Digital Traces of Religious Identities: On Belongingness and Anxiety

Abstract

This chapter documents how poor children in the slums of India used digital technologies as proxy sites for enacting their religious identities. Enactments on digital platforms seldom translated into children performing their digitally mediated religious ideas/practices in physical spaces. Using digital technologies as proxy sites to enact their religious identities was influenced by children’s desire to experience a sense of belongingness with their community. Children chose to demonise the religious other in closed/covert online spaces. They continued collaborating and co-existing with the religious other in material sites for economic and social benefits. Children practised jugaad as they simultaneously reinforced and challenged/circumvented the religious norms dominant in their communities for personal desires, financial motivations, and other social benefits.