After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, South Asians were shipped to sugar plantations across the Caribbean as indentured laborers. Indentured servitude produced the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. The oceans that witnessed this odyssey and ordeal came to be known as kālāpānī or dark waters. The Madrasis (named after their port of departure, Madras, i.e., Chennai, but hailing from different parts of southern India) are a religious minority within the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. They cohere around various south Indian deities including Mariamman, Kateriamman, Madurai Veeran, Gangamman, and Sangili Karuppan and practice spirit possession, drumming, and healing rituals associated with these deities. Since the 1980s, Madrasis have been moving to the United States. Brooklyn has emerged as the North American center of the Madrasi diaspora. In Guyana and in Brooklyn, Madrasis live, work, and perform their healing rituals on the aquatic edges of the Anthropocene.
The dark waters, with their colonial histories and endangered futures, continue to inundate the Madrasis’ migrant worlds. ExxonMobil’s oil rigging along the Guyanese foreshore threatens the lives and livelihoods of Madrasi fishermen and sugar plantation workers. In 2015, ExxonMobil “discovered” oil reserves along the Atlantic coast of Guyana. In 2019, the government of Guyana and ExxonMobil signed a contract allowing the multinational oil and gas corporation to set up shorebases and oil rigs along the coast. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022 among Madrasi drummers, priests, priestesses, healers, and fishermen in Guyana, the first part of this paper will focus on how Madrasis draw on 1) their own history of labor, indentured servitude, and experiences of extraction and 2) the language of karma and kaliyuga to describe and criticize what they call “Exxon’s transparent slavery.”
In their conversations about climate change, fears about impending oil spills, and the lack of safety gear for workers on Exxon’s oil rigs, Madrasi pujārīs (priests) and fishermen employ the term kaliyuga (commonly understood as a Hindu mythological term for a final timecycle marked by chaos and “apocalyptic” or catastrophic events) to describe what they view as our current era of climate change and environmental disaster. Some pujārīs propose the year 1492 (Columbus’ arrival in the Americas) as the beginning of the kaliyuga. In connecting the apocalyptic and mythological imagery of kaliyuga with colonial regimes of extraction and labor and contemporary petro-imperialism, Madrasis expand and experiment with the potential and limits of religious and mythological terminology. They have also extended their terminological experiments to the term karma. In a world shaped by human-inflicted climate change and environmental degradation, the word karma, the Madrasis argue, is best understood to mean environmentally-conscious ethical action. Madrasis on both sides of the Atlantic dark waters—the Guyanese coast and the shores of Brooklyn—share this understanding of karma.
In Brooklyn, Madrasis invoke their goddesses from the waters of Jamaica Bay. The U.S National Parks Service recognizes Jamaica Bay as a designated Wildlife Refuge. The bay’s endangered wetland ecosystem supports the annual migration of shorebirds, horseshoe crabs, and the Madrasis’ annual religious ceremonies. In the aftermath of hurricane Sandy (October 2012) and as a response to increasing concerns about urban pollution in Jamaica Bay, the Madrasi community has been working closely with park rangers on various cleanup projects in Jamaica Bay. In the second half of my paper, I will draw on years of ethnographic fieldwork among Madrasis in Brooklyn to outline the community’s understanding of karma as environmentally-conscious ethical action. I will also analyze park rangers’ responses to and collaboration with Madrasi healers, priests, and community leaders.
Having analyzed how the Madrasis of Guyana and New York invoke their own history of indentured labor and the concepts of karma and kaliyuga to make sense of life, labor, and religion in an epoch of human-inflicted climate crises, I will conclude my paper by putting the Madrasis’ historical perspectives and terminological experiments in conversation with recent debates in the environmental and energy humanities (Tsing 2015, Haraway 2016, Ghosh 2016, Danowski and De Castro 2017, Latour 2017, Chakrabarty 2021) about the terminology and dating of the Anthropocene. Not only does the Indo-Caribbean Madrasi perspective challenge normative definitions of karma and kaliyuga but it also allows us to situate the study of Hinduism within ongoing discussions about the historical and epistemological issues with the way we conceive of or describe the Anthropocene (a term that carries significant anthropocentric and Enlightenment baggage but also creates new opportunities for inter-disciplinary dialogue).
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Danowski, Déborah and Eduardo Viveiros De Castro. The Ends of the World. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement : Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, UK, and Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2017.
Tsing, Anna L. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press, 2015.
After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, South Asians were shipped to plantations across the Caribbean as indentured workers. The system of indentured labor produced the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. The Madrasis are a religious minority within this diaspora. They cohere around the south Indian goddess Mariamman and practice drumming and spirit possession rituals. Since the 1980s, Madrasis have been migrating to the United States. In New York and Guyana, Madrasis live on the coastal edges of climate change, oil spills, and water pollution. Drawing on ethnographic work in Guyana and New York, this paper examines how Madrasis invoke their history of indentured labor and the language of karma and kaliyuga to criticize ExxonMobil’s expansion along the coastline of Guyana and water pollution in Jamaica Bay, New York. The paper places the Madrasis’ terminological experiments in conversation with recent debates about the terminology and dating of the Anthropocene.