionVishwakarma
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 3 - 21
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Appadurai, Arjun. 1974. “Right and Left Hand Castes in South India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 11 (2–3): 216–59.10.1177/001946467401100203CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashbee, C. R. 1909. “Foreword.” In The Indian Craftsman, by Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., v–xv. London: Probsthain and Company.Google Scholar
Ashby, Lillian Luker, with Roger Whatley. 1938. My India. London: Michael Joseph.Google Scholar
Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. n.d. A Tribute to the Legend—Shri Dattopant Bapurao Thengadi. New Delhi: Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. https://www.indianlabourarchives.org/bitstream/123456789/1141/1/A%20Tribute%20to%20the%20Legend%20%20Shri%20Dattopant%20Bapurao%20Thengadi.pdf (accessed June 22, 2021).Google Scholar
Bassett, Ross. 2016. The Technological Indian. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674088986CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bear, Laura. 2015. Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt along a South Asian River. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Birdwood, George C. M. 1884. The Industrial Arts of India. New ed. London: Chapman and Hall, Limited.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. 1996. “A Postindustrial Prelude to Postcolonialism: John Ruskin, William Morris and Gandhism.” Critical Inquiry 22 (3): 466–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breman, Jan. 1996. Footloose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139171076CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breman, Jan. 1998. “A Study of Industrial Labour in Post-Colonial India.” CLARA Working Paper on Asian Labour 3, International Institute of Social History Digital Publications.Google Scholar
Brouwer, Jan. 1995. The Makers of the World: Caste, Craft and Mind of South Indian Artisans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Daniel Houston. 1934. The Development of Capitalistic Enterprise in India. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1989. Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal 1890–1940. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691188218CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1908. Mediaeval Sinhalese Art. Broad Campden: Essex House Press.Google Scholar
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1909. The Indian Craftsman. London: Probsthain and Company.Google Scholar
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1917. “The Theory and Practice of Art in the Silpa Sāstras.” Modern Review 21 (January): 40–45.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, Ranajit. 1996. “Indian Working Class and Some Recent Historiographical Issues.” Economic and Political Weekly 31 (8): L27–31.Google Scholar
Derbyshire, Ian. 1995. “The Building of India's Railways: The Application of Western Technology in the Colonial Periphery 1850–1920.” In Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India 1700–1947, edited by Macleod, Roy and Kumar, Depak, 117–215. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Fernandes, Leela. 1997. Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Fernandes, Leela. 1998. “Culture, Structure, and Working Class Politics.” Economic and Political Weekly 33 (52): L53–60.Google Scholar
Harder, Hans. 2011. Sufism and Saint Veneration in Contemporary Bangladesh: The Majibhandaris of Chittagong. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, Douglas E. 2012. Small Town Capitalism in Western India: Artisans, Merchants, and the Making of the Informal Economy, 1870–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511675690CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 2006. Mindfulness. Translated by Emad, Parvis and Kalary, Thomas. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jain, Kajri. 2007. Gods in the Bazaar: Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kerr, I. J. 1997. Building the Railways of the Raj, 1855–1900. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kochhar, Rajesh. 2013. “Tribhuvandas Kalyandas Gajjar (1863–1920): The Pioneering Industrial Chemist of Western India.” Current Science 104 (8): 1093–97.Google Scholar
Kumar, Nita. 1988. The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mathur, Saloni. 2007. India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2018. “Occulted Materialities.” History and Technology 34 (1): 31–40.10.1080/07341512.2018.1516851CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Kirin, and George, Kenneth M.. 2017. “Tools and World-Making in the Worship of Vishwakarma.” South Asian History and Culture 8 (4): 478–92.10.1080/19472498.2017.1371506CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Kirin, and George, Kenneth M.. 2018. “Vishwakarma: God of Technology.” In Technology and India: Spaces, Practices and Authorities, edited by Jacobsen, Knut A. and Myrvold, Kristina, 8–24. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2004. “Photos of the Gods”: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Raina, Dhruv, and Irfan Habib, S.. 1991. “Technical Institutes in Colonial India: Kala Bhavan, Baroda (1890–1990).” Economic and Political Weekly 26 (46): 2619–24Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 1985. “Artisans in Vijayanagar Society.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 22 (4): 417–44.10.1177/001946468502200403CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 2004. “Vishwakarma Craftsmen in Early Medieval Peninsular India.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47 (4): 548–82.10.1163/1568520042467154CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reddy, G. Sudarshan. 1997. “The Caste System, the Colonial Judiciary, and the Struggle for Ritual Status in 19th-Century Andhra.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 58: 677–85.Google Scholar
Roberts, Alfred Edward [Ratnajinendra Rabel Ratnawira]. 1909. Visvakarma and His Descendants. Colombo: Ceylon Visvakarma Union.Google Scholar
Roy, Tirthankar. 2006. The Economic History of India, 1857–1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, Tirthankar. 2008. “The Guild in Modern South Asia.” International Review of Social History 53 (Suppl. 16): 95–120.10.1017/S0020859008003623CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saberwal, Satish. 1976. Mobile Men: The Limits to Social Change in Urban Punjab. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.Google Scholar
Sargent, Adam. 2020. “Working against Labor: Struggles for Self in the Indian Construction Industry.” Anthropology of Work Review 41 (2): 76–85.10.1111/awr.12199CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Smritikumar. 2013. Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830–1980. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092308.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Settar, S. 2020. Early Buddhist Artisans and Their Architectural Vocabulary. Manipal: Manipal Universal Press.Google Scholar
Simondon, Gilbert. 2009. “Technical Mentality.” Translated by Arne De Boever. Parrhesia 7:17–27.Google Scholar
Simondon, Gilbert. 2017. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Translated by Malaspina, Cecile and Rogove, John. Minneapolis, Minn.: Univocal Publishing.Google Scholar
Singh, Harkishan. 2010. “Tribhovandas Kalyandas Gajjar (1863–1920)—Pioneer Industrial Chemist of India.” Indian Journal of History of Science 45 (3): 419–29.Google Scholar
Srinivas, M. N. 1956. “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization.” Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (4): 481–96.10.2307/2941919CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stolow, Jeremy. 2012. “Introduction: Religion, Technology and the Things in Between.” In Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology and the Things in Between, edited by Stolow, Jeremy, 1–22. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Streefkerk, Hein. 2006. Tools and Ideas: The Beginnings of Local Industrialization in South Gujarat, 1970–2000. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers.Google Scholar
Surajram, Vyasji Vallabhram. 1926. Vishwakarmani Katha: Vishwakarma Charitra, Vishwakarma Purana. Dakor, Gujarat: Bookseller Mansukhram Ranchoddas.Google Scholar
Thomas, Renny, and Geraci, Robert M.. 2018. “Religious Rites and Scientific Communities: Ayudh Puja as ‘Culture’ at the Indian Institute of Science.” Zygon 53 (1): 95–122.10.1111/zygo.12380CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurston, Edgar. 1909. Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume III. Madras: Government Press.Google Scholar
Upadhyay, Smriti. 2018. “Workers and the Right Wing: The Situation in India.” International Labor and Working-Class History 93:79–90.10.1017/S0147547917000333CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varghese K., George. 2003. “Globalisation Traumas and New Social Imaginary: Visvakarma Community in Kerala.” Economic and Political Weekly 38 (45): 4794–4802.Google Scholar
Vishwa Samvad Kendra–Gujarat. n.d. “Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.” https://sites.google.com/site/vskgujrat/home/like-minded-organization-1/bharatiya-mazdoor-sangh (accessed November 28, 2020).Google Scholar