Mauritian Hinduism and Globalisation: Transformation and Reinvention 9781032206608, 9781032287058, 9781003298137

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsement Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 The cult of Baharia Puja in Camp de Masque Pavé at the kalimai of Petite Cabanne
Baharia Puja of Petite Cabanne: the symbolic function of Kali
Description of the ceremony
The nature of Kali’s power
Ceremonial issues
The revealing ceremony of conflicts between family groups in the region
The Baharia Puja of Royal Road
The ceremonial course
The ceremonial organisation
The Arya Samaj movement in its existing differentiations
Notes
Chapter 2 The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque
Social relations in the ceremonial process
The social community of belonging of the faithful
The ceremony duality
The intrinsic rationality of the ceremony
The a priori meaning of the Amourou Panduga ceremony
Symbolic efficiency of ritual modification
Power is power; it does not separate; it is organised
Religion is the “zero degree”15 of the state
The political sense of the new ceremonial practices: Baharia and Amourou Pujas
Local electoral alliances and strategies of associations
The outcome of the regional politics
Religion and state
The relationship of one to the multiple: a vector centrality
Notes
Chapter 3 The transformation of popular cults on crown lands
A societal transformation of the urban towns: Port Louis and Mahébourg
Kalimais on crown lands
The new cults of Grand Baie and Palmar
The new inter-caste and intercommunity relations
Construction of temples and renovation of kalimais of Mahébourg and Port Louis
Renovated kalimai and foundation of a new temple in Mahébourg: a caste/community/class contradiction
Symbolic changes, political changes
Construction of temples and renovation of kalimai of Tranquebar, Port Louis,
The transformations of space from 1992 to 2007: land issues and caste/class differences
A Hanuman Temple was built. It is placed where the old altar was in 1992. It has been preserved and is inside the temple.
Religion and politics: the weight of federations
From legal to politics
Notes
Chapter 4 Kalimai temples and community strategies: The emergence of Hanuman
Imbalanced development of the north east and south east of the island
The temple foundation and development of community associations since national independence
Kalimais and temples: a process of erasure of popular cults
Development of egalitarian ideologies: caste/class dialectics
The Arya Samaj movement
The Hindu Maha Sabha movement
The Arya Ravived Prachnari Sabha association
Development of national federations
Geographical distribution and social re-organisations
Hanuman: an authority to overcome community divisions, caste and generations.
The disappearance of Dhi
Brahma/Baram: overdetermination of statutory distinctions
Saï Baba, Shiva, Ram, Krishna
Networks and electoral strategies
Electoral strategies and ritual clientelism
Interdependence and autonomy with regard to party strategies: constituencies No. 5, No. 7, No. 9 and No. 10
Notes
Chapter 5 The New Deal: Religious and political transformation
New places of worship in the north of the island: social fragmentation
New kalimai and temple on Île d’Ambre: Redesign of the labour market
New relations plantation/industrialisation and strategies of the minority groups in Constituency No. 7
The kalimais of the Daruty establishment of Plaine des Papayes: Permanence and decadence of the ancient kalimais
First kalimai of Daruty: Bellevue-Pilot, a place of memory preserved in the state.
Second kalimai Daruty property: Plaine des Papayes, witness of departures to the city after closure of the mill.
Third kalimai called Daruty, witness of an old Hindu and Creole conflict today deserted
Private kalimais: heritage issues and control of the labour force
The New Deal
General sense of the multiplication of new temples: new land and financial issues
Emergence of a class of small owners and multiplication of cults dedicated to Hanuman
Busy lane
The development of temporary labour in agriculture and industry wage labour
Emergence of international sugar capital and erasure of the large plantation
A more complete urbanisation process in the north than in the south of the island
Notes
Chapter 6 Kalimai temple transformations and changes in rituals
Popular cults practised in the temples
A unique model of religious representation
Differentiated positions of deities in the Sacred Space
The Mahashivratri cult at Grand Bassin
Emergence of Hanuman and Kali temples
Hanuman on crown land and new peripheral areas for early sugar retirees of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS)
New neighbourhoods and the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) in Montagne Blanche
Hanuman and Kali, symbolic management of conflicts between tradition and modernity in globalisation
Temples of Kali on crown lands and private lands
The first temple of Kali on crown land: Grand Baie in the north
Other private temples of Kali have multiplied
Social strategies, electoral strategies: 2014
Political redistribution of 2014 elections
Symbolic terms of transformation
Hanumanisation
Shivalisation
Brahmanisation
Creolisation
Recent development of Tantrism
Globalisation and migration
Annexure 6.1
Tantra: Kali in India
Notes
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview



  “This book deals with a complex subject, that of popular Hinduism in Mauritius, whose anthropological interest is undeniable, as also economic, geographical and political. Throughout the pages, the authors gradually bring us, from the inside, with details and meticulousness, into the world of Mauritian Hinduism. In addition to its contribution to the constitution of the Mauritian heritage, through its many valuable ethnographic descriptions, this research poses an additional milestone in the understanding of the dynamics of popular Hinduism cults in Mauritius. It contributes not only to the knowledge of contemporary Hinduism but also to that of the practices developed by its followers and the types of relationships that they maintain not only with their deities but also with their fellows. Combining history, religion, politics and economics, the investigations carried out here will prove to be invaluable in the future. I highly recommend it to the public interested in understanding Hinduism outside India, Mauritius (its history and its local dynamics) and Creole societies in general.” Christian Ghasarian, Professor of Ethnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland “A brilliant and intricate ethnography that captures the intersections between religion, language, ethnicity and other sociabilities that crisscross the trajectory of the global economic and financial networks. The book vividly presents the role of various religious cults that participated and facilitated the growth of the Mauritian plantation economy and its polity. The postcolonial historiography captures the minute cultural details of the continuity from one part of the subcontinent to the Island state. The fascinating history of the ‘Kalmais’ to sugarcane plantation to the genesis of cooperative structures and market economy, all in a lucid and enthralling way. A must read for all scholars of social sciences and humanities.” Vishal G. Jadhav, Associate Professor of Sociology, Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune, India





MAURITIAN HINDUISM AND GLOBALISATION

This book presents an original and comprehensive overview of the transformation of Mauritian Hinduism against the backdrop of globalisation. It discusses themes such as the cult of Baharia Puja; the cult of “Camp De Masque”; changes in popular cults; temples and associative strategies of social integration; emergence of Hanuman; ritual innovations in politics and, religious and political transformation due to globalisation to highlight the link between the reinvention of Hinduism and Mauritian capitalism. The first of its kind, this book with its rich ethnographic accounts, will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of religion, Hinduism, social anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, diaspora studies, sociology of religion and African studies. Suzanne Chazan-Gillig is an anthropologist and was formerly a senior researcher and consultant at Institute Research and Development (IRD), France. She earned a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Paris V. She has written several books in French and has carried out extensive fieldwork in Madagascar. Her book on Sakalava Society in Madagascar was published in 1991. She has extensively published her research papers in refereed journals in both English and French. She has also conducted empirical research in Mauritius on the topic of migrations, exchange and industrialisation in the context of globalisation on markets. Since 2002 she has been studying the social changes on the west coast of Madagascar. Pavitranand Ramhota is Associate Professor and Head of Department of Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the Rabindranath Tagore Institute, Mauritius. He has been UNICEF Consultant on “Women and Children in Mauritius” and UNESCO Consultant on the cultural heritage of Indian immigrants in Mauritius. He obtained a PhD in social anthropology with distinction from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco), Paris. He has contributed several articles in refereed journals, and has organised many international seminars and conferences. He is currently working on Indian migration in the occidental Indian Ocean with a perspective of comparative forms of Hinduism and the world of capitalism.

MAURITIAN HINDUISM AND GLOBALISATION Transformation and Reinvention

Suzanne Chazan-Gillig and Pavitranand Ramhota

TRANSLATED BY SRINIKET KUMAR MISHRA

Cover image: Goddess Kali at Poste De Flacq Temple, Mauritius. Photograph by Pavitranand Ramhota. First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Suzanne Chazan-Gillig and Pavitranand Ramhota The right of Suzanne Chazan-Gillig and Pavitranand Ramhota to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to contact owners of copyright regarding the textual and illustrative material reproduced in this book. Perceived omissions if brought to notice will be rectified in future printing. The views and opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or the publisher. The analyses based on research material are intended here to serve general educational and informational purposes and not obligatory upon any party. The editors have made every effort to ensure that the information presented in the book was correct at the time of press, but the editors and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability with respect to the accuracy, completeness, reliability, suitability, selection and inclusion of the contents of this book and any implied warranties or guarantees. The editors and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind to any person, product or entity for any loss, including, but not limited to special, incidental or consequential damage, or disruption alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by omissions or any other related cause. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First published in French by Éditions Karthala-IRD 2009 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-20660-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-28705-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29813-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137 Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Suzanne Chazan dedicates this book In memory of her eldest daughter, Valérie To Jean-Bernard, Pierre, Valérie and Anne-Laure Augustin, Maximilian, Yann and Maïwenn. Pavitranand Ramhota dedicates this book In memory of his wife, Ameeta and his father Hatmanan To his mother, Gowmattee To his daughter, Grushenka and son, Pranav





CONTENTS

List of Illustrations x Preface xiv Acknowledgements xviii Introduction

1

1 The cult of Baharia Puja in Camp de Masque Pavé at the kalimai of Petite Cabanne

7

2 The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

28

3 The transformation of popular cults on crown lands

53

4 Kalimai temples and community strategies: The emergence of Hanuman

89

5 The New Deal: Religious and political transformation

117

6 Kalimai temple transformations and changes in rituals

152

Conclusion

178

Glossary 185 Bibliography 188 Index196 

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1.1 Prayers of the dewassia who blesses the sacrificial sword in front of the altar of his house 10 1.2 On the way to the kalimai left from the house of dewassia11 1.3 The priest prepares the dhaja (flag) 12 1.4 The pandit opens the ceremony by purifying the dewassia. The roles are perfectly differentiated in the rite 12 1.5 The seven earthen pots, from which the boiled milk overflows, symbolising the unity and family harmony achieved13 1.6 The sacrificer prays while holding the sword that was dedicated to Kali. Several red vertical lines have been drawn on the sword as a sign of the presence of the seven sisters 14 1.7 Goat prepared for sacrifice: a garland, a red tikka on the forehead14 1.8 The organising family at the end of the ceremony 16 1.9 The seven related women, founders of the association of Kalimai19 1.10 Ingredients offered to Mother Kali and the couple as the priest addresses Kali in the form of a Kailash 20 1.11 The red Hanuman flag is installed in the place assigned to him to the right of the altar of Kali21 1.12 The first group of participants at the left of the altar of Kali22



Illustrations  xi

1.13 Fruits of all kinds offered to the divinities of the seven sisters, before the Brahmanic ritual 22 1.14 The altar of Kali is covered when the pandit makes the Brahmanic rite 23 1.15 The priest lit the fire on the stool in front of Kali’s altar 24 1.16 The men enter to install the Hanuman Dhaja before the prayer 25 2.1 The Rameshwarnath Mandir Temple, Camp Masque Pavé28 2.2 Preparing food before the Amourou ceremony 31 2.3 Women carrying the binde32 2.4 The altar of the brother, follower of Sai Baba, acting as a Tamil assistant priest 33 2.5 The Prabha is placed in front of the Sri Rama Mandiram Temple of Camp de Masque34 2.6 The Prabha is installed on the back of the wearer 36 2.7 Struggle for good and evil at the exit of Petite Cabanne Road at the first intersection of the road followed by the parade 36 2.8 Arrival of the women to offer the binde to Amourou in the kalimai of Royal Road 38 2.9 The sacrifice of calebasse chinois (Chinese gourd) at Amourou by the porter of Prabha38 2.10 The final prayer in Sanskrit to the deity of the fire Agni outside the kalimai39 3.1 The Grand Baie kalimai Kali Ananta Mandir 56 3.2 Places of worship of various associations on crown land at Belle Mare56 3.3 Altar of Belle Mare without tutelary deities. The three deities Brahma, Hanuman, Kali57 3.4  Palmar public beach facing the places of worship 57 3.5 In front of the kalimai of Belle Mare, a new temple dedicated to Shiva58 3.6 The kalimai/temple of Grand Baie on the beach 61 3.7 The small altar of Grand Baie built by the low castes in reaction to the construction of the Kali Ananta Mandir temple 62 3.8 The Mahébourg kalimai in 1992. The kalimai was placed in a former store that belonged to a Chinese from the Beauvallon establishment. It was called Boutique Cassée63 3.9 The deities of the kalimai in 1992 64 3.10 The Tamils built a kovil66 3.11 The altar of Kali on the left of the entrance 67

xii Illustrations

3.12 The two trees under which were built a kovil and a kalimai71 3.13 The kalimai of Tranquebar72 3.14 The temple encompasses the ancient structure of kalimai74 3.15 The renovated kalimai is a future shivala by the presence to the left of the altar on the photograph of a small statuette representing Shiva. This kalimai only includes the upper male deities of Brahma and Hanuman75 3.16 The blocks are located where the Hanuman temple is to be built 75 3.17 This tree photographed in 1992 represented the deity Dhi76 3.18 In 1999, when the kalimai became a temple, the previous tree has grown and is decorated with ex-votos are small bottle caps 77 3.19 The tree is now surrounded by a cement enclosure and an altar niche 77 3.20 The outskirts in the background of the temple 78 3.21 The Hanuman icon is located outside, in the small red altar above 79 3.22 2007 situation 79 3.23 The temple of Tranquebar located below the road, near the ancient kalimai82 4.1 The kalimai of Vallée des Prêtres remains unchanged 95 5.1 The old kalimai was placed under the chimney of the factory 118 5.2 The new kalimai of Île d’Ambre119 5.3 The new Tamil temple of Île d’Ambre119 5.4 Deities located in the outer space of the temple 120 5.5 The old mill at Daruty 127 5.6 Garden landscape around the ruins of the mill 127 5.7  Kalimai of Bellevue-Pilot128 5.8  Kalimai of Plaine des Papayes129 5.9 Daruty kalimai130 5.10 The place where was installed the altar of Brahma 131 5.11 The association Dhi and Baram132 5.12 Displacement of the Plaine des Papayes kalimai133 5.13 The goddess Kali of the new kalimai133 5.14 The temple under construction is called Kalimata Mandir134 5.15 The cybercity of Ebène138 5.16 New residences at Montagne Blanche for the VRS of the Sans Souci camp of FUEL 139 5.17 The kalimai of the former Sans Souci camp 140

Illustrations  xiii

5.18 The altar of Hanuman on the new place of residence of the inhabitants of the camp of Sans Souci in Montagne Blanche141 5.19 The old houses of Sans Souci transformed into green houses for hydroponic cultivation of vegetables 144 5.20 Renovation of the private kalimai of the Goburdhun family 149 6.1 Bonhomme Salute 161 Graphs

2.1 Ethnic/religious distribution of the population in the survey districts 46 5.1 Ethnic distribution of the population of Rivière du Rempart123 Tables

3.1 Community distribution, caste of elected officials of the constituency No. 12 Mahébourg/Plaine Magnien 3.2 Community and caste distribution of elected candidates: No. 4 Port Louis North/Long Mountain 4.1 Hindu associations founded from 1900 to 1935 4.2 Hindu associations founded from 1964 to 1990 4.3 Electoral results by constituencies, castes and communities in 1967 4.4 Electoral results by constituencies, castes and communities in 1976 4.5 Constituency election results Nos. 5, 7 and 9: Baboojees/ Marazs and Vaishs hold cross-relationships with the Raviveds and Rajputs 4.6 Development sects in Mauritius 4.7 Community distribution of elected candidates in constituency No. 5 Pamplemousses/Triolet 4.8 Community and caste distribution of the elected representatives of constituency No. 9 4.9 Community and caste distribution of the elected representatives of constituency No.10 Bel Air/Montagne Blanche 5.1 Community and caste breakdown of elected representatives in constituency No. 7 piton/Rivière du Rempart

69 85 97 99 99 100 101 103 110 112 113 126

PREFACE

This book by Suzanne Chazan and Pavitranand Ramhota proposes an insight into contemporary Mauritian society through an abundant body of information and knowledge for the study of the interactions of the religious with the economy and with politics. The key focus of the topics under scrutiny revolves around the Hindu religion practised by more than half of the Mauritian population. In this study the religious field is considered as a symbolic system of the relations that cut across families/ethnicities, caste, race and class. The difficulty of the enterprise is due to the multi-religious/multicultural forms of Mauritian society and its multiple configurations in a close relationship with the economy and with the State that the authors have characterised as a historical role, namely that of orchestrator and arbitrator of constitutional categories, unlike the French colonial model of colonisation. This inherited British colonial model has generated the idea of “communalism” particularly through the mechanism of reservation of one or more seats in the legislative assembly for representative(s) of designated minorities who are elected as “best loser(s)” in the general elections. Successive governments since Independence in 1968, some ten years after African Independence, have not been able to engage beyond the merely rhetorical, to control, or to limit the tensions resulting from these communal strategies or those of caste, or founded on the base of colour so as not to reproduce ethnic conflict which erupted in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, on the eve of Independence. This particular sociopolitical situation interacted with culture and can be observed through its influences on the popular rituals of the different religions – Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Actually, it exists as an exterior relation, at times an exacerbation of the religious that the authors have correlated with the electoral strategies of the concerned groups and their ceremonial practices. The religious effervescence of the Indians of different parts from India – the North Indians from Bihar, the south Indian Tamils, the Telugus and the 

Preface  xv

Marathis – observe in the same way as the Catholics practise their cult of Père Laval or the Muslim perform their annual Goon ceremony. Tourists are particularly keen on attending this type of religious display that is expressed in public space where there are processions of the worshippers of different religious groups who participate in large numbers and attract large crowds of onlookers. Beyond these large events which pilgrims organise from one end to the other end of the island, Suzanne Chazan and Pavitranand Ramhota have developed the hypothesis, which is confirmed in the field data, that all religious changes are symbols of social transformations, both economic, and political, and which play vital roles locally in view of the relationship to the globalised markets. This unique research, never before carried out in a formal manner in Mauritius, has been dealt with in an authentic manner through the methodological use of historical analysis, demography, geo-economy, which complement the anthropological approach and the qualitative methods and that set up an overall sense of symbolic transformation observed in the context of field research. After having presented the landscape of the Indo-Mauritian society constructed in the context of development of capitalist Mauritian sugar industry – from the first East India Company to the association of the three Companies of India becoming the “triple hope” – the authors trace in parallel the transformation of the popular cults of Indians through integration with the sacred religion of the temples. Simultaneously, the Mauritian economy formerly based on 90% of its income on sugar, has diversified and opened to the international markets and finance and labour recruitment. The island has become part of the “Newly Industrialised Countries” (NIC). In view of this, the country adjusted, and still adjusts, its politics due to the constraint of globalisation. The Hindu religion when studied from below – the grassroots, through the rituals and by the intermediaries of cultural/religious associations – and from the top through the electoral sociopolitical strategies – justifies all the expectations caused by globalisation, a capitalism that knows no boundary or border. Through a long detour of history which witnesses the impact of the Royal decrees and the French empire on this insular society, placed under the dependence of British colonial rule after the treaty of Paris in 1814, the authors have placed emphasis on the changes in the colonial model with a greater focus on the changes of the relation of production from slavery to indenture. It is similar to the new order instituted by the British colonial enterprise when it created the census categories of the “general population” issued to Catholics on the one hand and Hindus, on the other. Therefore, the religious and cultural differences have been the principal factors for social differentiations, starting with the constitutional duality established in1847, and strengthened in 1901 some ten years before the end of Indian immigration. The different modes of colonial exploitation – French and British – thus instituted a double valorisation of the religion and the origins of migration are at the heart of the interrogation of the authors in their wish to establish the exact relation of the cultural to the economic and the political in the new system of government. The close correlation of the religious/cultural

xvi Preface

phenomena with the changes in the contemporary politic and economy have been put in place in the different ritual practices dedicated to the goddess Kali whose altar kalimais have multiplied throughout the island, where the Indian immigrants were distributed in the sugar plantations. In certain regions temples were constructed where Kali and Hanuman were installed. This is the reason why the authors have put forward the idea of “Hanumanisation,” “Shivalisation” and “Brahmanisation” of the Hindu society in parts of Mauritius. In a space that separates the north from the south of the island, along a diagonal that runs from east to west, the authors focused on recent changes in the rites, the modernisation of religious buildings and/or their transformation into temples in the context of local economic and political changes. For this, the authors have used a variety of methodologies, ranging from the register of “participant observation” to that of the pure and simple description of places of worship and their follow-up thanks to the photographs taken at different times of the surveys between 1991 and 2007. Several baharia puja, amourou puja, cavadee and Père Laval ceremonies were analysed, demanding a revisit of the history of the concentration and closure of local sugar and textile companies. The importance of local social, religious and cultural changes was measured by their impact on the current events because of the multiplication of sites of different religious persuasions on “State lands,” lands located 500 metres from the seaside managed and administered by the Government. Thus, in various places of the north-eastern and north-west coasts of the island a cult to the Hanuman deity has recently emerged, in response to the newly experimented social relations in places under the influence of the cities or directly under the authority of state and sugar trade powers. Thus, the Hanuman deity is installed in the new residential areas of those who were still living in sugar camps and who have been displaced. The acme of the demonstration of the relationship between the State, the markets and religion can be read in Chapters 5 and 6, more particularly in Chapter 6 which brings to light the obvious global change that the authors have described as a “New Deal.” The situations mentioned in the last three chapters highlight the new residential territorialities generated by the transfer of the inhabitants of the old camps and their installation in new places of residence, in full ownership, and by the development of social housing reserved by the Government and sugar companies in the context of tripartite negotiations between the social partners, the state and the sugar companies which are downsizing their workforces. From the chosen examples, it is understood that urbanisation was the raison d'être of the modernisation of forms of worship, more so in the north-west and north-east of the island than in the southeast. There, the number of Kalimais has decreased considerably, and many of them today are more or less deserted in favour of the construction of new temples. In these places, the deity Hanuman became more or less the main reference of the relation to the divine on the State lands mentioned above. At the same time, in newly constructed places of residence and in urban neighbourhoods, there are recent changes in rituals in relation to so-called “higher” deities, which are also

Preface  xvii

recorded in the electoral results. They reflect the existence of a greater autonomy of the families with regard to the community and caste strategies of the big national parties and the cultural associations of the capital of Port Louis. The last chapter highlights the genesis of the birth of the main Hindu cultural associations and their growing segmentation. In these processes of gradual and seemingly inevitable individualisation, the symbolic changes concern the deities of Hanuman, Brahma, and Dhi, which are generally found in the kalimais and the arrangement of “superior” deities that we find in urban temples like Saibaba, Shiva, Ram and Krishna. Would the first Hanuman be the sign “of overcoming the community and caste divisions” as appear the results of the election of the year 2000, the second Brahma symbolising a casteist downturn of some faithful, the third Dhi disappearing sooner or later depending on the regions? As for the last divinities to be found in the urban temples or in the renovated kalimais, as well as the change of function of Kali whose displacement in the space of the temples transforms her cult to that of a deity inside the temple, this symbolic reversal of a cult of the outside to a cult of the inside, is fundamental and reveals new relations between men/women, young/old, castes/classes imposing themselves on the urban world. Suzanne Chazan and Pavitranand Ramhota establish a comparison of the shift from Kali to the exterior of the temple which thus becomes an inferior goddess compared to Brahma who is outside the temple, this symmetrical inversion of the respective positions of the Kali and Brahma deities would be a sign of a naturalisation of external influences and of a change in the relation between tradition and modernity confronted with a model of development in accordance with the needs of globalisation. This new symbolic reality has already had consequences since the 2000 elections when, for the first time, the new governmental alliance was not made on the basis of a 60/0 as it was the case since the beginning of the national elections in 1967. In the constituencies studied, those of Nos. 9, 10, 5 and 7, there has been a change in the balance of community and caste relations. The emergence of new deities like Hanuman, the disappearance of others like Dhi, the relationship of female divinities – Kali and the seven sisters – to the male deities – Hanuman, Brahma, Bairo – in kalimai is no longer the same when we have to do with the deities of the temple – Muruga, Ganesh, Shiva and Vishnu – with whom there are nevertheless well-established kinship relations. The popular cults established in the kalimais and the cults based on the sacred texts in the temples are the sign of the tremendous mutation of the Indo-Mauritian society in the context of the globalisation of the markets and the proof of the political instrumentalisation of cultural and religious conflicts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At the time of publishing the English version of the book l’Hindouisme Mauricien dans la Mondialisation, it is a pleasure for us to thank H.E. Jagdishwar Goburdhun, GOSK, High Commissioner of Mauritius to India and now to Malaysia, who was the first reader to be convinced for the need to hand down the vivid memory of Mauritian Hindu culture, both as a popular and a scholarly religion, despite the dissolving context of contemporary globalisation. We would also like to thank Gérard Winter, former General Director of the French IRD (Institute of Research and Development) for his support of the research project implemented in Mauritius from 1990 to 1996, upon which this book was realised, and the allocation of annual missions until 2005. We express our gratitude to those who have accepted to receive us over the years and to share with us their knowledge of the society. These informants are the residents of villages and urban districts who manage and control places of worship, representatives of cultural associations, semi-public institutions, nongovernmental organisations, representatives of small and large companies, auditors and experts from large companies. We are particularly grateful to the Chief Executive Officers and managers of the two most well-known private consortia in Mauritius, Ireland Blyth Limited (IBL) and the Rogers Group. We thank the members of the Board of Directors (BOD) of the major sugar companies with whom we have worked particularly on the history of sugar mills. We are especially indebted to Edouard Rouillard, chairman of the Board of Directors, to Jean-Alain Lalouette, Managing Director, and to the late Philippe Blackburn of the Bel Ombre Company, former Public Relation Officer of the Board. Thanks to their valuable information, we have understood the internal processes of concentration of the old Estate mills in order to reconstitute the great stages of Mauritian sugar capitalism and to identify the incoming crucial



Acknowledgements  xix

changes linked to the development of the three existing electricity and sugars companies: Alteo,1 Omnicane2 and Terra.3 Many heads of families who owned the old mills also agreed to reconstruct the history of the bankruptcies of the mills that their ascendants faced, allowing us to re-establish, over time, the relationships of capital and labour that have constructed today’s society. Among them are the late Noël Régnard, Philippe Lagesse and Pierre Dalais. They have contributed by sharing their knowledge to the objectivities of the contingencies of sugar development and their different forms among which our study of Hindu popular cults might have not been realised. In addition, forms of extension of sugar capitalism were clearly elucidated by respondents such as Alfred North-Coombes, Hervé and Philippe Koenig, Camille Hardy, Yann Boullé, Patrick Lincoln, Léon Pitot, José Poncini, Patrick d'Arifat, Guy Rouillard and France Staub, both members of the Royal Society of History. We gratefully recall the long exchanges we had with Yvan Martial, founder of the Gazette des îles and former editor-in-chief of l’Express, with Raj Boodhoo, who worked at the archives during Auguste Toussaint’s time, with Carl de Souza about his book Les jours Kaya, and also with Huguette and Madeleine Ly Tio Fane, well-known figures in the intellectual world through their writings and their profound knowledge of the archives. May our good friends Hervé, Maryse Hardy and Roger, Marie-Hélène Lemaire also be thanked for sharing their relations with the leading executives for the sugar companies of Constance, Beau Champ and FUEL ( Flacq United Estates Limited). Unfortunately, we cannot name all our informants here, because there were so many of them. Our thanks would be incomplete if we do not mention both drivers who took us to the field, especially Ramesh Ramphul, and Sattish Teeluck. They have both participated in our research on cults. We have several times quoted the mediation of the late Ramesh Ramphul, who was from the village of Camp de Masque Pavé where we conducted our investigations. Finally, we would like to thank Boomesh Beedasy for computerised data, Asha Ramnial for assisting us in the fieldwork and Shameela Chengalrayam Frederik for her help in the organisation of the book in the French version. A token of thanks to my dear friend Mr Hans Ramduth and his wife Leena who at the last hour assisted in resetting the maps and schemas as per requirements. A token of thanks goes to my friend Viswanath Balloo for his assistance, support and presence needed any urgency of work has been required. We also thank Mr Boopen Beehaary Paray who agreed to assist me in formatting all the photographs. Suzanne Chazan-Gillig also warmly thanks her colleagues and close friends, Nicole Ronchewsky, Françoise Bourdarias and Louis Moreau de Bellaing for their close reading of the French proofs and helpful suggestions. Pavitranand Ramhota thanks Professor Claude Alibert, Vice-President of INALCO in 2004, for agreeing to act as his dissertation supervisor and Professor Christian Ghazarian of Neuchâtel University from Switzerland and Professor Henrietta Moore, Deputy Director of the London School of Economics and

xx Acknowledgements

Political Science, as well as Suzanne Chazan-Gillig who accepted to participate in his dissertation committee. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Archana Kumar for reading the English proofs and editing the English version of this book. My heartiest thanks go to my colleague and bosom friend Vidhu Vatshala Appadoo for the great effort she put into organising the chapters of the book. The English translation of the book was done by Professor Sriniket Kumar Mishra of the Department of Translation Studies, Mahama Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya Wardha, India. We express our deep appreciation to him. This English edition includes revisions and additional chapters for the benefit of the reader, and we hope that it will be useful to scholars of comparative religion, sociology and anthropology, cultural studies as well as to transnational diasporic communities.

Notes 1 Product of the company formerly called FUEL (Flacq United Estates Limited) of Mauritius, which invested in two sugar companies, the first from Tanzania, the second in Kenya. 2 Product of the concentration of the sugar companies of Mon Trésor and Mon Désert in the south of the island. 3 Product of the concentration of the Harel brothers company in the north of the island.

