Architecture of Sovereignty: Stone Bodies, Colonial Gazes, and Living Gods in South India [Hardcover]

Demonstrates how religious spaces are sites of contestation over sovereignty and broader debates about governance as they have been reconceived repeatedly.The book re-examines how we collectively imagine relationships between culture defined broadly and the roles of historical transformation, flux, instability, and how people 'on the ground' experience material realities in given historical contexts as part of their everyday life.The book re-examines how we collectively imagine relationships between culture defined broadly and the roles of historical transformation, flux, instability, and how people 'on the ground' experience material realities in given historical contexts as part of their everyday life.In this innovative study, Gita V. Pai traces the history of the Pudu Mandapam (Tamil, 'new hall')  a Hindu temple structure in Madurai  through the rise and fall of empires in south India from the seventeenth century to the present. This wide-ranging work illustrates how south Indian temples became entangled in broader conflicts over sovereignty, from early modern Nayaka kings, to British colonial rule, to the post-independence government today. Drawing from methodologies in anthropology, religious studies, and art and architectural history, the author argues that the small temple site provides profound insight into the relationship between aesthetics, sovereignty, and religion in modern South Asia.List of Figures; Acknowledgments; Notes on Transliteration and Spelling; Introduction: Sovereignty's Trace in Architectural Forms; Part I. Stone Bodies: 1. Constructing Kingship: Nayaka Rule in Early Modern Madurai; 2. Co-opting a Local Goddess in Madurai: From Warrior Queen to Ziva's Consort to Political Pawn; Part II. Colonial Gazes: 3. Imagining Civilization: Antiquarian Curiosities in Madura; 4. Tracing the Vernacular: Drawing Madura into Debates over Language in British India; 5. Illustrating Madura: Art as 'History' and State-Building; 6. Photographing Madura: Theló=