Digitising the Diaspora Temple: Diasporic Affordances of Devotional Objects at a Hindu Sindhi Temple in Hong Kong

This article explores how diaspora ties are mediated by devotional objects at a Hindu Sindhi temple in Hong Kong. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this small temple moved its services online and reached the Hindu Sindhi diaspora in 33 countries. Through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews (in person and digital), this article finds that this successful digitisation was facilitated by a creative redeployment of everyday devotional objects—such as the new ‘flattened’ deities (two-dimensional cardboard idols acquired by the temple for digital broadcasts) and the diverse diasporic objects assembled into an offerings plate (‘presented’ both to the digital audience and the deity), which evoked the mobilities and connections of the dispersed Hindu Sindhi community. At a time when the diaspora’s everyday physical mobility was curtailed, the mobilities, material forms and potentials of these devotional objects—read here as ‘diasporic affordances’—demonstrate how the digital and material intersect to sustain diaspora ties.