The latest Australian census results show that the top 3 “country of birth” categories that grew the most between 2016 and 2021 were Nepal, India, and Pakistan. Those top 2 countries are predominantly Hindu and this has contributed to Hinduism’s phenomenal growth in Australia since the turn of the millennium. Hindu migrants are generally young, with a median age of 31 years, meaning it is likely they will be raising Hindu children in this country.

Hinduism’s rise is most visibly reflected in the colourful facades of temples appearing in our major cities. My new book explores this growing Hindu community through changes occurring within a long-established Australian temple:

மொழி, மத வேறுபாடுகளை கையாளும் நடைமுறை: ஆஸ்திரேலியாவில் ஒரு தமிழ் இந்து கோவில்
Negotiating linguistic and religious diversity: A Tamil Hindu Temple in Australia

In the temple, where I conducted a linguistic ethnography, there is a surprising level of diversity in language, culture and religious beliefs. On one particular day, there were 14 languages other than English being spoken in the canteen area. The most common were Tamil, Gujarati, and Hindi. The Tamil language was to be expected because the temple was established by mainly Sri Lankan Tamil migrants to venerate a Tamil Hindu god and to be a site for the celebration and transmission of Tamil culture.

However the influx of migrants from the Indian subcontinent has meant that the temple’s devotees are becoming increasingly diverse in their linguistic and religio-cultural practices. This then challenges the temple’s identity and conduct as a Tamil space.

In the context of English-dominant, monolingual-mindset Australia the temple founders saw it as crucial that a safe space for Tamil was created to keep the Tamil language and culture alive for future generations. This goal was particularly urgent because minority languages and religions have been marginalised for decades in Sri Lanka (where I’m from), most evident in the long civil war that involved the persecution of Tamil people, language and culture on a large scale. What you’re hearing in the news today, about the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, is closely linked to this issue, because unworthy and corrupt national leaders have used ethnicity, religion and language as tools to divide the population and maintain power.

Devotees inside the temple (Image from Perera, 2023 © Routledge)

When it comes to passing Hinduism onto future generations, the temple runs a Sunday faith school for children and the language policy is for Tamil-medium lessons. It’s a small school in terms of student numbers but it is an important opportunity for young Tamils to meet with peers and to work out what the Hindu religion means for them in a largely (although diminishing) Christian society. Sitting in on these classes I observed rich translingual practices in how the students deployed mainly Tamil and English language features in the expression of their Tamil pride and their evolving religious beliefs. I was impressed with the students’ confidence in their identities. However, those Hindu children who did not have a Tamil-language background – either being of a different ethnolinguistic group or being Tamil but not having the opportunity to learn it in Australia – were inadvertently excluded from the classes based on the school’s language policy.

So this is the dilemma for migrant hubs like Hindu temples which become sites of diversity. Tough decisions about which languages to uphold in the practice of religion and in religious education mean that some groups do not have the same opportunities for linguistic and cultural expression in the temple. External pressures like homeland language politics and war and the dominance of English language in Australia makes these decisions more complex. The temple strives to be an oasis for all Hindu migrants as they make new homes in Australia, to be a site of belonging and identity development for future generations, but finding a way to cater for all language preferences is an ongoing concern.

My book details the challenges encapsulated in the reality of what we celebrate as Australia’s linguistic and religious diversity. Importantly this book also highlights the critical role of migrant religious institutions as sites for maintenance of language and culture in addition to faith. In this way, these institutions offer significant support to migrants so that they can move confidently in broader Australian multicultural society.

Reference

Perera, N. (2023). Negotiating linguistic and religious diversity: A Tamil Hindu Temple in Australia. Routledge. [Flier with 20% Discount Code available here]

Related content

Piller, Ingrid. (2021). What can churches teach us about migrant inclusion? Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/what-can-churches-teach-us-about-migrant-inclusion/

Murugan Temple, Colombo (Source: Andy Nobes)

Do you know which non-Christian religion has grown the fastest in Australia since the new millennium? You might be surprised to hear that it’s Hinduism. Hinduism has different faces in Australia but I want to show how it is helping language maintenance for one particular group of migrants.

