NOTE:
Presently, India is at a unique transformative stage. The very meaning of ‘identity’, whether it be in context of religion, societal or even judiciary, is forming in its own distinctive way. These changes which are largely behavioral can be studied through the tangible structures which enable, create, and at times, challenge the present scenario. This illustration-based book is a work-in-progress which attempts to study the inception, growth and implication of makeshift-temples which crop up on public areas.
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Through this document, we recognize and study the cultural phenomenon of the establishment of roadside temples. The makeshift temples that are built with easily available, cheap materials such as scrap metals and bricks slowly develop, grow and expand over time.
In certain number of years, the crude structure forms into a concretized building which often dominates the roadway. Small entrepreneurial businesses grow around the slowly developing temple and footfalls increase overtime.
The temple becomes a center for public activities and at the same time holds the power to draw people who identify themselves with the ideology. The aim is to decode the underlying growth process, to be able to analyze the inception, development and establishment of the structure as a point of religious identity.
