Gold like the Vēl : Murugan worship and economic independence in colonial Mauritius

This paper aims to map the progressive settlement of Murukaṉ worship throughout the indentured South Indian communities of Mauritius island, in the early decades of the 20th century. Following the end of slavery in 1835, indentured plantation labor brought to the Mascarene archipelago large contingents of Tamiḻ-speaking migrants from agrarian castes such as -in decreasing numerical order- Vaṉṉiyar-s, Kallār-s, Paṟaiyar-s and Vēḷāḷar-s.

I locate the emergence of Murukaṉ-centered within a departure from the historically dominant ritual economy of Māriyammaṉ and Draupati worship, confined to sugar estate temples under direct White planters’ patronage. This ritual economy relocated in the racially stratified Mascarene plantation the hierarchical religious relations of the South Indian Camastāṉam (agrarian petty kingdom). Timiti (walk on fire) and Paratam (Mahābhārata) recitation arguably constituted a custom in the thompsonian sense, a negotiated celebration of the social-political bond between local ruler and subjects (Thompson 1980).

The first Murukaṉ temple was inaugurated in 1856 by Tamiḻ merchant-turned planter Songoritee, in the central village of Clémencia. The temple had been erected on the arable lands he had purchased from a White planter, near the habitations of which Songoritee was the landlord. In this social and economic capacity, he patronized the first recorded Taippūcam  Kāvaṭi procession in honor of Murukaṉ, the ceremony being until today the main Tamiḻ-descendant Hindu festival alongside Timiti. The annual Kāvaṭi celebration was soon lavishly taken up by the Cokkaliṅkamīṉāṭciyammaṉkōvil -replica of the iconic Madurai temple in the Mauritian capital Port-Louis- through its Ceṭṭiyār plantocrat patrons.

It is in the first decades of the 20th century that Mauritius witnesses a crucial evolution in the Murukaṉ-centered ritual economy. In 1903 is inaugurated the Cupramaṇiyamalaikkōvil by the Vēḷāḷar families of Quatre-Bornes, on the mountainous slopes dominating the Creole upper-middle-class town. The temple founder, Velamurugan, is said to have been an indentured laborer who had donated all his savings to Quatre-Bornes’ Vēḷāḷar small farmers for the temple construction, Velamurugan then merging with the statue he had placed on the mountain, setting the construction in motion.

By the 1910s, the Cupramaṇiyamalaikkōvil Benevolent Society had become the largest patron of the annual Taippūcam  Kāvaṭi procession. In 1911 was inaugurated the Civacuppiramaṇiyarkōvil in the English town of Vacoas. Marday “Butler”, a Tamiḻ former domestic servant risen to landlord, was the temple’s founder and first Tarumakarttā (regal intendant), also patronizing early on a large Kāvaṭi procession.

Following the Quatre-Bornes and Vacoas temples, many smaller Murukaṉ temples were built between 1910 and 1950, installing perennially public Murukaṉ devotion throughout the island, Mauritian devotees contributing also to its installation in the Tamiḻ-descendant communities of Réunion island.

I argue that the establishment of Murukaṉ cultic centres map the settlement of a new class of upper-caste Tamiḻ landlords moving from small plantation holdings to more mercantile ventures. To “shift” towards Murukaṉ symbolized the abandonment of a hierarchical economy of field labor to a more fluid and horizontal form of a nonetheless stratified patronage. Through the foundation narratives of the Quatre-Bornes and Vacoas temples, the peripatetic and metamorphous deity Murukaṉ arguably provided to formerly indentured migrants a Bhakti of economic freedom and political ascension. This argument is backed by the primary sources of a Tamiḻ-Mauritian devotional literature, focus of my paper’s last part.

Born and living all his life in Port-Louis, Vadivel Selvam “Chellen” Pillai (1899-1979) was a third-generation Tamiḻ-Mauritian man of letters. Working as a clerk in a dock company of the sugar industry, Chellen is mostly as a Tamiḻ kaviñar (poet) and nāṭakalaiva (stage master), celebrated for his rāga-based musical-literary compositions. Chellen’s literary work was chiefly at the service of the Hindu Hymn Society. Although a nominally Srīvaiṣṇava institution patronizing Viṣṇu worship in the island, the Society turned to Kāvaṭi patronage in the late 1920s, which testifies of the growing importance of public Murukaṉ devotion for religious patrons. Chellen was tasked with the composition for the musical accompaniment of the ceremony. Though known until today for his Srīraṅgam-themed kīrttaṉai poems, Chellen also composed praise poems to Murukaṉ out of his own will, as he confessed the God as his iṣṭatēvam (favored deity). The poet’s pieces on Murukaṉ extol the virtues of rest, self-employment and dignified effort, these notions absent from the more landlordist poetics of Chellen’s Vaiṣṇava panegyrics.

I argue that these poems are an eloquent discursive index of the devotional universe of early 20th century Mauritius, in direct echo of the foundation narratives of the Clémencia, Quatre-Bornes and Vacoas temples. Through my analysis of three of his compositions in three different genres (patikam, vempā, kīrttaṉai), Chellen tellingly showcases the association between his favored deity and a hard-won material liberty, so distinctive of Murukaṉ Bhakti in the Mascarene islands.