Hinduism is not brand new to Australia. Hindus and Hinduism have existed here since the early days of colonisation and Hindu temples and centres have been around since the 1970s. The term “Hinduism” is an overarching one for a religion that is diverse in its forms. The way Hinduism is practiced can vary between regions; the various forms can focus on different deities and encompass different cultural and linguistic practices. For this reason, there are approximately 50 Hindu temples in Australia.

One reason Hinduism is growing quickly is because of the large number of Indian migrants coming to Australia. Indians form the country of birth group (for Australia’s overseas-born population) that increased the most in size between 2001 and 2011 (up by 200,000 people).

The Hindus I want to talk about are Sri Lankan Tamils. They form the fourth largest Hindu group in Australia after Indians, Fijians and Nepalese. There were about 15,000 counted in the last census and most of them are located in New South Wales and Victoria.

Previous research has found that a devout Hindu faith can assist in heritage language maintenance. This generally relies on an ideological view about the need for a particular language in order to practice one’s faith appropriately. In a diaspora context, it is important to distinguish between the language(s) seen as necessary for the performance of Hindu rituals and the language(s) seen as necessary for communication to and amongst an often more linguistically diverse group of devotees.

Lord Murugan

Most Tamil Hindus follow a branch of Hinduism known as Saivism which views Lord Shiva as the preeminent god. For Tamils, there is a particular closeness to Lord Shiva’s son known as Lord Murugan. He is seen as the Tamil god and is considered a big part of Tamil culture. Many Tamil Saivites who have migrated from Sri Lanka “believe from generation to generation that Tamil means Saivism and Saivism means Tamil” (Suseendirajah 1980, p. 345). In this sense, the Tamil (தமிழ்) language is seen as an essential part of the practice of Saivism; “how are we going to pray in English?” asked a leader of one Tamil temple in Australia.

There are seven temples dedicated to Lord Murugan by name in Australia and these have been built and consecrated by Sri Lankans in the last 20 or so years. Located in several capital cities, they are not only sites for religious worship but important for bringing Tamil migrants together. The temple spaces promote traditional music and dance, host weddings and festivals, and serve Sri Lankan food from canteens. Some temples also play a role in educating the younger (second and third) generations and providing a space for them to perform and participate in Tamil religious and cultural activities.

So how can these temple spaces help with language maintenance? The answer is not obvious when you consider that the language of formal ceremony in the temples is Sanskrit, a language known by the priests who conduct them, but, largely not understood by most devotees. Add to this the fact that the ethnic and linguistic backgrounds of devotees in these temples are becoming increasingly diverse with the growth of Hinduism. Sometimes English is the only common language amongst them.

Despite these factors, the temples are still able to maintain the use of Tamil in various ways. When I visited and spoke to temple leaders at three Murugan temples, I was given the distinct impression that I was entering predominantly Tamil spaces; most signage was in Tamil script and the majority of people around me were conversing in Tamil. If you look at the temples’ written communications such as notices, newsletters, websites or Facebook sites, there is certainly evidence of English being used, but substantial content is presented in the Tamil script.

While the formal rituals in the temple occur in Sanskrit (as they would back in Sri Lanka), there are forms of group worship in the temple spaces that occur in Tamil. Worship such as the singing of hymns (based on ancient Tamil Saiva literature) and particular devotional songs, called bhajans, occurs in Tamil. The traditional music that is performed in the temples’ cultural halls contains a lot of Tamil. Religious lectures are delivered by visiting speakers in Tamil, communication with temple volunteers working at the front counters or serving food will all occur in Tamil if you can speak it. And if priests address the crowd in the temple they will do so in Tamil.

Not all the younger Tamil generation are proficient Tamil speakers so there is the risk of losing their interest if they cannot fully participate in the above activities. But at one temple, a weekly religious school is taught in Tamil to approximately 60 students indicating that some younger devotees are proficient in the language. This is on top of a secular external Tamil language school attended by many more Tamil children on weekends in the same city.

Sydney Murugan Hindu Temple (Source: Global Hinduism)

In this way, the temple might not be able to succeed in teaching the language, but for those members of the younger generations who wish to use Tamil, there are many opportunities to do so, from one-on-one communication with other devotees to the Saiva school.