INTRODUCTION

Mauritian Hinduism and Globalisation: Transformation and Reinvention is based on an original research theme which consists of a first-of-its-kind reflection on relationships that have been established in Mauritian society, inherited from the double colonial domination of the French and British. These connections are mainly between politics, economics, the Mauritian sugar plantation economy and their transformation, ensuring this small island in the western Indian Ocean far from world markets assumes the position of a “newly industrialised country” (hereafter NIC). All the research data presented is the result of intensive field work from the years 1990 to 2021. The methods of investigation and the problematic relations between the State, religions and societies were reciprocally determined by interviewing local informants – all reliable sources with social standing. Various comparisons are made with the use of primary study data associated with systematic archival work, in particular notarial deeds and research on family liability companies known as “company and co.” and limited liability companies known as “ltd.” The book is of a more strictly communal nature that falls under the direct ethnological approach of the North Indian community, that of the Biharis. They acquired independence in 1968 and emerged from national elections to govern the country through a PTR/PMSD alliance for three decades. This was after having obtained a majority of seats in the Mauritian legislative assembly. The programme as it was finally adopted was far from the first formulation. However, it retained the methodological rigour assured by the concern to work at the same time from both an ethnological point of view – using “field studies” – and a historical one – bearing on the long duration of the local capitalist development. The latter belongs to the successive colonial periods of France and Britain, beyond their rivalry carried by their differing models of colonisation in the western Indian Ocean. DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-1

2  Introduction

This book is a product of the field research carried out in Mauritius by Dr Suzanne Chazan-Gillig and Dr Pavitranand Ramhota along with other French and Mauritian researchers who worked on different topics. For this purpose, the French Government through the Research Institute for Development assigned Dr Suzanne Chazan-Gillig, senior researcher at IRD (French Research Institute for Development), to carry out a general investigation on the relationship between culture, economy and societies. Dr Chazan set up a research team comprised of local academics and international researchers, future partners who conducted research in ethnology based on intensive field studies and who were able to devise a bottom-up questioning of civil society. All the researchers sought to identify the mechanisms of community production in Mauritius, and compared and contextualised them, knowing that the political model asserted since national independence was of the advanced liberal capitalist type, based on the colonial heritage: a Westminster model, which granted a place in government with “the best loser system.” This set of academic programmes was meant to be indicative of how a small island, remote from global markets, could expect to count as an NIC in the international sphere. Programming these research topics included the regular organisation of discussions between researchers based on the field data they had collected. Of course, these exchanges which were established as research progressed lasted only for a while, all researchers having to face their own academic constraints. The large numbers of migration at the origin of the Mauritian settlement were the starting point of all questions. All issues which were raised could not deliver the same quality of academic outcome. Some research topics were presented in the form of dissertations to earn a postgraduate degree. Pavitranand Ramhota’s thesis on popular Indian cults was judged to be the most successful research work; hence, the authors of this book gathered their data and decided to advance the overall thinking they had initiated. This was in order to highlight the concrete general mechanisms which governed industrial diversification and the employment policy implemented by the State and companies according to the contractual mode long experienced in the colony, known as the “Select Committees.” Ultimately, readers will notice the epistemological point of view adopted by the authors. The studies on Mauritian economic and social formation have been clearly emphasised, as with those on European migrations which have been considered as a process of externalisation of contemporary social inequalities (1990– 2010), associating great poverty with the emergence of a local upper and lower middle class at the time of national independence. The nationwide Mauritian bourgeoisie, which was then established to varying degrees – but unequal in all respects, and excluded the so-called “Creole” category – accompanied the country’s economic progress. Mauritius, which had become an NIC, was now playing in the big leagues of international relations, and due to its insular situation, adjusted its strategy. Like any periphery isolated from the markets, it could not play its part other than by exploiting its migratory past through the development of networks. This does not mean that the Mauritian economic development is a

Introduction  3

model to the African countries and the island is of utmost importance in determining the affairs of the world. The evolution of the this research pleaded for the need to identify the approaches on the issues of diaspora of any subjectivity bearing in mind the networks of exchange, and this can be done without existence of any financial institutions, land, and employment policies through which the individual would meet the opportunities necessary for preferential relationships.. This book also investigates the Creole issue specific to Mauritius, which has experienced two forms of colonisation. The authors of this book claim that one cannot speak of “Creole Hinduism,” which many scholars of the Hindu religion corroborate. Indeed, the Hindu religion is so structured that any external element is taken as a form of internal modernity, quickly incorporated into the differentiations. It is a statutory religion in which there is no individual hierarchy. The collective group is all that matters. Our informants have regularly insisted on the fact that the one who breaks the chain – symbolically represented by the circle – is automatically out of the game of any socialisation. The Hindu community studied in Mauritius emphasises that, whatever the period concerned – that of the pioneers of immigration or that of the era of triumphant capitalism in the mid-20th century – the land settlement of anyone who is a resident of the island cannot take place outside the historical social relations which legitimise it. The Hindu “community” is structured first into family groups, then into castes according to the original traditions recalled through the roots of trees, symbolically associated with deities, in particular the roots of neem. Every temple foundation is linked to the political strategy of a cultural association whose federation headquarters are in the capital Port Louis. The history of the foundation of the great cultural associations shows that the birth of any group is linked not only to the separation of dependence on caste inequalities, but also to the economic and political affirmation taken by these social categories. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show that, from 1910 to 1986, this phenomenon of caste/class has intervened in the formation of the newly established social categories in the community space which allowed for collective action in the State apparatus. The analysis of sect development is a research area that has not yet been completed. It concerns international relations established by Mauritian socio-religious formations and the strategies of the main headquarters in the countries to the North or in India. This second type of cult of a political nature was supported by the Telugu cultural association Andra Maha Sabha for which the head office is in Port Louis. The Telugu Federation of Port Louis introduced a ritual innovation that they extended to all their branches on the island. This Brahmanic ritual consists in the offering of a coconut broken into two parts, a symbol of the struggle of good against evil. This is staged by the Prabha at every crossroads that sees the various branches of families arrive to form a procession. The message behind this performance is that from now on everybody will renounce animal sacrifices. Evil is symbolically eradicated. The opposition between scholarly and popular religion is played on a strong institutional basis and the popular religion is more syncretic, supported by the forces of nature and subordinate to the scholarly religion

4  Introduction

managed according to a clearly defined sovereign order. Whatever the nature of the conflicts, power does not separate, “it is zero tolerance of the State,” as its main principle is not to break the chain. This is the symbolic effectiveness of Kali, an intrinsic power resting on sound alliances, a hidden ruling power and its ability to solve internal disputes. Pas Géométriques “crown lands” are lands that cannot be appropriated by individuals. Consequently, they are part of the public domain. As a result, they belong to the State. However, it is mainly on these lands that the temples are most often developed following modernisation by the kalimais. These lands are also the framework for the emergence of new ritual practices. Two regions have been affected by this type of problem in our investigations: one in the east in Palmar, the second in the north. These two regions have been on the front page of the Mauritian newspapers because they have both been involved in the privatisation of land on “Crown land”; modernisation in the first case, grabbing of public land by a private person in the second case. These acts of privatisation by an association or an individual show not only the huge risks of globalisation and its consequences on the production of new inequalities, but also the way in which local society moves from the legal to the political. The caste system as it exists in Mauritius is different from that of India today. It will be up to other research teams to uncover this difference by comparing the economic, social and political forms of diasporas in the world with regard to the countries of origin. At any rate, this study of popular Hindu cults in the context of globalisation also claims an original method relating to the field of diaspora study. The authors realised that no diaspora is sustainable without the support of financial, land, legal institutions in the host countries as in the countries of origin. What we learned from this research is based on the political and economic strategy of Mauritius, which relied on the opportunities open to private initiative, largely supported by the State, which has become a vital vector in the development. After almost 40 years of national independence, the real change has taken place through the opening of the local market to private national investments in riparian countries to expand the scale of sugar production in anticipation of direct international competition from Brazil after the Lomé Conventions. After having been a colony dependent on French and British metropolises, Mauritius has become a coloniser itself and, as such, participates in the globalisation of world markets. The most striking example of this is the development of the computer and electronics sector. The leading investments conducted in the free zone newly instituted in this area, are indeed the State which is associated with Indian investors; for the opening of this new market some local private capitalists participate. Mauritius appears at the end of this research as a centralising periphery of the sugar markets on the one hand, and on the other hand as a form of self-centred development of the global information technology (IT) and textile markets. The last part of the book “The New Deal” highlights the close links established between politics (electoral strategies) and economics (the central function

Introduction  5

of small planters) in Mauritius. Responding to the relative political weight of smallholders was the strategy of industrial diversification that occurred when the 18 sugar companies were reduced to three energy-producing units. Specifically, dismissal/resignation contracts were given in return for donations of land granted in full ownership to the former cane cutters that allowed the massive layoffs. The bureaucratic logic of the select committees established a collective order adjusted to that of a statutory religion. The community research work carried out on contemporary Mauritian society from the double historical/political and ethnological perspective has highlighted the process of creolisation as having been the product of the continuity of colonial domination in the bureaucratic form of census categories instituted by the British administration. The main racial distinction of the relations of production instituted in the sugar economy under the French colony was commuted into a class division in the sugar estates at the time when the old family-oriented companies were transformed into limited liability companies (known as “company ltd.”). Through both periods of “small” and “large fragmentation” of the old Mauritian sugar estates, shareholding has grown and diversified. The large sugar estate has been less and less Mauritian, more and more institutional; the hierarchy of companies has become more complex, distinguishing the supervision of agricultural workers working on the cane fields. The old métis society of the French era was divided into “mulatto” according to skills and social proximity to the European world and “the Creoles” who were all those agricultural workers assimilated with former slaves. There would be barriers to the process of emancipation, such barriers really have their basis in the classification of colour, as there was formerly the category of so-called “free men of colour,” which disappeared from the vocabulary in favour of terms of a class nature such as “mulattoes” and “Creoles,” a distinction which does not exist on Reunion Island, the sister island of Mauritius. The image of the “New Deal” used here refers to the development strategy undertaken by the United States for Europe at the end of the Second World War. The actions taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1930 helped the US economy to emerge when it was in great difficulty. In a similar way, the strategy of Mauritius facing globalisation since 1990 is an emergency economic programme which defines the island’s position within the international relations system. They formed part of the international relations of the time/era/age. In the context of the submission of countries in the south of the world with a globalised order of markets, Mauritius deploys an aggressive strategy to intervene in the markets: land, labour, financial and commercial, which, as is the rule in any development process, generates growing inequalities. The last chapter examines the new planting/industrialisation relationships in relation to the regional redistribution of local markets. The last chapter is an update of our 2019 investigation on Hinduism – Mauritian Hinduism – and the Mauritian form of capitalism. Despite an assertive policy towards the entire education system, there is still a great mismatch in the levels of training of young people needed for the options taken by local

6  Introduction

private and public capital. Today’s Mauritian society is troubled in all its component parts. Indian society, focused on its own values, hints at a symbolic change begun with the disappearance, in some places, of the guardian deities and of Dhi, which represents the white sugar tree. Does the “improbable future” of Mauritian Hindu society still offer hope for a shining future? The authors of this book offer no answer to this open question. They propose to broaden discussions on the dominant trends resulting from the symbolic changes observed in IndoMauritian society: the concepts of hanumanisation, shivalisation, bramhanisation or even creolisation are proposed as themes capable of grasping as a whole the value systems that cross contemporary society. Mauritian society was not approached in the same way as societies with strong oral traditions, the knowledge of which came from the elder lineages responsible for maintaining and transmitting traditions. Mauritian multiculturalism is an inescapable historical and political reality whose particular arrangements can only be seen through the way in which its origins are instrumentalised in the practice of institutions. If yesterday’s world economy was founded on the geographical mobility of both men and women and products in the face of the concentration and immobility of capital (the period of slavery and the indenture) in the context of the development of the rival French and British empires, then that of today is identified with an exclusive model of capitalist development which knows no borders. Finally, the study of cultures and civilisations is a particular category in examining societies and in seeking the answer to one key question: how far they do not want to go?

1 THE CULT OF BAHARIA PUJA IN CAMP DE MASQUE PAVÉ AT THE KALIMAI OF PETITE CABANNE

The kalimais of the Flacq region, which we have just presented, outline the contours of a society which, after all, is quite closed – at least in appearance – and concentrates mainly on family social bonds and the conflicts they engender. None of these conflicts have ever been clearly articulated, even when we solicited our informants for answers to questions that illustrate the way in which the healer diviners approached the problems for which people wanted to find a solution. Confidentiality is a must, and for the most part is kept, whatever the communities studied. In other words, it is not through talking to individuals that we can understand the particular rationality of a cult in relation to the underlying conflicts that structure it. It is by carefully observing in the houses the unfolding of the activities for the preparation of food that have been offered to the deities, by classifying the ritual objects, describing their mode of intervention in the worship and distinguishing the practices of the officials when they are two or more, as well as specifying the division of tasks that accompany the ceremonial unfolding, that we have identified the raison d’être of these ceremonies. The systematic description of kalimais and the study of their localisation leads to an understanding of the local social, economic and political transformations. These aspects can be understood in a more dynamic and dialectical way by focusing our reflection on the contemporary redistribution of community and caste relationships symbolised in local cults through the songs always precisely related to this or that deity, from such or such event; by prayers, types of offerings, ritual arrangements, all these data are significant of the social relations in question to which are added the community meals organised by the associations to close the ceremonies. It is most often the associations that are at the origin of the transformation of the cults that they manage simultaneously and more or less directly. This chapter presents the two Baharia Puja cults that were celebrated in the two public kalimais of Camp de Masque and Camp de Masque Pavé in which we DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-2

8  The cult of Baharia Puja

participated. We will see the same type of Baharia worship, celebrated at two particular moments, in two different places, close to each other, to stage two different modes of social integration that reflect the existence of associative strategies the political meaning of which is not fixed in advance. The public characteristic of these kalimais is unambiguous when we integrate in the analysis the active part of the local associations in their relationship with the differential strategies of the federations of Port Louis: the Mauritius Sanantan Dharma Temples Federation of the kalimai on Royal Road, the Mauritius Andra Maha Sabha of Sri Rama Mandiram Temple and the recently founded Arya Samaj Temple. The reader will not be surprised that we dwell on long descriptions of the ceremonial when presenting the position of the various actors; this is in order to give meaning to the silence that surrounds the fervour towards one deity rather than another. The pantheon of tutelary deities and superior divinities (we will explain this essential difference), is rich in meanings about the social relations at play, provided we make meaningful the people’s silence about their own difficulties and give prominence to disputes regarding offerings, donations and services rendered during cults. The final community which has been instituted in the cults is surprising, for one whose view would be directed by the certainty of observing an Indian society closed in on itself. We will show that the production of the community bond is commensurate with the plasticity of internal relationships within family groups, which are constantly feeding external relations to the point of naturalising them. This ability to erase the boundary between the external and the internal takes on a true cosmic dimension in the discourses produced by the cult officials, the dewassia, the pandit, and/or the diviner/healer. All these intermediaries close to the deities make the divinities act and speak to each other. Their place, always assigned, says nothing about the final meaning of the human undertakings engaged, those for which the deities are constantly solicited. It is the statutory ordering of objects and men that is in perpetual motion and makes sense. You cannot change an element without changing the entire thing. The social is produced and reproduced in perpetual motion. We will make sense of the images, the symbols, we will replace the people and the position of the national researcher within the events we had the chance to observe. Discussion will come later when we will tackle, in the fourth part, the relationship between religion, politics and economics in contemporary Mauritian society. We insist that the status of the researcher, Hindu or foreign, has made little difference nor has transformed the actual meaning of the relations at play. Although the national researcher was Hindu of the Vaish caste, he was no more able to elicit the confidences of the informants than the foreign researcher. The quality of the interviews depends more on the conditions under which people were able to reach a prayer situation than of the trust they held in one or the other researcher, foreign or national. Moreover, we were assessed against Pavitranand Ramhota’s status in society, as he was a native and resident of the region. As for the foreign researcher Suzanne Chazan, she did not benefit from any particular status, with only one exception, when a cult was dedicated to the

The cult of Baharia Puja  9

deity Dhi, who represented the former white colonist. The place of the stranger was then perfectly codified and assigned during the investigation, in the same way as the status occupied by the national researcher in the Hindu society. By respecting the symbolic forms affirmed in the ritual, every stranger is associated and finds their exact place in the event. We would go so far as to say that content and form come together in the Hindu religion. We attended two types of Baharia Puja at Camp de Masque and Camp de Masque Pavé.1 Baharia Puja is organised on a frequent basis in the countryside and in the suburbs of cities such as Port Louis, Beau Bassin, Quatre-Bornes and Mahébourg. It is a rural cult originally, which is practised outside in broad daylight on kalimai sites. The first ceremony studied was subject to a goat sacrifice, the second was organised to offer fruits to Kali: apples, bananas, oranges, pears, grapes, etc. There is a third type of offering that can be presented for this same ceremony. These are vegetables that are cut, such as the calebasse chinois or tender Chinese gourd. A vegetable and fruit sacrifice has the same symbolical meaning equivalent to sacrificing an animal, with vegetable juice being identified with blood. The Baharia Puja for which people sacrifice animals or fruits is practised with the help of a dewassia, who is a local priest who can drink the animal’s blood, and who, therefore, fully identifies himself with Kali. He is an intermediary who, through possession, enters into a trance and has the power to cure diseases or to fulfil the wishes of the members. In contrast to these sacrifices, the ceremony of offering only fruit uses no intermediary to access Kali. He is an official of the religion, a priest who, having chosen the ritual and offering it to the organising family, officiates without claiming any particular power. The priest is paid for his services to perform the sacred ritual and he often leaves before the worship is really finished. The dewassia also receives a sum of money, but he is considered as an intermediary of Mother Kali but the family has no obligation to pay him. He is a member of the family who officiates like a dewassia, because he is recognised as having been provided with special powers by Mother Kali, whom he is very close to. Therefore, he can also have customers, who come to consult him to solve their difficulties. The dewassias of the Camp de Masque area have become difficult to find because their knowledge and power come from an initiation acquired from the father or uncle of the family, who himself has received his knowledge by inheritance from his own father or uncle.2 There are few young people today who agree to succeed their fathers in this role. Thus, we see that the term Baharia Puja gives rise to the development of ritual strategies where the rites of Shastrik scholarly religion and the rites of Laukik folk religion can either coexist or be opposed to each other. The two places where the Baharia Puja of the Camp de Masque Pavé and Camp de Masque villages were celebrated are Petite Cabanne and Royal Road. The ritual described at Petite Cabanne was a family celebration, although this kalimai has today broadened its social function, becoming a place of public worship where the rites practised have a collective character of gathering, which makes it equivalent to a temple. Petite Cabanne now works in a network with the other kalimais

10  The cult of Baharia Puja

and temples of the region for certain annual ceremonies, such as Amourou Puja, which we will discuss in the next chapter. We will see that these ceremonies implement a more complex social structuring where the families of different castes and communities are grouped together.

Baharia Puja of Petite Cabanne: the symbolic function of Kali The first Baharia ceremony which we attended at Camp de Masque Pavé respected the rules of the popular tradition of thanking Kali for her benefits through the dewassia. The organising family had made a wish that had been granted. That is why he had kept it for days before the celebration and, as a gesture of thanks, a goat and sweet food were offered to the goddess Kali.

Description of the ceremony The ceremony took place very early in the morning and we were received by the organising family and led by the women who had prepared the sweet dishes in their kitchen and ornated them on banana leaves. There were puris, which are cakes of flour, and khirs, which were prepared by cooking rice in sweetened milk. Seven portions were prepared for each of the sister deities. Besides that, there were dishes consisting of local fruits such as bananas and pineapples and of relatively expensive imported fruits such as oranges, grapes and apples. Then, we were invited to the altar in a corner of the dining room where the young dewassia, RM, was praying while honouring the deities with incense, while the uncle, who was his initiator and the organiser of the ceremony, played dholok, a traditional percussion instrument, resembling a kind of drum. The rhythm of the music was to enable the dewassia to get into a trance. Then he blessed the sword with which he later sacrificed the goat, bought by taking a collection from family members to a number of 15 people. ​

of the dewassia who blesses the sacrificial sword in front of the altar of his house. Source: All figures, illustrations and tables are by the authors, unless specified otherwise.

FIGURE 1.1  Prayers

The cult of Baharia Puja  11

These preparations for the purification of dewassia, the support of the uncle of the family and the gathering of the prepared offerings were completed. The other parents went, in procession, to the place of the kalimai. We left the house of dewassia, located in the heart of the village of Camp de Masque Pavé. The dewassia, the uncle and the father of the family opened the procession to the first intersection of the road playing dholok and following the road through the village.3 The goat that was going to be sacrificed was kept on a leash and pulled by a member who closed the procession. The line of officials and their parents moved from one crossroads to another. Three intersections were crossed, where the same rite of purification took place and so on until the arrival in front of the kalimai. This long procession of the devotees did not arouse any particular curiosity; no one joined the parade. ​

FIGURE 1.2  On

the way to the kalimai left from the house of dewassia.

On arrival at the kalimai, the people who participated in the parade separated, and the women entered the kalimai enclosure. They bathed the seven sisters with water and purified the place that was previously used for other cults. Then they dressed all the female deities on the altar with red cloth and applied the red dye to the middle and top of the stones. They also arranged sweet dishes, prepared on banana leaves, in front of each of the sister deities. Meanwhile, the women outside the kalimai and dressed in red saris made nine garlands of the yellow flowers known as ghenda, the first for dewassia, the second for the goat before he was beheaded, and finally seven other garlands that were placed under the seven earthen pots, where the milk should be boiled. For their part, the men bathed and dressed the male deities Hanuman, Brahma and Shiva. The priest made the pavilions – red for Hanuman and Shiva and white for Brahma – to signify the participation of these male deities in the sacrifice offered to Kali. All these products were poured successively on the head of Kali by the pandit who recited the prayers and blessed the dewassia before he entered a trance. During the pandit’s prayer, the women, having finished making the garlands, entered the sacred space of the kalimai to place them on the altars of all male and female deities. They added apples, oranges, grapes, pineapples and bananas: the first are

12  The cult of Baharia Puja

expensive export fruits and the second come from the local production market. Before the dewassia was possessed by the spirit, and at that particular moment the pandit left the ceremony. The rites – Brahmanic addressed to the superior and inferior divinities of the Kalimai people – followed one another but did not mix. The second rite was radically different since it was of the Puranic type. He accompanied the prayers while the men prepared the seven earthen pots where the milk was boiled in seven earthen pots. After that, the goat was sacrificed. ​

FIGURE 1.3  The

priest prepares the dhaja (flag).

The first part of the ceremony was conducted by the pandit4 according to the specific Brahmanic rite of these deities. The two officiating priests, the pandit and the dewassia sat down; the first on the ground, the second on the first step of the altar of the seven sisters to recite the prayers in Sanskrit to Kali according to the Brahmanic rite. Kali was represented by a coconut who wore a yellow garland, and a red tikka. The coconut was placed on a lota, a copper pot lined with betel flowers. The system represented by coconut, lota, and betel is called kalash. It is a symbolic set that materialises the presence of Kali. The offerings, made to Kali, are composed of earthen lamps, grains of rice, petals of flowers, flour, vermillion, water, clarified butter and incense. This vegetarian ritual is supposed to neutralise the ferocity that Kali is usually said to have. ​

pandit opens the ceremony by purifying the dewassia. The roles are perfectly differentiated in the rite.

FIGURE 1.4  The

The cult of Baharia Puja  13

The men carefully crafted seven individualised fireplaces with precut wood to lay seven pots of land. The hearth was made up of seven wooden structures entangled one on the other in a square shape. Seven garlands were previously placed under each hearth. The seven earthen pots were marked with seven red lines of vermillion. The fireplaces were lit and the boiled milk overflowed. The fire hearths were completely burned out and there remained only the pots under a row of ashes. During all this time, the goat was the subject of special care. It was prepared for sacrifice by the women who made it a wreath of yellow flowers to put on its neck. Its ears were also adorned with yellow flowers and a red tikka was placed in the middle of its forehead. The dewassia blessed the sword when he entered a trance. The priest, who was the head of the organising family, was responsible for distributing the ceremonial roles and verifying that everything was in place: from the preparation of Kali’s altar to the dressing of the male deities to the preparation of woods to make the hearths, he ensured that everything occurred in the right order. Before the dewassia would be ready to sacrifice the animal, he took boiled milk from the jars with which he sprayed his head, then that of the animal. He drew seven red lines on the sword with the sindoor. Everything then was ready for sacrifice. ​

FIGURE 1.5  The seven earthen pots, from which the boiled milk overflows, symbolising

the unity and family harmony achieved.

In a single stroke the man who conducted the sacrifice decapitated the beast and then cut the block on which the goat had been placed in two before being sacrificed. Suddenly, the head fell to the ground. It was placed on the altar of Kali by the dewassia. Everything happened very quickly. The ceremony was a success because the dewassia’s gesture was sharp, fast and effective. The assembly rejoiced because Kali was satisfied. Everyone was able to return home, having received their share of meat, distributed by the head of the family who took the initiative to organise this ceremony. ​

14  The cult of Baharia Puja

sacrificer prays while holding the sword that was dedicated to Kali. Several red vertical lines have been drawn on the sword as a sign of the presence of the seven sisters.

FIGURE 1.6  The

FIGURE 1.7  Goat

prepared for sacrifice: a garland, a red tikka on the forehead.

The nature of Kali’s power What meaning does the form of the ritual bear? The first remark relates to the manner in which Kali’s presence was imposed during the ceremony. It reveals itself by the repetition of significant symbols of the effectiveness of her power. Thus, the number seven, repeatedly stated, is the signifier of the plural form taken by Kali who is transformed, during the ceremony, into a divine power based on the dissolution of the different attributes that represent her. Mother Kali absorbs and devours everything that resembles her. That’s why she controls life and death. This is the meaning to be accorded to the symbolic equivalence of milk and blood in both key moments of the ceremony relating to the passage from life to death of the animal itself signified by the action of fire which destroys the separated powers of the seven sisters: the union occurred. The family gathered in worship has symbolically transcended its divisions. The sexual division of labour instituted in the ceremonial practice had for aim the two rites – Brahmanic and Puranic – which succeeded one another in the event. The ritual duality seemed to echo the separation of the world of men from women, as the altars of divinities are separated from the altar of Kali. But, if we look more closely, the seven sisters form the part of a whole identified with

The cult of Baharia Puja  15

Mother Kali of whom the dewassia is possessed, whereas the pandit merely recites the verses he has chosen for Mother Kali. He has no relation of mediation with the community of the faithful, he remains a licensed official of the scholarly religion. This differs from the status of dewassia which is inseparable from the role played by the priest. His blessing is the most certain guarantee of the efficacy of the sacrifice, which will only truly be taken into account if the animal dies with a single stroke of the sword. The dewassia and the priest are in a relationship of mutual dependence, they are chained to each other, to validate the presence of Kali and derive the benefits from the sacrifice that is made to her: the fraternity of the officials becomes manifest when the boiled milk overflows, erasing at once what opposes or differentiates them. The two differentiated functions of the dewassia and the priest, who are cousins in ​​ real life, implement the differentiated masculine and feminine powers that they represent in the family community of the parents present in the event. The strong arm of the power of the dewassia who in turn transfer his power to the sacrifice whose hand would not shiver when he slaughtered the sword on the animal’s neck it was because he blessed the man in the name of Kali’s power, of whom he is possessed. The relationship between the sacred and the profane institutes the differentiation of social roles and grounds competence. Indeed, if the sacrifice is not made cleanly, with one sword stroke, this accident is interpreted as a conflict between the two officials, who are included in the same kinship system where they occupy a position particular that they manifest by the way they place themselves and are placed with regard to maternal and paternal powers engaged in families. The dewassia represents the female pole of power; the priest, the male pole. The worship of Kali is the place of a possible reversal of the relationship between men and women in families. The sacrificial gesture represents the unique and ephemeral moment during which the union of genera is surpassed in the act of killing the animal. The next moment, the wooden block that was used for the sacrifice will be cut in half and will fall to the ground alongside the decapitated head of the animal, which will be carried in front of the altar of Kali. Tension is necessary for life. And finally, the three symbolic orders – water, earth, fire – present in all the rituals of the Hindu religion, are supposed to bring well-being, which is why Baharia Puja is celebrated: for the land to have good productivity, so that families reproduce themselves biologically, and so that they attain moral perfection in their socialisation enterprise. This particular cult was celebrated to thank Kali for the return of harmony between the families.

Ceremonial issues The global dewassia intermediary function in the ceremonial process is prolonged in everyday life during family conflicts, which are most often expressed as conflicts between women within the extended family which groups two families together over three ascendant generations: step-mothers, sisters-in-law and sisters of the two Saas, Pato, Beti in Bhojpuri lineages. The seven sisters, the seven

16  The cult of Baharia Puja

merging earthen pots, are the symbolic frame of magnified social relationships authenticated by Kali’s presence in worship. The boiled milk that overflows earthen pots symbolises the union to be achieved within families and also the union to be built in families involved in the social interaction because of the familial marriage alliances and their possible differences. The participants included members of the same family of the Ravived low caste. The dewassia, the sacrificer, the initiator and the organiser of the ceremony are closely related: uncle, nephew and cousin of the same paternal line. Their marital status does not intervene, because all the men, married or not, are allowed to officiate during the ceremony. This is not the case for women, who must be married or widowed to intervene in ceremonial, in a secondary role of preparation. A five-year-old girl was admitted to the kalimai compound with her mother and aunt to learn how to prepare the altars.5 The relationships engaged, symbolically, in the worship revolve around the gendered relations between men and women on an inter- and intra-generational basis, which are projected in the case of this family community on the differences of castes because of the intercaste marriages which took place. From this point of view, the organising family is representative of the social changes that have taken place since Independence, because some of the natives left their families to settle in the city and newcomers arrived and got married to those who stayed on the spot. The interviews, which preceded our participation in the ceremony, focused on this little story of the resident families where our informants talked about their recent alliances. The two Allied families who participated in this Baharia’s cult of Kali were both from Camp de Masque for at least three generations up. ​

FIGURE 1.8  The

organising family at the end of the ceremony.

The revealing ceremony of conflicts between family groups in the region The grandparents of the head of the family who organised the ceremony resided in Beauvallon in the camp known as the Moulin Cassé of the former owner Fabre

The cult of Baharia Puja  17

before the fragmentation took place. But they are also part of two different statutory groups, the first being of the Ravived low caste and the second of the Vaish caste. The family of the Ravived belonging to B. was originally strictly endogamous and frequented the kalimai of Chemin Cimetière. An old conflict divided the association that managed the kalimai of Chemin Cimetière, which resulted in the displacement of some of the families to the nearest kalimai of Petite Cabanne. The segmentation of the families has meant that the kalimai of Chemin Cemetière has folded back on itself, integrating the low castes called Ravived, which are subdivided into two Rajputand Ravived subgroups. The first practise the cult of the pig, the second the cult of the goat. The object of the conflict, in the form of the ritual and the types of sacrifices to be practised, actually referred to a conflict of alliances between the groups of families concerned. It determines the allegiances and Camp de Masque family-contracted inter-family marriages of which the B family is a magnificent example. The B. family separated from Chemin Cemetière tends to be closer to Petite Cabanne which is a kalimai open to different castes since there has existed, for a long time, an alliance and set of well-established ritual arrangements between families of high and low castes. This is how the recent marriage of the son of the low-caste Ravived family head B. to a daughter of the high-caste Vaish family is an accepted marriage. The father was sirdar in the sugar estate of FUEL and, as such, owned nearly five acres of freehold land that he distributed to his children and where they now plant fruits and vegetables. The presence of the pandit alongside the dewassia marked the coexistence of the Puranic ritual with the Brahmanic ritual in the region. It was consistent with the local balance of relationships established since 1976 between high-caste Baboojees, Vaishs and the low castes, a balance practised and negotiated within families about their plural origins incorporating Baboojees, Vaishs, Ravived although, in fact, the political situation is more complicated and we will analyse, in a later chapter, the particular electoral evolution of the region, in the light of the electoral results from 1967 to 2005. We did not seek to know more about the true reason for the celebration of this cult, which we knew was, in all probability, a conflict between allies now resolved, since Kali delivered his blessings. Despite the outlying location of Petite Cabanne, this kalimai has recently become the privileged place of ethnic and caste openness that we will discuss more fully in the next chapter which describes a new cult of Amourou Puja with which were associated the faithful affiliated to the kalimai of Petite Cabanne. In conclusion of this observation, in spite of the strictly familial content of this cult, we had basic material of a general reflection to pursue on the topic of the multiplication of the family conflicts observable in the region where the social contradictions engaged appear more willingly like conflicts related to statutory differences rather than economic conflicts. Indeed, in the case of the families B. and A. organising the ceremony, there did exist an important difference of an economic nature: the A. family was one of the planters who owned five acres,

18  The cult of Baharia Puja

which is considered important in the region where pineapple is grown mainly with a very good local market value. The B. family, meanwhile, remained on the spot and continued to work as FUEL labourers and sharecroppers. Their different economic conditions have not been the major obstacle to legitimise intercaste unions between families. It is more difficult to find solutions for dealing with different Vedic and Puranic traditions within a family. The ritual symbolic differences thus participate directly in the political game through the multiplication of temples and baitkas. For the last ten years or so, the national federations have been vying with each other to reinvent the cults, so that they gather as many people as possible, without hurting the caste oppositions that exist because of local demographic and economic changes.

The Baharia Puja of Royal Road It was in December 1994, some two years after the Baharia Puja of Petite Cabanne, that the same type of ceremony was studied at Royal Road, a kalimai located about one kilometre from Petite Cabanne. The day chosen for the ceremony was a Friday,6 a sacred day in the Hindu religion reserved for the goddess Kali. The ceremonial ritual was very different from the preceding one since there was no sacrifice of animals, but offerings of fruit although it is the same type of Baharia worship. The main reason for this was the presentation of a newly married couple to two maternal and paternal families brought together for this purpose. The investigation’s situation was very different from the first case, because the team of researchers, made up of a Mauritian, J., and the same foreign researcher, was very directly involved in the ceremonial game, each having contributed by their donations to the success of the ceremony, which was not the case in 1993 when we were more external. The researchers helped to prepare the celebration according to the gender division of labour that existed. Suzanne Chazan helped peel the onions, cut the vegetables, prepared the curry and rice. J., meanwhile, followed the organiser of the party P. who was checking the work of everyone, so that everything was ready for the event, and for the community meal that would follow. All the people of the village were invited to the celebration. It was not a simple family ceremony, even though the organisers were from the same extended family in which there were many preferential weddings, as we have seen from talking to the seven women, sisters and sisters-in-law belonging to the founding family of the kalimai7 which was organised since by the association. Sweet and savoury dishes were prepared, large tables for the meal were arranged along the dirt road that separates the Rivière Françoise from the kalimai at the corner of the main road that goes from Flacq to Bel Air. This kalimai enjoys a particularly favourable geographical location, bordering the water visible from afar and at the crossroads of the roads that delimit the fields. It is a place of extension of the residential area of Camp de Masque Pavé and of an implantation of the largest planters still living on site. These have an average area of four ​​ to five acres. The houses are generally opulent in that locality and many of them have one or

The cult of Baharia Puja  19

more floors. It is the privileged place of residence of a small semi-urbanised rural elite, because many heads of families are civil servants who work in Port Louis or elsewhere while farming their fields. Nearby, there are several cooperative and private businesses that testify to the local economic vitality. ​

FIGURE 1.9  The

seven related women, founders of the association of Kalimai.

There were so many people coming to worship the elder person and so the head of the family asked for the help of his football team, of which he is president, and that of the Telugu village temple official, to bring them the tables and chairs that were missing. They arrived in a truck making a big noise when the equipment was transported, while the ceremony had already begun. Mutual support among the most active personalities of Camp de Masque was very effective. It was commensurate with the richness of the meal served to all who were present. Many young people were there, which is unusual for this kind of ceremony. The division of labour between men and women for the preparations was not complete. Thus, men the mean were seen to cook the puri, to prepare the hearths, and also to turn the semolina preparation, the large quantity of which required particular vigour. P. was everywhere, engaging some to sweep, the others to look for the fruits that were missing from the shopkeeper next door. Seven types of curry were prepared as is the case for weddings. An atmosphere of trust prevailed, as is evidenced by the product of the collection that was on a table, in an open box, that everyone could see, demonstrating that the money collected belonged to the entire community gathered for this Puja. Most of the women who prepared the various dishes were members of the Arya Samaj association, with P. as head of the family. But his mother belonged to another association, having remained faithful to the Sanatanist traditions she inherited from her father. As a result, the mother of the main organiser of the party seemed isolated and a little distant. The men present were very close neighbours and friends, relatives by marriage. The girls and nieces of P. prepared the altar, laying offerings consisting of trays of fruits, apples, bananas, oranges, pears and pineapples, donations from the organisers. The offerings necessary for the Vedic rite celebrated by the pandit were made by the paternal and maternal families of the newlyweds who officiated inside the kalimai. The parents of the

20  The cult of Baharia Puja

son-in-law said they came from close endogamous unions and low castes. It was the family of Fowdar big planters of Montagne Faïence, who own a property of over a hundred acres of pineapple plantation. The groom’s mother told the researchers that she was of the Takurain caste, while the father was Takur, thus demonstrating the endogamous bond that united the families. Two types of offerings were prepared: they distinguished two ceremonial moments, the first linked to the Puranic tradition dedicated mainly to Mother Kali and the couple, the second opened to the Vedic rite dedicated to the fire associated with the scholarly religion which dominated from the moment the ceremonies take place in a temple. The rite celebrated in this kalimai is changing. It integrated the Vedic and Puranic rites and we were to understand later that this practice was becoming widespread in the region. An informant pointed out Dewassia cannot be found, that’s why Baharia Puja, which requires a sacrifice of goats, has been abandoned. No one practices this ritual…/…The priest who comes to celebrate the cult of fruits has restructured the kalimai in his way to make the sacrifice of Chinese gourds. Still at the bottom of the altar, a slightly liquid solution composed of clarified butter (mantègue), curd and Tulsi leaves was prepared for the rite of Kali. At the end of the ceremony, the couple who participated in this ceremony offered Mother Kali the products that are traditionally reserved8 for her: cloves,elaiti til, mustard, dhan (unhusked rice), “Jaw” herbs, abir (red dye), kumkum (red dye for tikka), sindoor, rice, sugar. Saffron crushed on betel leaves, honey and fruits (coconuts, apples, oranges, pears, bananas), were offered to Kali and the seven sisters. Each participant received in his or her right hand a small amount of this preparation called Parsad and ate it. Finally, the camphor, the earthen lamp, the oil to light the lamp, the clarified butter to lit the fire, the sandal and the gruel were dedicated to Agni (fire). ​

offered to Mother Kali and the couple as the priest addresses Kali in the form of a Kailash.

FIGURE 1.10  Ingredients

The cult of Baharia Puja  21

A last type of offerings was offered to Hanuman, above whom the red flag was erected: fruits only, of all kinds, added to camphor, betel and sandal. ​

red Hanuman flag is installed in the place assigned to him to the right of the altar of Kali.

FIGURE 1.11  The

A pile of small wood, very dry and broken into small pieces, was used to light the ceremonial fire (in a cast iron tripod) called Hawan kund. Finally gulaiti flowers (yellow), roses, ghendhas (yellow) were distributed to all at the end of ceremony.

