Latest revision as of 20:51, 17 August 2024

[edit] Global demand

[edit] As in 2024

Kamini Mathai & Sneha Bhura, May 25, 2024: The Times of India

Traditional Sompura craftsmen from Gujarat work on an upcoming Jain temple in MelbourneWhen you drive down to the coastal town of Mammallapuram, also known as Mahabalipuram and famous for its spectacular 7th-century monuments, you’re likely to breeze past the Tamil Nadu Government College of Architecture and Sculpture without even noticing it.

Yet, this one-of-a-kind institution has been quietly teaching traditional temple architecture for the past 67 years. While even IITs struggle with placements, alumni here are in high demand these days, thanks to a temple building spree both in India and abroad.

“People everywhere want to reconnect with their Hindu heritage now, and what better way to do this than by building a temple?” says Nishanth Manoharan, an alumnus of the college who is currently in Reunion Island, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, working on his 20th temple. It’s probably his fifth or sixth stint on the island, as Nishanth says he has lost count because clients keep sending for him.

With more than a third of Reunion Island’s population being Indian, building temples is more of a status symbol now. “Almost every family here wants to outdo the other with a temple. You’ll find temples everywhere, from the middle of fields to housing colonies. For me, it’s steady income, and more than I will earn working on a farm,” says Nishanth, whose father is a farmer in Tamil Nadu.

Mohammed Ajmal, craftsman and managing director of Marble Art Palace in Jaipur, says assignments are coming even from Africa.

“In Nairobi, Kenya which has a well-established and wealthy Indian community, we are currently finishing work on two temples. Now, we are getting orders from Tanzania,” says Ajmal, whose family has been in the business of stone inlay work, also called Pietra Dura (Italian) or parchin kari (Persian), for years.

Ajmal and his team also executed parchin kari work on the pillars and interior walls of the Sheikh Zayed grand mosque, and is currently consulting on detailing work at the recently inaugurated BAPS Hindu mandir in Abu Dhabi. After an initial site visit, most of the commissions are prepared in their factories in Rajasthan.

“A Gujarati client in Nairobi, who has dedicated his life to the maintenance of temples and religious community centres, recently got his whole house designed like a temple,” adds Ajmal, who has 35 artisans working under him.

Ahmedabad-based temple architect Rajesh Sompura and his team of over 400 skilled craftsmen too have a global footprint.

“After the consecration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the demand for Hindu, Jain and Swaminarayan temples has gone up. We have been active in building temples mostly in the US, Australia and the UK. Now, we are also getting calls from places like Gibraltar, Madagascar and Portugal,” says Sompura.

Parts of the temple — designed, carved and polished in India — are shipped to be assembled by master craftsmen who travel on temporary religious worker visas to international locations where local temple committees take care of their food and lodging.

“No steel is used in our constructions and structures are erected according to shilpa-shastra and vastu-shastra. However, our traditional architects are well-versed with technology and work with specialists to convert traditional sketches into AutoCAD drawings,” says Sompura.

He is currently overseeing the construction of a Jain temple in Melbourne for which craftsmen from India are set to travel in six months’ time.

“Building temples is a lot of hard work in terms of physical labour but the new generation is not too keen to continue the tradition. Sompura shilpkars (artisans) will be needed in larger numbers in the coming days,” says Rajesh.

One reason for this, as art historian Vidya Dehejia writes, is that through temple-building activities, the diaspora is “seeking its roots”. According to her, the US alone has at least 450 Hindu temples, many of them in the South Indian model because Ganapati Sthapathi and Mutthiah Sthapati, doyens of South Indian architecture, were willing to travel to the US, work with members of the diaspora in the planning stages, and send skilled workers from India.

Global opportunities may have increased but not everyone gets to travel abroad. Kashi-based sculptor Kanhaiya Lal Sharma, who has been roped in to create replica statues of Ram Lalla in black stone to be shipped to countries across Europe — commissioned by the EterBliss Foundation, which promotes sanatan dharma — works from his hometown.

“I have just sent one over 5-ft tall statue for a Hanuman mandir in Amsterdam to be inaugurated on July 21. Another 8-ft one is for London. I haven’t visited these places. But people like my work,” says Sharma, who started crafting Ram Lalla replicas right after the Ayodhya temple opened to the public on January 22.

Sculptors like K Ramesh of the Mammallapuram-based Manasa Wood Creations have seen their turnover triple over the past couple of years.

“I’ve just hit Rs 1.5 crore,” says Ramesh, who recently shot to the limelight for building 44 massive and heavily carved wooden doors for the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Ramesh, who has built temples, doors and chariots in South-East Asia and Europe, makes at least six overseas trips a year for work, and has now started recruiting and training youngsters in the trade to meet rising demand.

“I am recruiting from the architecture college but now, I need way more than they can supply,” he says.