Devotees who cannot speak Tamil still visit the temple for worship but many are excluded from the group activities that are conducted in the Tamil language. This is a salient point given that the number of Indians attending these temples is increasing. Will the temples eventually change their language policies to accommodate non-Tamil speakers? Or will they prioritise their role in Tamil language and cultural maintenance? This may, in part, depend on how many newly arrived Tamil-speaking migrants join the temple.

The evidence given from several temple leaders and devotees I spoke to indicates that they don’t see the younger generations as being that interested in maintaining the language in general, and so, if the religion is all they can keep then maybe the language of the temple will change in the future. As one temple leader said, “the religion will live for a hundred years but the language won’t”. Perhaps, while the languages (Sanskrit and Tamil) used in the worship aspect of the religion are likely to be upheld, we may see change in the languages (that is, a shift to English) used for communicative purposes, such as for information and education, in the temples.

Incorporating more English into the temples’ language policies will accommodate both the younger generations and the non-Tamil devotees. But will the ideology that connects Tamil and Saivism be so strong for the first generation members in charge of the temples that English will continue to be used only when necessary? Questions such as this seem yet to be addressed by the temple boards and indicate that language change is likely to occur gradually, and with complexity, in these spaces.

Details about my research about language maintenance in Tamil Hindu temples in Australia is available in Perera (2016).

References

Perera, N. (2016). Tamil in the temples – Language and religious maintenance beyond the first generation Multilingua : 10.1515/multi-2015-0059

Suseendirarajah, S. 1980. Religion and language in Jaffna society. Anthropological Linguistics 22. 345–62.

High Court of Australia (Source: Wikipedia)

When people arrive in countries like Australia, seeking to be recognised as refugees and offered protection, it is obviously important that they are able to communicate their experiences and respond to any doubts the authorities may have about their claims. Given the centrality of language and communication, this area has created interest for sociolinguists in a variety of refugee-receiving countries around the world. Indeed, it is the focus of my own PhD research, here in Australia.

In reviewing the literature, I’ve come across a burgeoning body of research from Australia and abroad that centres on issues related to intercultural communication, interpreting and language analysis. These studies identify significant challenges for asylum seekers and other participants in the system.

However, one asylum seeker’s recent appeal to the Federal Court of Australia brought up an even more fundamental concern. Beyond the provision of interpreters and training in cultural awareness, there seems to be a much more basic challenge facing those seeking to access the justice system: knowing the language and the culture of the court and the law itself. Judicial officers, who are in a superior position in terms of their knowledge, therefore arguably have a heightened responsibility to facilitate unrepresented parties as they attempt to navigate what can be a very “foreign” environment.

SZWBH v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection sets out the experience of an asylum seeker who had sought judicial review after his application for a protection visa was unsuccessful. In Australia, if a visa application is unsuccessful, the applicant can apply for a judicial review of this decision in the court. The court cannot consider the merits of the application. Instead, it acts as a “check and balance” on the executive wing of government, assessing whether decisions made by government officials – including those made by the Immigration Department – were made following the legally required procedures (Crock & Berg, 2011, p. 613). If a migration decision is not reached in the appropriate manner, this could constitute what is known in legal language as “jurisdictional error”, requiring the decision to be made again.

The Sri Lankan asylum seeker, known as “SZWBH” (in Australia, applicants for protection visas are no longer referred to by their names in published decisions), had no legal assistance or representation when he sought review in the Federal Circuit Court, but was provided with an interpreter. After his application for review was summarily dismissed, he appealed to the Full Court of the Federal Court.

The later Federal Court appeal decision sets out the earlier exchange between SZWBH and the Federal Circuit Court judge, Justice Street.

HIS HONOUR: SZWBH, the court has looked at the grounds in your application and having read the decision of the tribunal, it doesn’t appear to have a sufficient prospect of success to warrant a further hearing date and the court is minded to consider whether your application should be summarily dismissed now. To make clear the position, I have a concern that the grounds you’ve identified do not properly identify any jurisdictional error. Is there anything you wish to put to me as to why there is a jurisdictional error by the tribunal?