The ceremonial course The ceremonial unfolding revealed the existence of a ritual dualism, distinguishing the Puranic tradition attached to Kali and the Brahmanic ritual. Two stages followed one another. Around 5 p.m., the pandit P. R. from Brisée Verdière arrived. This priest was chosen by P. to officiate according to a new rite in this kalimai because he wished to break with the tradition of animal sacrifices usually made in this kalimai. The women entered the kalimai where the chairs had been arranged. Two different groups9 faced each other. In the first group, to the left of the kalimai altar, where the women who had prepared the meal and those who had spoken with our team a few days earlier, J. was allowed to enter the kalimai. The mother of the husband who was attending the ceremony asked J. to stand next to her to offer explanations. ​

22  The cult of Baharia Puja

FIGURE 1.12  The

first group of participants at the left of the altar of Kali.

Suzanne Chazan stayed outside the kalimai to photograph without disturbing. She was given the tikka as a sign of participation in the ceremony. At the end of the ritual, she was invited, like all women, to enter the kalimai, at the moment when the priest sang with the people the prayer of mother Ambé Gawri. The women and girls went up to the altar of Kali that had just been unveiled and drew seven circles with camphor lit on a tray where there were flowers: this was the Arti. The second group, facing J., was the close family of the husband S. The granduncle of the husband (bansur in Bhojpuri) who was also the mother’s elder brotherin-law – that is, the elder brother of the wife’s husband – was in front of the group and his close relatives behind him. In this group, we could note that two men were there to give help to the officiating couple. The grand-uncle of the groom was placed in the centre because he is the head of the S. family and the groom’s mother chose to sit opposite right where J. was placed. Thus, the paternal and maternal lineages of the groom were facing each other in relation to the altar of Kali. On the right were the paternal relatives and on the left the maternal ones. On the altar of the seven sisters, there were the seven pairs of puris and khirs, sweet cakes of two different kinds Ladu Besand, Ladu, slices of oranges, apples, bananas and pears, two pairs of bracelets. All this was well arranged and the young couple covered the table of seven sisters with a cream-coloured cloth. ​

FIGURE 1.13  Fruits

of all kinds offered to the divinities of the seven sisters, before the Brahmanic ritual.

The cult of Baharia Puja  23

The ceremonial process that followed corresponded to the ritual chosen by the pandit, a true orchestra conductor. The young couple acted on both the advice of the pandit and of their paternal grandfather. In front of the priest were put betel leaves on which there were flowers and rice mixtures. In the centre, there was a copper pot where mango leaves and flowers were placed, all covered with a coconut. Close to these dishes was the tripod that was used later when the fire was lit. The Vedic rite opened with the Om invocation: the priest and the officiating couple drank water. The lamps were lit everywhere on the altar of Kali, and in front of the small altar of the pandit at the bottom of the steps. The sandal was lit to make the Arti. A prayer was addressed to the coconut that represented Kali. The Arti was also performed in front of the coconut invoking Karpur Gawram. A number of deities were invoked in prayers such as: Ganesh, Naw Graha, Durga and so on.​

FIGURE 1.14  The

altar of Kali is covered when the pandit makes the Brahmanic rite.

The assembly of people gathered in the kalimai was very quiet during the prayers of the pandit, who was then the chief official. After the invocations made to the deities, the fire was lit by the couple. At this precise moment, the mother of the groom moved and a woman replaced her by starting a chant with a soft and continuous voice. At the same time, the priest chanted his prayers which superimposed without mixing. While the priest mentioned the deities of the great tradition of the temples, the women sang the kalimai songs, especially the songs of Ambé Gawri and Kali. - Jai jai ambe mata naho - Jai Jai Durge mata naho - Jai jai Shakti mata naho - Mata ambe mera ni - Oh mata durge bawani naho - Oh maya naho shakti - Oh maya sora oh shingar - Par lele asan devi ma - Oh maya asan lele naho - Oh maya shakti lele naho

24  The cult of Baharia Puja

- Jai luxmi Ramana - Jai luxmi Ramana - Jai luxmi Ramana - Eh kali devi sharimaï Parmesawri - Ma shakti bawani ma - Vishnu Narayana shakti Baï - Long live Mother Ambé - Long live Mother Durga - Long live the Mother of the force - You are our mothers Ambé - Oh! Mother Durga Bawani - Oh! you are our Mother of strength - Oh! Mother do you look beautiful - And then, take your places - Oh! Mother of the force - You too take your place - Long live Luxmi Ramana - Long live Luxmi Ramana - Long live Luxmi Ramana - Oh! Mother Kali, Sharimai, Parmaswari - Mother Shakti, mother Bawani - Vishnu Narayana, you have the strength. After the coconut prayer, the priest handed the camphor placed on a betel leaf to the officials to light the fire. The pandit invoked Kali by throwing rice at the altar of the seven sisters, still covered with the linen placed at the beginning. He recited verses in Sanskrit, dedicated to Kali. The pandit then spoke to the assembly about Kali and took the liberty of making a Sanatanist speech to distinguish what is good or bad in certain Puranic practices from other rites like that of the Arya Samajists. ​

FIGURE 1.15  The

priest lit the fire on the stool in front of Kali’s altar.

The cult of Baharia Puja  25

At that moment, the woman who had continued chanting songs to Kali was asked to keep quiet. It was then that five men, without any discretion, entered the kalimai to set up the pavilion at the altar of Hanuman10 and invoked it simultaneously with fruit offerings. The priest prayed Hanuman, and chanted the Hanuman Chalissa, and broke the coconut. ​

FIGURE 1.16  The

men enter to install the Hanuman Dhaja before the prayer.

The ceremonial organisation In this double ceremonial event, the role of the priest, supported by the men, had the effect of operating a kind of phagocytosis of the worship of Kali. The break was not noticeable but it was present despite all the precautions taken to grant Kali its residual place in this cult. The officiating couple went up and stood in front of the altar of the seven sisters. They unveiled the deities, lit the camphor in front of each of them and sprinkled them with water. They both signed the deities with Kumkun and Sindoor, like all the participants. They lit the camphor, made the Arti turning three times in a clockwise direction. During this time, the assembly of the women was silent, no one sang any more, the men broke the coconut before Hanuman. Suzanne Chazan, the stranger, was invited to enter the kalimai as the women walked in a long procession to Kali’s altar to pay her last honours. All women, young or old, fervent or not, married girls or women wanted to go to the altar of Kali. The ritual chant sung by the priest at that time was addressed to Kali and was considered too long by P., the organiser of the ceremony, who asked the participants to stop, telling them that they could do later their devotions to Kali, after the ceremony. The officiating couple went down again with the priest. He took his place in the women’s assembly for the Purnawati which is a closing ritual around the ceremonial fire, consisting of throwing three times into the fire the remaining ceremonial dishes: mantègue and samagri. Everyone got up, including the men who were outside the kalimai and sang Kapura Gawram. The flowers blessed beforehand by the pandit were then launched on the officiating couple. The closing song was the Shanti Path consisting of sacred verses known to all Indian communities.

26  The cult of Baharia Puja

The Arya Samaj movement in its existing differentiations Both Baharia Puja cults studied, two years apart, in the two kalimais of the villages of Camp de Masque Pavé and Camp de Masque of Petite Cabanne and Royal Road respectively, were organised one and the other by a single extended family. The main purpose of the first cult was to thank Kali for her blessings by granting their wish. The second was mainly to present a newly married couple to the maternal and paternal families gathered for this purpose. Of course, these two-family cults did not have the same social function. The first remained limited to the strict family realm, the second had a political efficiency measured by the participation of the large number of villagers who felt concerned by the ceremony. The influence of the F. family, organisers of the celebration, was all the greater because it employs many people from the village, for the harvest of pineapples and vegetables, on the hundred acres of land that belongs to them in full ownership and whose products are exported abroad and/ or sold on the Port Louis market. The first ceremony was celebrated according to the traditional ritual of Baharia cults which deals with the sacrifice of an animal or its symbolic equivalent (fruits or vegetables). The second ceremonial was based on a Vedic dominant ritual, which coexisted while opposing the puritanical rite offered to Kali, for whom a Chinese gourd was sacrificed and cut in half. In this last ceremony, the managing association of the kalimai opted for a ritual change and prepared for the eventuality of founding a temple in front of the kalimai. This one would be transferred as soon as the works started. It is not surprising that the community of the faithful gathered for these two cults would be very different. The Baharia Puja of Petite Cabanne brought together a limited number of people, about 15 people from the extended family living on site. The neighbours or friends of the village of Camp de Masque did not participate neither with donations nor by their presence at the ceremony. This differed greatly to the composition of the faithful of Royal Road. Volunteers from the different Camp de Masque Pavé organisations such as the football club, the women’s association, the Telugu temple association and the local Arya Samaj batika came together as well as individual planters to help prepare the celebration. All the parents of the families offering the binde to Amourou came from far away and participated by their gifts in the ceremony. The collection raised enough money to prepare a very festive collective meal similar to a meal reserved for big weddings. This is why the second ceremonial Baharia Puja at Royal Road must be considered to have had a dual political and economic meaning, one that we will elucidate later, on the occasion of a new ceremony that took place on the sites of the two kalimais of Petite Cabanne and Royal Road gathered on this occasion. Obviously, the region was in full ideological excitement and placed under the direct influence of the federations of Port Louis whose members were the regular attendees of the two kalimais and of the two local Telugu and Arya Samaj temples. The Brahmanisation more or less clearly affirmed by the Baharia cults of Royal Road and Petite Cabanne is then very significant regarding the political control of local societies by the national federations.

The cult of Baharia Puja  27

The next chapter presents the cult Amourou Puja organised in the same two kalimais, under the umbrella of the Sri Rama Mandiram Telugu association and conducted by a local resident priest H. of the Telugu temple of Camp de Masque. This event showed how the caste distinctions underlying these cults crossed the community divisions and were coordinated with the main local socioeconomic differences. The Amourou Puja cult was characterised less by ritual brahmanisation than by the syncretic mode of intervention of the Telugus in a cult dedicated to Kali. This Amourou Puja cult symbolically reflected the strategies of demographically minority communities in their attempt to federate as many people as possible from all backgrounds to build a political electoral majority here, there or elsewhere. In the case of the Telugus, it is elsewhere, on the ground of district no. 12 of Rivière du Rempart, that it was necessary to understand the strategy of the national federation active on the constituency no. 10 of Camp de Masque where live many citizens of the Telugu community.

Notes 1 The MGI driver, Ramesh Ramphul, was present in this survey and always held the symbolic place that was his in local social relations, being from the region. Ramesh Ramphul testified throughout this investigation of an anthropological intuition on which we have relied a number of times. We pay tribute, once again, to his memory. 2 It is the maternal uncle who is, in principle, the initiator for the succession of this office within families. 3 We stopped at each intersection to do the purification ritual. 4 The dewassia and the pandit officiated together in worship. Each has its particular function: the dewassia whose knowledge is based on initiation and the pandit who is a scholar, a connoisseur of sacred texts. 5 It is about this little girl that a wish was made and that the ceremony in Kali was organised in gratitude for the satisfaction of the wish made. 6 In fact, the Baharia Pujas we attended were always on a Sunday. Here, we will see that the ceremony that is described is not actually a Baharia Puja since there was no sacrifice of animals, nor Chinese calabashes. 7 The photographed women are related, being sisters and sisters-in-law. They intervene in the choice of preferential marriages. They are the ones who offer sweet food and money to the bride and groom. 8 See glossary. 9 Let us note that J. had a central position in the event being placed next to the woman mother of the husband of the pair for whom the ceremony was celebrated. In addition, he was also placed in the gathering space of the women with whom we had done the interview in the kalimai. 10 This brutal intrusion of men into the temple at the time of Hanuman’s invocation coincides with the request made to the woman to stop singing. This situation was symptomatic of the ceremonial stakes. The priest was seen speaking to women as they chanted to Kali, while the men chanted Hanuman, the protector of the temple. One could think that Kali was about to become a goddess from within. She was already phagocyted. Note that at that moment the tension, if it existed, was noticeable only by the noise made by the men at the moment when they entered the kalimai enclosure to raise the Hanuman flag.

2 THE AMOUROU PUJA CULT OF CAMP DE MASQUE

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque appears within our investigation as the equivalent to the Baharias cults celebrated by the North Indians in the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar States of India, the Mariamen cult’s celebrations of the Tamils of South India, or Marathi cults dedicated to Ganesh. The interest in studying this event lies in the fact that the initiative for the development of this rite in the Camp de Masque area comes from a local association supported by the Andra Maha Sabha national federation, which is based in Port Louis near the Champ de Mars. The local Camp de Masque association was founded in the 1980s. It is called Sri Rama Mandiram and is currently renovating what was once a small temple made of straw and corrugated iron, which is today become a beautiful temple in concrete cement. ​

FIGURE 2.1  The

Rameshwarnath Mandir Temple, Camp Masque Pavé.

To achieve this new temple, a labourer of the establishment FUEL, P., has since become the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the association of the village, and donated a ground of eight perches belonging to him. The association DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-3

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  29

now has some 55 members, including 30 men and 25 women who are very active in social work. The celebration gathered nearly 300 people (250 according to estimates of several people), about 10% of the population of Camp de Masque, which is a good number in a rural area so far-away from the major cities of the centre. In these conditions, it is no longer an issue to consider the cult of Amourou as a simple feast of a family’s performance more or less extended to the relations of the existing social proximity. We were dealing with an event that was to lead us on the ground to an analysis of religious practices in relation to the local associative system, articulated with the national religious and cultural federations. Of course, the locals played a decisive role in the relationships that were to be understood and analysed later through the genesis and structuring of the community since its establishment in the region. This community had a nonnegligible social position because of the marriages with native families and by social activities developed by the association for its community, but also for other social groups of North and South India present at the celebration. Some of the participants were worshippers of both places under renovation, those of Petite Cabanne and Royal Road. Families were socially closer to the first kalimai than to the second. By associating the two with their feast, the informant S. widened the social base of their integration which opened to the numerous people of the village, who in turn lent their support to the preparation of the festival; meanwhile parents residing in other regions of the island came to join this ceremony to make their offerings to Amourou, the name given by S. to the goddess Kali. Finally, the active members of the national federation also came to support this undertaking as they had already done in other regions where they founded local associations of the same type. The Camp de Masque association was branch 39 of the Port Louis Federation. The community/ethnic group demonstrated, through the ceremonial unfolding and the practice of this new ritual, its capacity to serve the cause of crosscommunity relations, based on the overcoming of inequalities of caste and ethno-linguistic divisions existing between groups – Tamils ​​and Hindus – while serving its particular identity, put into practice on a cultural/political level by the Andhra Maha Sabha federation. Before entering more deeply into the description of the ritual and its relations with the participating groups, and before specifying the role played by the various organisers, we must make some clarifications concerning the community practice common to all Indians in Mauritius whatever their origins. Let us first recall that 14 days are declared “public holidays” of which four days are spent annually to celebrate the Indian religious holidays, with the exception of Divali, the festival of lights which is strictly speaking not considered to be a religious ceremony. Each of these festivals is celebrated in India in one of the four different regions from where the Indian immigrants came as indentured labourer: thus, the Taipoorsam Cavadee is the day dedicated to Muruga, especially venerated by the Tamils; the Mahashivratri is the day dedicated to Shiva during the pilgrimage of the North Indians; Ganesh Chaturti is the feast of Ganesh

30  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

celebrated by the Marathis and finally the Rambhajanum is the national religious holiday of S. in memory of Ram by the Telugus. Indo-Mauritians, whether from the north, south, south-east or south-west of India make it their point of honour to participate in each of these festivals. It will suffice to see the Cavadee of Port Louis or the Mahashivratri of Grand Bassin, to understand that these are opportunities for them to manifest their unity in the religious and cultural diversity of the country where they have settled for more than two centuries. On each of these religious holidays, there are also popular cults belonging to every different Indian communities: the Cavadee corresponds to the fire walking dedicated to Draupadi, the mahashivatree corresponds to the Baharias Pujas dedicated to Kali, the rambhajanum is related to the Amourou Pujas, etc. Unlike the cults dedicated to the higher deities, to which all Indians participate, the popular cults are the expression of the community and linguistic particularisms. The relationship of the local to the global is expressed in two ways, from above and from below. On the one hand, we have political social strategies coming from federations that interact in the local game through ritual arrangements that are always symptomatic of social mobility at work. On the other hand, ceremonial actors regulate the more or less variable and locally stabilised conflicts that are expressed in the context of differentiated rituals. These actors were established by marrying, in a way, the social segmentations that took place while incorporating newcomers. It is to this dialectic of local and global upon which we focused in order to update what is of general nature in particular ceremony of Amourou Puja held at the Rameshwarnath Mandir, Camp de Masque Pavé. Thus, the community played its part locally by modernising the ceremonial ritual of Amourou Puja so that the community of the faithful widens to other groups to which they may belong. Indeed, local relations have long been open to interethnic relations, often blurring caste distinctions, so that these exogamous unions are difficult to legitimise in the dominant social context of preferential relations of strict endogamy. We therefore wondered how the intercultural social bond on which was based the integration of S. into Camp de Masque Pavé was transformed into ethnic visibility by the action of the national federation which implemented the power of its group despite its low local demographic weight. For, while S. represents 3.5% among the 52% Indian population of Mauritius, their numerical weakness is partially offset by an internal organisation welded by the widespread practice of a very high rate of preferential marriages generating “republics” of close cousins ​​by fathers, very active at the national level. This social polarity which is specific to them has been further strengthened by the fact that they were constantly close to the sugar economy, the structuring effects of which have been beneficial to this social formation at both economic and political levels. Thus, privileged links were possible between families who stayed in the countryside and those who settled in the city. It is in the northern region, Rivière du Rempart, where the largest number of S. reside. They stayed close to the sugar estates where they settled: Bellevue-Maurel, Barlow, Antoinette, Bon Espoir, Rivière du Rempart, Goodlands and Petite Rosalie. In other areas, such as the Beauchamps

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  31

property, the St Pierre sugar factory and Dagottière, the majority of Telugus left the camps to settle in the central cities of Beau Bassin and Rose-Hill. The local-toglobal relations that were expressed in the Royal Road ceremony highlighted the interdependence of the cities/countryside of the S. families between them and their particular way of religious/cultural involvement at local and national levels. The electoral issue itself was indirect, since it concerned the constituency No 7 (Rivière du Rempart/Piton). It was obvious to the extent that the S., whatever the existing alliances within the national parties, placed in all governments a deputy minister, in Rivière du Rempart, where the group is best represented. Amourou Puja, like all the ceremonies celebrated in honour of Kali, is an outdoor cult and could not be organised on the site of the temple of Camp de Masque’s Sri Rama Mandiram. It was celebrated at the Royal Road kalimai. The relationship of inside to outside, staged by the community of participants, was based on a community ideology in which gender, caste and ethnic distinctions were commuted into a pluralistic reality of relationships, giving the minority group a mediating function among other social groups in both North and South India: Hindus and Tamils. We have considered this cult of Amourou as a framework for elaboration of interethnic relations exploitable elsewhere in the field of a centrality managed by the federation of Port Louis at the time of the elections or during any event of national importance.

Social relations in the ceremonial process The social community of belonging of the faithful We were able to characterise the social relations involved in the ceremonial ritual by visiting the most important family, who were preparing for the feast after having followed the ten-day fast imposed in the new ritual. ​

FIGURE 2.2  Preparing

food before the Amourou ceremony.

Early in the morning, the P. family, whose head is the Public Relations Officer (PRO)1 of the local association, resides at Camp de Masque Pavé in a house located opposite the temple. He greeted us at his house, which is built on a large plot of

32  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

land, where several other buildings are connected through courtyards adjoining the kitchens, which separate the nuclear families. This type of habitat is very typical of the way of life of the Mauritian families of yesteryear where the nuclear families were generally grouped around a larger or smaller interior space on which the kitchens of each other unfolded. Today these spaces have more or less disappeared because of the demographic growth observable in the city as in the countryside. There was densification of the buildings on the residential spaces, primarily a geographical extension where possible, and where the land was not owned. Upon entering the inner courtyard, we visited all the houses and kitchens. In the middle of the courtyard, there were several women’s groups (17 in total) and two Krishna men and the son of P. cutting vegetables. Cauldrons (carails) 2 were laid on a log fire. In the kitchen, everything needed for cooking was gathered. Opposite, we entered another kitchen belonging to the brother of Mr. P., which shows that the nuclear family is organised for itself during the preparation of food while cooking is collective. Through interior stairs, we were introduced to the room where Krishna’s 34-year-old niece had been fasting for ten days. She carried a binde3 which is composed of two copper vessels. The first and the largest contain rice cooked with saffron mixed with tamarind and leaves of Lilas Pers with a bitter taste. The second is called lota in which there is rice and curd. Finally, above these copper pots, is placed a lighted earthen lamp supplied with oil by the parents of the person who wears the binde when the light wavers the entire duration of the parade. Those women carrying a binde are followed by close relatives all along the road that leads to the kalimai. ​

FIGURE 2.3  Women

carrying the binde.

Beside this room, there was the room of the brother, an assistant Tamil priest who said pusari, and is able to fast and lie on nails or on swords for ten days, according to him. The brother led us to visit his particular altar, set up in the small adjoining studio where he lives. He explained that he feels rejected from the family and has thus marginalised himself to find his balance, breaking with the tradition and adopting Tamil practices. ​

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  33

altar of the brother, follower of Sai Baba, acting as a Tamil assistant priest.

FIGURE 2.4  The

The deities placed on his altar show that he is a follower of Sai Baba and that he honours several Tamil deities present in the temple of Bonne Mère, located near Camp de Masque on the road to Quartier Militaire in Flacq. He became a specialist for puncturing the needles of the Muruga followers during the Cavadee ceremonies. Apart from the brother, who kept away from the ceremony, showing his closeness to the Tamils, and because he is in opposition to his brother, the whole family took part in the ceremony and it was their nieces and daughters who carried the binde. Everyone can carry it but in practice and in the majority of cases, it is rather the young women with particular problems that carry it. Such was the case with the niece still unmarried at 34. The products that come into the food are: green beans, jackfruit, bananas, dholl, brinzelel, rasson, kucha (achar peppers), sagu and aplon.4 All these ingredients are used in cooking the traditional dishes of S. Before our departure from the family home P., the bearer women presented their binde on the threshold of the door to the bearer of Prabha5 who blessed them before they left the celebration parade. A married woman called Moutaidevelou – adorned with flowers on her hair, tikka on her forehead, with a Mangalam Sutram (traditional necklace) tied around her neck, bracelets on her arm and a matelu wedding ring on the second finger of her left foot – played the intermediary role between the Prabha bearer and the young women at the moment of the blessing. This ritual role she was assigned corresponds to the social role she holds within the allied families because she advises the parents on the most judicious choice to make regarding the future spouse of the children, according to the preferential alliances allowed in families. In this way, she acts as the agwa6 who ensures that the estates of families are maintained in the hierarchy of castes through the game of weddings. Washing young single women’s feet with a solution of saffron in water is a symbol of the value attached to the purity of preferential weddings that are the hope of families. We were told that all these women, who carried their offerings, had no obligation to make a promise to Kali as it is usually the tradition in the Baharia cults. They had just got ready for the celebration, by constraining themselves to ten days of fasting. ​

34  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

Prabha is placed in front of the Sri Rama Mandiram Temple of Camp de Masque.

FIGURE 2.5  The

After this visit, we had to leave to attend the blessing of the Prabha in front of the Sri Rama Mandiram temple where it was made. The Prabha is a symbolic object through which the bearer manifests a fusional relationship with the world of divinities in its constant struggle for good versus evil when he enters into a trance In addition to the family P., organiser of the celebration, native of Camp de Masque Pavé all who came together to participate in the celebration and the other women who joined the parade explained the reasons for their participation. Nineteen women in total bore binde. They were all dressed in the same yellow saris with red and white edges. The bindes were all essentially the same, only the decorations changed, indicating the different geographical and social origins of the families gathered for the celebration: Flacq, Riche Mare, Camp de Masque Pavé, Camp de Masque, Bonne Mère, Sainte Croix, Vacoas, Pont d’Epinay, Petite Cabanne, Bel Air/La Lucie were the places of residence evoked by the carriers when we asked them the question. All these binde-bearing women were surrounded by their sisters, sisters-inlaw and mothers. They all confirmed having relations via marriage with the organising family. Some were dressed in saris of different colours, like the lady above in red who bore no binde unlike the other women and did not wear a Mangalam Sutram either. This woman of Telugu origin thus demonstrated that she had adopted the tradition of her husband of Hindu origin, by virtue of the submission of woman to man. In the assembly, several women had contracted intercommunity unions between a Telugu and a Marathi between Telugu and Tamils and between Telugu and Hindus. It can be concluded that the community of women carrying binde were all linked by marriage to the organising family. They formed a kinship, characterised by interethnic relations that mingled with intercommunity relations. The P. family that we had visited at the beginning of the ceremony, managed to gather around it all its relatives and allies scattered on the island: cousins/aunt in the paternal line, nieces in the maternal and paternal lines and sisters-in-law in the maternal line. Binde bearers

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  35

or companions, these women were united around Amourou and carried within them the contradictions of caste and ethnicity found in the local society of Camp de Masque. Through them, one could understand the effects of social power of such a ceremony in favour of the minority group which succeeded in reuniting the branches of the family P. dispersed in the other regions of the island. These staged relationships were likely to be exploited under certain circumstances if a collective strategy was deployed at the level of the local association and the national federation. The chosen political alliances must then take into account the various positions that have been acquired by the family members, dispersed in the different regions of the island. The presence of representatives of the federation at the celebration had this partially utilitarian function of the relations engaged in the sphere of cultural-political influence of the national federation. The residents of Camp de Masque, who remained outside the ceremony, are those who had no alliances with the S.: part of the faithful of the Chemin Cemetière kalimai, the followers of the Petite Cabanne kalimai who have preferential alliances with high and low Hindu castes, specifically the Raviveds allied with the Baboojees and Vaishs.

The ceremony duality Shortly after the long-guided tour proposed by the master of the house, we went to the kalimai of Petite Cabanne, taking advantage of the car, which we were offered by the driver and on which there were offerings for the altar of Kali, the Prabha and an idol representing Vishnu called Utsawamurti. A loudspeaker on the roof of the van was there to orchestrate the songs during the parade. A large picture of Kali, placed on a banner, opened the parade. A second car, carrying Durga for Tamils who is another form of Kali for Hindus, also joined the kalimai of Petite Cabanne, where the ceremony was officially opened. A very simple first ritual was celebrated in front of the Kali altar in Petite Cabanne. There were no participants other than those who had come from outside, including a representative of the federation, a journalist from the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and the researchers were invited by the five officials of the ritual to honour Mother Kali and for the celebration to be a success for the people of the village. Before that, they helped the priest to dress in yellow and to fix the Prabha on his back. The Prabha is a sort of flowered altar, similar to the kavus of the Tamils, the kanwars of the Hindus, the murtis of the Marathis. A bamboo frame was crafted to hang yellow daisies and Ghenda oranges, red anthuriums and sagou leaves. A mirror was placed in the centre of the Prabha, which symbolises the opposition of good and evil. In the struggle being fought, the evil is not driven out, it is simply sent back to itself, which must be interpreted as the very general mode of social closure corresponding to this society displaying a more statutory than hierarchical organisation. ​

36  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

FIGURE 2.6  The

Prabha is installed on the back of the wearer.

The presence of the deities Kali/Durga and Luxmi/Parvati was symbolised by the four red flags, planted at the top of the building. The Prabha preceded the parade of women. It has a special relationship with the female divinities mentioned above, but the emphasis is on Vishnu and Shiva instead of Kali because the first two are the direct husbands of Luxmi and Parvati. The chief priest, mandated by the federation Andra Maha Pradesh, came from Quatre-Bornes (with a yellow shawl on the shoulder) as the bearer of Prabha. The officials stood on the steps of the altar, where each plays a special ceremonial role. After having climbed on the platform of the altar of Kali, the officials face each other. The assistant priest of the temple of Camp de Masque H. and the devotee of Amourou are downstairs on the ground and finally the president of the local association, in plain clothes, is on the first step of the altar. ​

for good and evil at the exit of Petite Cabanne Road at the first intersection of the road followed by the parade.

FIGURE 2.7  Struggle

A prayer was addressed to Ganesh. Then, the officials turned round on themselves by tracing seven circles clockwise while invoking the seven sisters. The

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  37

hierarchy and the equivalence of the roles were materialised by the respective positions of the officials on the steps of the altar. We saw that their disposition is not comparable to a hierarchy, the circles drawn by each evoke the statutory differences attached to the ritual functions and their respective autonomy in the ceremony. The prayers ended with the consecration of the sword, on which were drawn seven red lines of sindoor representing the seven sisters; the priest then broke a coconut and cut a lime. A first struggle was started between one of the devotees carrying the sword and the Prabha bearer who took the burden of the evil: he went into a trance. This fight was the leitmotif of the parade. It was reproduced in several places along the road that runs through the village. During these episodes of struggle, the same sentence was pronounced by the one who was in charge of killing the evil Acharawa Allala Vira, which means: “You, the evil you stay where you are. We catch you.” We left in a convoy along the dirt road that connected Petite Cabanne to the main road of Camp de Masque in the following order: in front the cars carried as a flag of pride the large picture of Durga and Kali, and ahead of the group of priests was a man walking with a light. At each crossroads, at the corner was lit a piece of camphor, the incense was burned, the lime was cut and water was poured while bowing down before the fight of good against evil. Very young girls played Kolatom7 and others read Kali’s prayers in Sanskrit. Kolatom is a traditional dance of Andra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in southern India. The girls danced to the sound of sticks banging and giving rhythm to the dance.8 The Prabha bearer opened the way for the ladies to pass freely and safely. By entering into a trance and struggling against the evil awakener who always provoked him with a sword at the end of which was planted a lime, the Prabha destroyed all the bad actions during the crossing of the various intersections they met following the road from Flacq to Bel Air. At the first intersection, four women were waiting, then a fifth. All bore the binde. They came to stand behind the officials of the procession. The light above the binde was on. Different women’s groups joined the procession later, when it was at the crossroads where they were waiting in turn. The parade never changed its course, it drew a straight line between the kalimai of Petite Cabanne from where it had gone to the kalimai of Royal Road (Figure 2.8) where it was to arrive. The women formed a continuous chain of people that grew as they entered the parade at each of the road junctions and represented the unwavering union of all those who had chosen to participate in the cult service. The head of the parade stopped in front of the entrance to the kalimai, where an abstract figure from the region of the origin of S. in India was drawn in chalk to distinguish sacred and ritual space from secular space. ​

38  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

FIGURE 2.8  Arrival

of the women to offer the binde to Amourou in the kalimai of Royal

Road.

All the men who were in front of the parade entered the kalimai for the sacrifice offered to Amourou. Gurumoorty, an Indian expert from the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI), who came to raise awareness amongst S. and train priests, also had a place during the ceremonial ritual. A Chinese gourd was blessed, cut in half by the Prabha bearer, and covered with an abhir-red powder, symbolising blood. The ritual sacrifice was thus accomplished. The chief priest preached long prayers, recited in the Sanskrit language, to Amourou. Then he made an official speech, followed by that of the devotee, H. priest of the Sri Rama Mandiram Temple. His speech focused on comparing the rituals of different ethnicities in India: Tamils have Cavadee, Marathis have Ganesh Chaturti, Hindus have Mahashivatree and S. had just celebrated their holiday, called Rambhajanam. ​

sacrifice of calebasse chinois (Chinese gourd) at Amourou by the porter of Prabha.

FIGURE 2.9  The

The three circular figures drawn by the women arriving in the kalimai symbolised the fervour of the three mother deities associated with the feast: Parvati wife of Shiva, Luxmi wife of Vishnu and Saraswati wife of Brahma. This triangular relationship of the goddesses Parvati, Luxmi and Saraswati, considered as mediators of the relation to Amourou, as well as the sacrifice of vegetables and the

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  39

speeches of the priests associated with the ritual manifested the mainly interethnic final meaning of the celebration of worship: in the confirmed form of a popular rite, we dealt actually with a Brahmanic ritual. Let’s return to our ceremonial description. ​

FIGURE 2.10  The final prayer in Sanskrit to the deity of the fire Agni outside the kalimai.

On the right side of the kalimai, and outside, where the tent had been placed to receive the guests and serve them a meal, a small structure of hawan kund had been built where the women, after having offered the ritual meal contained in the binde at Amourou sat in cross-legged making a circle. The fire was lit in the hearth. A young priest officiated at a ceremony parallel to the one held in the kalimai: different prayers were recited in Sanskrit language, the roles of gender and ritual sharing were then definitively confirmed: while the men officiated in the kalimai, binde-bearing women gathered around the fire to celebrate the Arya Samajist ritual. The prayers were addressed to the God of fire, Agni. The women poured mantègue9 with mango leaves and samagri10 which they spread on the fire with their hands saying “Swaha.” The family of P. and members of the Royal Road Kalimai Association began serving the guests with meals while the two services celebrated in and outside the kalimai were barely finished. As privileged spectators of the festival, we had to realise that P., who had provided valuable assistance on the occasion of this feast, kept himself at a distance and did not get involved in the ritual of sacrifice in the kalimai. Yet he was in complete agreement with the chosen Sanatanist ritual. Moreover, we had been told many times by H. that S practised, like all other communities, Puranic rituals. So can we raise the issue of the distance kept by P. while he was also very close to H., ideologically speaking?

The intrinsic rationality of the ceremony The ceremonial organisation presented itself in two different ways. The first was described by H., who is the priest of the Camp de Masque temple. He attended the chief of priests officiating the ceremony. The second level of analysis focused

40  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

on the direct observation of the ceremonial ritual, correlated with the social relations engaged in the limited community of the faithful who carried their offerings to Amourou. First of all, we propose to interpret the explanations given by the priest H., before the ceremony. He lives in the village of Camp de Masque where he runs a business of a “General Retailer Store,” along the main road of the village. This is how the priest assistant presented the ceremony.

The a priori meaning of the Amourou Panduga ceremony It is a cult that concerned all the villagers. It is not easy to prepare grandiose pujas because it is expensive. So, we celebrate this ceremony once a year. We collect money, people do not just give money, and sometimes they prefer to give rice balls. Our job is to ensure that everyone in the village participates in the celebration. This ceremony was developed to validate locally a change of rituals of the Amourou Panduga at the initiative of S. In the past, we went door-to-door to raise money with which we buy goats to sacrifice them and we shared the meat with the people who were present. Today, there is a change in the ritual. The Brahmanic nature of the Amourou cult instituted by the Federation We are an association and we focus on Vishnu. We, Telugus, are closer to Vishnu. He has ten different reincarnations, we adore Narsimha11 who is one of his reincarnations for which we celebrate the Srimadrapana puja. Our society celebrates this puja and we also celebrate Rambhajanam12 as part of the Ram ceremony. All these pujas are of type Vishnuite and we also do puja of Kali said Murupuja13. The most grandiose puja is the Murupuja. When H. speaks of S., he uses a collective term that could be translated into Creole as nu ban S, that is to say “our people S.” He relates this collective identity to the belief in the god Vishnu. The manifestations of Vishnu are built around ten forms of representation of divine power. They may give rise to behavioural changes when one knows that Vishnu, half-man, half-lion, is ambivalent in nature. The dual essence of man/nature is regularly exploited in case of conflict in the sense most favourable to the social opening. The ideology of the followers of Vishnu, of which H. is a part, is in perfect agreement with the place of S. in the community system of Mauritius where they are, demographically, a minority. Their action aims to harmonise the different cults dedicated to Mother Kali, whose name is Amourou and Mariamen in Tamil.

