Goddesses Lakshmi and Bhudevi and Their Active Presence in the Tamil Hindu Diaspora in the SF Bay Area: Will Climate Change Events Affect the Worship of Two Qualitatively Different Hindu Goddesses?

In the Tamil Hindu diaspora in the United States, this paper will explore the presence, the vitality, and the active worship of two Hindu goddesses, one who is very well known, the Goddess Lakshmi, who represents wealth, health, auspiciousness and alertness and one not as focused upon, Bhudevi, the earth goddess. This ethnographic research will focus on Tamil Hindu Americans of the San Francisco Bay Area.  

The first questions will be: What are the meanings and significances of these two Hindu Goddesses and their value in Tamil Hindu everyday life? What are the narratives in which these two goddesses are embedded? The myths? 

The second set of questions this paper will pursue relate to the ways in which the ritual imaginations of these two goddesses overlap with the notions of “value” and “disvalue”. What kinds of “value” (or mathippu) are considered to be resident in the Goddess Lakshmi and how does this translate into everyday life actions related to economics? What kinds of “value” (or mathippu) occupy the earth goddess Bhudevi and how are those values translated into diasporic everyday life? Depending on the time of arrival in the diaspora, how do various intergenerational family members relate to these two goddesses in their memories of the “homeland” or their value structure there? This research will focus on expanding the ways in which notions of “value” and “disvalue” are understood in relation to each other through these two goddesses of Lakshmi and Bhudevi in the Tamil Hindu diaspora and the lived memories of their ancestors. 

A third set of questions this ethnographic research will focus on the following question: What is the perception of the natural world and what roles does it play in the everyday life of tech workers, tech business laborers, and those who work adjacent to the technology industry and for those who work far away from the tech industry? Is there a direct relationship between the earth goddess and the natural world, and if so, how are they connected in narratives, myths, stories, and everyday dialogues? If not, why not? What are the temples in the SF Bay Area which have an icon to Bhudevi and who are those Hindu worshippers who do special pujas to these icons? Why do they do special pujas to Bhudevi? 

Very recently, in January 2025, the Los Angelos area was a site of intense fires which were out of control for weeks and was one of the fiercest fire storms ever in a populated area in California. How do these uncontrollable fires affect Hindu American’s worship of Bhudevi? Do they connect these unimaginable climate events to their honoring of the goddess Bhudevi? And if they do, how do they express the relationship? And if they don’t, why do they not? And is there any effect of the fires to the worship of the goddess Lakshmi in the SF Bay Area? If so, how so? If not, why not? 

This paper will attempt to inscribe how the earth goddess, Bhudevi, and the wealth goddess, Lakshmi, appear and disappear in the everyday lives of Tamil Hindus in the SF Bay Area.  Through intensive ethnographic research, participant observation at the Bhudevi and Lakshmi shrines at the Siva-Vishnu Temple in Livermore, CA, and the potentially rich articulated relationships between the moral economy of a climate aware world and Hindu goddesses in the diaspora, this paper will attempt to map out a new kind of notes in the fields of religion, geography, and economics. These sets of questions will be investigated through the triple interlaced lens of economics, ecology, and climate chaos.