THE INTERPRETER: [For court proceedings involving interpreters, the interpretation in English, as recorded in the transcript, is the accepted official record of the communication as it took place, to the exclusion of the other language(s) spoken by participants]. Yes, I wish to put to the court certain things.

HIS HONOUR: Now is your opportunity to do so.

THE INTERPRETER: I described to the Department of Immigration that my younger brother, younger sister and her husband were killed. I also submitted that certificates relevant to those killings and I put forward a claim stating that because of those incidents the police will be targeting me as I was seen as being opposed to the police.

HIS HONOUR: Yes.

THE INTERPRETER: Therefore, I plead to this court that I have come here to seek refuge and protection, and therefore, I urge this court to grant me protection and allow me to stay in this country.

HIS HONOUR: Is there anything else you want to say as to why there was a jurisdictional error?

THE INTERPRETER: I have certain doubts whether the tribunal delved into an inquiry as to my younger brother was killed.

HIS HONOUR: Yes.

THE INTERPRETER: There are more – therefore, I ask your Honour to consider my claims and look into the decision and make a favourable decision.

HIS HONOUR: Yes. I’m confined to jurisdictional error by the tribunal. Is there anything else you can put to me as to why there’s jurisdictional error?

THE INTERPRETER: I do not have anything further to tell your Honour.

HIS HONOUR: Thank you SZWBH.

Refugees at sea (Source: Wikipedia)

Demonstrating respect for the judicial process, the solicitor representing the Minister stepped in to acknowledge SZWBH’s disadvantageous position. She suggested that he may need more time to access all relevant documents and offered to help him put together a court book, given the Minister’s superior access to the relevant material. Nonetheless, without giving the parties the opportunity to do this, the judge summarily dismissed the case, arguing that the proceedings had “no reasonable prospect of success”. The whole Federal Circuit Court proceedings were complete within 30 minutes of when they had begun.

With the help of pro bono legal assistance, SZWBH appealed this decision to the Federal Court. The response of Justices Mansfield, Tracey and Mortimer was close to scathing. They pointed out that it was highly unusual for a judge to summarily dismiss a case at the first hearing, without giving the party any opportunity to prepare a proper response. They argued that where the party involved was “an unrepresented Tamil asylum seeker” this was offensive to the Constitutional powers and responsibilities of the judiciary (para 55).

The Federal Court especially emphasised the challenges SZWBH faced in navigating the court system, arguing that:

The grounds on which the appellant made his application to the FCC did not clearly allege jurisdictional error on the part of the Tribunal. This is, perhaps, not surprising given that the appellant was acting without legal assistance and had an imperfect understanding of the English language. So much may be inferred from the terms of the application and the fact that the services of an interpreter were required at the hearing. It is also relevant to note, as the Tribunal had done, that the appellant had been a cleaner in Sri Lanka and had only been educated to year 11 standard (para 25).

Even as a qualified lawyer and recent law student, I can admit that I find explaining jurisdictional error difficult. In fact, Crock and Berg (2011) argue that articulating a clear explanation of jurisdictional error is “one of the most difficult tasks for any administrative lawyer” (p. 645). It is no small wonder then that SZWBH struggled to employ the term when arguing his case.

Fortunately, the Court recognised the attempts SZWBH had made to communicate his arguments and the very real challenges he faced in doing so in a way that strictly employed formal legal language. The Federal Court judges neatly summarised the situation:

Serious issues relating to the procedural fairness of proceedings must arise in circumstances such as the present in which an unrepresented applicant whose primary language is not English and who may be assumed to be unfamiliar with curial processes is called on, without notice, to mount arguments resisting the summary dismissal of his application (para 32).

Happily, the Full Federal Court was therefore able to right the wrong of the Federal Circuit Court judge’s decision, and remit the review back to a different judge to be made again. However, this case makes obvious the very real difficulties that may be faced by unrepresented parties, especially in situations where the judge apparently desires a case to be dealt with “expeditiously”. SZWBH’s experience demonstrates that equal access to justice requires much more than the provision of interpreting and that unfortunately, sometimes what is lawful may be far from fair or just.