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  41

Symbolic efficiency of ritual modification Then H. established the fundamental distinction between followers of Shiva and followers of Vishnu. Their difference lies in the fact that Shiva has no other form of representation than himself. He is the essence of divinity. As a result, what the informant does not say but is to be understood is that the popular rites of the communities from the north and south-east of India do not have the same status with regard to that of scholarly religion. He wondered then why, in other ceremonies, it is not necessary to practise fasting the ten days preceding the ceremonial to make offerings to Kali, which are made in majority of animal sacrifices. In the temples on the occasion of the Cavadee, the cults of Durga are preceded by a ten-day period similar to Lent, which is not the case, neither for the Baharias nor for the Amourou Pujas. The differential status of popular religion with scholarly religion is evoked in these terms: When it comes to the question of whether followers of Vishnu believe more in female goddesses than in male deities, it is not easy to decide. If I speak of the trinity of divinities, Bramha, Vishnu, Mahesh, they are one God: Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preservative and Shiva/Mahesh the destroyer … In the same way the feminine divinities Parvati, Saraswati, Luxmi, represent Kali. That does not mean that when you do something towards Parvati, it’s Kali. In other words, there are three different forms that are attached to three different names. In the same way as when one goes to war, one puts on one’s soldier’s uniform, one does not go dress in civilian clothes. The soldier and the civilian have different clothes, but it is the same man caught in a different situation. It all depends on what kind of work, what kind of social activity the person is taking.

Power is power; it does not separate; it is organised The difference of status evoked about Kali vis-à-vis the higher deities emphasises the overall political meaning of ritual change imposed: the fasting practice of all the families who participated in the ceremony is the symbol of the transformation of the popular ritual dedicated to Kali (here Amourou) into a Brahmanic ritual analogous to the cults of the official religion, like those dedicated to Parvati. H. goes further and clarifies his point of view: The male Trinitarians, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, and the female Trinitarian deities, Parvati, Sarawasti, Luxmi, function in the same way as in a ministry where there is Prime Minister Shiva/Parvati, Minister of Finance Luxmi, and Minister of Education who would be Saraswati. The representations of male and female divinities determine the differences in social, economic and political roles, which relate to the multiple subdivisions within castes. He went on to say:

42  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

Mother Kali, in this context, represents the strength of Shiva.14 I give you an example. Look at this gentleman painting a building, so he is called painter. If, tomorrow, he turns into a gardener, he is called a gardener and if he changes his job again, his name will change depending on the type of work he does. So, you see that the same person can assume different functions. In the same way, there is only one God who takes several attributes, that is to say that he takes different names attached to different functions. As for Kali, when she takes a specific form to kill, one has to do to Mother Kali, but Mother Kali may be acting, too, in the particular form of Saraswati identified with the goddess of education. Grandmother Kali took a divine form to eliminate evil. This is the reason why Mother Kali is placed at the entrance of the village to prevent the evil from spreading in the village. This reasoning, while highlighting the way in which the power functions and applies to gender relations, status differences, emphasises the fact that power is not shared. Mother Kali, beyond the plurality of her forms of action, is unique and attached to the struggle of good against evil. H. thus justifies statutory caste differences, presented as an embedded system of attributes where the distribution of roles is not based on a hierarchy, but on a separation and a plurality of functions, all in relation of general equivalence with the divine essence of Mother Kali. We know, indeed, that on a kalimai site, the main divinities have their place and their own territoriality around the altar of Kali. In addition, the tutelary deities are frequently associated in pairs as if one of the qualities could not function without the support of the other and vice versa. We have seen in the previous chapters that the symbolic space of kalimai was split, highlighting the duality of functioning of power – sometimes active, sometimes passive, which manifests itself under one form or the other: Kali fights against the evil, but at the same time it is evil by which misfortunes happen. The ceremonial stake of the kalimai cults is to preserve Kali’s passive role, to neutralise it or to make it intervene only on the register of the struggle of good against evil. Power is simultaneously at the origin and as a product in popular cults. When they take place in the temples, these same cults give rise to manifestations of social control and are the object of practices of imposition and distribution of roles by the power of the associations that manage the temple. When it comes to an outside cult, it gives rise to a staging of the existing statutory differences within the established family social groups.

Religion is the “zero degree”15 of the state Power would not function as power without the mediation of Kali, of which H. told us that it pre-existed the higher deities and that in it is Shakti,16 the energy of Shiva. She is well placed to eliminate evil. Evil is identified in this interview as denying or transgressing the position assigned to each social group in society, supported by long-established traditions. The integral morality attributed to Kali

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  43

confers on him, according to the implicit representations of our informant, a particular power which consists of manufacturing the political elites resulting from the relationships of power established over the long term between social and family groups. We must know the origin of mother Kali. In our culture,17 in the same way that we speak of the male deities Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh18 who are considered as the spouses of the female divinities, Saraswati Luxmi and Parvati, we speak of Kali as a female power dependent on Shiva. She represents the strength of Shiva. Thus speaking, H. manifests the religious education he has received, leaving him more attached to scholarly religion than to popular religion. But he wants to mark a kind of general equivalence of the couple Kali/Shiva, leaving the popular belief in Kali a place of choice. Kali is totally different from the trinity of the Saraswati sisters, Luxmi and Parvati, all of whom are subject to their respective spouses by the privileged relationship established between Kali and Shiva. It is therefore not only for educational reasons that H. deplores the animal sacrifices often practised by S. themselves. It is because this system maintains divisions of gender, family and caste that he has found this practice detrimental to the social changes that are needed now. The rite of Kali is centred on the offering of goats. So,, we thought it was necessary to harmonise things. For Shiva, one prepares while respecting days of lent, one offers water, whereas, for Kali, one limits itself to make sacrifices of animals. We can make sacrifices, but we must not kill animals, we replace them with vegetables or fruits. Animal sacrifices are selfishness. Ceremonial practices are symbolic. The coconut represents something. At every offer made, is attached a symbol. Sanatanist pujas are highly symbolic festivals. The Amourou cult that was celebrated was meant to be different from the Kali cults because the S. took, on this occasion, the driving role of an attempt to harmonise the rituals practices in the kalimais of Royal Road and Petite Cabanne. H. explained to us that he partnered with P. who manages the Royal Road kalimai because they agree on opposing the perpetuation of rituals centred on animal sacrifices. Both substituted the sacrifices of fruits or vegetables with something else. P. sacrificed the fruits to Kali, as observed in the Baharia cult of Royal Road. And H. sacrificed the vegetables to Amourou, as will be seen in the description of ceremonial to come: it is a Chinese gourd. In addition, it will be learned in the course of the ceremony that the women who wear the binde to Amourou, practise a fast of ten days, which is, in principle, not necessary for the popular cults reserved for Kali. The purpose of ritual harmonisation was to open up the minority communities that interact in the caste divisions of the Hindu majority group. For change within the social and

44  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

economic system by a more or less complete disappearance of animal husbandry in the region would lead to an adaptation of kinship and alliance systems and towards an opening-up regarding other groups of different communities and castes. Thus, the object of the sacrifice (gourd or fruit) was considered as the signifier of the ritual in which the practice of fasting was introduced to arrange the new social relations in the face of the present economic changes. The sacrificial ritual implements male power, and fasting is a way of gathering families scattered on the island for ten days, while focusing on family life. The worship of Amourou is a popular ritual that is an integral part of the scholarly religion revealed by this practice of fasting that does not exist in popular cults. But this ritual harmonisation is not accepted by everyone. The followers of the kalimai of Petite Cabanne still continue today to sacrifice goats as we described in the previous chapter. Some of the faithful of Petite Cabanne did not get involved and did not take an active part in the Amourou cult. Some, however, agreed to give their share to the fundraisings made for the celebration, as is the custom in Mauritius in all communities. Others flatly refused to provide their support. This is the case of the founding family of the kalimai of Camp de Masque Pavé, who did not want to lend the base to carry the binde she had. It was the same with the head of the B. family that we met when he organised the Baharia ceremony in 1993. He came as a simple spectator of the celebration and did not get personally involved. If people do not come to the ceremony and give something for the party, it means that they are still participating. We can say that any contribution, however small, is a form of participation. In the absence of active participation by all the people of Camp de Masque Pavé, H. contented himself with a symbolic offering in money or in kind. This way of not identifying the social aspect of the division, but showing the distance taken by some residents of the village, led us to the hypothesis of the existence of a hidden conflict between S. and the Hindus, which divides families linked by intermarriage relationships. This conflict has never been clearly evoked, nor formulated, otherwise than in the symbolic form of a ritual opposition or to highlight the need to broaden the social base of the integration of S. from Camp de Masque and Camp de Masque Pavé. H. justified the choice made by the S. of the kalimai of Royal Road rather than that of Petite Cabanne for their sacrifices as follows: The majority of the members of the society live in Petite Cabanne. That’s why they wanted to celebrate the ceremony at Petite Cabanne. We did not agree, because to do that and to make the celebration a success, it had to be done elsewhere. Staying at Petite Cabanne was likely to lock us where we are already. However, the opening of the celebration to Camp de Masque, would bring many other people. That’s why we organised the celebration at the entrance of Camp de Masque at Royal Road. In addition, the space is much larger, and accessible.

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  45

The social conflicts underlying this ritual harmonisation have not been fully elucidated. They had a certain permanence that made it difficult to think of solutions. The religious discourse remained stuck around the two themes mentioned: the opposition between scholarly religion and popular religion, and the opposition between men and women. But it was known that this ritual innovation marked an important step in the process of conquering the local power of the Village Council and the District Council of Moka/Flacq, to which P. of Royal Road, supported by S., participated as an elected member of his village of Camp de Masque and Camp de Masque Pavé. The elections in 1995 changed the political landscape of Constituency No. 10, which shifted into opposition when the MMM/PTR alliance came to power. Our protagonists P. and H. opted for the camp that lost the elections. This had huge consequences since the finally founded Hindu temple is now at Camp de Masque and not in front of the kalimai of Royal Road, as had been planned. The Royal Road kalimai has not changed since 1994 while that of Petite Cabanne has become almost a temple.

The political sense of the new ceremonial practices: Baharia and Amourou Pujas The Amourou popular cult, which we have just presented, is an essential link in a chain of distribution of social relations that is instituted in everyday life and is also expressed in the choice of political alliances made during election campaigns. The duality that manifested itself in the ritual symbolically symbolised the boundary of the inside and the outside, established by the groups participating in the ceremony. In the kalimai, a classical Sanatanist ritual was performed with Gumarikaya Chinese calabash sacrifice. Outside the kalimai the binde-bearering women celebrated ritual Arya Samaj. This double ceremonial structure, which excluded women from the essential sacrificial moment dedicated to Amourou, while they practised a different ritual to the god of fire, demonstrated the existence of latent conflicts experienced within families. The dominant position affirmed by women in the Arya Samaj ritual should be able to respond to the need to overcome the caste and community cleavages involved in families because of the many interethnic marriages practised in families – with the Tamils in ​​ particular – and castes – with low Hindu castes mainly. The two organisers of the ceremony, P. of Ravived origin and H., of Rajput origin, were two representatives of two different associations. The first was of Arya Samajist obedience, the second was a follower of Andra Maha Sabha. Their alliance in worship did not have the expected political efficacy as demonstrated by the 1995 election results. Both sought to bring together the widest possible social platform for them to be able to represent a majority, based on an intercommunity and intercultural alliance. P. was working on his own legitimacy in order to found a new temple, opposite the kalimai of Royal Road, where his residence is located. H. was working on behalf of the community in order to place an elected minister in the next election of Rivière du Rempart as the “best loser.” H. and P. were

46  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

therefore not competitors since they acted through their respective associations. We were asked by each of them to participate in the events that would take place the following week: an Arya Samajist ritual and worship at the temple of Sri Rama Mandiram, followed by the monthly meal at the headquarters of the association. At the same time as we participated in this ceremony, we understood the more generally political content of worship and the way in which local electoral alliances are set, beyond the very strong caste contradictions in the region.

Local electoral alliances and strategies of associations The District Council of Moka/Flacq covers electoral constituencies Nos. 8, 9 and 10, with a total population of almost 210,000 mostly rural inhabitants. The specificity of these districts is given by the percentages achieved by the Hindu community compared to the other communities of the island. Thus, Moka and Flacq reach more than 50% of residents from the Hindu community for less than 20% for both communities best represented after the Hindus, which are, respectively, the general population (19.1% in Flacq) and Muslims who total 20.6% in Moka. Tamils ​​account for 4.8% in Flacq and 7.1% in Moka. This demographic distribution of communities explains the instability of the political alliances19 of constituencies 8 and 9 during the electoral campaigns, insofar as minorities have a very active role, to make and break alliances to the best of their respective interests, those of “best losers.”20 The best loser is the minority group, belonging to a political party, running for elections. This group can then place three candidates in parliament by choosing its most popular representatives, given the election results. Eight positions are reserved in parliament for the “best loser” candidates to be likely to hold a ministry, the minority group must have at least two representatives in parliament. ​ 50000 48000 46000 44000 42000 40000 38000 36000 34000 32000 30000 28000 26000 24000 22000 20000 18000 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

49925

Port Louis Pamplemousses Riviere Du Rempart Flacq Grand Port

49243

17822 25860 23000 18942

1241 297 39

166

4559 3816 2265 1877

461 206 48 8 36

41

buddhist/chinese

Christian

GRAPH 2.1  Ethnic/religious

Hindu

7402

6345

6285

Marathi Hindu

3505

1618 2204 910 1710 1222 1161 1075 598 653

1962 2363

Tamil hindu

Islam

Telegu Hindu

distribution of the population in the survey districts

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  47

Constituencies Nos. 8, 9 and 10 have always had elected officials who have become ministers, some of whom at number 10, such as Boolell and Goburdhun, have maintained themselves for a very long time, the second having succeeded the first, when the PTR had to give way. MSM allied with the MMM in 2000.21 Constituency No. 10 is composed mainly of large planters living in the central towns, who vote, however, in their region of origin, where their plantations and sharecroppers are. The election results obtained in 1967 and 1982 show that it is a politically stable constituency that has been in the grip of electoral dominance, their elected candidates having always been part of the ruling alliance. When the PTR lost the elections, the No. 10 constituency swung back, and the outgoing candidates were from the MMM / MSM alliance, which was 60/0 in 1982. However, the intercommunity and intercaste balances that have formed with the rise to power of Anerood Jugnauth and Paul Bérenger changed from 1982. Their success in regions 8, 9 and 10 was based on the support of Vaishs (MSM) and that of low castes (MMM) of mainly Ravived and Rajput origins. Their alliance was intended to counter the PTR which was criticised in 1982, the preferential policy this party, the product of Independence in 1968, had led in favour of high caste Baboojees/Marazs. The other two districts 8 and 9 have minority groups, demographically larger than the number of low Hindu castes, if we include Tamil, Muslim and residents. Thus, Tamils have ​​ always placed a candidate in elections No. 8, whether it was PTR or MMM. Electoral District No. 922 is very different and is similar to the caste distribution found in Triolet/Pamplemousses District No. 5, where the MMM won the 1982 elections against the PTR in power since Independence, the candidate of which was the outgoing Prime Minister, described as “father of the Mauritian nation.” At that time, the overwhelming electoral victory 60/0 of the MMM was obtained thanks to the support of MSM voters from the lower castes Ravived and Rajputs. Different were the electoral balances of the electoral District No. 9 which varied according to the electoral campaigns in proportion of the support of the low castes and their alliance or not with the Vaishs, when the MMM allied with the MSM. The results of our investigation show that the relationship between low Ravived and Rajputs castes has tended to break out and to separate today, because of the differential strategies of the cultural associations that competed for their voices, through the renovation of cults. Thus, in the penultimate election of 2000, the MMM and the MSM chose two candidates of the low castes Ravived and Rajput and a Vaish to wear their colours. The PTR did the same. The low-caste division among them played for the benefit of the election of two Vaish candidates, PTR and MSM. This new distribution is symptomatic of economic inequalities that can no longer be solved in the traditional context of communities, nor do they find solutions within the framework of divisions or party alliances. The expectations of qualitative/quantitative equilibrium are no longer as reliable because economic differences weigh more and more heavily on the choice of candidates proposed by the parties. Voters are more sensitive to the content of party alliances than before. This happened in 2000, when the

48  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

MMM and the MSM, once again allied after their separation, built their union on the principle of the alternation of party leaders in power. The message was heard, and, for the first time, the winning parties did not make 60/0, quite a new situation in Mauritius. Finally, this region is witness to the growing distortion between the image of a communalist society and the reality of the relationships experienced on a daily basis or in the context of work. This new political and economic reality is reflected in the symbolism of the rituals and the power relations that are played out in the associative strategies of the national federations. In addition, it is noted that the two constituencies of Flacq/Bon Accueil (No. 9) and Triolet/Pamplemousses (No. 5) are made up of groups of related and allied families, which further reinforces the finding that the quantitative/qualitative game of elections can no longer obey the same ethnic/caste rationality that has always prevailed since national independence.

The outcome of the regional politics The real political meaning of the Amourou cult questions these associative strategies, where we find, at one end of the social chain, the partisans of the Arya Samjist movement, and, at the other end of the chain, the local section of the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation. The two kalimais of Petite Cabanne – with the Puranic sanatanist rite – and Royal Road with the ambivalent ritual – Vedic and Puranic – seek the way of their legitimacy, compared to the two federations to which their local chapter is affiliated on the one hand, and in relation to local elected representatives, who have been re-elected since 1976 in constituency 10.23 This electoral stability does not apply to an exclusive loyalty to a party. It expresses itself by taking into account the alliances that are organised around the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), which has led the game since 1976. This party is always full of the voices of minority groups, since the three national parties PTR, PMSD and CAM,24 who became accustomed to oppose the MMM split after the formation of the new party, the Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien (MSM). The adage according to which, in Mauritius, it is the minority which makes the majority as verified in these electoral constituencies. S.’s strategy in the Amourou cult is the exact symbolic translation of this situation of political electoral balance centred on the MMM. The Arya Samajist movement itself is part of an ideology of overcoming community and caste divisions. Baharia’s cults of the Sanatanist type are symbolically opposed to the Vedic and Puranic syncretic cult of Amourou, but this opposition is not frontal. It depends on the necessary balance of community divisions and castes involved in cults as in political electoral life. The influence of the Arya Samaj movement, whose social composition has changed a lot since 1976, has done a good job in this region, where inter-communal and intercultural marriages have increased. The federation in the region develops a policy of regrouping the Indian minority communities to take advantage elsewhere, in the constituency No. 12 where they can place a ministerial candidate under the “best loser.” This political instrumentalisation of

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  49

religion by the federations is not isolated. It is a general practice, in a multicultural society that affirms its differences through a dialectic of quality/quantity in a public space, which does not establish any prior centrality. The private relationships to which the religious domain belongs and the public relationships about which electoral practices are concerned are not separable and they enlighten their reciprocal meaning to the extent that electoral behaviour is not based on simple arithmetic of individual votes, but on strategies in the national framework: here, there and elsewhere.

Religion and state From the descriptions of the rituals and the new spatial distribution of places of worship, one is surprised by the original density of occupation of the sacred space of the kalimai: make no mistake, every tree, every plant, every stone, every wood can be and are gods in a kalimai. To the multiple is added the abstract character of the representations of the divine. The bias of simplicity in the ordering of the ancient, whose space is divided only on the right and left to distinguish the pure and the impure, above and below in sign of the presence of the higher and lower divinities, this spatial organisation is today significantly challenged, by the multiplication of new deities, which have appeared in the kalimai. Everything is complicated because the associations that manage the existing and the growing number of their members have a multiplier effect of the divinities offered by the different groups of families who pray in the place. It is not surprising to see divinities that have nothing to do with the cults ordinarily celebrated in such as the iconography of Sai Baba, Ram, Sita, Shiva, etc. Already busy, the space of the ancient renovated becomes a real crossroads, a place of juxtaposition of divinities of all kinds, where everyone can find what he seeks. Very kitsch, these new modern spaces are filled with photographs and idols. Thus, a gigantic, colourful Kali, dressed in red and luxury saris, appeared on a background of ordinary white tile wall and coloured marble and white on the ground Petite Cabanne. It was once a sober kalimai25 and only structured by the surrounding vegetation in which one had only introduced new plantations so that the deities take the precise place which they had to occupy. The decorations that we see today in this renovated kalimai are not devoted to sobriety either: festive room lanterns, electric garlands, all this pageantry has nothing to do with the religion of yesteryear. The time is no longer for simplicity or intimacy, but for demonstrating the richness and power of the associations in charge of these places. Very often, these new gradually becoming temples. In general, they put a roof to protect the altar of Kali from the rain, then they surround the sacred space as in the kalimai of Lallmatie, Royal Road and it remains only to fill the void by transforming the original building into a small temple. The surrounding area is bursting with new constructions reserved for religious festivals and meetings of members of the association. It also has small altars scattered under the trees. This type of transformation from kalimais to temples is done, in successive stages, according to the capacity

50  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

of the association to invest and according to the greater or lesser generosity of the members who make donations. At the same time that the association manifests its power – social and economic – through the existence of a temple, donor members gain the respect of their peers, which can be transformed into political power if the same people carry out social work locally recognised as such.

The relationship of one to the multiple: a vector centrality This transformation of kalimais into temples opens the way to an interpretation of religious-political relations in Indo-Mauritian society, the functioning matrix of which is ​​found in kalimai cults. It may be supposed, indeed, that the mode of exercise of power in the institutions of the state is not far from satisfying the same symbolic rationality as that found in the kalimai. In this hypothesis,26 the seven representations of Kali under the name of the seven sisters are to be considered as equivalent forms of power. There is no visible hierarchy between the different sisters. They share the divine essence of Kali, but through them are distinguished, without interfering, the rituals and procedures by which one reaches the divinity. Some rites are incompatible with each other. The great permissiveness of the organisation of kalimai space is counterbalanced by the ritual which must be performed according to the rules fixed by the divinity to which one is more particularly attached. The difference in roles and status is therefore played out, through procedures and rituals, to access the divinity share contained in each of the sisters. Because of this, the hierarchy of functions is useless. What differs is the paths to divinity. All sister deities are assumed to be equal to Kali in that they are, each in themselves and for themselves, vectors, mediations, paths to Kali. This symbolism is frequently observed in behaviours that shape relationships within institutions such as administrations, cooperatives, cultural associations, etc. The decision-making process is never individual, and when a conflict is about to break out, the first response is not to react, to let go, to postpone, to remain silent within the site of conflict, to keep apart the concerned protagonists. In the same way, the actors of a family conflict go in separate groups to the place of worship that they have in common. They use different mediations and rituals to access Kali. Their paths never cross so much the invoked divinities are jealous of their prerogatives. The rituals and offerings reserved for them have the function of assigning to everyone the place and the limited role to hold in order to communicate with Kali. At workplace as in everyday life, the rules of life in society are simple, they consist in not exceeding the limits of established functions. The role of the guardians of power in the institutions is of the same order as that of the divinities in the kalimai. There is the same distribution of roles with respect to the status of people, as we heard from several informants “Kalimai is like a government, there is a prime minister, a minister of Education, Finance, Labour etc.,” “Each function of power,” “the seven representations of Kali,” is accompanied by many adages such as “the 99 servants of each of the seven sisters.” The

The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque  51

essential role of counsellors is to ensure, on an ongoing basis, that no one has reckless access to the person in charge of power. Councillors are as jealous of their remit as are the divinities of kalimai. This is why they are offered precise gifts, according to a code that is devolved to them. In the religious sphere or in the public sphere, it is the separation and the distance which serve of exercise of power. Everything depends on this need to stay away from all those in positions of power. The decision itself is never officially taken. Over time, whether it is a conflict or a minor reprehensible action, indifference gradually sets in, the stakes appear more and more derisory, and one falls into the uncertainty and negation of the very existence of any problem. Most of the power is preserved when nothing changes in the order of things. Power is all the more inseparable as it is acted upon by a multiplicity of actors, who contribute to its preservation, on which depends the maintenance of one’s place of each. To fully understand this plural aspect of an immutable and stable power, one can look at a developing conflict between cultural associations and the Government crown lands belonging to the state.

Notes 1 .Public relation officer. 2 It is a kind of Chinese hat-shaped stove, where the mines (Chinese noodles) and roasted rice can be easily mixed with vegetables steamed beforehand and cut into very small pieces. 3 Copper containers that women wear on their heads in the photograph. 4 See Glossary. 5 See Glossary. 6 See Glossary. 7 See Glossary. 8 The equivalent of this type of dance in France would be the cheerleaders. 9 The mantègue is the cream of the milk which evaporates when heating and gives a kind of oil which is called “clarified butter.” 10 Samagri is a mixture of several ingredients like wood chips, rice, cloves, etc. that is offered as oblation to the sacrificial fire. 11 There was a demon named Hiranyakasyapu, whose particular gift was to be immortal. This boon was transmitted to him by Brahma and he took himself, therefore, for God. That’s why he forced people to pray. In order to put an end to the injustice and domination he was inflicting on people, Vishnu then reincarnated to eliminate Hiranyakasyapu in a half-human, half-animal form, that of a lion that allowed him to be killed (the demon). 12 These are the songs dedicated to Ram. 13 Mourou also pronounced as “Muru” which means mother. 14 Shiva, who was not appointed, represents the office of Prime Minister. 15 To use the image used by Roland Barthes about writing. 16 The invocations to the kalimai goddesses begin with the term Shakti Mai, as the invocations to the deity Shiva begin with Om Namaha Shivaya. 17 Implicit. 18 Mahesh is another term for Shiva. 19 See the three tables of electoral results from 1967 to 2000 which also show the Ministers elected in constituencies 8, 9 and 10 during the same period. The electoral results of District 5 were also studied to compare these constituencies with No. 8.

52  The Amourou Puja cult of Camp de Masque

20 The least representation of a community is determined by a precise calculation made by the commission which supervises the elections “Electoral Supervisory Committee” (ESC): the number of people belonging to a community according to the census of the population of 1972 is divided by the number of seats that the community has obtained in the election to which one adds a seat. 21 Electoral Results Tables for Districts 5, 8, 9 and 10 from 1967 to 2005. Elected Ministers are highlighted in yellow in these tables. 22 See Table. 23 See Table. 24 Labour Party, Mauritian Social Democratic Party and Communauté d’Action Musulmam. 25 Compare photographs taken of this kalimai between 1992 and 2004 (Part One). 26 This is not a hypothesis, because we have been able to understand many work situations by the way in which the ideals symbolised in kalimais serve as internalised models of the behaviours of those in power.

3 THE TRANSFORMATION OF POPULAR CULTS ON CROWN LANDS

A societal transformation of the urban towns: Port Louis and Mahébourg The transformation of religious buildings is not new. It is very old and of those who came to Mauritius to settle and develop the island, it was one way of taking root. Independently of the land law established by the Royal Government, which granted the first concessions to Mauritians of French origin, an unwritten form of law of a religious nature developed after the period of slavery at the time of Indian immigration. This took place in the camp places of residence where the labourers lived, since their commitment to a contract was for five renewable years. The first places of popular Indo-Mauritian worship, kalimais, were installed in the camps. They had this particular function of local territorial integration even before the Tamil temples first, then Hindu, appeared after the sugar boom of the 1850s. There are some 250 Hindu temples registered by the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation. They are spread all over the island and there are some 50 others waiting construction, for which an authorisation from the government has been requested by the local associations. This multiplication of religious buildings has been denounced by the press1 and the business world, which saw, in this surge of new constructions, a way to prevent the development of tourist sites such as hotels located most often along the coast on the State land known as pas géométriques that cannot be privatised, such as new private constructions for luxury rentals or even as is the case for properties (usually so-called campements bungalows in Mauritius) belonging to those who have a long-term lease of 99 years with the government. The regions of Palmar and Belle Mare to the east, Grand Gaube, Anse la Raie, Trou aux Biches

DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-4

54  The transformation of popular cults

and Grand Baie to the north, Albion to the west, were cited as places where illegal religious buildings have been built. In the same way, the villages were also the setting of territorial resetting and installation of new places of worship. From then on, our research topic, which could appear as esoteric in 1992 when it started, has become very timely and it is important to follow the course2 of this change. The changes observed in the organisation of popular cults show that the Indo-Mauritian society does not conceive of its economic development independently of its social development which continues in the context of the globalisation of the markets as it had begun with the installation of the first Indian labourers on sugar plantations. This assertion, moreover banal, merges the sugar trade history on which the popular cults have modelled themselves to adapt social relations to the economic reality and the divisions of labour of Indian immigrants and people of colour in sugar establishments. From the first camps to the first indenture labourers, from the kalimais to the first temples and the formation of the villages, from the sugar concentrations to the bankruptcies, the Indian labourers produced their statutory differences in the interstitial space of the sugar development, taking advantage of the strong competition and of international rivalry from the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The indenture labourers played according to the rules of this competition to acquire an emergent social and economic position. This is quite well assessed by the transformation of popular cults in the history of Mauritius. It is not surprising that the multiplication of religious sites and the development of temples is done, today again, in the interstices of the local tourist development or on the outskirts of the big cities and where the land pressure is the strongest. Indeed, the history of sugar has taught us that any social and economic change in Indo-Mauritian society is reflected simultaneously in the religious and political domains. Let us study these new cults located on the crown lands of the northwest coast and east or in the neighbourhoods of the major cities of Port Louis and Mahébourg.3 Currently, the multiplication of religious sites has a double meaning: it is social, it is economic and it becomes political from the moment when the occupation of State lands by private or semi-public actors is generalised.4 It is the local associations and the national federations that are at the origin of these new constructions or the renovation of places of worship. We will see that the recent distribution of places of worship on crown lands is concomitant with the symbolic changes mentioned in the two preceding parts, which are to be considered as phenomena of innovation/withdrawal, closure or opening, social fragmentation in the daily life and work of today’s Mauritian society, faced with the general restructuring of the labour, land, financial and commercial markets. At the same time, as the number of places of worship increases, the State strengthens its control over the occupation of the crown lands and significantly increases the land and rental tax while shortening the tenancy rights. The new tax is fixed

The transformation of popular cults  55

according to surface area and the limit of the built-up areas and is judged to be too high by all concerned, some of whom cannot pay such sums.

Kalimais on crown lands The transformation of the popular cults and the development of the temples on the crown lands are real topics of the current day. They are topical in a number of different ways. Thus, one observes that kalimais, belonging to the ancient tradition – oral and written – of the Hindu civilisation, enter contemporary modernity. To highlight this articulation of tradition and modernity of worship, we will present the terms of a legal-political debate that took place on the recent installation of kalimais which were transformed into temples on the crown lands of the north and south of the island. This is the case in the urban neighbourhoods of Tranquebar in Port Louis and at the exit of the city of Mahébourg. The issues are territorial and political. They are also social and historical in that they record the transformation of long-standing community and caste relations within the local Indo-Mauritian society. The fact that the favourite places for new constructions are today the State lands everywhere on the coast, at the foot of the hills or the mountains, on the urban grounds where the land is the rarest and the most expensive, testifies to the power of the associations and federations that are behind the constructions in progress, and the ones allocating substantial subsidies to achieve them. Reciprocally, the recent taxation and land requisitions show that the legitimacy of tenure rights is uncertain and can be challenged at any time. Whether it is the crown land such as the hills of Tranquebar, which are found at the foot of the Montagne des Signaux, are in principle state land reserves, certain religious associations had bargaining political power to possess these crown lands to establish their temples. These Hindu communities have placed an emphasis on their class/caste to obtain this privilege. The same is true of the trade unions formed by landowners to defend their interests threatened by excessive taxation of lands governed by a 99-year emphyteutic lease and the remaining 13 years of which are not accounted for by the new reduced 60-year lease. We will also see that the “Integrated Resort Scheme”5 (IRS) programmes raise religious as well as political issues because they affect the legitimacy of traditional land ownership developed by several generations of long-established families. These lands may be requisitioned by the state because of the country’s superior interest in promoting openness through the choice of international investments for joint-venture development projects. This is the main topic of this chapter.

The new cults of Grand Baie and Palmar The construction of new cults on crown lands has accelerated since 1990. Thus, in the north at Grand Baie, Fig. 3.1 shows the Kali temple which has just been built at the most popular spot of the bay, directly overlooking the sea.

56  The transformation of popular cults

FIGURE 3.1  The

Grand Baie kalimai Kali Ananta Mandir.

Moreover, between Palmar and Belle Mare (Fig. 3.2), luxury hotels and a new golf course were built and a reserved area of worship has recently appeared. In any case, we see that as soon as a community builds a religious building, next to it another religious association builds its own, and so on. After the construction of the first building, three more were installed quickly. They are spread out along the coast next to each other.

FIGURE 3.2  Places

of worship of various associations on crown land at Belle Mare.

The first Kali Mata Mandir converted into a Kali temple, the second Artha Ashram is designed for the followers of Krishna, the third Brahma Kumari is a meditation centre devoted to the pedagogy of the guru Baba. Finally, and to close it all, the Muslim community has just finished building an Islamic cultural centre. In late 2000, a new notice was put to advertise the construction of a Hindu cultural centre called Arya Nawyuk Samaj. All these buildings are located next to each other, facing the public beach of Palmar. Further on, still on the road to Belle Mare which leads to the hotel of Saint-Gérant, one sees a small statuette of Kali, surrounded by Hanuman and Brahma, which are located just in front of the rocks which overhang the sea. These altars were placed there to be the reference point for the organisation of the Ganga Snan6 ceremony, which brings together all Hindu communities of different origins or statuses. ​

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of Belle Mare without tutelary deities. The three deities Brahma, Hanuman, Kali.

FIGURE 3.3  Altar

FIGURE 3.4  Palmar

public beach facing the places of worship.

This multiplication of small outdoor altars, which extend to crown land, is a direct consequence of the existing land pressure on the coast, especially since recent sugar estates and the development of new hotels. There is no more land available anywhere to build new temples: neither in the sugar estates whose land is reserved for the cultivation of canes, nor on the lands of the big planters who have been partly fragmented to share them between heirs, or where the seaside bungalows are located. There is therefore hardly any place to build a religious site, and as a result, the associations stormed the crown land, where the land competition is most evident as in Belle Mare, Palmar and Grand Baie. These new places of worship located in such close spaces reveal the competition between cultural and religious societies. They update the new community relationships being built in the context of the globalisation of markets, regarding access to land ownership.

