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Hindu Gods in West Africa
Ghanaian Devotees of Shiva and Krishna
Series: - Studies of Religion in Africa, Volume: 42
Author:
In Hindu Gods in West Africa, Wuaku offers an account of the histories, beliefs and practices of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temple, two Hindu Temples in Ghana. Using historical material and data from his field work in southern Ghana, Wuaku shows how these two Hindu Temples build their traditions on popular Ghanaian religious notions about the powerful magicality of India's Hindu gods. He explores how Ghanaian soldiers who served in the colonial armies in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma during World War II, Bollywood films, and local magicians, have contributed to the production and the spreading of these cultural ideas. He argues that while Ghanaian worshippers appropriated and deployed the alien Hindu religious world through their own cultural ideas, as they engage Hindu beliefs and rituals in negotiating challenges their own worldviews would change considerably.
Albert Kafui Wuaku, Ph.D.(2004), University of Toronto, is Assistant professor of African and African Diaspora Religions at Florida International University, Miami, USA. He has published on Ghanaian Hinduism and Haitian Vodou practices in Miami.
"Wuaku provides fresh insight into the intellectual debates at work in Ghanaian religious activities...This highly original study deserves a wide audience and will surely influence ongoing debates and new research about Africa’s dynamic religious landscape and African-Asian interactions." - Shobana Shankar, Stony Brook University, USA, in: Journal of Religion in Africa 45 (2015)
All interested in religious globalization in the late 20th and early 21st century, religion in Africa, overseas Hinduism, and fieldwork in African religious fields.