Further Reading

Crock, M. & Berg, L. (2011). Immigration, Refugees and Forced Migration: Law, policy and practice in Australia Annandale: The Federation Press

SZWBH v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2015] FCAFC 88

SZWBH v Minister for Immigration & Anor [2015] FCCA 436

Carnatic singer Prema Anandakrishnan and her accompanists performing for the monthly Sydney Music Circle concert

An important element of language relates to its aesthetic use, in other words, how we make our lives beautiful and present ourselves to the world beautifully through language. Anthropologists and linguists have been interested in this dimension throughout the 20^th century in their study of ritual and folklore and the ways that language is used in them through song, chant, oratory and other kinds of interactional discourse. Bauman’s (1975) Verbal Art as Performance crystalised many of these ideas to place an emphasis on performance when looking at such aesthetic modes of communication and to establish performance as an important area of study within Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics. Singing is an important cultural activity in which language as performance intertwines with music. As with many other forms of performance, singing often takes place within the context of a range of other embodied cultural practices.

In my Linguistics PhD thesis supervised by Dr. Verna Rieschild at Macquarie University, I looked at two singing traditions – Irish traditional singing and South Indian Carnatic singing – as practiced in diasporic communities in Australia focusing on performance, language choice and language ideologies and musicolinguistic artistry. My thesis research provided a fascinating opportunity to apply the ideas from the study of language as performance to forms of singing I loved, and explore dimensions of multilingualism, globalisation and migration within them.

In singing, highly marked language choices can be made such as using a language you don’t know or normally speak, or using a non-dominant language in a dominant setting. The transformative nature of the performance enables a transformation of settings and communicative practices. Hence, Irish traditional singers in Australia who speak Irish let their use of Irish in songs spill over into the informal speech or banter between the songs. Tamil-speaking Carnatic singers choose a song in Tamil (from the multilingual song repertoire) to elaborate with extended musicolinguistic improvisation.

Language ideologies, equally prevalent in singing as they are in speech, are particularly strong and transformative due to the expressive and heightened nature of performance. In Carnatic singing, an ideology of devotion to the Tamil language has competed with ideologies about music as a “universal language”- in other words, beyond any particular spoken language- throughout the 20^th century (Ramaswamy 1997; Weidman 2005). Hence, the multilingual repertoire and centrality of songs in Telugu and Sanskrit has remained along with recognition of Tamil and singers consciously or unconsciously vary (typically in small degrees) as to how they weight each language in terms of the number of songs in each language and how this correlates with the types of songs chosen (some Carnatic songs are considered to be more musically “heavy” and consequently more at the core of the repertoire). Meanwhile, Irish traditional singing is connected with ideologies relating to Irish language use which have arisen in the course of its revival and resistance to the hegemonic influence of English.

Perhaps the most “moving” aspect of singing, however, is the way that music and language artfully intersect in performance, which I call musicolinguistic artistry. In the final part of my thesis, I analysed the musicolinguistic artistry of both singing traditions. In Irish traditional singing, one aspect of musicolinguistic artistry is the ways that singers perform different versions of the same song with slight differences in melody, rhythm, text or performance practice. Singers typically maintain aspects of the particular version they acquired but usually put their own individual stamp on it through acceptable variations in the song text (O Laoire 2004), innovative performance practices such as harmony or framing the song in a particular way through banter.

In South Indian Carnatic singing, musicolinguistic artistry is at its zenith in the improvisatory format known as niraval (literally “filling up”) in which a line from a song is repeated in various melodic and rhythmic combinations over the continuing steady beat cycle of the song. In niraval, the singer first uses the musical elements to emphasise particularly meaningful phrases in the song text and then gradually develops the melody and rhythm to increasing virtuosity to the extent that the line of text becomes more of a vehicle for the music (Radhakrishnan 2012).