The new inter-caste and intercommunity relations Sometimes, the internal rivalries underlying societies and federations are ethnic in nature, as is the case with Belle Mare. There are two places of worship, geographically close to each other (Fig. 3.6). In the distance was built a large Shiva

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temple belonging to the Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad Federation and in the foreground in front of this temple is a kalimai affiliated to the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation located at the intersection of the road from Flacq to Trou d’Eau Douce and from Trou d’Eau Douce to Poste de Flacq, under the tree at the turn of the road that can be seen in Fig. 3.6 in the distance. ​

FIGURE 3.5  In front

of the kalimai of Belle Mare, a new temple dedicated to Shiva.

The new temple was built in opposition between planters, some of whom are part of Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parsihad, and others follow the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, which favours the transformation of the kalimai into temples. This new temple foundation stands in the way of any possibility for Kali followers of the small kalimai, located in front (under the tree in the photograph), to turn the kalimai into a Hanuman mandir or other temple. The two names shivala and mandir for Hindu temples are the semantic translation of the conflict between the two federations. Their strategies apply to different registers of religion. This is why, on the island, we see Hanuman and Baram divinities appearing everywhere, occupying the symbolic function of the cult of the inside, while the kalimai is no more than the matrix reference of the engaged relations. The local conflict between the temple and kalimai is the expression of the same general conflict, which caused the split of the Hindu community into two federations: the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, the oldest, and the Sanantan Dharma Mandir Parishad7 more recently.8 However, if we refer to government legislation about the conditions to be met for the foundation of a temple, the texts say that when a temple already exists, there cannot be a second too close. The members of the Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad association knew that by founding a shivala dedicated to the superior deity Shiva, they would make impossible the transformation of worship from outside the kalimai into temple. While the temple is located at the crossroads in a well-defined, registered space, the kalimai is located in the centre of a troubled space, on which the federation has dispersed the divinities in order to extend its land control as far as possible. The relative power of an association is measured by the possibilities of access to land. Failing

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to build a temple like the shivala opposite, the federation has occupied the space as widely as possible by distributing many tutelary deities considered as guardians of the territory by tradition. The closure of social relations, their mode of structuring by caste refers to the opposition of the two national federations, which is expressed territorially on the land of which have been subject to a hydraulic development carried out by the French cooperation to be distributed to small onion growers residing on the spot while fancy shops for tourists, have settled in front of hotels on the same pas géométriques State lands to capture the clientele of luxury duty free products. The present situation shows the existence of a local religious bidding over a caste opposition is at the same time a class opposition about the free disposition of the crown lands where alternate religious buildings, shops, hotels and bungalows and plantations of small onions. In 2007, some former plantation lands were built and were converted into residencies. There will be more and more, according to the local trend towards building. So where there was only one small bungalow in front of the public beach on the right side of the Trou d’Eau Douce road in Belle Mare, there is now a residence made of luxury villas from seven to eight rows wide without intermediate green space to lighten the landscape. Logically, the coast had been hitherto preserved from any massive construction on the seafront. The scenery might look like Grand Baie where the density of construction is so strong that much of the waterfront, outside the bay itself, cannot be seen from the coastal road. Land pressure on pas géométriques is particularly strong and goes as far as to question the historical legitimacy of the enjoyment of land that has been subject to successive legacies over the generations or, on the contrary, buildings are located there despite the imprescriptible right that governs these lands. For example, Mauritian residents living in properties located on crown lands under emphyteutic lease that lasted 99 years and who still normally have 13 years of leases under the terms of their contract have now an important tax payable to the government based on the size of their land. For example, for a piece of land ranging from the Trou d’Eau Douce road to Belle Mare over a width of 50 metres, the occupants must pay six million Mauritian rupees over five years to the State. Those who do not want or cannot pay the amount corresponding to the surface of their land, can remain on the basis of their old contract, whose renewal is not guaranteed at the end of the 13 years which remain to them. The social consequences of such a measure for retired or almost retiring sugar managers are for some of them dramatic. This tax, which was expected but has surprised those concerned and also many Mauritians by its importance, comes at a time when most properties’ campements bungalows’ residents come to the end of their professional life for several years. At that time, the staff-housing that were secondary residences became principal residences replacing of those which are taken away from the employees when they are at the age to assert their right to the retirement. Others are long-time retirees, as evidenced by the average age of

60  The transformation of popular cults

60 to 80+ of those who are members of the camp-owners’ advocacy association. These recent measures diminish the image that we have of the Franco-Mauritian community that would be made up of a block of wealthy people, so that we see today the emergence of different social and economic conditions for sugar industry managers who are neither better nor worse than those of the top executives of any other country in the world. The economic consequences of this high tax will not be long in coming and it is likely that there will be a search for profitability of these properties by the construction of more residences for rentals to rich tourists to be used for the recovery of land taxes and charges. Of course, this drastic measure, immediately applicable, concerns all Mauritian residents of any origin, when they have properties on crown land. One can wonder if the Creoles of modest conditions who received from the government the seaside lands towards Rivière Noire, near Le Morne, will have the means to pay such sums? Such situations are not lacking to illustrate the state of low land legitimacy with regard to government policy that seeks to enhance the waterfront for tourists. To those are added the lands reserved by the Government for projects open to the foreign investors’ Integrated Resort Scheme (IRS). For example, the cultivation lands of 200 acres belonging to 50 small planters of Riche Terre have been requisitioned for a very small compensation and the promise of granting new cultivation lands by the government. The small planters who brought their claims to court seem to have negotiated their departure with the government today to ensure that their interests are preserved in this process of relocation of farmland. Whether it be whites or small planters, whether Mauritians from the general population, Hindus or Muslims,”9 the law is the same for everyone. It has serious consequences for the living conditions of those who are affected by these measures. Community barriers no longer have the same sense of social protection as before. Social barriers fall in front of the financial stakes of globalisation, be they investments or the need to cover the expenses of a State whose financial equilibrium is fragile. This is why the symbolic forms of expression of the social bond break with the past and are manifested by recent segmentations according to competing interest groups that interact in globalisation. For the Hindus, for example, it can be said that the construction of the Grand Baie kalimai obeys the same logic of separation and social divisions expressing class inequalities. But this time, the purpose of building the new Hindu temple next to the previously built Tamil temple comes from an ethnic Hindu opposition to the Tamils. How is the situation? The birth of the kalimai/temple of Grand Baie is the product of the separation of the followers of the Vaish caste vis-à-vis the lower castes. There used to be a small kalimai at the temple, which had been founded by the Vaish communities and the low castes of Fonds du Sac and Triolet. They prayed together in the same kalimai. Animal sacrifices were practised there. There were protests from neighbouring communities and the Vaish decided to leave the place to pray in the temple of Triolet where they lived. Low castes then joined the Arya Samaj

The transformation of popular cults  61

movement. During this period, the kalimai was abandoned. But this place of the coast has become the tourist site of Grand Baie, the busiest of the island. After the saturation of the coast by the construction of hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, bungalows, collective residences and the development of shops, the city of Grand Baie has grown considerably up to the limits of its commercial centre not far from which lies the kalimai located on the seashore. ​

FIGURE 3.6  The

kalimai/temple of Grand Baie on the beach.

The government’s priority was to build a new hotel for tourism. It was then that the Vaish regained control of the kalimai space and built what should become a temple by eliminating incidentally the tutelary deities like Dhi and Gowraya, who are non-vegetarian deities. This eviction is a sign of the elimination of the low castes of this place of prayer where the latter previously practised animal sacrifices. In response to this situation, the low castes have founded a new cult, almost on the sea, not visible for those who do not pay enough attention. The photograph was taken at low tide so that when the tide is high, Kali emerges halfway up the water. In the new temple of Grand Baie, there are only superior deities: Brahma, Hanuman, Shiva, Durga, Bandi and the goddess Kali. They are vegetarian deities. This Sanskritisation of the kalimai is not new since it is already present in the kalimai of the district of Moka/Flacq. This phenomenon is always an indicator of the political will of the associations to build with time a new temple. It should be noted that the reaction of the Vaish, who reinvigorated the kalimai after abandoning it, is linked to the existence of the large Tamil temple built before the sea some 100 metres from the kalimai. As we have already noticed in Belle Mare on the east coast, the same phenomenon of multiplication of places of worship is developing in the north of the island: as soon as a community, through a religious association, appropriates a space, another association starts to build a second building next to it and so on. The transformation of the kalimai and the foundation of new temples are the sign of political and economic contradictions, foremost among which are the intercommunity relations through which the relations of high and low castes are played out. ​

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small altar of Grand Baie built by the low castes in reaction to the construction of the Kali Ananta Mandir temple.

FIGURE 3.7  The

Construction of temples and renovation of kalimais of Mahébourg and Port Louis Renovated kalimai and foundation of a new temple in Mahébourg: a caste/community/class contradiction In 1992, Mahébourg was a city in full transformation where came to settle construction workers, along with employees of companies in charge of the renovation of the city. At the same time, the workers who were working in the sand mining company for the manufacture of cement were dismissed. There were a number of unemployed people, who, along with the newcomers, found work in public-contracting buildings at the time for development projects in the city. These contracts included the renovation of the old port, the restoration of the old railway station, and the rehabilitation of the ruins left by the Dutch whose oldest buildings had been used to accommodate the first slaves. A memorial has been erected since, at the very place where the Dutch accosted, namely, the old port of Mahébourg, called Grand Port, located between the city of Mahébourg and that of Flacq. In 1995, when the construction was completed, construction workers once again found themselves unemployed. The working class of the city had in the meantime increased in number because the workers, from other regions, remained on the spot, all grouped in the ville noire, more densely populated than it was before. A certain number of people found work as airport employees, a position which had developed considerably since 1996. In addition to the unemployment of construction workers, there was that of the Creole fishermen10 who experienced a change in their situation, as a result of the government’s prohibition to fish at port entrances. This population was added to the already numerous unemployed of this same district and the women who used to do the laundry in the old washhouse called dhobighat exchanged information with each other, talking about their difficulties of life in situation of unemployment.

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The ville noire has increasingly taken on a city character, because of the regrouping, in this place, of all families – Tamils and Creoles – all living in modest conditions, some living on the edge of survival. We can say that the communities – Tamil and Creole together – had a difficult year in 1995. That is why the Tamil trade community of Port Louis and Rose Hill, through the Tamil Temples Federation, reacted by helping the Mahébourg community which resulted in latent conflict with the Hindu community. It consisted of small traders and small local officials who live in Plaine Magnien, along the road to Plaisance Rose Belle. The Tamil community already had a large temple in Mahébourg, while the Hindu traders had no temple, just an old kalimai called Boutique Cassée (Fig. 3.8), located right in front of the big Tamil temple in Mahébourg, not far from the museum. People often came to pray in this little kalimai, which gathered many people from various communities: Creole, Tamil and Hindu.

Mahébourg kalimai in 1992. The kalimai was placed in a former store that belonged to a Chinese from the Beauvallon establishment. It was called Boutique Cassée.

FIGURE 3.8  The

This influx of people to the kalimai of Boutique Cassée justified the request for renovation of the temple by the local Tamil community, to attract the faithful who prayed there. The Tamil community then took control of the distribution of kalimai divinities, to create a new temple: takeover did not have for immediate purpose the land of installation of kalimai, nor the altar of Kali and the seven sisters. The community first became interested in knowing the Hindu guardian of the kalimai, descended from a low-caste Ravived, H. He had come from the village of Sebastopol to settle in Mahébourg, where he worked for the Ministry of Health. He was not a labourer. He had his residence next to and behind the Boutique Cassée that became Kali worship, from which he extracted the deities as the work of the kovil began, replacing them just in front of his house. The Tamil community then began by announcing the renovation of the place of worship by the Tamil temple society known as Shri Vinayagur Sedolamen kovil. At the moment when the tree under which the kalimai was to be cut and uprooted by the settler

64  The transformation of popular cults

of the sugar estate Riche en Eau in charge of the work to be undertaken, the Hindu faithful founders of the old kalimai, disputed this enterprise, saying “this tree was considered by the devotees of Kali (the Hindus) just as by the followers of Kali Amen (the Tamils), as a goddess of this place.” The tree sheltered the tutelary deities that the first residents of the camp of the old mill prayed. Finally, the directors of Mahébourg temple, located just opposite the kalimai undergoing renovation, chose to keep the tree and build the temple at the foot of the tree, located at the intersection of the main road that leads from Mahébourg to the airport and a cross-town road that leads to the seaside. An announcement was written and posted at the beginning of the rehabilitation work to warn the population of the project to found a kovil. While waiting for the completion of the kovil’s construction, the Tamils placed carved cement figures representing the seven sisters as well as pictures of the goddesses, to which was added a Hanuman statuette that was not there before. Several figurines were placed in the building that was once open in the open, but the guard closed every evening for fear of theft. Gradually, this kalimai, formerly known as Boutique Cassée, was called a “church” as a sign of effective control of the place of worship by the Tamil community.11 ​

FIGURE 3.9  The

deities of the kalimai in 1992.

Note the presence of the seven stones abstractly representing the seven sisters. These are the stones of a very old mill kalimai that have been moved. Hanuman, on the right of the photograph, symbolises the ongoing social and ritual change.

Symbolic changes, political changes Ritual practices evolved, and Hanuman became the symbolic vector of this local social and economic transformation, the first visible effect of which was the geographical separation of Tamil and Hindu communities of worship. From now on, each community prays in separate places of worship and totally differentiates

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itself by its ritual practices, while the space of the cults of the communities underwent, each to their own, changes of organisation. The latter only reflected the control of the place taken by the respective national federations: the Tamil Temples Federation of the Tamils and the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation of the Hindus. The conflict thus took on a communitarian form before being transformed, a second time, into conflicts of caste within the North Hindus, to be finally changed to a Brahma cult. In the space of the figurative kalimai built by the Tamils in anticipation of the construction of the kovil, the Hanuman deity was placed on the altar of Kali and not outside, as is the tradition in the kalimais. This change of position of Hanuman from within as opposed to Hanuman from outside, depicts the political nature of community involvement and caste resulting in a future change of ritual, in order to federate the different communities. In the same way, when the Hindu custodian of the kalimai Boutique Cassée realised that the Tamils were going to build a kovil and that he did not have enough contractual force to stop this project carried by an official of the ministry housing, the guard went to complain to the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation on which he depended. Like the Tamil federation, the Hindu federation made a change in the ordering of kalimai divinities, at the precise moment when the guardian had to move it to preserve it. The moved kalimai was placed under the protection of Brahma, placed on a small altar that did not exist before, surrounded by white flags, instead of the red flag previously dedicated to Hanuman. This Brahmanisation of a popular cult marks the final takeover of the cult of the place by the national Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation. Secondly, the Hindu federation’s voluntary wait-and-see attitude towards the Tamil community was based on a logic of assertion of the dominant position of the high caste of traders towards the small local officials of low caste. The guardian of the kalimai being of low caste and a small employee of the administration, he did not have the support of his federation, any more than he benefitted from the support of the Hindu merchants of Mahébourg, however faithful the previous followers of this place of prayer were. We find a strategy equivalent to the previous situation concerning the State lands. But this time, it was not the superior Hanuman deity who was used by the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation to effect change in the organisation of space because the inner contradiction that developed was more relevant of a caste difference than of a community distinction: between traders and petty officials, there is hardly any economic difference. Brahma has been used as the symbol of a caste difference between protagonists of the same Hindu origin and Hanuman refers more to different of class – the workers – than of caste. This situation is to be reported as the previous one, to the more general conflict, which crosses the Hindu community as a whole. For part of the Hindu community was once united around the national Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation which split in 1986 and founded a second federation, the Sanantan Dharma Mandir Parishad composed mainly of high Hindu castes.

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The problem was thus considered to be too individual in nature, given the small number of low castes involved compared to the many more high caste faithful. Therefore, the strategy used to strengthen the internal union of the Hindu community was to justify the introduction of Brahma as superior deity, equivalent to a brahmanisation of kalimai. Thus was achieved the statutory integration, by assigning the caste position of the former kalimai guardian, within the unified Hindu general community, by and through the organisation of a symbolic bipolarisation of the present deities at the place of worship where members of the kalimai association pray separately according to the different rituals to which they are attached. The conflict between petty traders and petty local officials did not break out until the mainstream caste integration was challenged by the religious practice of worship, the latter of which keeps people separate, according to tradition. Thus, the difference of belonging to high or low castes is simultaneously a professional distinction between patrons and small traders, visà-vis small local government employees. Faced with this, the power of the Tamil community was affirmed in the form of a class identity, aiming to overcome community distinctions by introducing Hanuman as a superior deity likely to operate the community overtaking in favour of the class difference. The Tamil community has indeed benefitted from the solidarity of local merchants, all categories combined, especially that of the Telugu federation Mandiram which, thanks to their significant financial support, has made it possible to build a much larger temple than the one which had been planned. The Tamil community has had a greater capacity to regroup than the Hindu community. In the first case intercommunity solidarities made it possible to overcome the internal divisions of caste while the Hindu community disassociated itself from the faithful of low castes. This community retreat of the Hindus adjusted the statutory differences which it experienced. The political weakness of the northern Hindus refers to its difficulty overcoming caste divisions, illustrated by this local duplication of a caste conflict into a more general class conflict that is found at the national level of existing cultural/religious federations. ​

FIGURE 3.10  The Tamils

built a kovil.

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The temple is filled with many deities corresponding to the different rituals of their faithful. In the absence of political power, the community includes all those who share the same conditions of life and work. The space of the temple is thus loaded with a plural symbolism relating to the different ritual practices of the faithful of the Indian and Creole communities united. In 2004, we photographed the temple Sri Vinayagur Seedolamen kovil under the tutelary tree of the kalimai of Boutique Cassée outside as inside. We noted the existence of numerous altars distributed in the external enclosure where the altars of the deities are placed under the protection of the tutelary tree of the old kalimai, in full bloom after having almost disappeared. To the right, on the same road, is what could be a future shivala Kali Mata Mandir, placed under the second tree, which already existed but we had not seen before. The displaced Kali altar is the setting for the development of a new temple from 1993. The shadows of these trees intertwine at certain times of the day, while the displaced kalimai has developed and new altars have appeared in the last 12 years. ​

FIGURE 3.11  The

altar of Kali on the left of the entrance.

The Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, by giving it time, without ever leaving space, and by financially supporting the construction of new altars around the Kali’s altar, has a hold of the majority of the potential political effects of separation of the two statutory groups involved. The Federation managed the relationships of the two linked formations by sharing the same place of worship where the small Ravived/Rajput castes and the high castes pray separately. With the development in time of the conflict, other higher divinities like Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh took place near Kali. The conflict between distinct socio-professional groups in 1992 was shaped by the more general caste conflict within the Hindu community. The process of change took place through a relationship of homology established between social groups that functioned in the same way, but in separate order. Such is the mode of occultation of the internal tensions of the local Hindu community, which presents an image of formal unity by sharing the same place of worship while the rituals practised are different from each

68  The transformation of popular cults

other. They take turns without ever meeting. As for the community division, it is presented in the kalimai as a functional differentiation, equivalent to belonging to distinct socio-professional groups. And it is the external deities who have the symbolic charge of signifying the intercommunity alliances prefiguring their resetting into a temple as a symbolic organisation around Brahma while the same place is given to the tutelary deities under the protective tree which has not been uprooted. The class/community division (workers and tradesmen) which is experienced in the relationships of the faithful who come to pray in this kovil can be exploited politically. Because, lest we forget, once the kovil is built, it cannot be built another Shiva temple adjoining. Therefore, potential caste/class or community conflicts take the form of religious innovations, prior to any new equilibrium that usually results in assigning the place occupied by each group in the temple space. The length of the conflict – between 1994 and 2004 – was a determining factor in the affirmation of class and professional status relationships which led to a change in the balance of intra-community power relations where the caste difference was transferred on a class distinction. This mutation was made visible in the evolution of the electoral results of the local electoral district.12 In about ten years, the statutory caste inequalities managed by the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation and the class differences have tended to become individualised through the new rituals. There was then no repetition, but there was innovation and recreation of practices centred on the deities Brahma and Hanuman, which are the framework of overtaking and/or withdrawal of community and caste. The symbolic changes relating to this social transformation have been played out at the political level by new electoral balances. Their recent evolution shows that when the caste solidarity of Baboojees and Marazs fell after 1976,13 the political game was reversed in favour of intercommunity alliances with other social formations. The 2000 elections mark the moment of real change. ​ Now, to win the elections, we must take into account the demographic minorities. The political parties PTR/PMSD14 and now PMXD15 which oppose the MMM/MSM16 parties do not rely on the same leaderships. The former allied themselves with the Vaish Ahirs, themselves allied to the lower Rajput castes, and the latter allied with the Vaish Koyrees, Kurmis allied with the low-caste Raviveds. In 2000, there was no more attractiveness of power around high castes, which previously shared the influence of minority groups, obtaining a 3/017 result for the benefit of the ruling alliance in the framework of the greater and greater openness to international markets. The last elections in 2000 recorded the superseding of the old community and caste barriers. There has been a gradual break-up of the old social order in favour of other economic and social solidarities. Demographically, minority groups now have a better chance of winning the elections and placing themselves as outsiders of traditional balances. Let us analyse the evolution of the electoral results from 1967 to 2000 in terms of community and caste differences. In 1967 and 1976 elected officials from the Baboojees and Marazs joined the candidates of the general population and were

Sinien, J. (MMM) 14,557

Ponith,S. (MMM) 14,873

Ramsewok, L. (MMM) 14,942

20,930

Elections 1982

Thomas Georges Joseph 11,394

Ponith,S. (MMM) 11,379

Ramsewok, L. (MMM) 11,434

20,267

Elections 1983

Source: All tables have been prepared by the authors, unless specified otherwise.

General population

Marathis

Rajputs

Raviveds

Vaish Koyrees

Vaish Ahirs

Ganoo, G. (IFB) 7,891 Walter Harold (PTR) 7,695

Ramphul,V. (PTR) 7,331 Badry, L. (PTR) 8,017 Ramsewok, L. (MMM) 7846

Badry, L. (PTR) 7,898

Baboojees

17,882

12,991

Total no of voters Marazs

Elections 1976

Elections 1967

Ethnic/ caste distribution

Marie Rousty (MSM) 13,064

Bora K. (MSM) 13,289

Bunwaree, V. (PTR) 13,707

24,420

Elections 1987 24,744

Elections 1995

Colendaveloo Ivan (MMM) 12,165

Choonee,M. (MSM) 12,160

Marie Cyril Eddy Boissezon(PTR) 15,884

Soburrun, D. (MMM) 15,37

Bunwaree, V. (PTR) Bunwaree,V. (PTR) 12,486 18,102

25,160

Elections 1991

TABLE 3.1 Community distribution, caste of elected officials of the constituency No. 12 Mahébourg/Plaine Magnien

Colendaveloo Ivan (MMM) 11,527

Rupen, S. (MSM) 12,683 Gayan, A. (MSM) 14,707

26,839

Elections 2000

The transformation of popular cults  69

70  The transformation of popular cults

elected. In 1982 and 1983, the Baboojees teamed up with the Vaish Ahirs, excluding candidates for low-caste Ravived castes and high-caste Marazs. This first political fragmentation of the high castes in favour of inter-communal cross alliances was reversed in the following elections of 1987, 1991 and 1995, this time for the Marazs allied with the Ravived, excluding the Vaish and Baboojee candidates. From 1995, the political situation changed radically, firstly because the MMM allied with the PTR, leading to a discontinuity of traditional intercommunity alliances. This period of five years precipitated the movement of social fragmentation already at work in the context described of strong economic pressure exerted on the employees of the agricultural and industrial world, who experienced periods of long or short unemployment, a situation which had been forgotten since the creation of the free zones of industrial activities. In 2000, the political overthrow of the Marazs was for the benefit of two elected Baboojees allied to the general population. Intercommunity relations are again on the agenda and this situation is sufficiently general to be reported. When we look at the electoral results of other constituencies such as Nos. 5, 7, 9 and 10, we see that the various groups in the Indian community and the political parties still have the same caste strategies. But we must agree that it is no longer possible to anticipate electoral results as well as before. There is now a qualitative/quantitative relationship that can interact to the extent that the final majority may be due to alliances between minority groups, which are inherently volatile. To understand this dialectical and qualitative aspect of things, we must look at the ritual and religious innovations that reflect the way in which associations manage to place their candidates as “best loser,” when they are in the minority, according to the rules of the political constitutional game. While it is clear that the same type of community/caste/class opposition works in the urban micro-society of Mahébourg, there are however percentages in the process of transformation. In Mahébourg the separation of Tamils with Hindus is partial, a place having been given to the altar of Kali in the outer enclosure of the Tamil temple. In other regions, such as Île d’Ambre, which will be discussed later, the separation is more radical, so much so that the newly built kalimai is now called “tination.”18 Community division is all the more complete on Île d’Ambre, because there is a political opposition in the constituency No. 7 between high castes and Vaishs of different categories whose solidarity is exclusive and irreversible. The loop is complete: to each one its condition in both cases, in Mahébourg as on Île d’Ambre, the Tamils are recognised as having a unifying power capacity of which the kovil is the ultimate expression. ​

The transformation of popular cults  71

FIGURE 3.12  The

two trees under which were built a kovil and a kalimai.

Cultural change has been accompanied by a strategy of privatising unoccupied land. The land legitimacy of those who have been granted the right to build their private residence along the same road as kovil and kalimai is subject to the right of ownership according to the Loi de prescription (prescription law): if the land has been occupied and developed by families from generation to generation: the tree of the tutelary deities has not been uprooted and has housed the new kovil. Who better than the priest to be the legitimate new owner? Who better than an average departmental official to get permission to build a private residence in this place? Henceforth, instead of the space on which the fire and sand walks were practised, there are now beautiful private residences while the land was considered, in 1992, a non-residential area. On the other hand, the photograph taken from the kalimai guardian’s house of Boutique cassée, taken in 2004, shows the existence of a beautiful two-storey house, but it is wedged between the temple which occupies the angle of what was previously a wide road and the newly built kalimai spreading over a large area along the road. And the border between the house and the new kalimai built with subsidies granted by the federation is illustrated by a concrete wall built less than a metre from the front of the house of the former kalimai guardian. This spatial marginalisation of the former guardian of the kalimai is in keeping with the place he occupies in the caste system revealed by the new ordering of the renovated kalimai. Faced with the manifest solidarity of all the federations that have lent their support to the construction of the new Tamil temple and new kalimai – the federations Hindi Samelan Sabha which is the cultural association that brings together all the Hindus, the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation and the Mandiram Federation – for Telugus, the marginality of the kalimai guardian has been unequivocal. It can be concluded from this analysis that caste divisions have been stronger than community distinctions and that professional inequality relationships can only be seen in a borderline situation, leading to a process of

72  The transformation of popular cults

personalisation close to exclusion for one who is not “politically” or “culturally” correct. In order for economic inequalities to be recognised as class relations, those relations within the family, the caste and the community must have entered into a general process of dissolution. This is why the usual tendency in Mauritius is to designate all forms of inequality as taking on the appearance of caste or community of origin. To make things clearer, we need to look at concrete situations from the inside and follow the way in which a conflict is transformed into one of statutory and community inequalities.

Construction of temples and renovation of kalimai of Tranquebar, Port Louis, Let us stay in the urban setting, but visit this time the neighbourhood of Ward IV, Port Louis at Tranquebar, where a similar situation to that of Mahébourg developed within ten years with the transformation of the kalimai in Tranquebar into a shivala temple. As elsewhere, the change of the symbolic organisation of space refers to a social, economic and a social and political change of sufficient importance to give rise to a territorial marking. Tranquebar is a peripheral district of Port Louis, located at the foot of Montagne des Signaux, belonging to the electoral district of Ward IV. Besides the kalimai, there are large buildings which are, respectively, the Masonic Lodge premises Memphis Mizraim, the offices of the Sanantan Dharma Temples Federation, a Chinese pagoda, Marie Reine de la Paix which is a cultural and religious centre for Christians. All these buildings are built on the slopes of the hill of about eight acres of available lands belonging to the government. They are crown lands. This is where the old kalimai was built. The formerly free land is now largely occupied by the newly built temple, which resulted in the extension of the worship space in anticipation of future buildings/constructions,19 as evidenced by the distribution in places of certain deities like Hanuman, Brahma and the ancient deity of Kali. Added to this is the once open space now delineated by new frontiers for separating the place from the popular district, the so-called “Bangladesh” being geographically the closest. ​

FIGURE 3.13  The

kalimai of Tranquebar.

The transformation of popular cults  73

The transformations of space from 1992 to 2007: land issues and caste/class differences According to our informant who was the President of the association Naw Jiwan sangh Tagore Patshala, in this kalimai, a last celebration of Baharia Puja where several animal sacrifices were practised in 1992. One can see in the background the “Bangladesh” suburb of Port Louis, which has considerably changed for 12 years. The photograph was taken in 1992 when the kalimai was going to be renovated. The blocks that were placed there were used for repairs. The hill that houses the kalimai, at the foot of the Montage des Signaux, was once covered with forest. It was a steep place, where one can see the existence of a small ravine behind the kalimai, which overlooks the houses of a recently built residential area, where textile workers work in the free zone of Plaine Lauzun, where the city of Valléjee is located. The founder of Kalimai thus speaks of the history of his implantation: I knew this place on October 5, 1944 when it was still a wasteland, where there was nothing at all. Then we set a table for the seven sisters so that we could pray. It was not until February 17, 1957 that we built the altar on which we installed the statuettes representing the seven sisters. Then Dhi, the goddess Gowraya, Mahavir Swami, Brahma, who protect Kalimai against evil spirits or malefactors, were placed next to Dhi. There are seven sisters: the goddess Durga, then two others like Luxmi and Bandi, Sitla, Sati, Kankar, who receive their powers from Brahma, who is the creator of the universe. The people who come to pray here are from every nook and cranny of Mauritius because they find their strength. A kalimai must be complete. Without Hanuman, there is no kalimai. Hanuman, also called Mahavir Swami, plays a fundamental role in the kalimais because, when he is present, all the destructive elements move away from the place. That is why the altar of Hanuman and Brahma were built. We made the altar of Brahma so that tranquility reigns. You saw, when you entered the kalimai, you felt an extraordinary tranquility, especially when it comes to Brahma. The year 1957, the date of the foundation of the old kalimai, represents a moment of social integration very important, because it is at this moment that the oldest families installed in the district made use of the law of prescription 20 to acquire a legitimate right of the land of the State. At the same time, they asked the then member of parliament of the Labour Party (PTR) Beeckramsing Ramlala to build a kalimai, which they were granted without difficulty. The seven sisters, who took up residence in the old kalimai in 1957, are Kankar, Bandhi, Sitla, Sati,

74  The transformation of popular cults

Luxmi, Saraswati, Durga. Beside the altar were the upper deities of Brahma and Hanuman, while Gowraya represented the tutelary deities in charge of protecting the place. The legitimate right of landownership is based on the link to ancestors held by kalimai on the one hand, and on the other hand on the specific legislation relating to the law 1948, granting land ownership to those who have occupied it and developed it for 20 years. From the beginning, the old kalimai which was built had a particular architecture like that of a small temple. He recalled the rural kalimai of Beauvallon, which we saw earlier, that it was the framework for the production of the caste link in the region. This architectural peculiarity of the old kalimai is the sign of the privileged mode of occupation of this oldest district of Tranquebar, which had a preferential welcome for families more or less distant to Ramkissoon: rue Justice, rue de l’Indépendance, rue Madame and finally, rue Harris, we find these same types of families of high Hindu caste. The founders of the old kalimai were the legitimate occupants of the once-deserted Tranquebar district. They are high castes and the renovation of the old kalimai was made on the same architectural criteria, like that of Beauvallon, looking like the same temple at the time of its foundation in the photograph. ​

FIGURE 3.14  The

temple encompasses the ancient structure of kalimai.

The space of the new temple admitted Brahma into the precincts of the temple while before he was outside. It is the same with Hanuman who was placed as usual at the entrance to the sacred space of kalimai. But in the meantime (between 1992 and 1999), a change of scenery, the new kalimai was controlled by the male deities of Hanuman and Brahma, from which we now see the absence of Gowraya. The little deity of Shiva in the foreground on the left of the photograph was installed so that later this kalimai would be transformed into shivala, according to the rule of the Hindu religion which wants only the dedicated cults to Shiva to become temples. ​

The transformation of popular cults  75

renovated kalimai is a future shivala by the presence to the left of the altar on the photograph of a small statuette representing Shiva.This kalimai only includes the upper male deities of Brahma and Hanuman.

FIGURE 3.15  The

The kalimai society thus expected to be registered as part of the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, which is entitled to annual grants for temples in different parts of the island. This renovation was indeed that of a future transformation of the old kalimai into a temple, as can be seen in the most recent photograph taken in 2004. Since 1999, an awning has been adorned with the deities that one found on the top of the temples was added as to form from now on the entrance of the temple. ​

FIGURE 3.16  The

blocks are located where the Hanuman temple is to be built.

The ancient kalimai is now no longer there and we can determine the changes in the organisation of space between 1992 and 2004. If we look at the picture, taken in 2004, five years after that of 1999, and 12 years after the only photograph taken of the old kalimai in 1992, the first red dot to the right of the temple represents Hanuman, the second slightly larger point is located further behind the pile of blocks and represents Brahma. Once again, we find these two same deities in relation to which social closure and opening embedded the symbolic partition of the territory and the construction, eventually, of three different temples. The first temple of Shiva will be the renovated kalimai, the second will be that of Hanuman between the two trees, and behind the pile of blocks, the third building will be dedicated to Brahma slightly higher up on the hillside at the top to the right.

76  The transformation of popular cults

This multiplication of religious buildings on the pas géométriques constitutes a territorial marking that corresponds to the splitting of social relations, according to the dividing lines of the caste and the class. Female and tutelary deities like Gowraya have been left out for Hindus and Tamil deities Kateri and Petsai. This absence of the tutelary deities belonging to the temple symbolises the exclusion of the social groups which are attached to them, as was the case in Mahébourg, the suburb of Tranquebar which experienced struggles of influence resting on the differences of caste and class. The first ones manifested through the impossibility of sharing the same place of worship, even though care was taken to place in the kalimai the higher deities of Brahma and Hanuman. The latter were manifested by the marginalisation of the cults celebrated under the tree, which is in the space located in the foreground on the panoramic photographs taken in 1999. ​

FIGURE 3.17  This

tree photographed in 1992 represented the deity Dhi.

