introduction. 7
Tamil Nadu, and they worship Arokia-mariamma (Mary, Our Lady of Health) in
St. Mary’s Basilica in Bangalore. Thursday is also a day when Bangalorean Hindus
like to visit local dargahs—places where powerful Sufi saints are said to be en-
tombed—seeking cures, promotions, and a host of other favors. These public acts
of reverence, petition, and thanksgiving remind us that although there are relatively
crisp boundaries between religious communities if an issue like marriage is on the
table, these clear boundaries fade away when it comes to recognizing divine power
in the “other” tradition. Hundreds ofdargahs throughout India serve as shared rit-
ual spaces accommodating Hindus, Christians, and Muslims, and they are joined by
a host of Christian shrines and Hindu temples.
Despite the dramatic developments signaled by what we have described at
ISKCON, Swaminarayan, and elsewhere, in most of Bangalore ’s small neighbor-
hood temples and homes Hindu devotional life was proceeding as usual. There it
seemed nothing had changed, except that now radio and television stations were
broadcasting songs of the season—songs of the Hindu season. The first week of
January in any year comes right in the middle of the South Indian month of Mar-
gali (Skt. margasirsa). This month is considered to be especially sacred to Andal and
Manikkavachakar, two Tamil poet-saints who lived around the eighth century c.e.
Andal, a woman who refused to get married to a human being and instead wanted
to marry Vishnu, wrote two poems expressing her passion for this deity. Between
mid-December and mid-January Andal is venerated in the Vishnu temples in South
India and in the South Indian temples in dozens of American cities, including Pitts-
burgh, Malibu, and Atlanta. In Bangalore several temples sponsored oral commen-
taries on Andal’s poetry, and the mornings started with a recitation of her songs in
thousands of households, just as they did in temples located in Livermore, Califor-
nia; Queens, New York; and Aurora, Illinois.
In many Bangalore households, a television channel called Jaya TV is turned on
at 5:30 a.m.every morning. Ordinarily the broadcast begins with darshan of the fa-
mous Pillaiyar (Ganesha) temple in Pillaiyarpatti, Tamil Nadu, and continues im-
mediately with twenty minutes of the Tamil version of the “good morning”
(suprabhatam)prayer performed at the great temple of Lord Venkatesvara in Tiru-
pati. During the month of Margali, however, the suprabhatam is replaced by the
Tiruppavai,the prayer that Andal composed to awaken Krishna—not just on Jaya
TV but on at least three other television channels and many more radio stations. On
the first day of Margali (December 16, 2003) Jaya TV started with a male voice
reciting a traditional invocatory verse glorifying Andal. This was followed by stu-
dents from the well-known Padma Seshadri High School in Chennai—young