The diasporic context adds the further dimension of migration and transnational movement. In the Australia-based communities of practice engaged in Irish traditional singing and South Indian Carnatic music, the singing traditions are transplanted from their territorial origins, evoking a strong sense of connection to those cultural homelands and triggering or providing a space for other embodied cultural and linguistic practices which accompany the singing traditions (cf. Ram 2000; Dutkova-Cope 2000). Performance events of these singing traditions hence create micro-level ecologies in which practices of cultural continuity and language maintenance and revitalisation can unfold in ways that are meaningful and beautiful. Practices of transmission of these traditions and transnationalism (e.g. singers or other community members traveling “back” to Ireland or South India for learning, performing or attending performances) add another layer which further strengthens continuity.

Looking at these two singing traditions in my thesis, I have realised that performance animates and “moves” language in a number of ways, particularly when what is being performed is language itself. Hence singing and other forms of performed discourse could be seen as another kind of “language on the move”, encompassing the range of communicative functions and social practices reflected in everyday speech but also transcending them into an aesthetic experience. When the language being moved through performance moves globally through migration and transnational practice, the shifts created are strong and encouraging for linguistic diversity in a multicultural world.

References

Bauman, R. (1975). Verbal art as performance. American Anthropologist, 77(2), 290-311.

Dutkova-Cope, L. (2000). Texas Czech folk music and ethnic identity. Pragmatics, 10(1), 7-37.

O Laoire, L. (2004). The right words: Conflict and resolution in an oral Gaelic song text. Oral Tradition, 19(2), 187-213.

Ram, K. (2000). Dancing the past into life: The rasa, nrtta and raga of immigrant existence. Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11(3), 261-273.

Ramaswamy, S. (1997). Passions of the tongue : language devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. Berkeley. University of California Press. 

Radhakrishnan, M. (2012) ‘Musicolinguistic artistry of niraval in Carnatic vocal music’ in Ponsonnet M L Dao & M Bowler (eds) The 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference Proceedings – 2011 (Canberra, 1-4 Dec 2011) Canberra: ANU Research Repository

Weidman, A. (2005). Can the subaltern sing? Music, language, and the politics of voice in early twentieth-century south India Indian Economic & Social History Review, 42 (4), 485-511 DOI: 10.1177/001946460504200404

Many native speakers take it upon themselves to judge the English of people who don’t speak their brand of English. In the case of migrants to Australia this is most often to point out some deficiency: the judgment that someone’s English isn’t good enough has become a key facet of social exclusion and the judgment is used to keep migrants out of jobs or keep them in jobs below their qualifications. In fact, migrants, and particularly refugees, have become so firmly associated with “poor English” in the public imagination that having good English is now being used in the media to judge whether a refugee is “genuine” or not. I’m talking about the spokesman for the asylum seekers who were stuck on the Oceanic Viking until a few days ago. Both the fact that he is using an English name (Alex) instead of his “real” name and the fact that he is “well-spoken” and speaks “English with an American accent” have been held against him and have been used to discredit him. This is from an ABC interview:

MARK COLVIN: And the High Commissioner also said, I’ll quote “Alex’s accent is quite a distinct American accent. It is not the accent of a Sri Lankan Tamil”.
ALEX: Does the Sri Lankan High Commissioner feel that people in Sri Lanka don’t have American accents or British accents? Is there not international schools in Sri Lanka? Is there not people that do accent training for call centres and various other customer care services?
MARK COLVIN: So you trained in a call centre?
ALEX: Pardon me? I was trained in a call centre for an American call centre.

Alex himself has apparently been as surprised as I am that his high level of English proficiency could come to discredit his claim to refugee status:

[Alex] has expressed surprise over the fact that how his American accent English could become a reason for the rejection of his refugee plea. “Just because I speak English, and I was educated in an American boys mission school in my home town, and then I finished my BA, and then I finished my MBA in India, so does that mean I am not a refugee?

“We are facing genocide in Sri Lanka — it’s not about whether you are educated or not educated. Just the fact that you are Tamil, […]

A true Catch 22 story: call center operators all over the world as well as many migrants to Australia have to change their names to make it in an English-speaking world; similarly, they have to adjust their accents so that they sound less “foreign” to their far-away call-center customers or close-by employers.

Around the world learning English comes with the promise of social advancement and inclusion in the mythical “West” – just to be told “Ooops, overshot the mark, you’re too good to be genuine.”