We find the deity Dhi in all kalimais. Followers came to pray before making offerings to the seven sisters at that time, but there were no ex-votos on the tree whose truck was burnt following offerings of candles and lit sandalwood lit, etc. The ex-votos appeared after the renovation of the kalimai whose construction took on the appearance of a temple. The tree that represented the Dhi deity of the ancient kalimai was the geographical centroid of the place. It has become a marginal place. Again, let us look at the images taken at two different times, the tree does not look the same: in 1992, 1999, 2002, we see the importance taken by the cults practising in this place where mainly, residents of the working-class area called “Bangladesh” prayed. The term “Bangladesh” was used by PMSD leader Gaetan Duval. In this symbolic way, he meant the poverty of the people living in this neighbourhood, who were part of his electoral clientele that he helped through his position as a lawyer in Port Louis. The inhabitants of this district were as poor as the Bangladeshis living in India. The tree was burned in 1992. Fig. 3.18 represents the deity Dhi. In 1999 it was filled with ex-votos that did not exist in 1992. Inside the bottle caps, the faithful of the place wrote a name, about which they came to generally settle

The transformation of popular cults  77

a conf lict by practising witchcraft. If, formerly, in the time of the old kalimai, there were the State lands of worship space, a place of prayer for the various communities who came to make their offerings to Dhi when they came to pray to Kali, in 1999, the tree seemed isolated from the rest of the buildings by virtue of having become a place of worship almost specialising in witchcraft. Mainly Tamils and Creoles came to pray there, and some Hindus attached to the tradition that when a person comes to kalimai, they pray first to the tutelary deities of the place, and then to Kali and the seven sisters. ​

the kalimai became a temple, the previous tree has grown and is decorated with ex-votos are small bottle caps.

FIGURE 3.18  In 1999, when

The ex-votos are small capsules in which a name is worn in order to harm the person concerned. People say that this tree is powerful because previously its trunk was almost burned and it still thrived. With the disappearance of tutelary deities, magical beliefs tend to develop, a sign of a new social ordering and the deepening of inequalities between people, which this district, in reconstruction for 12 years, testifies. ​

FIGURE 3.19  The

tree is now surrounded by a cement enclosure and an altar niche.

78  The transformation of popular cults

In 2004, a new decoration was offered to the sight: the tree had different looks. It was transformed into a cult practically converted, surrounded by a wall of cement, while a small altar in sealed cement blocks had been installed, to make a niche just like all the other cults where are offered presents to the deities of the place: sandal perfume, lighted candles, Gulaiti flowers. Some low-status Hindus also offered sardines and bread, as requested by the deity Dhi in the kalimais. The tree tended to become the equal of the altars placed in the temples. Was this an outbidding for the appropriation of this cultural space by the Tranquebar residency groups or a simple claim of existence from the poorest groups by their free disposing of a place of prayer which was until now located at equal to all the other cults on the geometric steps of Tranquebar Hill? Because the number of houses still under construction was more and more important whereas before the old district counted only a few tin shacks in 1992 in the photograph. That’s why the residents of this neighbourhood have tended to extend at the margins. In addition, they had marked a direct path to facilitate the comings and goings of the faithful from the area to their place of prayer which was located under the tree representing Dhi. Having observed these land encroachments by the community of Rodrigues emigrants and the Creole population considered as “squatters” closed the place21 by the construction of a small low wall, while extending the cult area high up on the hillside. And, point of no return, the renovated worship of Dhi of 2004 is surrounded by a fence (Fig. 3.19 making impossible the religious practices made around the deity Dhi). ​

FIGURE 3.20  The

outskirts in the background of the temple.

More ex-votos, more places of worship of the Creoles and Rodrigues of the nearby neighbourhood known as “Bangladesh.” The sacred space of Dhi subsists in contrast, the divinities of Kali, Brahma and Hanuman, have entered the temple since 1994, while Hanuman has become independent by parting from the kalimai and the temple. He became a superior deity who had his own temple in 2007 (Fig. 3.29). The territorial reconstruction of the sacred space gives a direct reading of local social transformations. The photographs that illustrate the stages of this mutation process over 15 years are quite telling. ​

The transformation of popular cults  79

FIGURE 3.21  The

Hanuman icon is located outside, in the small red altar above.

The faithful can come to pray at any time, according to their needs, even when the temple, as is the case frequently, remains close in the evening. The Hanuman icon outside the temple and photographed in 2007 (Fig. 3.22) replaced the old altar of 1992 and entered the temple in 1999 (right photograph, it is a collage). Once inside the temple, he was on the altar of Kali but had no territoriality of his own. Since 2007, the Hanuman temple was finally built as originally planned. He separated from Kali first of whom he was the guardian, then the superior deities to whom he was associated for a short time and then he acquired his own status. The strategic importance of Hanuman in this place of opposition of caste/class between Hindu faithful, some of high caste, others of lower castes and between Hindu community and Creole/Rodrigues is obvious. The altar of Hanuman is the setting for new rites. Former followers of Kali, mostly women, no longer have the preeminent role they had because men prefer Hanuman preferentially to Kali and they are the cult managers. It took about ten years to clarify the situation symbolically and relate it to the community closure and caste environment. Geographically and from a social point of view, Hanuman was the place where differences could be expressed. As for the Brahma divinity, the process is not yet in progress. There is talk of a temple of Brahma, but the old site has remained the same. ​

FIGURE 3.22 

2007 situation.

80  The transformation of popular cults

A Hanuman Temple was built. It is placed where the old altar was in 1992. It has been preserved and is inside the temple. The reorganisation of the worship space has highlighted the fact that no more constructions can be built apart from the upcoming altar of Brahma located high up on the hill. The closing of the place was accompanied by the definitive exclusion of the place of worship of the Creoles, where the tree representing Dhi in the old kalimai was. The existence of kalimai and the need to abandon animal sacrifices foreshadowed the land issues that have arisen with the growth of the population of this new urban area since 1992, when new residents arrived. The transformation of the kalimai into a temple and the new constructions are a response of the population who built from scratch symbolic legitimacy more or less associated or independent of each other according to the social resetting that has occurred on the neighbourhood. We noticed the opposite strategy of the Tranquebar Tamils compared to the Creoles. The Tamil traders in conflict with the Tranquebar Hindus reacted in a very different way and chose to simply invest a new, more distant space also located on the crown lands to build their temple. Recently completed, the temple is further from the places of residence but it is not a difficulty for the Tamils who have several temples located on heights, the best-known being that of Quatre-Bornes under the name of église Montagne.22 It took 15 years for the high-caste Hindu community to assert itself as quasiindigenous vis-à-vis all the others. Their political mode of existence was due to the layout. Their political mode of existence was played without referring to the power of state. The political control of land was performed through the reorganisation of the cult sites, their modernisation and their multiplication. There was no noticeable border other than a symbolic one, no apparent social disorder but an exclusion principle aimed at curtailing any conflict. The anticipated change went all the way in the symbolic form of a closure of the religious space. It began in 1992 with the legal permission to found the kalimai, it continued in 1995 with the creation of the kalimai association when the founder’s son assumed responsibility for the cult by grouping the high caste residence belonging to the founder’s kinship and finally implementing the exclusion of the popular part of the Tranquebar suburb called the “Bangladesh” space. Finally, the social meaning of this new order of space coincides with the actual relations of the inhabitants of the “Bangladesh” neighbourhood and traders in Tranquebar. “Bangladesh” was formerly inhabited by poor Creoles, who built tin shacks without permission from the government. There were also some Tamil families and Hindu tenants or owners of modest houses belonging to the small traders of Tranquebar. Since 1995, this district has grown considerably due to the installation of Rodriguans, who came to work as servants in the wealthy families Hindu, Chinese and Muslim of Port Louis. It is the Rodriguan women who work at home, because the Mauritian labour force is considered too expensive by the Port Louis middle class and superior. The Rodriguans have therefore settled permanently in this neighbourhood. They were followed by the men on behalf of the family

The transformation of popular cults  81

reunification, who, like the Creoles and Tamils, considered the area of the Plaine Lauzun free zone, where they earn about Rs 5,000/month. The nuclear families have gradually widened, replaced by the large Rodrigues family, eager to settle permanently in Mauritius, rather than return to Rodrigues where unemployment is important. This recent influx of migrant workers has increased the building density so that the situation of the Rodriguans has gradually moved closer to that of the Creoles described as “squatters.” What about the quality of “squatters” that designates the inhabitants of the district of “Bangladesh”? In other words, all these lands being lands of the State, or any newcomer is a squatter or nobody squats. All those people settled at the start in the same way. The legitimisation of the occupation of the soil was retroactive and made by reference to the 1948 statute of limitations. It provides for the granting of a property right to those whose establishment is sufficiently old, a right that has only been applied to old residents and not to others. Since the R family favoured their caste-wide family group, those who are now considered squatters are those who are not part of the kalimai society, which is Hindu and a high-caste majority. By designating the Creoles as squatters, the new kalimai society denies the right of the first Creoles to claim the 1948 law. The attribute “squatter” was already inscribed in the original relationship between earlier residents and not later at the arrival of the Rodriguans or workers of the free zone. The term “squatters” is not legal; it is social, economic and political. This little story of the transformation of the cults of Port Louis has shown the actual relations of traders, with workers in the area of the free zone as well as those who became unemployed following the closure of factories. The border of the popular district with the beaux quartiers of the lower and/or upper-middle class of the city of Port Louis is based in earnest on the organisation of the religious space. It must be said that this district opens to a panoramic view of Port Louis and the port. Very curiously, Tranquebar still holds a reputation of being the outskirt of Port Louis. If there is a vulnerable population in the neighbourhood on the hillside, the higher plane has been structured for more than 15 years. The land pressure that has been exercised over the past 12 years on the eight acres of land claimed by each of the constituent social groups of Tranquebar has been very strong. Each group wanted to set up their own cult, which is a sign of social tension that led the kalimai’s founding society and other groups to close on themselves. Each association acted on its own behalf. From the moment that popular groups were eliminated the dominant groups, Tranquebar became a truly private area, although all of them are tenants of the state on crown land. And there was the emergence of borders, no longer symbolic but real, such as the construction of the concrete wall to prevent the direct access of residents of the nearest neighbourhood called “Bangladesh” to their worship area. This wall and the multiplication of religious buildings on Tranquebar Hill were signs and proof of a closure of the once fluid social relations between the various communities and between the different castes. It is not surprising, in these circumstances, that the founder’s children, who took over from their father and run the company

82  The transformation of popular cults

Naw Jiwan Sangh Tagore Pashala, are about to change their federation, preferring the Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad at the Sanantan Dharma Temples Federation, that dates back to 1986 and preferentially brings together the high Hindu castes. This group of the oldest residents thus affirms its status of high caste compared to the others. And caste cleavages have tended to espouse class relations, but are not totally limited to them since community divisions have played a certain role in the present social distribution. Moreover, as everywhere else, it was at the time of the district’s electoral consultations that could measure the degree of real social openness reached by “Ward 4” of Port Louis.

Religion and politics: the weight of federations If we compare the situation of the urban micro-society of Port Louis with that of Mahébourg, we can only note that it is through the same deities Dhi, Brahma and Hanuman that social groups have differentiated according to caste and class community distinctions. ​

FIGURE 3.23  The

temple of Tranquebar located below the road, near the ancient kalimai.

Predictably, there was a split in the kalimai society from number of residents located on the other side of the ravine. This geographical limit did not prevent worshippers from coming to the kalimai, but a person opposing the politician preference to attend the temple rather than the kalimai made separation necessary. A dissident association has been formed, more sustained than the kalimai’s society by the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation. The construction of the temple corresponding to this split is recent and of high quality as one can see in the photograph. At first sight, what strikes one when visiting the temple is the almost exclusive presence of the male divinities inside as on the outside. Moreover, there is no offering on any of the altars of the temple. The ceremonial role of this temple is unequivocally less active compared to the kalimai, which would tend to prove that at the level of the faithful of both cults, the separation is incomplete while it seems more advanced at the associative and political level. One cannot reasonably go further in the analysis of this division. At most, we can wonder if caste separation and community divisions are essentially different from economic inequalities. This issue refers to the respective influence of the federations that still intervene in the temple building enterprise as is the case here for the kalimai and temple society so that any multiplication of religious buildings in the

The transformation of popular cults  83

same neighbourhood or village is the product of a political strategy, here, the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation and the Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad, which compete freely since their split in 1986. If we distinguish the founding period of kalimai during which the society and its President practised the sacrifice of animals, the current period would correspond to a symbolic reversal of the religious practices of the renovated kalimai which evolved towards a Sanskritisation evidenced by the omnipresence of Hanuman. Let us record the presence on the altar of Kali of Shiva, Brahma, Hanuman and Ganesh. This symbolic assembly reflects the radical nature of the change. For some time, however, high-caste worshippers who once prayed in the Tranquebar Temple tend to pray in the kalimai transformed into a temple. Simultaneously, the president of the association said that they would probably change federation and turn to the Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad. This change of membership of some of the faithful of the temple shows that the local relations are crossed by the same general caste conflict which provoked the split between the Hindu federations. The shivala and the kalimai of Tranquebar experienced a global opposition which opposes the high-caste Vasih, demographically a majority in the district, the Baboojees/Marazs, and the low castes. So far, the political equilibrium of this constituency is structured around the MMM, which has obtained all the votes since 1976 except for two elections: in 1987 where the votes were shared with the PMSD, and in 1995 where they were shared with the PTR grouping around it minorities, which are Muslims, Creoles, Tamils and Telugus. In 1976 and 1995, the Telugus and Tamils remained faithful to the MMM whatever the alliances between parties, while the Creoles always voted in the sense of the alliance that would triumph: in 1987 they voted PMXD, in 1995 they voted in favour of the PTR, and in 2000 they voted for the MMM, which allowed them to place two candidates for the governments. This is not the case for other demographically majority groups such as Vaishs, Baboojees, Marazs and low castes. Their electoral strategy was more diffuse until the moment of the rise to power of the MMM in 1976. At that time, the Vaishs broke with the communalist and casteist strategy and their voices were reported on the MMM while the other groups continued to vote for a candidate from their community and caste of social belonging. But, from 1976, the social composition of the district changed and the electoral demography increased by a third; they went from 14,300 to 22,450 voters approximately. The vote of the Vaishs in this region was marked by their indifference to the community preference and caste since 1976, during the second election consultation at the time of the Independent Forward Bloc (IFB). Their political emergence comes from the differential strategy they adopted towards the Baboojees/Marazs who voted for community preference and caste, so that the low-caste Ravived or Rajputs have placed their votes on the Vaish. This change in the electoral behaviour of a significant portion of the electorate coincided with the demographic growth of the neighbourhood – between 1967 and 1976, electoral demographics increased from 14,250 to about 22,430 voters

84  The transformation of popular cults

– accompanied by a change in social composition. The Creoles have become a group which one must now take into account if one wants to win the elections. Since 1976, the process of the local society break-up has been played across the caste dividing line. This process is nearing completion so that economic differences become the second level of transformation. In addition to the caste differences that are comparable to class differences in the Hindu population, there are the community inequalities on which the economic differences of the Indo-Mauritian minority groups such as Telugus and Tamils bear economic significance. It has been noted that the minorities have remained very loyal to the MMM while the Creoles, whose living and working conditions are the most difficult, voted in favour of the alliance that always rises to power: they changed successively from the vote PMXD in 1987 to the vote in favour of the MMM in 1991 and, in 1995, they voted for the PTR. This strategy of systematic infidelity allowed them to elevate one of their candidates to deputation from 1987 to today. The 2000 elections are interesting to analyse because Creoles and Vaishs shared the voices of minority groups, as if a stage had been reached where caste differences would be equivalent to class differences: would the Port Louis middle and lower classes get closer to residents of disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods? Would the conflict between the two Indo-Mauritian federations, based on the caste difference, not be the same re-argued struggle to retain disappearing privileges? Conversely, are class differences so crucial as to produce intercommunity relations that are new and indifferent to the major religions? ​ From the answer to these questions depends the meaning to be given to the construction of these new temples dedicated to Hanuman in Port Louis as in Mahébourg. At the same time, what is the meaning of the Sanskritisation of popular cults that is becoming widespread on the island? Where are the intercultural relations to be found if they do exist? What progress is being made on national integration? Is it up or are there community running? The relations of popular cults to scholarly religion have changed dramatically. To understand the relationship of the religious to the economic and political, we must wander down the history of temples and associations that have presided over the emergence of federations: the ethnic, caste and class dialectic are played at the national level in the very space of associative networks based on kinship and alliance systems that extend from the north to the south of the island.

From legal to politics Can we conclude on such delicate subjects as the question of the real legitimacy of the crown lands? In the distant ages preceding the formation of the colonial empires, the same question arose as to who owned the goods of the ships which came to release on the coasts of the islands situated on the periphery of the world. Grotius23 (1604) made a plea “De Ure Prédare” which served as a reference to international law at the time of the creation of the United Nations to say that the

Foogooa,M. (IFB) 7,749

Vaish Ahir

General population

Muslim

Tamils

Telugus

Bundhun A.R. (IFB) 7,734 Rault, P.GR(PTR) 7,687

14,428

Total voters Marazs

Vaish Koyree

Elections 1967

Ethnic /Caste distribution

Silvio,M. (MMM) 9,581

Moorba, S. (MMM) 9,617 Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 9,610

22,425

Elections 1976

Silvio,M. (MMM) 17,274

Nundalalee, J. (MMM) 17,688 Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 17,879

26,605

Elections 1982

Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 14,040 Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 14,040 Aruna Salon (MMM) 13,984

25,124 Mundil, D. (MMM) 13,772

Elections 1983

Duval, Gaetan Charles Xavier (PMSD) 14,677

Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 14,710 Baligadoo, K. (MMM) 14,710 Aruna Salon (MMM) 14,771

29,278

Elections 1987

Genieve,C. (MMM) 17,435

Aruna Salon (MMM) 17,658

29,040 Brizmohun, P. (PMSD) 18,753

Elections 1991

TABLE 3.2 Community and caste distribution of elected candidates: No. 4 Port Louis North/Long Mountain

Chaumiere J.F. (PTR) 17,550

Aruna Salon (MMM) 17,658

Thakoor,Sidaya (PTR) 18,780

29,122

Elections 1995

Grivon, Richard (MMM) 15,961 Lszongard, J.P. (MSM) 14,962

Chumroo, M. (MMM) 16,926

30,734

Elections 2000

The transformation of popular cults  85

86  The transformation of popular cults

sea is a heritage in common.24 By virtue of this principle, the “State lands” are preserved from any private appropriation. Any building less than 500 metres from the sea – be it private bungalows or places of worship, social or cultural centres – is the result of a tolerance on the part of the State, guarantor of the collective ownership of the land. The buildings are private; the land is collective. The State cannot therefore demolish what belongs to public affairs like popular cults. The relation to the land, in the symbolism of kalimai, is mediated by a whole series of social relations that bind people to each other and that symbolise the relationship of deities between them. There is no individual autonomy in the kalimai system. In contrast to this, the private bungalow is a private entity belonging to an owner who has the right of access to the land that has been granted to him or her, but he or she cannot sell that land. The private/public relationship engaged on the lands of the State is thus very ambiguous, vague and it is logical that all actors play on the legal vacuum regarding the situation of these lands. The general tendency is, therefore, when a construction is already active, to consider that there is no other frontier to geographical expansion than the marked opposition of one to another. If this opposition does not take the form of a conflict, the space is for everyone, and therefore for oneself, if one knows how to assert one’s right of installation before the community. This is why the whole island is the scene of wild appropriations of the coast, where the facts precede the law. Coastlines are the subject to a collective claim, difficult to challenge as the practices of expansion of each other are numerous and unexpected most of the time. In the examples given of Belle Mare, Palmar and Grand Baie, the logic of collective appropriation had as its main importance within the area of political legitimacy as much as that of owning a plot where to pray. Private ownership generally follows closely collective ownership. Once the installation of a place of worship is accepted, then residences are built such as hotels, etc. There is no case law on State land. The Grand Baie temple/kalimai conflict with the State is still pending. Any conflict over crown land is of a political nature in response to conflicts against the state or its representative. From the moment that the “Voice of Hindu” association, whose communalist positions are well known, wins the trial that has begun between the founder of the cult and the State, it will be difficult to prevent new temples from settling on the coast. The multiplication of temples and kalimais on public places of crown land is a subject of great topicality that concerns the whole nation: religious affairs, cultural affairs are state affairs in Mauritius. The political legal treatment of these cases cannot be assessed independently of the social and economic nature of the problems raised. The various communities have, under the cover of a religious affair, to discuss in advance the new relations engaged owning to the globalisation of the markets. However, the levying of high taxes on private lands and property taxation opens up a new era of management of the island’s land heritage by the State, which dictates its conditions and main orientations.

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Notes 1 The Mauritian (newspaper) of 20 July 2002, p. 4. 2 Religious excitement, which is not specific to the Indo-Mauritian community. 3 At 500 metres from the coast, all lands belong to the state. These are the pas géométriques crown lands. This legislation comes from the law of the sea and dates from voyages and great discoveries during which it was necessary to determine to which belonged the goods of the boats when they accosted on the coasts to release. It means that the sea belongs to everyone. The crown lands extend to the lakes, the border of rivers and the mountains in Mauritius. 4 At the time of writing, the occupation of the lands of Grand Baie’s crown lands in the north by the renovation of an ancient kalimai was the major topic the day. This fact required the intervention of the Minister in charge of land and housing. The problem is crucial because these lands which are most often occupied by private properties and hotels are the subject to a complete redefinition of the emphyteutic contracts of 99 years issued by the government. The problem concerns all Mauritians who have properties on the sea. 5 See Glossary. These are foreign investment projects for industrial or tourism development projects. 6 All Hindus go to the seaside to pray to Ganga Snan. 7 We will see later that this split is of caste nature as much as of class. When there is a split, it reflects the very strong economic and political pressure that always takes on an associative form. 8 The new temple of Shiva was built by the high trading castes, who specialise in tourism products and have their shops further along the road, in front of the hotels, while the lower castes and the others communities, small planters of onions or spices, pray in kalimai. The luxury textile businesses cater to the international “upscale” clientele of the main hotels located along the road. 9 There are also Muslim residents who have large camps in the geometric steps of Trou d’Eau Douce, for example. 10 Term used in the Mauritian sense of population of African or Malagasy origin. They are Black Creoles as opposed to those of mixed-race. At the end of the French era of colonisation, there was talk of “free people of colour” as opposed to former emancipated slaves (see Chapter 1). 11 Is this the effect of the Christianisation of some of the Mauritian Tamils, which explains the fact that these sometimes call their temple “church”? This is so for the temple of Quatre-Bornes, which common language designates as “the little mountain church,” in reference to the hill above which the temple was built by the founding family who still manages today privately this place of worship. On the other hand, this cult also refers to the period during which all the labourers who worked in the neighbouring sugar mills came to pray. 12 Village council election. 13 The Baboojees/Marazs won the very first 1967 elections by joining forces with the Mauritanian Social Democrat Party (PMSD) and, in 1976, their PTR candidates had two terms. There was a candidate Baboojee who made his return to politics with the support of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM). See Table No. 8. 14 Labor Party and Mauritian Social Democrat Party. 15 Mauritian party Xavier Duval. 16 Mauritian Militant Movement and Mauritian Socialist Movement. 17 Which means that all the candidates nominated by the party have been elected. 18 The term “ti-nation” is a term which refers to the Hindu low castes of Mauritius and the term “nation,” as we have seen above, refers to Creoles of modest conditions. 19 A Hanuman Temple is to be undertaken and a “Krishnanand Sewa Shivir” Cultural Centre is planned on these state-owned crown lands.

88  The transformation of popular cults

20 A law of 1948 granting land ownership to those who have occupied it and developed it for 20 years. 21 In photograph 123, we clearly see the existence of this cement wall in the background of the photograph behind the renovated kalimai where there is a row of trees. 22 Note the linguistic/religious syncretism of Tamils who can speak of their temple (kovil) as a church. 23 De iure praedae (On the right of capture), including Mare liberum (The Free Seas) – 1604 24 Grotius, who was a lawyer in the United Provinces, is at the origin of the theory of international law based on the “natural right” “JUS NATURALIS.” Thus, for example, we have spoken of just wars (moral) and unjust wars (of aggression). On this principle it is established the humanitarian law in particular the right of the Red Cross or the right of the Geneva Conventions.

4 KALIMAI TEMPLES AND COMMUNITY STRATEGIES The emergence of Hanuman

Imbalanced development of the north east and south east of the island The diversity of statuses of the popular cults is great from one region to another as we have already remarked about the kalimais of Chemin Cemetière and Unité describe earlier in the first part. It is even clearer in the north and south of the island. Given the strong correlation existing between religious, political and economic life, it is not surprising that the north, ruled by the most complete tourist development than in other parts of the island, geographically close and better connected to Port Louis, the capital, asserts itself through scholarly religion, in preference to popular religion, whereas in Flacq it is the opposite that occurs. It is to the north that small and medium-sized enterprises of large-scale farming groups such as the Nundlal, Baichoo, Sookai, Ramreka, Nandochand, Ramjuttun, Jhurry, Sarjua, Boodhoo, Bissessur, Ramlagun and other families have established themselves. The village of Triolet has become the barycentre of these small and mediumsized enterprises (SME) It is spread over some 20 kilometres of national road and has all the businesses found in a small town. This phenomenon of rapid transformation of villages into small towns is recent. It is uneven in the different regions but it is very general and it is what explains the degree of certainty with which one can anticipate the disappearance of the popular rituals in the family form that they had originally. We emphasised the process of privatisation, or the disappearance of some places of worship in Flacq. This evolution was accompanied by the increase in the number of temples, which each community having settled for several years in a given place had to build if it wanted to add its voice to those which count in public life. Indeed, the political mobilisation of Indian society is constant, it is not only practised when election time comes, it is performed DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-5

90  Kalimai temples

daily, through participation in community life supported by religion. In villages and small towns, no one can find a job if he or she is not a member of one or more societies. These societies have strategies of innovation or withdrawal, closure or social opening and whatever their formal purpose, their vitality is not questionable so that we can say that the mobilisation capacity of the IndoMauritians is great. It is one of the most characteristic features of the Indian cultural tradition that collective relationships take precedence over individual relationships. Personal initiatives, however, are numerous since the foundation of an association and a place of worship are mostly individual donations, which are recognised as such after a long course in social work. The average person climbs, step by step, the stages of life more and more devoted to others, as he or she progresses in age. So, there is no social development apart from economic development, and we have already insisted on how the Indian labourers of the origins of the sugar plantation came to the surface on the basis of a mutualistic conception of society. This is what can be understood from the ideology of unequal community sharing regarding gifts to sister deities. However, the alleged fraternity1 of the seven sisters does not deceive anyone, and the solidarity expressed in the ceremonial enterprises is based on the differences of roles and status that each occupies in society. Thus, in the renovation of the kalimai of Petite Cabanne in 2001, there was a distinction related to the relative amount of the donations of the families which made it possible to buy the Kali icon. There was a major donor, analogous to the company’s majority shareholder, and small donations that could also be compared to smaller shareholders. Of course, the voice of the first is preponderant, even if the place of worship is not named after him or her. The game of donations is a powerful symbolic determinant of social and economic stability, which distinguishes the big from the small. But both are necessary for each other. These ideological considerations about unequal sharing in religious practice may seem far from the subject. It is not so because any “enterprise” of temple foundation of a small cult entails the elaboration of competitive strategies, which are revealing of the values conveyed ​​ by the religion and their relation with the power and the economy. Let us take a new example of church renewal strategies, which reveals the political and economic issues involved in these actions. In the south of the island, in Terracyne, a donation had been made to install an icon of the goddess Kali in the kalimai, which had until then only a small statue. The statue was stolen, not to possess the icon, but to destabilise the community association which, by this act of renovation, manifested in public its cohesion and its power, while the fight manifested on the contrary its powerlessness to preserve this place of prayer. If places of popular worship are easily transformed into temples today, it is because there is a game of power and interests on the part of the national cultural federations that support these local operations as much financially as politically. What is important does not always lie in the accumulated sums, it is also in the social and political supports which create the conditions of success of a collective enterprise.

Kalimai temples  91

All the recently founded temples bear the mark of a centralising policy of the federations that subsidise the temples. Today we are witnessing a brahmanisation of the cults, which imposes itself through the temples as a framework of religious unification of Indo-Mauritian society. But at the same time, there is a fragmentation of the ritual space distributed in the outer walls of temples, particularly urban ones, such as Tranquebar in Port Louis, but also the Tamil temple in Mahébourg. This double attempt at ritual imposition by the temples and relocation of the popular deities inside and outside the ritual space, which they delimit at the same time, is the sign of a production of a syncretic type of religious imaging the society in full transformation. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight that the building of a temple has always had and still has a precise relationship with the level of social and economic development that must be established to locate social tensions and the types of relationships that are controlled through cultural institutions. Contrary to the preconceived notions that the multiplication of places of worship would demonstrate a desire to dominate from the Indo-Mauritian community demographically superior to others, this multiplication is to be related to the political and economic issues underlying cultural differences. However, we note the recent emergence of cultural centres supported financially by successive governments, for the use of each Mauritian community: the Tamil Cultural Centre in Moka, the Marathi Cultural Centre in Moka, the Telugu Cultural Centre in Port Louis, the Hindu House, the Chinese Cultural Centre, the Mandela African Cultural Centre and finally, the Islamic Cultural Centre, the latter centres being located in Port Louis. This cultural policy aims to balance existing community differences. It has perverse social and political effects. It can equally aim to better allocate government subsidies according to the needs expressed by each community and to produce its opposite by reinforcing the social segmentation at work in all the communities, being confronted with the growing inequality of development subject to external market constraints. As a result, the game of minorities, which can find favour with their claims through cultural bodies, can no longer be answered when it comes to raising the issue in the general context of Mauritian development. The results of our study lead us to believe that the main orientations of the economic development generate forms of economic inequalities related to the historical social inequalities perpetuated in the organisation of the cultural federations. This is why the community distinction is not the only explanatory factor for the “malaise” felt by the people of Mauritius. The genesis of the emergence of cultural societies and their federative processes shed new light on the way in which economic differences intervene in the community and caste divisions and call them into question. The symbolic manifestations of the appropriation of public space by cults are indicative, as we have seen, of the social fragmentation at work in communities seeking to control its anarchic development, each producing their own centrality. The territorial and political marking of state-subsidised cultural centres is also a strategy aimed at strengthening the power of the networks that cross the

92  Kalimai temples

Mauritian society, whereas these same networks, far from being closed on their own territory, invent their own mediations to implement new relations. The cults located in the north and south of the island, which we have chosen to study in this work, clearly show that a dialectic of quality/quantity is implemented in the centre/periphery relations concerning the emergence of urban society and the relationships established with rural society. In this perspective, we have turned our attention to the new conceptions of the centrality of power contained in the local community practices in their relations with the federations that are courting them and with the State which grants the subsidies and the lands necessary for the construction of cultural centres and temples. The history of temples marked the birth and the structuring of the Mauritian society in the merchant and sugar trade that prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today it is based on the necessary overcoming of ethnic and caste barriers in everyday life and work. By the detour of the history of the foundation of temples and the correlative one of cultural and religious associations, we will highlight in this chapter the real and supposed function of the federations that manage the new temples. What new state/society relations are being established today through their mediation?

The temple foundation and development of community associations since national independence The building of a temple for southern or northern Indians is not a trivial accomplishment. It reflects a form of social integration, based on the production of statutory caste differences, the emergence of independent planters and the need to organise a redistribution of profits, to link in a certain way the members of the community by the duty of restitution. The Hindu religion common to Indian immigrants rests, indeed, on the philosophy of the Dharma applied to the four ages of life which govern the actions of man during his earthly existence. Through a continuous process of restitution of the benefits received, one builds little by little a retroactive legitimacy, even posthumous, which goes beyond the restricted framework of the family. For example, the big planters who agreed to take some of the surplus accumulated in their businesses to give back to the community created, at the same time, the rules of sociability that governed the gender relations and the inequalities among the families, the division of labour while they provided for themselves by their social actions the means to overcome the great stages of human life in the hope of being reborn in a second form. The foundation of the temples appeared at a particular moment of the differentiation of the world of plantation and the development of the cities that needed to integrate the different rites practised in the kalimais, which themselves contributed to fix and perpetuate the caste differences locally instituted. The caste is a local product built around the temple/kalimai duality which carries with it more or

Kalimai temples  93

less the continuous history of families who have managed to make a name for themselves.

Kalimais and temples: a process of erasure of popular cults Whether it is Tamils from the south or ​​ Hindus from northern India, it took more than a generation of presence at the immigration site for temples to emerge in Mauritius. The foundation of the temples is presented as having been done by the big planters around whom the religious orthodoxy was progressively built, after a quite long phase of popular practices where the tutelary deities were venerated in kalimai places of worship. Initially, the Tamils ​​and Hindus shared the same piety with the goddess Kali, who represented the harmony extended to the balance of relations that was instituted between the different social groups present in the camps. Therefore, the spatial organisation of the first temples – Hindu or Tamil – differs from that of the new temples of today because, in the old temples, the altar of Kali is usually placed at the entrance and in the enclosure of the temple. The kalimai was the first altar where the organisation of space was transformed by the introduction of the higher divinities alongside the tutelary divinities. This is why the space of the ancient temples includes the central altar of the higher divinities and the outer space is filled with divinities forming as many small altars that are fervour-specific to this or that tutelary deity. The building which is considered the oldest Hindu temple is Phuliar and it has today preserved the structure of the kalimai to which has been added only one deity, that of Hanuman, who recently entered the temple. In the same way, the oldest kalimai of Camp de Masque Pavé recently welcomed upper deities who were placed next to the altar of Kali. The transformation of the kalimais into a temple or vice versa is in reality a process of brahmanisation, or the Hanumanisation of religious societies which reveal the way in which the statutory relations of the Indo-Mauritian society are changing and are transformed into new social equilibriums according to the economic and political context in which they are placed. We have coined the term “Hanumanisation” because of the very recent importance of this deity corresponding to the generalisation of contractual relations, without social protection other than internal solidarities contained in religious or cultural associations. The Tamil temples were built much earlier because they had a class of traders and craftsmen in Port Louis who have diversified into the plantation. Their first temples were built, like those of Hindus, around Kali called Kaliamen, they are Mariamen kovil like that of Clémencia and Terre Rouge. These temples were renovated at specific times and hosted the higher deities transforming Kali into a secondary deity. When a temple, such as the one at the northern station Draupadi Amen Kovil in Port Louis, has preserved Kali as the main deity, this temple is associated with that of Nicolay Road considered the largest Tamil temple in the capital centred on the deity Muruga at the time of the

94  Kalimai temples

celebration of the Cavadees and timidee. The duality/complementarity between temples and kalimais is a spatial-historical projection of the intrinsically linked contradictory relations that have been instituted in Mauritius in the process of separating high castes from low castes with regard to community differentiations acquired by reference to tutelary deities of the various regions of origin. There was a reproduction of the Indian religious model in four castes, the Brahmins, Kashtriyas, Vaishs and Sudras despite the well-established historical fact that the Indians who came to Mauritius were all low castes. Through the popular cults, the families were formed and the caste structure was gradually established on the basis of the endogamous preference of the paternal lineage. Simultaneously, the economic emergence of the first so-called “old migrant” immigrants took place. In the new temples, as in the Kaylasson of Port Louis, the goddess Kali is most often outside the enclosure of the temple. In other cases, she is present on the altar of the higher deities. The various positions of Kali in the temples depend on the circumstances and time during which Kali entered a temple with a secondary deity position. If one were to classify Hindu temples, one would determine the three stages of development of kalimai. In the first phase, kalimai altars were located in the sugar plantations, making it possible to develop forms of cooperation between Indian immigrants who were strangers to each other at the time of their arrival on the island. In the second phase, the cults were part of the division and/or integration into high and low castes depending on the economic inequalities that occurred with the emergence of the small random plantation originating from the fragmentations of property generating the development of the first villages. The third phase, the most complex, is that of the institutionalisation of the oldest immigrants (the earlier-mentioned “old migrants”) recognised in the public sphere as “Indo-Mauritians,” differently to the new immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century. It was at this time that the temples multiplied, some separating from the kalimais, the others integrating the worship of Kali who became a secondary deity in the temple at a time when the fragmentation of land endangered the popular cults. In the face of this threat, the big planters contributed financially to the foundation of new temples and the renovation of the kalimais of the small planters who worked on their lands. Today, we have reached the end of a process of land concentration under cane crops, by successive fragmentations of marginal lands of sugar properties that have rationalised production and cutting around cities and large villages so that we witness the gradual but rapid disappearance of kalimais, with their entry into desertion as has already happened in the north. As evidenced, the one kalimai we encountered that has hardly changed since 1992 when we saw it despite the development of new residences. Newcomers simply preferred to create their own temple. They did not go through the intermediate phase of affiliation to a kalimai. The new relationships were imposed from the outset for those who belong to the same community of origin through the foundation of a new place of worship. ​

Kalimai temples  95

FIGURE 4.1  The

kalimai of Vallée des Prêtres remains unchanged

The ancient kalimai has just been surrounded by a wire fence that delimits the prayer space so as to prevent animal sacrifices that were once specific to the rituals of the place. The current phase of temple multiplication in place of kalimais responds to the strategy of national federations that distribute State subsidies for renovations or the creation of new places of worship. In all these federations, there is a Board of Directors elected and renewed each year exclusive of the president whose election period extends over three non-renewable years. This is why Henrietta Moore2 noted, from reading this research, that religion was closely linked to political life. Let us add that religious orthodoxy appears as the emergence of a power whose rationality is based on the internalisation of differences based on an ideology of the one in the multiple through the differential spatial ordering of the higher tutelary deities.

Development of egalitarian ideologies: caste/class dialectics Simultaneously and in contradistinction to this general process of social differentiation revealed by the coverage and distribution of cults related to religious orthodoxy, new egalitarian ideologies have spread in Mauritius that have been propagated around the world from India in the wake of migrations. These associations with marked transnational character interest us because the history of their founding in Mauritius underlines the specific process of transformation of the Indian society based on a reversal of meaning (the ideology conveyed by the association) in a depiction revealing the form of social dividing lines already there and in the process of becoming institutionalised. In cults, the naturalisation of external relations is always the sign of a mutation of society, of a segmentation being produced and legitimised. Let us try to reconstruct the chronology of genesis and multiplication of the most important community associations in the construction of the local social bond.

The Arya Samaj movement It is through the story of a little milk peddler, therefore from the bottom up, that the ideology of the Arya Samaj movement in India has spread. He had met a

96  Kalimai temples

Hindu soldier who had entrusted him with Swami Dayanand’s book The Light of Truth, which he propagated in the Indian community. This theory gained fame in Mauritius with the arrival of Manilal Doctor between 1907 and 1911. He was a lawyer, a fervent defender of the non-violent ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, who came at the very moment to defend the cause of Indian “indentured labourer” who came when the colonial government audited the working conditions of the labourers in the sugar industry. The final report of the Royal Commission issued in 19093 led to the implementation, by the colonial government itself, of measures to improve the lives of tillers living in the camps. Manilal Doctor helped the small planters to organise the different local branches of the Arya Samaj movement in Mauritius and founded, simultaneously, the bilingual English/Hindi Hindustani newspaper which conveyed the major ideas of the Vedic philosophy, breaking with the orthodox religion and the Puranic practices of temples and kalimais. Thus began a process of consciousness raising of the workers by the conquest of their Indian identity, through the learning of the Hindi language, different from that of Bhojpuri which was the true native language of the IndoMauritians considered as that of the labourers working on the cane fields. Baitkas, a kind of cultural centre avant la lettre, were built all over the island to raise awareness of the Indian world. There were organised evening classes and Arya Samaj rituals during which Vedas were recited in Sanskrit scriptures. The Vedic rites confronting a learned conception of books a popular religion based on beliefs of a mythical nature rested on the four sacred texts of the Vedas – Rig Veda, Athar Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda. The popular conception of religious orthodoxy, which believes in the existence of divinities incarnated in different animal or human forms, has been discarded in favour of the affirmation of the existence of an abstract deity symbolised by the symbol Aum who is invoked in one’s prayer. The rituals practised are simple and centred on the Agni fire, a symbol of purification that makes no distinction between neither caste nor class, much less origin or gender. Women may access the priesthood, and the ceremonial ordering obeys no rule, except that of making a circle around the hearth, where are offered different products like clarified butter, raw rice, sugar, semolina, water, camphor, etc. It is access to education that has been the main driver of social emancipation in the Baitkas. This movement has spread considerably throughout the island as women, low castes, small labourers and small planters have been among the most regular to take these teachings. The process of asserting knowledge led to two conflicting ideologies: the one that retroactively legitimised the caste and the one that sought to overcome it. It was the Vaishs, an intermediate category in the social status ladder, who spearheaded the mass consciousness movement while the Baboojee/Maraz high castes worked to maintain their class/caste position by founding a competing association, Maha Sabha, in 1925 shown in Table 4.1. It will be noted that the regions where we studied the popular cults were also those which were best covered by the Jila Parishad Aryasamaj, centres distributed in the different districts of the island: the district de Flacq totalled 57 branches, that of

Kalimai temples  97

Rivière du Rempart 44 branches and Pamplemousses 41 branches. The least represented region in this movement was the district of Rivière Noire, which had only nine branches, because of the existence of a high percentage of Christians in the general population, compared to the Indian communities. ​ TABLE 4.1 Hindu associations founded from 1900 to 1935

Years

Associations

1910

Arya Samaj

1925 1935

Social Basis

Egalitarian ideology, based on the vedas: some marazs, baboojees, largely Vaish Planters and the majority of low castes Hindu Maha Sabha Exclusively the high-caste Marazs and Baboojees Arya Ravived Prachrani Sabha Exclusively the low-caste Ravidas

The Hindu Maha Sabha movement The Hindu Maha Sabha movement, founded in 1925 in Port Louis, was a direct consequence of the growing influence of the Arya Samaj movement, which had weakened the influence of the Baboojees/Marazs. These high castes had not followed this movement unlike the lower castes who rallied to the egalitarian ideology of Arya Samaj. The latter had thus been able to claim the affirmation of their existence when it was denied to them, according to the principle that no ceremonial practice differs from that generally followed and is allowed within the temple, whereas it is well known that a rite is a way of asserting oneself as a particular group, symbolically staging one’s own qualities. The multiplication of Hindu temples, which followed the founding of this association, corresponded its need to rally around the high castes – all those who declared themselves to be of Puranic rites – and at the exact time when the colonial administration would promote the accession of Indians to education.

The Arya Ravived Prachnari Sabha association Ten years later, in 1935, a new segmentation occurred. This one arose from the separation of the low-caste Raviveds vis-à-vis the Vaishs, the two most represented groups in the Arya Samaj movement. This separation took the form of a new identity claimed by the Raviveds who took the name of Ravidas, son of the sun, as opposed to the name Raviveds, its being a controlled appellation of those who practice pig cults. The symbolic content of the claim is clear: the Ravidas distinguished themselves by claiming the high caste quality of being pure, son of the sun, as opposed to the symbol of impurity that connotes proximity to the pig. The new association Arya Ravived Pracharni Sabha brought together the great Rajput/Ravived/farmers who showed their real social and economic

98  Kalimai temples

position acquired over time in Mauritius. Once again, we find the process of class differentiation that preceded the claim of belonging to a high caste. Previously, the only way to assert a class position contrary to one’s caste position was to add the Sing suffix to one’s name, but in 1935 this Sanskritisation/ individualisation was no longer sufficient to convey the emergence of an elite of low caste within the Labour Party, in the unions and cooperatives of large and small planters. There were no new religious or cultural formations after 1964 for the essential reason that social mobility began to organise around the political issue of the founding of major national parties such as the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD), the Independent Forward Bloc (IFB) and the Communauté d’Action Musulman (CAM). This long period was used to unite the Indians around the idea of independence ​​ and the steps to be taken to conquer it. Between 1935 and 1964, internal divisions within castes or classes were ironed out. Differences were overlooked in order to maintain harmony and bring together all the components of Indo-Mauritian society at the exact time when Independence was impending. The Bissoondoyal brothers, Basdeo the philosopher and Sookdeo the trade unionist, played a decisive role in the unification of the Indian community through the Jan Andolan movement, whose main objective was to raise awareness among the masses. The classic pilgrimage model of travelling the island from north to south and from east to west was the most appropriate way to open the path to independence by raising awareness of Indian workers at their place of residence and of their work.

Development of national federations Between 1960 and the 1990s, differentiation processes continued in Indian society through national federations, which became more and more established on the basis of classes, from which new subdivisions were created within castes. Both the associations Sanathan Dharma Temples Federation and Gatlot Rajput Maha Sabha had a more complete nature in relation to economic differentiations. They were founded in 1964 and 1965, respectively. The first federation was intended to administer and coordinate the life of the temples spread throughout the island while operating a religious reunification of all those who claimed to be Sanatanists. By this objective, the association, controlled at the level of the Board of Directors by the Baboojee/Maraz high castes and some Vaish representatives, became a stepping stone for the accession to power, at the time when the first national elections were held in 1967. Independence Day was proclaimed on March 12, 1968. The electoral results gave a significant proportion of elected Baboojees/Marazs, who were not, however, among the most important demographic groups, as were the Vaishs, Muslims or still the general population. ​

Kalimai temples  99 TABLE 4.2 Hindu associations founded from 1964 to 1990

Years

Associations

1964

Sanathan Dharma Temples High castes strongly represented on the Board of Federation Directors and by Vaishs Ghatlot Rajput Maha Sabha Separation of the Ravived/Rajputs from Arya Samaj and Arya Ravived associations of which they are members etc. that become Rajputs Vaish Mukti Sangh Unification of the Vaishs, some of whom are the members of the Sanathan Dharma Temples Federation and others are Arya Samajists Sanathan dharma mandir The high castes leave the SDTF whose board is Parishad controlled by the Vaishs

1965

1976

1986

Social basis

The Table 4.3 demonstrates the electoral results by constituency in 1967 gives them a total of 12 elected representatives. They were best represented in the PTR/ IFB alliance which gave birth in 1968 to a new alliance of the PTR/PMSD/ CAM following the break-up of the former “Independent Forward Block” (IFB). The affiliated members of this association counted a very large number of elected officials in the PTR government and were very influential due to the number of positions of the higher administration which they benefited thereafter. The Table 4.2 shows that in 1965 the association Gatlot Rajput Maha Sabha4 was formed which expressed the claim of a part of the low castes that asked essentially to be identified as Ravived, designating their difference from the Rajput. This term designates in India the Kshastrya caste and they self-designate as being the equivalent of high-caste Baboojees in Mauritius, by reference to the social position they have acquired, having been raised to the quality of large planters and having been able to send their children to pursue long studies in order to professionalise them. The influence of this association, however, did not cross the political barrier, judging by the election results they obtained in 1967. ​ TABLE 4.3 Electoral results by constituencies, castes and communities in 1967

Ethnic/caste distribution

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 total

Marazs/ 2 2 2 Baboojees Vaishs 1 2 1 1 1 Raviveds/ 1 1 1 Rajputs Marathis Telugus 1 Tamils 1 Muslims 1 1 2 1 1 1 General 2 1 population Chinese 1

1

1

1

1

1 1

1

1

1

12 1

1

1 1 1 1

1 1

1

1

1

1 1

2

1

2

10  4  1  2  4 11 10  1

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Equally interesting is the founding of the Vaish Mukti Sangh association born in 1976 in the very particular political context of the birth of a new party, the MMM, which kept an influence on the nation’s future after the elections of 1976. Let us recall that the Vaish groups were distributed in different associations. They were present in the Arya Samaj organisation of which they were the pioneers. They were also present, but as a very small minority, in the Hindu Maha Sabha community association. Some of them were also grouped in the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation because of their adherence to the sanatanistic rituals that some had kept. The raison d’être of this new association was to regroup the Vaishs, who had initially granted massive support to the PTR, the party of the first government of Mauritius including Prime Minister, a Vaish himself, who remained in power from 1967 to 1982. Despite the very good electoral scores that they had in 1967, having totalled ten candidates, two fewer than the Baboojees/Marazs, the Vaishs did not have the desired representation and felt the need to have a social efficiency of their own to benefit from their actions. In 1976, the Vaish placed 17 candidates under the banner of the MMM5 they supported, which still represents today the highest electoral score in these elections. This new cultural association clearly had a strictly political character, no claim of social or economic recognition was necessary for this group which forms what might be called the middle class of the Indo-Mauritian community. ​ TABLE 4.4 Electoral results by constituencies, castes and communities in 1976

Ethnic/caste distribution

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 total

Marazs/Baboojees 1 1 2 Vaishs 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 Rajputs/Raviveds 2 1 2 Marathis Telugus 1 1 Tamils 1 Muslims 1 3 General pop 2 1 Chinese 1

1 1 1

3

1 2

1 1 1 1

1

1

1 1

1 1

1

3

2

1 1 1

2

9 17 8 2 3 7 13 1

After having played the role of stepping stone for a better integration of the Vaish group in the political life of the nation, the association has continued its cultural activity but it has nowadays only minor importance regarding the challenge of contemporary development. The year 1986 saw the division of the Sanathan Dharma Temples Federation and the formation of a competing association, the Sanathan Dharma Mandir Parishad. ​

Kalimai temples  101 TABLE 4.5 Constituency election results Nos. 5, 7 and 9: Baboojees/Marazs and Vaishs

hold cross-relationships with the Raviveds and Rajputs Electoral constituencies

1967

2 5 1

1976

1 1 1

7

1 1

2 1

1

9

2 1

1 1

1982

1 1 1

1 1

1 1 1

1983

1 1 1

1987

1 1 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

1

1

1 1

1991

2 1

1 1

1 1 1

1995

1 1 1

1 1

2 1

2000

2 1

2

1 1 1

Distribution castes Maraz Baboojee Vaish Ravived Rajput Maraz Baboojee Vaish Ravived Rajput Maraz Baboojee Vaish Ravived Rajput

The latter was born from the opposition between the Baboojees/Marazs and Vaishs who were asserting themselves culturally and politically. In 1986, the board of directors of the Sanathan Dharma Temples Federation was mainly composed of the electoral results they had acquired since 1976. The Vaishs supported the MMM while the Baboojees/Marazs were more favourable to the PTR, their strong alliance with the Ravived while the Baboojees/Marazs relied on the Rajputs; these cross-relationships, contradictory and opposite, could not allow the joint management of the same cultural association even though both groups were of the same Puranic obedience. The Table 4.5 shows that in constituencies 5, 7 where there have never been elected Baboojee/Maraz candidates, the Vaishs have always got the maximum number of votes, regardless of the alliance in power. They relied on the Raviveds (electoral district No. 7) and the Rajputs and Raviveds (district No. 5). In constituency No. 9 the competition between Vaishs, Baboojees and Marazs was played through the Raviveds and Rajputs. But, from 1987, there was no Baboojee/Maraz candidate, when the dissident association had just been created. From 1987 until 2000, the Vaishs relied sometimes on the Ravived, sometimes on the Rajputs. One can understand that the Hindu federation, by losing weight on the political ground, sought to strengthen its religious influence through a policy of Brahmanisation of the cults celebrated in the temples. Indeed, they are those who have always had the almost exclusive function of providing the priests of the temples.

102  Kalimai temples

These community association movements, which accompanied National Independence, allow us to trace the process of social differentiation initiated in the 20th century: apparently modelled on the caste difference, any new association generates a class assignment. This is how low castes segmented themselves into becoming Raviveds and Rajputs. We note that each new association always determines the field of its social action as opposed to the group from which it has just separated. There is therefore no possible hierarchy between social groups, who jealously guard their autonomy and work to make their voices heard throughout the country, as evidenced by the ritual issues between families and different castes. These rituals are legal frameworks for affirming a position within the whole society. The federations founded since 1964 have a national character and play their part in the administrative and political context of the state. They produce those who are known as “political leaders.” This term, however, is unsuitable because leadership does not exist, the emergence of an elected representatives always proceeds a bottom-up rise and not the opposite. It is the balance of power and the multiple mediations within the associations that ensure the success of a political destiny.

Geographical distribution and social re-organisations The status of popular cults is very variable depending on the degree of evolution of society. We have seen that the northern region was very early concerned by the movement of urbanisation, especially since it is to the north that we find the large Indian plantation and that the sugar estates concentration was carried out more quickly (Bellevue–Harel). New religious movements called “sects” have multiplied throughout the island. They convey ideologies that take shape in the institutional game through local cultural associations that maintain some relations with the national federations. Their influence within the internal relations of the various communities of the island is considerable. Some of them, like the Arya Samaj movement, oppose the caste system, others reinforce it. In a general way, the new values ​​conveyed by the sects are a way of rethinking the traditional distinctions referring to community, origin, caste, or sexual difference according to the actual social relations more recently experienced in everyday life and work. We could not give the exact number of sects that have appeared in the last ten years in Mauritius, as they are numerous. The most important of these are Brahma Kumari, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Satya Sai Baba, Rama Krishna Mission and Art of Living as revealed in Table 4.6. These religious/cultural movements, such as the Arya Samajist movement at the beginning of the 20th century, occurred in the recently founded temples, in the kalimai spaces of the renovated popular cults. Their divinities have a definite place alongside other higher deities. It can be seen that the influence of the sects is mainly in urban areas and in the northern parts of the island, where popular cults have lost their symbolic effectiveness, have already disappeared or are in the process of being lost. This preferential influence of sects in the north of the island can be explained by the more rapid evolution

Kalimai temples  103

of northern rural society, which is more directly confronted with government policy and the development of private consortia centred on the restructuring of the economy due to the markets. It can also be explained by the fact that the Hindu Maha Sabha federations and the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation which are at the origin of the foundation of the new temples have a board of directors whose representatives are from the north. ​ TABLE 4.6 Development sects in Mauritius

Foundation in India Founder

Association

1937 1966 1965 1897 1970

Brahma Kumari Hare Rama Hare Krishna Satya Sai Baba Rama Krishna Mission Art of Living

Dada Lekraj Swami Pabupradha Satya Sai Swami Vivekananda Ravi Shankar

The main symbolic changes observed at Flacq revolve around a new positioning of the deities Dhi, Brahma and Hanuman. The north has a particular emphasis on Brahma deities and especially Saï Baba. Dhi is an instance that tends to disappear from the pantheon of deities present in new places of worship.

Hanuman: an authority to overcome community divisions, caste and generations. Throughout the island, in the new urban neighbourhoods or in the relocation areas of former sugar factory workers who have left the company, in the new villages created for the labourers still living in the disappearing camps, these are the places where one finds the divinity Hanuman, then occupying the place of cult of the outside, to replace the old kalimai but which cannot transplant the old place of residence to the new one. The generalisation of Hanuman’s presence in some cult worship, whether in ancient or renovated temples, in old or renovated kalimais, as well as in individuals of Sanatanist obedience, is so complete that we could speak of “Hanumanisation,” as we speak of Brahmanisation. These Hanuman altars are often planned to be transformed into new temples. Hanuman is a transversal deity resulting from popular cults. He is established in temples in formation, to found a social organisation that mixes economic, community and caste differences. Through this divinity Hanuman6 new social relations are conveyed, supposing the opening of community and caste in the sphere of work as in everyday life, where the extended family can no longer remain grouped for trivial reasons of access to the land or even of fragmented and scattered heritages. Besides Hanuman whose virtue is to represent a world indifferent to community distinctions (between South and North Indians for example) and caste, Dhi falls

104  Kalimai temples

into disuse and Brahma experiments, like Hanuman, a new career. These divinities support the new relationships established in the villages, some of which evolve quickly and are transformed into quasi-urban centres, as soon as tertiary institutions such as schools, postal and telecommunications services, banks, hospitals, health centres, weekly or bi-weekly markets and stores cover the immediate needs of the population. In villages such as Lallmatie presented above and in some old villages on the east coast of the Flacq region, such as Trou d’Eau Douce, Bel Air or north to Grand Baie, Rivière du Rempart, Goodlands and Triolet, people work either in the capital or in other parts of the island. The roads are now fully serviced and signalised. In addition, each region now has school coverage that no longer requires parents to send children to schools in the cities of Plaines Wilhems, where the most successful colleges are since they were relocated recently as the well-known MGI which now has five colleges in the districts of Plaines Wilhems, Moka, Flacq and Pamplemousses. The inhabitants of these villages in strong demographic growth live on the spot like urban people who go to their work and come back at night. We understand better the social meaning of the disappearance of Dhi and the reactivation of Brahma in these quasi-urbanised places of the island.

The disappearance of Dhi In the preceding chapters, we have mentioned the particularity of the deity Dhi, who represents white settlers in the kalimais. By assigning a place to Dhi, the founders of the ancient kalimais created a place of intermediation with the white world. Dhi is part of the pantheon of local popular deities. Our informants reported on the multiple situations in which Dhi is used as mediator of the Kali relationship. These were always circumstances of how the white dominates the workers and always tried to approach them for the best benefit when they needed them in dire circumstances. The first Indian dealers have always been close to the white world. They had the boss’s trust in the company. There is no doubt that the presence of Dhi in the kalimais has been a sign of the way in which the relations of domination have been internalised, giving rise to the first statutory legitimacy. There was not necessarily an internalisation of power and domination; there was the production of a symbolic separation, instituting difference as an intrinsic value of social functioning. By thus naturalising the sugar power in cults, the founders of the kalimais legitimised the first forms of social differentiation that were born from the shared sharing of the daily life of the camps and the relations of production established by the whites. This is a thesis that no source of written history can validate since popular cults are largely in the memory and oral tradition is particularly interesting to develop because it highlights an operating mode of the power very different from Eastern societies in comparison with Western societies. The gradual disappearance of Dhi is not surprising today considering the almost complete break between the sugar world and the world of small planters. It can be said that the umbilical cord is cut with the sugar world, which restructures, mechanises production, dismisses agricultural workers and reduces the running costs of

Kalimai temples  105

the sugar factory and the company’s management. Closeness is no more an issue. On the other hand, it is worth waiting for the compensations for a labour force which contributed by its work to the profits of the capital: the small planters and agricultural workers become today small landowners and some of them have built their residences. This works for those who have taken early retirement or have chosen to leave, encouraged to do so by the company that negotiates departures by donating a piece of residential land and allowances. As for the camps, they are disappearing from the sugar landscape and those who stay receive a plot of land to live in. This policy of improving the housing of agricultural workers has the effect of giving a more convincing and positive image of an industrialised country than that of promiscuity related to close quarters in the former sugar camps.

Brahma/Baram: overdetermination of statutory distinctions The duality of the superior deity Brahma, some of the informants name the deity Baram which is found in all kalimais of the region, can be expressed in two different ways. Either Brahma is in the kalimai, or he is outside. In the first case, he symbolises the internal relations, in the second case, the emphasis is on the external relations. In both cases, however, the power he represents is intangible, unlike Kali in her 99 available forms. Whether placed inside or located outside the kalimai, Brahma appears to be self-sufficient: neither a figure of intermediation nor a vector of socialisation, he represents – in the best case – a form of achievement on the path of life. His abstraction is total. Besides, nothing is said about Brahma. He is prayed to, he has no ritual, no special prohibition. He can be anywhere and everywhere. He is the place of individualisation in a society where community practices are omnipresent, whether in everyday life or work. He is also the setting for the privatisation of a public place. Frequently, Brahma is placed in the shadow of a church as if he had been, at a distant time, the sign of an ambivalent adherence to the Catholic religion for its expected effects of better social position within the sugar establishment. The situation of Gokool, an “old migrant” who is Christianised to obtain the sirdar post and who takes back native religion, after having acceded to private property, and has not been isolated. If, formerly, it is the high castes who built this type of economic emergence by proximity with the white world, the same does not apply nowadays. Some low-caste Ravived families have taken a prominent place in the process of economic development of the last two decades. This reality is expressed electorally as well as symbolically. It is by this means that a representative of the low-caste Ravived entered for the first time in the electoral race at Montagne Blanche (district No. 10) where, supported by the Vaishs and the Muslims, he achieved a real electoral score.

Saï Baba, Shiva, Ram, Krishna These deities are now part of the new urban temples. This is so in the renovated kalimais of the city of Port Louis, in Cassis located in the Salines and Tranquebar,

106  Kalimai temples

at the foot of the Montagne des signaux. These kalimais have become real temples. The deities took place on the altar of Kali, where are placed pictures that represent Saï Baba, Shiva and the deities Ram and Krishna. The new urban temples are based on the transformation of the cult of the outside devoted to Kali into a cult of the interior, testifying to the emergence of an urban society, in which the relations between women and men, young/old, class/castes are in the process of undergoing a non-discriminatory approach. The control of renovated temples is now exercised without pre-established relationships of seniority, and class differences no longer follow ancient caste distinctions. The rise of so-called superior deities, associated with the power of Kali in the interior space of the temple, is a particularity of Mauritius. The same process of integrating new so-called higher divinities also appeared in some regions of India in 1937, 1965, 1966 under the influence of Gurus in a context differing from that of Mauritius. In Mauritius, it is in the very space of popular cults that such symbolic changes are recorded. It is known that the new temples are renovated under the influence of young people who show their difference by opposing the animal sacrifices generally practised in kalimais. This opposition does not take the form of a rupture but that of a re-appropriation of the popular beliefs to which an ideology of social openness is assigned: the external influences are included in the cult of Kali, itself. The shifting of Kali inside the temple joins the same process by which Brahma is situated towards external relations. These changes in the renovated cults symbolise the process of naturalisation of external influences on the dominant model of Mauritian development applied to the new international order. In this way the lower status groups have found a new positioning in the local social and political order. In summary, it can be said that the kalimais have undergone a series of internal transformations, the principle of which is to introduce in the space of the new temples or renovated kalimais male divinities formerly absent, around which instituted new ritual rules are opposing the vegetarians to non-vegetarians. Before becoming an inward cult, the cult of Kali had already partly passed under the influence of Brahmanic and Vedic ideologies. Some Kalimais such as those of Royal Road and the Vallée des Prêtres are today under this double influence. All of these symbolic changes show the existence of a new social sharing, emphasising the need for new alliances between different communities and castes at the time of the elections.

Networks and electoral strategies Electoral strategies and ritual clientelism The reversal of the dominant high-caste/low-caste balance in the Flacq region, to which constituencies Nos. 9 and 10 belong, cannot be understood apart from taking into account the indirect action of women in the area, recent political play and the important place they occupy in popular cults. Although the IndoMauritian woman does not engage in any political debate within her family, and despite her still adopting an attitude of total reserve, even if husbands, cousins,

Kalimai temples  107

uncles or brothers are engaged politically, her action in the private sphere of families can no longer be ignored in political life. Indeed, she helps to forge and break the networks of belonging through the rules of marriage, inheritance and the choice of religious education for children. In these different ways, she remains the privileged place of distribution of a number of useful votes in the elections. In the event of social and family conflicts, she puts into circulation her social power, to solve them through the organisation of kalimais rituals and/ or through the local community game in which more and more women are involved in the same way that a large number of them have entered professional life today. The strategies of the national federations go through local associations with the aim of using the statutory differences and the community preference at the time of the elections. We had the opportunity to analyse the groups of women members of the Arya Samaj society of the Camp de Masque Temple, which circulated the power of social networks. This is why, recently, women have been considered as determining actors of the electoral results to come. During the last two elections of 1997 and 2000, the various campaign agents of the national parties sought the support of women to whom they distributed many gifts such as cookware, televisions or small household electronics. They were treated equally with men who received land, employment contracts, taxi release, business permit, hotel contracts or money. This two-pronged approach both on men and women, to gain the sympathy of the voters, dates from the last by-elections of 1997. It was adopted by all the major parties, without exception. This strategy had a direct impact on the overthrow of the traditional Vaish group alliance with the MSM and MMM parties they had been loyal to since 1976. The Ravived candidate, under the PTR banner, was assured of Baboojee votes, and the Marazs acquired this political party. That is why the electoral agents of this candidate sought to win the sympathy of some of the Vaishs without whom the PTR could not win the elections. The distribution of electoral gifts was therefore made to their benefit. This gift-giving practice is based on the same principle of distribution found in popular cults regarding the management of internal conflicts within families. The nature of the offerings offered to the divinities, which belong to the popular religion, erases the conflicts about which the ceremony takes place. Similarly, the unequal distribution of gifts at the time of elections – according to differences in gender, community, caste, age or class – determines the desired balance of power regardless of the content of the political message conveyed by the different parties. In both the religious and political spheres, the quantitative play of offerings and their modes of attribution are decisive for the result of the ballot. The selection criteria for the distribution of gifts highlight the respective power of families in constituencies with close social composition and similar balances between families. It is therefore not surprising that electoral districts whose population is comparable in terms of community or caste population distribution, such as those of Pamplemousses, Triolet, Rivière du Rempart, Montagne Blanche, and Flacq, are subject to identical strategies from parties and cultural federations whose objective is to choose the most favourable constituency in terms of electoral weight, according to the interplay of cross-cultural, community and/

108  Kalimai temples

or ethnic influences. It should be noted that the strategy of some national federations, such as that of the Telugus studied in the second part, had the explicit goal of placing the sole ministerial candidate of the community at Rivière du Rempart. For this, the federation has implemented power relations and interests, based on a dialectic of the minority/majority in a given place to establish themselves as outsiders elsewhere. This strategy favouring inter-ethnic and intercaste relations at Camp de Masque was exploited at Rivière du Rempart, where the Telugu community enjoys a rather favourable position.

Interdependence and autonomy with regard to party strategies: constituencies No. 5, No. 7, No. 9 and No. 10 The Flacq region where we have focused the investigations is quite exemplary and exceptional, because it reflects the way in which local authorities are articulated within national political formations, through kinship networks built from generation to generation throughout the island. Flacq is at the centre of the existing relations between the northern and eastern regions: Triolet in constituency No. 5, Rivière du Rempart in constituency No. 7, Bel Air/Montagne Blanche in constituency No. 10. Constituencies Nos. 5 and 9 are the only ones to count the same proportion of the community population. They are composed of a majority of Vaishs and of Raviveds and Rajputs). As a result, each major party, if it wants to win the elections in constituencies Nos. 5 and 9, must present three candidates from the dominant Vaish, Ravived and Rajput groups. With regard to constituency No. 10, candidates who run in the different parties belong to the Maraz and/or Baboojee and Vaish or Muslim groups. The strategy of the major national parties differs in the following way: the PTR generally associates three candidates from the Marazs, Baboojees and Muslims while the MMM chooses Baboojees, Vaishs and Muslims. As for constituency No. 7, it necessarily includes two Vaish and Telugu candidates, given its demographic composition. Our study of kalimais shows the historical importance of large Muslim planters in the Camp de Masque area, Telugus in more recent times, and also the existence of a significant proportion of Maraz/Baboojee absentee owners who do not vote on the spot, but who have a determining influence on the vote of their parents remained on the initial settling place. Through women, who usually control the kalimais, games of contrary influences are exercised on the vote of the residents. There is a general unstable equilibrium relationship between the influence networks of the Baboojees/Marazs in constituency No. 10, where they are a majority and influential, as they are the powerful networks of the Vaishs, who are demographically dominant but not always significant in constituencies Nos. 5, 7 and 10. Finally, the Telugu influential networks still place an elected candidate and possible future minister for the north Constituency No. 7 and have an outsider role in the game of opposition relationships between Baboojees/Marazs and Vaishs. The Telugus always join with the Vaishs and the Raviveds. We thus note the existence of a great evolution of the casteist and ethnic game of the Flacq region, if we compare the electoral results

Kalimai temples  109

of the eight general elections of the three electoral districts which had an indirect influence on constituency No. 9 between 1967 and 2000. The Table 4.7 reveals that constituency No. 5 of Triolet is a region with a Hindu majority. There is a very small percentage of the general population, Muslims or other Indian minorities. It was a bastion of the PTR until 1982, supported by the lower Ravived and Rajput castes. If, today, this district is still very favourable to the PTR, it is following the reinforcement of the traditional alliance of the Vaishs with low castes. The other Baboojee/Maraz high castes still vote in favour of a PTR candidate, whether low-ranking Ravived, Rajput or Vaish. The progression of the MMM in the region has changed the alliances of high castes with low castes: when the MMM is allied to the MSM, it is the low-caste Raviveds who win with two Vaish candidates (1991 and 2000). Conversely, when the MMM candidate is allied to the PTR, there are two low castes, the Ravived and Rajputs who win with a Vaish. We note that the MMM candidates are all elected from the two most well-known groups of low castes. In any case, it is the Vaish candidates who have the majority of the votes. This situation reveals the casteist strategies of each of the high caste formations, Baboojees/Marazs and Vaishs. They vote exclusively for the candidate belonging to their own caste. In addition, the myth that the strategy of Pamplemousses/Triolet can only have elected representative future ministers, as was the case from 1967 to 1987, has proven unrealisable since 1991, to the point that today there are no more local elected representatives in the government. The very good score obtained by Navin Ramgoolam can thus be analysed as the pure product of a strategy of strengthening the caste, explaining ultimately the disappearance of elected representatives of low caste, since 1991, in this region. This pure casteist game of electoral district No. 5 is found partly in district No. 9 of Flacq/Bon accueil, at least until 2000. It is mainly composed of Vaishs and Raviveds. Muslims and Tamils ​​are very numerous but are not a majority. At that time in 1967, we observe that the Raviveds have no elected representatives despite their number, and that the PTR/IFB alliance has concentrated all the votes around Vaish and Baboojee candidates. At that time, the electoral game was not yet centred on a caste strategy, but rather on the concern of regrouping all the Indians. The caste differences were secondary, given the relative weight of the PMSD on the eve of independence. From 1976, the situation changed radically, the MMM places two candidates – Baboojee and Ravived – validating the latent division of caste existing between high and low castes. From 1976 to 2000, apart from the years 1983 and 1995 during which was played the rupture of the MMM with the PSM on the one hand and the change of alliance of the MMM with the PTR on the other hand, the Ravived, demographically dominant, have regularly placed two candidates, regardless of the alliances between the different parties MMM, MSM or PTR. In general, the Vaish were allied with the Ravived. Note that in 2000, the 3/0 obtained in favour of the MMM/MSM alliance was accompanied by a very high proportion of votes obtained by the Ravived candidate of the PTR. The Ravived totalled 13,337 votes, a score that could not have been achieved without the addition of the votes of Muslims and Creoles. ​

Election 1967

13,039 Jugnauth Lall (IFB) 8,519

Ramgoolam seewoosagur (PTR) 8,917

Modun, R. (PTR) 8,608

Ethnic/caste distribution

Voters Vaish Ahir

Vaish koyree

Ravived

Ramgoolam seewoosagur (PTR) 12,460 Gurburrhun, R. (PTR) 9,960

21,481

Election 1976

Koojoo, P. (MMM) 16,494

Ramjuttun, V. (MSM) 16,878

27,087

Election 1982

Gurburrhun, B. (PTR) 16,453

Ramjuttun, V. (MSM) 14,989

26,375

Election 1983

Gurburrhun, B. (PTR) 16,242

Ramjuttun, V. (MSM) 14,679

29,561

Election 1987

Ramnah, P. (MMM) 24,310

Ramgoolam, N. (PTR) 27,233

Jhurry Gianeshwar (MSM) 16,618 Ramgoolam, N. (PTR) 17,042 Koonjoo, P. (MMM) 15,788

29,153

Election 1995

32,231

Election 1991

TABLE 4.7 Community distribution of elected candidates in constituency No. 5 Pamplemousses/Triolet

Hurnam, D. (MMM) 17,680

Jhurry Gianeshwar (MSM) 19,190 Ramgoolam, N. (PTR) 19.914

35,527

Election 2000

110  Kalimai temples

Kalimai temples  111

The table 4.8 demonstrates the district No. 9 Flac–Bon-Accueil like that of Triolet/Pamplemousses (district No. 5) cannot see the emergence of a candidate Vaish candidate if he is not supported by the votes of the low castes. However, these votes are split according to their Ravived or Rajput origins, which can in any circumstance overthrow the majority tendency of the high castes, whatever the alliance contracted between the national parties This region is in the process of emancipation of the casteist and ethnicist game as evidenced by the score obtained by the Ravived candidate ranked in fourth position. To obtain this score, it took the votes of minority groups in the region as well as those of the general population and Indo-Muslims to add to those of their own caste. Note that Flacq/Bon Accueil, unlike Triolet, has become a region of candidates all potential ministers. The three elected candidates became ministers in the year 2000 occupying the post as Minister of transport and marine, cooperatives, and productivity. He has always been elected in the constituency of Flacq/ Bon Accueil No 9 and was closest to power under the PTR government. ​ When looking at the Montagne Blanche-Grande Rivière Sud-Est (GRSE) which is in electoral division No. 10, the results recorded between 1976 and 1995 brought to power mainly Baboojees and secondarily the Marazs and Vaishs. The electoral game as shown in Table 4.9, whether based on the MMM/MSM political alliance from 1976 to 1995 and 2000, or on the MMM/PTR alliance in 1995, does not change the electoral situation, which is balanced by the presence of a Muslim. They were the “best losers” in 1976 and they were constantly reelected from 1982 to 2000. The casteist strategy of the Baboojees/Marazs is countered, in this constituency by the votes of Vaishs and Raviveds, which outweigh each other if we consider the recent evolution of the elections that brought to power, since 1995, a Ravived candidate, whose score is equivalent to more than 24,000 votes, under the banner of the PTR. From the moment when the great community and caste balances start to escape the strategies of the major national parties and federations, as we see in constituencies Nos. 9 and 10, we are entitled to assume that society is worked in depth by contradictions of another nature than that of caste. However, we have seen that, in the field of representations and rituals, we are witnessing a “great disturbance,” which topples scholarly religion, like popular religion, in the camp of religious syncretism, under various influences of movements from the outside.7 Until the eve of Independence, the process of national political integration closely followed the institutionalisation processes of the major federations, which experienced class divisions in their segmentation processes. Society has gradually been subdivided and, if we look more closely, economic inequalities have always been underlying the assertion of an emerging autonomy within a community or a caste. ​ We have seen in this chapter that the status of the popular cults is very variable according to the degree of evolution of the rural society which has been more and more attracted to the cities, as evidenced by the emergence of the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation. In 1959. The first board of directors was made up exclusively

Rajputs

Raviveds

Vaishs: Koyree

Jeetah Ramnath (IFB) 10,420

Daby Chatra (MSM) 17,916

27,801

Elections 1982

Lochun Ravin (MMM) 16,980 Gungah Dwarka Gungah (MMM) 9,703 Dwarka (MMM) 16384

Bussawon K. (PTR) 9.191

Jundoosing, K. (MMM) 8,673

Jhurry, K. (PTR) 3,728 Gujadhur, R. (PTR) 10,293

Vaishs: Ahir

22,460

14,937

Total voters Marazs Baboojees

Elections 1976

Elections 1967

Ethnic/caste distribution

Seetaram Iswurdev (MSM) 16,795

Daby Chatra (MSM) 16,899

Kimcurun (MMM) 16,071

27,007

Elections 1983

Seetaram Iswurdev (MSM) 16,817

Boyjeenauth Vijay kumar 17,288

31,112

Elections 1987

TABLE 4.8 Community and caste distribution of the elected representatives of constituency No. 9

Neewoor Roodrasen (PTR) 17,198 Guttee Rajnarain (MSM) 17,278

Bachoo Anil Kumar (MSM) 19,425

32,137

Elections 1991

Guttee Rajnarain (MSM) 18,048

Gunness Ajay (MMM) 21,889 Boyjeenauth Vijay Kumar (PTR) 23,804 Gian Nath (PTR) 19,131

33,591

Elections 1995

Koonjoo Premduth (MMM) 19,771 Fowdar Sangeet (MMM) 21,268

Bachoo Anil Kumar (MSM) 24,210

37,217

Elections 2000

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Muslims

Raviveds Rajputs

Vaishs: Koyree

Fondhun(IFB) 7,956

Jagatsing, K. (PTR) 8,004

Boolell, S. (PTR) 9,850 Jaddoo, R. (MMM) 9,892 Goburdhun, J. (MMM) 9.623

Boolell, S. (PTR) 8,282

Baboojees

19,239

13,584

No. of voters Marazs

Election 1976

Election 1967

Ethnic/caste distribution

Asgarally, A. (MMM) 14,279

Jaddoo, R. (MMM) 15,389 Goburdhun, J. (MMM) 15,665

23,292

Election 1982

Kader Bayat (MSM) 11,813

Goburdhun, J. (MSM) 11,755

Boolell, S. (PTR) 11,826

22,916

Election 1983

Asgarally, A. (MMM) 15,052

Goburdhun, J. (MSM) 16,167

Boolell, S. (PTR)

29,519

Election 1987

Peerun, Z. (MMM) 15,718

Jaddoo, R. (MMM) 17,481 Goburdhun, J. (MSM) 16,836

30,448

Election 1991

Bundun, V. (PTR) 24,070 Peerun, Z. (MMM) 19,309

Beenick, R. (PTR) 24,469 Goburdhun, J. (MSM)

Election 1995

TABLE 4.9 Community and caste distribution of the elected representatives of constituency No.10 Bel Air/Montagne Blanche

Choonee, M. (MSM) 19,432 Daureeawoo, R. (MSM) 13,615

Gunnesh, A. (MMM) 17,877

Election 2000

Kalimai temples  113

114  Kalimai temples

of high-caste Baboojee/Maraz representatives, mostly large planters in the north such as Ramlugun, Tulsi, Seewraz, Ramlakan, etc. The north was the privileged place of the emergence of the temples as early as 1867 at the beginning of sugar trade while the east did not know this fast growing, and all the less so that the big planters of the east like Gujadhur have achieved their primitive accumulation in sugar from their northern properties. In contrast, our study of Camp Masque Pavé and Camp de Masque in the Moka/Flacq district showed that only recently had each village had its temple. This difference in the time of the mutation of the popular cults in scholarly religion of the north compared to the south-east is the sign of the uneven development of the regions. The first, the north, bears the mark of earlier urbanisation and the second, the east, still retains its rural vocation today, while recording a multiplication of small residential areas neither rural nor urban as the inhabitants come either from towns in Plaines Wilhems because they return to their places of origin, or from camps in the estates because of the economic redundancies of sugar employees or voluntary retirees (VRS). The actual decline of kalimais and the transformation of their practices do not necessarily indicate a decline in popular culture. It symbolises an order of events related to modernity that transfers the protection formerly provided by the divinities of kalimais at the same time as they entered the temples but in a second position. It appears that the family violence formerly symbolised in the cults is today the business of the legislator to solve the problems of society. There is no need to refer to divinities to resolve difficulties, the law is there to register and enforce any serious breach of the dignity of women, for example. If protection, emancipation or protest are the real reason for popular cults, these manifestations do not exhaust the meaning of religious practices that are in direct contact with local political and economic life. Moreover, the metamorphosis of urban kalimais into the syncretic form of scholarly religion gives a shattered and devalued image of popular cults. Does this mean that urbanisation, internationalisation and the opening of the country to the outside lead to a form of commodification of culture, a loss of cultural legacy left by the ancients? This may be true in part, but one should not take things on face value because if, undeniably, there is commodification and political instrumentalisation, that does not mean the same thing. These phenomena, which are found all over the world, also signify the presence of political social reorganising of which we have tried to give an account in this chapter. The new intercultural relations and social fragmentation observed in the ordering of the renovated kalimais as in the ordering of the new temples, the representations of which the deities are subject tend to erase the frontier from within and from outside. The symbolic reversals of pre-established orders have always been a sign of a possible overcoming of the statutory distinctions conveyed by the Hindu religion. This is why our attention focused under the specified and singular issues of symbolic oppositions between vegetarians/non-vegetarians, deities/demons, priests/wizards, men/women, sacred/profane, right/wrong, good/ evil in order to signify the relation from within to outside which is always the

Kalimai temples  115

product of an internal contradiction. Places of worship are always presented as a framework for the incorporation of difference, as we have seen in the unfolding of ceremonies and in the representations given of the deities who dialectically intervene in kalimais and temples. The long, comparative descriptions of places of worship and their manifestations enlighten new codes of behaviour in the power practices and the authority relations. If we look at the administrative authority, we see that it refers to the same mode of incorporation and naturalisation of differences as those used in cults to settle conflicts. The management and practice of cults are strangely comparable to the manner in which authority is exercised and decisions are made in representative institutions of the state. The homology of forms of management of religious institutions with those involved in state organisations is a significant fact of the society’s capacity for openness and innovation in various contexts such as the independence process or the current restructuring of the markets. Although a certain number of Mauritians have emigrated for fear of the effects of national independence on their living conditions, history shows that this was done at the least social cost. Similarly, the acceleration of the current economic restructuring to enter the mainstream of globalisation has played out so far through all kinds of bargaining practices that have mobilised the power of lineage groups, some of which identify with the caste and others mobilise in networks of cooperation to accompany the changes of situation of those who pay the high price of the globalisation of the markets. But the competition is tough. It has become front-end since the end of the Lomé agreements and the multifibre agreement. It is directly connected with European countries such as France which is ahead in techniques of communication, electronics and computers. This is what we will study in the next chapter.

Notes 1 We should say “sorority.” 2 Henrietta Moore is Professor of Anthropology and Deputy Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. In this passage, we take up part of the synthesis presented at the time of Pavitranand Ramhota’s thesis in 2004 at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilization (INALCO), under the direction of Claude Allibert, Professor at INALCO. 3 See bibliography Report of Mauritius Royal Commission 1909. London Printed for His Majesty’s Stationery Office by Eyre and Spottiswood Ltd. 135 pages. 4 The Rajput identity is known by a tradition “A king Pritiviraj Chawhan had lost the battle against Mohammed Gawri who was the leader of Afghanistan. All the king’s warriors were subjected to slavery and were assigned to cleaning job. One of the great warriors in India Ranamahapratabsingh reminded Mohammed Gawri that they were actually warriors of Kshastrya origin and not slaves. Contrary to the general belief in Mauritius, the Baboojees were not real warriors but it was actually the Rajputs.” That’s why in Mauritius the Rajputs although considered as low castes claim today their high caste origins, especially since this social group has many high-level professionals in all disciplines such as justice, education, health, etc. This group refuses any Brahmanisation of the popular cults; moreover, they add a suffix “singh” to mark their true identity of high caste. 5 Mauritian Militant Movement.

116  Kalimai temples

6 We coined the term “Hanumanisation” because, since 2005, when we no longer did field surveys, the Hanuman phenomenon has developed further, in particular because of the foundation of new places of residence. It is omnipresent and tends to erase the multiplicity of altar arrangements of deities in the temples. It is as if there is a movement of uniformity of beliefs and rituals, at the same time as there is a weakening of religious practice, particularly among young people, and rituals are becoming simpler. There is an inversely proportional relationship between the divinity’s visibility and religious fervour. The larger the Hanuman statue, the more colourful, the less the rituals are rich in symbols and the expression of the religious feeling, the less the liturgical calendar is followed by the faithful. Hanuman tends to erase all the other deities and beliefs that are organised around them. 7 According to the title of the book Le grand dérangement (2006). Initially, we have argued the term dérangement as conceptualised by Georges Balandier which better corresponds to the reality that we have just described.

5 THE NEW DEAL Religious and political transformation

The mutation of the popular cults of the north is different from that of Flacq for the social, historical and economic reasons mentioned in the preceding chapters. Not only was the process of emergence of the upper-class Hindu elite faster, but the process of concentration and mechanisation of the sugar establishments was almost completed in 1996 in the north, with the exception of Mon Loisir. If the kalimais have lost their effectiveness, it is the temples that have taken the federating role vis-à-vis the Hindu faithful and the kalimais became almost all quasi-familial private cults. The religious buildings in the north are, for the most part, temples dedicated to the higher divinities. Whenever they are not Hindu temples, one can also find multi-community religious spaces that bear the mark of social fractionation by the transformation of old sites, the introduction of new deities for the practice of various rituals corresponding to the religious affiliation of each of the social communities residing on the spot.

New places of worship in the north of the island: social fragmentation New kalimai and temple on Île d’Ambre: Redesign of the labour market We are not far from a village called Panchavati, a name given by Prof Basdeo Bissoondoyal to a small place of residence that did not have a village status in the 1980s. There lived Tamils and Hindus who worked in the cane fields of the great proprietor P.,1 whose property extended over more than 50 acres. ​

DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-6

118  The New Deal

FIGURE 5.1  The

old kalimai was placed under the chimney of the factory.

The old mill chimney and the “Summit textile” factory were owned by an Indian investor from India. This factory has closed, and some of the workers have already been dismissed, especially all the Chinese immigrant workers from China. The plant must be taken over by an Italian investor. Some of those that lost their jobs work in another factory in Rivière du Rempart, Jeanswear Co. Ltd, which belongs to a Franco-Mauritian Guillaume Desmarais and some of them worked in Goodlands in a textile factory which is owned by an Indian Mrs Shamila. In the sugar era, there was a kalimai, located, as in many sugar establishments, at the foot of the chimney at the back of the factory. It was abandoned for many decades following the displacement of the inhabitants, who settled in a place called Panchavati where a new place of worship was founded. Only the Tamil sirdar of the grand proprietor P., whose cane fields are located in front of the factory, still took care of the place. With the creation of the Summit textile factory, new workers came and the Hindus and Tamils re-established ​​ the old kalimai. They each practised their respective rituals in this same place. The space of the old kalimai then took care of the deities prayed to by the Tamils alongside ​​ the seven sisters. At some point, around 1995, a conflict erupted over the sacrifices of goats and pigs practised by the low castes, which are forbidden by Tamils. In 2003, the factory closed, the conflict became insoluble and the Hindus left the old kalimai to create a new one in front of the factory, along the royal road of Rivière du Rempart which leads to Goodlands. The Tamil sirdar, dismissed from his position as manager of the kalimai, went to see the big planter P. to ask him for a piece of land to do the prayer. The new places of worship, the kalimais and temples, are on the same side of the road, just in front of the factory chimney. ​

The New Deal 

FIGURE 5.2  The

119

new kalimai of Île d’Ambre.

The kalimai has no space other than the limits set at the altar and the guardian deities of the place. There is no clearance. In addition, the construction does not look like other cults of this type. The sister deities are not all present. There are Kali, Durga and Hanuman and other deities which enter three niches closed by windows. There is no Dhi, no Gowraya, no Sitla, no Baram. Inside there are no trees or flowers: concrete, concrete, nothing but concrete. Above, as a decoration, no doubt, red hats have been placed in such a way that it can be said that this building can never become a temple. The scale of the constructions, the divinities present or absent from the temple and kalimai spaces, the environment, all this suggests that the conflict between the Tamil community and the Hindu community of low caste resulted in a separation of the Hindus from Tamils. This is what can be deduced from the clear geographical separation of the two cults, while the area used for the construction of the Tamil temple is more important. The sirdar, close to the big planter, obtained the authorisation to build his temple on a portion of ground along the road, a space he organised by anticipating, in advance, the enlargement of the temple according to a limit drawn by a wire fence closing the place (Fig. 5.3 and Fig. 5.4).

FIGURE 5.3  The

new Tamil temple of Île d’Ambre.

120  The New Deal

The new temple Mariamen Siva Soopramanian Kovil was built using the walls of a former sugar storage house that lacked a roof. The path leading to the temple is asphalted, plants are in place for future deities from outside to whom specific prayers are addressed. The temple company is being registered with the Tamil Temples Federation in Port Louis after applying for membership. It is as if the Tamils had federated around their deities those of other communities in the temple space. The deities who were placed in the centre on the altar are: Ganesh, Krishna, Amen, Muruga and Shivalingum. The first two deities are great Hindu deities; the second Amen and Muruga are the proper Tamil deities. The mutuality of Tamils with ​​ Hindus is marked by the presence of Shivalingum which brings together the divinities of the two communities according to the genealogical place of their respective deities in the fictitious kinship of the major divinities of the two groups. In the outer space of the temple all the guardians of the principal divinities were present, those whose harmful action is the most dreaded. The balance of relations between the two communities, Hindu and Tamil, seems fragile enough to require the strict control of divinities belonging to the order of witchcraft.

FIGURE 5.4  Deities

located in the outer space of the temple.

This desire to integrate all social groups into the central place of a temple is a general practice known to the Tamil community. We will see later that this same desire for openness to different deities of the Tamil religion is a particular way of being necessary to others, as happened in Mahébourg in a context of conflict relating to the installation of new workers employed in the city. The ritual opposition of Tamils with ​​ Hindus of Sanatanist belief was settled by the separation of places of worship. The newly built kalimai is not a traditional one, judging by its architectural configuration on the one hand, and the absence of Dhi and Baram among the deities on the other. Nor is it a temple and will never be one. We can see that this place of prayer, the place of which is limited to a minimum, is constructed in such a way that it is now impossible to practise the rites of animal sacrifice. The conflict is solved by incorporating compatible rituals and voluntary and reciprocal separation from those who lapsed into religious

The New Deal 

121

orthodoxy while nothing prevents this new kalimai from being a place of informal practices like those of praying to five deities,2 the number five representing the world of witchcraft. Moreover, looking inside, we wonder where we could put the seven milk pots of the seven sisters on a tiled floor and without any space to move. Let us remember that the milk must be boiled and placed under seven small fireplaces, carefully prepared with small wood, of a section is slightly larger than the earthen pots. Moreover, the construction is very neat and definitive. All the added ornaments restrain space; the kalimai concrete fence, the tiling on the floor, all these expensive architectural elements are superfluous in a cult of seven sisters. Conversely, the new temple seems to have been placed there to tell the various ritual communities living on the spot “look: we have done all that for you!” but at the same time it seems to say “now that you have everything, do what you wish but don’t do what we do not want, more precisely the Baharia Pujas with animal sacrifices.” Otherwise, it says “look at our kovil, there is everything you need to pray. The temple is open to everyone, come, come, you are welcome you on the other hand, the concreted space of kalimai, located in full view of everyone, is nonsensical in regard to everything we learned about Kali worship.” The meaning of all this is obviously social, but it is also political and economic. Employees of the textile industry are now praying in a temple where it is expected that the different communities of prayer can come. Note the presence of Durga in place of that of Kali and that of Krishna who has no place in a Tamil temple. Having not been able to attend any ceremony and knowing that the inauguration of the religious buildings was to be done in too long delay as regards the present, we will draw the general political electoral frame of the transformation at work by reconstituting the history of community and caste balances during the successive elections from 1967 to 2003 in the particular context of company restructuring in the sugar trade and the local textile industry. We will see that the symbolism of the organisation of the temple space and the social differentiation of the kalimai from the temple reflected the significant changes in the inter-ethnic and caste relations that occurred in 2003 during the by-elections organised in the constituency No. 7, when the outgoing Prime Minister became the President of the Republic of Mauritius. The opposition of the Hindu and Tamil community strategies is particularly clear in the field of local production relations which have led to changes in the political balance of power where the former plays the preferential integration of the caste and the latter play their part on the intercommunity preferential relations of the involved Indian minorities and on the internal conflict of the caste of the Indians of the North.

New relations plantation/industrialisation and strategies of the minority groups in Constituency No. 7 The situation of Île d’Ambre is different from that of other areas studied in the Flacq districts, east of the island. It brings into conflict the former labourers

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of different communities and castes, who experienced unemployment problems accentuated by the remaining in the area of those who became unemployed after the closure of “Summit textile.” The Tamils are ​​ the traditional political allies of the great planter Prayag for whom they work, one of whom plays the role of sirdar. This big planter is also a former PTR member under whose banner he stood as a candidate in the election. The differential contractual force of the Tamils ​​is measured by their ability to gather temporary labour at the time of harvesting, mainly Hindu and Telugu labourers, working partly for their property as labourers and partly on the land of the large private plantation. Hindu labourers in the large plantation and/or formerly on the heritage lands of the shut-down sugar company have become, for some of them, employees of the textile factory that has settled next to the old mill. These workers mingled with newcomers attracted by the demand for on-site work. The textile factory closed down and the workers experienced a period of long or short unemployment, which brought them temporarily closer to the large active plantation, which employed seasonal workers during the cutting season. The economic dependence of the employees of the factory was all the more harshly felt as, in agricultural work, economic redundancies had never been known until now. The Tamils, because of their emergent position in the production relations of the large private plantation, some of them being themselves planters have become “agricultural entrepreneurs” as were the sirdars before the independence of the country, are comparable to a “rural middle class.” It is different from the “urban working class” totally dependent on the labour market. That is why the employment situation led to the Île d’Ambre on a symbolic continuity between the faithful of the temple and the faithful of the kalimai, who each agreed to have their own cult. On the other hand, in Mahébourg, the economic inequalities being more clear-cut, the symbolic break was more complete between the Tamil and Hindu communities. The position of the Tamils ​​was more secure on the Île d’Ambre vis-à-vis the other communities than in Mahébourg where caste domination was radical. The unifying position of the Tamils ​​on Île d’Ambre was further strengthened by the long-standing political solidarity with the big planter, who has held several parliamentary terms under the banner of the PTR. By becoming the great organisers of the community integration, the Tamils​​ simultaneously strengthened their internal relations so that they had the preeminent place in the symbolic order of the temple represented by the organisation of the deities installed in the temple. This social function of bringing together groups of different origins assumed by the Tamil community in the space of the temple is the exact translation of their electoral strategy, based on the valorisation of the alliances of the minority groups to make the difference with respect to the Northern Hindus demographically majority if they had grouped all the voices. ​

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Percentage 01 11

19

5 0

5

58 Buddhist

Total Chrisan

Total Hindu

Marathi Hindu

Tamil Hindu

Telugu Hindu

Islam

Other & N. Stated

GRAPH 5.1  Ethnic

distribution of the population of Rivière du Rempart.

According to the Graph 5.1, it has been observed that constituency No. 7 consists of a majority of 60,000 Hindu population against 15,000 of general population, and a minority group 6111 Tamil population and 4636 of Telugu population The total population is nearly 100,000 inhabitants. High caste Hindus (Vaishs) and low castes voted in 2000 and 2003 for the PTR/PMXD alliance. It is therefore the low-caste Ravived and the Vaish who imposed the new electoral situation of this traditionally won constituency to the MMM/MSM alliance. What is the social meaning of this political reversal? If one looks at the Table 5.1 of the evolution of the community distribution of the elected representatives of the constituency No. 7 from 1967 to 2000, this one regularly opposes the Vaish groups, the demographically majority as compared to the Baboojee/Maraz caste groups. This situation weakens them in the neighbouring constituency No. 10 while they are a minority in No.7 and regularly opposed to the Vaish groups. This opposition of the two Indian groups, the northern group with a relative demographical majority and the southern one was favourable to the game of the minorities by bringing to power the minority Telugu from 1983 to 1991 and in 2000 in the constituency No 7. Therefore, each election from 1967 to 2000 placed this region among the best supporters of the outgoing minority, regardless of the alliances between the national parties. Until 2000, constituency No. 7 could be described as “politically correct” as long as it embraced or anticipated the alliance that would come to power. When the PTR was allied to the MMM, the expected results were balanced at 3:1 Vaish, 1 Tamil and 1 Ravived (1995 situation). But, if, as

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in 2000, the MMM was allied with the MSM, in this case the minority game by which the Tamils ​​and Telugus tried to ensure the triumph of one of their candidates to become “best losers” elsewhere had no efficiency. This is what happened in 2003 when the Prime Minister, outgoing deputy of the region, took the position of President of the Republic, so that by-elections were held at No. 7 where he had been nominated for elections. In 2003, the ethnic preference was general on the side of the PTR, as for the MSM/MMM and all the more so since the general population always refers, since 1976, to the alliance PTR/PMSD. Voters of No. 7 have electoral behaviour so predictable that they do not count in the strategies of the national parties. The difference is, then, around the transfer of the votes of Hindu minority groups. This is why the two opposing alliances presented the same ethnic equilibrium. They both had a Vaish candidate, a Telugu candidate and a Ravived candidate. The score was no longer 3/0 but it became 2/1 (two Vaishs and one Ravived). It was the minority Telugu groups on the side of the MMM/MSM and Tamils ​​on the PTR/PMXD side that made up the majority of the two Vaishs, elected from opposite political sides and from the different Ahir caste in favour of the MSM and Koyree in favour of the PTR. The winner of the upcoming election competition will now be the one who will go beyond caste division by practising the language of “unity in ethnic diversity.” The same strategy was used by the political opponents in 2003, but it was the PTR that was the winning candidate, bringing together the voices of the Tamil minority groups and Telugus. The homogeneity of the behaviour of the Baboojees/Marazs who are the same extended family, so-called la liane (creepers), as opposed to the internal division of the Vaish in Ahirs and Koyrees did the rest. It can be tentatively concluded that in this constituency the criteria of ethnic preference and caste play dialectically and contradictorily in the power relations engaged. They are not about the individual but the social group. We cannot say at Piton/Rivière du Rempart chaque zacot protège so montagne as they say in constituencies Nos. 5, 9 or 10. It is rather in a situation of mutual power relations of the win/win-type situation that characterises a perpetual balance of tensions between the protagonists. The sirdar, who is also the Tamil priest of the new temple, is aware of this reality which he plays according to the rules. Thus the Tamils, by voting PTR, strengthen their social proximity to the boss “big planter” P. They also show their ability to bring together and unite minorities. The foundation of the Tamil temple symbolically translates this situation of community openness and local caste. The local power of Tamils is ​​ measured by their ability to federate others. This is why the results of the votes in constituency No. 7 largely depend on the choice made by the minority groups, which are the framework for the possible overcoming of the community and caste balances traditionally admitted, while at the same time working on their own objective of having a Telegu member of parliament as a potential minister in Rivière du Rempart under the “best loser” system. The Telugus have an objective function of “outsiders” in the opposition between the Baboojes/Marazs and Vaishs.

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It should be noted that the Telugus are allied with the Vaishs/Koyrees, who are allied politically with the low Ravived caste, while the Baboojees/Marazs are allied with the Vaish Ahirs, allied themselves with the low castes Rajputs. The political influence of the Tamil temple under construction is of a political nature in that the community can federate, in any case, the minorities without being itself a stakeholder in local electoral issues, because the Tamils have no chance of placing one of their candidates in this constituency. They are invariably allied with the PTR, which represents for them the best guarantee of maintaining their pre-eminent position in the estate of the large plantation. The political situation of the years 1995–2000 seems to have proved them right, because the PTR/ MMM alliance in power, during this period, was neither based on a community ideology nor on the preference of caste, which was always opposed by the MMM since the origins of its foundation. The high and low Hindu castes are separated all the more easily as the two Vaish groups, the Ahirs and Koyrees, are socially and politically opposed: the former giving sometimes the political primacy to the low castes, sometimes to the high castes according to their preferential attachment to the PTR or to the MSM. ​ The versatility of alliances between national parties, the ideological weakening of caste barriers, all these situations have either strengthened the political solidarity of the community type that has been associated with the withdrawal of some cultural federations/associations, or opened up community relations favouring the segmentation of family branches and their networks. The mainly community-based Tamil community is following its own path by violating its own rules in certain paradoxical situations where they are the obligatory mediators for the relationships that exist between social minorities. The practice of inter-culturality is not necessarily contradictory with respect to purely community interests because it is at the national level that the electoral power of the Indian minorities is measured. As for the strategy of the Telugus, we find the same symbolism on Île d’Ambre as in Camp de Masque or the federation Mandiram; the Telugus have been very active and innovative in this region where they have parents who live in the village. It is known that the Telugu federation favours the development of new amourou3 rituals or in districts where there are active Telugu settlements. The new rituals’ organisation and the foundation of new temples follow community strategies implemented at the national level to take advantage of them in certain areas of the island where the community is politically well placed vis-à-vis power alliances between parties.

The kalimais of the Daruty establishment of Plaine des Papayes: Permanence and decadence of the ancient kalimais The lands of the former Daruty Mill are part of the Saint Antoine Sugar Company, the largest in the north of the island and the most fully mechanised for cutting today. We went to visit the old kalimais of the region for the first time 1993/1994

11,160

Ramnarain, H. (PTR) 8,282 Gurburru, B. (PTR) 8,084 Virasawmy, S. (PTR) 8,062

Number of voters Vaish Ahir

Vaish Koyree

Telugus

Ravived

Election 1967

Ethnic/ caste distribution

Virasawmy, S. (PTR) 8,052

Jugnauth, A. (MMM) 16,973,

Jugnauth, A. (MMM) 7,670 Jewoolall, R. (PTR) 8,341 Gokhool, D. (MMM) 14,969 Utchana, M. (MMM) 14,816

20,391

Election 1982

21.051

Election 1976

Ganga, D. (MSM) 13,683 Utchana, M. (MSM) 13,169

Jugnauth, A. (MSM) 13,620

19,864

Election 1983

Ganga, D. (MSM) 16,768 Utchana, M. (MSM) 14,852

Jugnauth, A. (MSM) 16,889

26,903

Election 1987

Ganga, D. (MSM) 14,125 Utchana, M. (MSM) 14,021

Jugnauth, A. (MSM) 16,734

35,461

Election 1991

Rampersad, R. (PTR) 16,999 Meenowa, J. (MMM) 17,476 Virasawmy, S. (PTR) 8,052

28,277

Election 1995

TABLE 5.1 Community and caste breakdown of elected representatives in constituency No. 7 piton/Rivière du Rempart

Meenowa, J. (MMM) 16,198 Yerrigadoo, R. (MSM)14,444

Hookoom, B. (PTR) 17,179

Jugnauth, A. (MSM) 18,760

31,340

Election 2000

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and returned in 2004 to compare with the previous occasion from what we had registered in Moka/Flacq. There is no renovation in the north nor even any significant transformation of these places of worship into temples. There is only an indirect relationship between the movement of kalimais and the possible recovery of the land surrounding the new places of worship for the celebration of Kali rituals. This is what we noticed when we visited the kalimais under construction in 2004, located on land which was donated by the Daruty property, replacing the land they were on when we visited them in 1993 and that we could not find, so much was the change in the local geography. The space is completely reconfigured around the renovation of the ruins of the old mill and its ancillary buildings. Luxury villas have been built in the area around the mill, a landscaped garden has been designed around the ruins of the mill where are scattered on the lawn, flower groves, coconut trees and other fruit trees. Eventually, the place will be closed by a wall, the entrance will not be as free as it was before when there were only cane fields around an abandoned mill. ​

FIGURE 5.5  The

old mill at Daruty.

FIGURE 5.6  Garden

landscape around the ruins of the mill.

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First kalimai of Daruty: Bellevue-Pilot, a place of memory preserved in the state. The oldest of all the kalimais of Bellevue-Pilot (Fig. 5.7) witnessed a dramatic event at the time we visited it and, as a result, we knew that it would never be renovated due to the violence of the events of which this place was the setting. Work began in 1992, and the truck driver’s son who was bringing the equipment was crushed by the vehicle’s rear wheel, causing his death on the spot. The inhabitants were very affected by this tragedy and then considered that what was the cause of the misfortune should not undergo modification. Thus, those who wanted to re-orient the altar of Kali, without performing a ritual to ask permission from the goddesses, because they judged that it was misguided with respect to the sun, understood that we do not hustle with impunity the ordering of things in a kalimai. It was decided that the kalimai would stay as it was originally. The only intervention that was made on the site was to erect a lava stone wall, as seen in Fig. 5.7. Our informants presented the many species of trees and plants that fill the place of worship with a beaten earth floor, telling us that they are honoured as deities. Shiva is placed on the small altar to the left of the photograph to protect Kali. By his quality of husband, he cannot be on the central altar in the presence of the seven sisters. Trees like Neem, Tulsi and Gulaiti flowers share Kali’s quality of “mother.” They are major deities because they each have a specific genealogical relationship with Kali. A specific song is dedicated to each of these goddesses. What about the more recent kalimai, once renovated and now displaced, because people no longer live in the same place having changed residence?

FIGURE 5.7  Kalimai

of Bellevue-Pilot.

Second kalimai Daruty property: Plaine des Papayes, witness of departures to the city after closure of the mill. The head of the establishment around 1880, Mr. Roussette donated the portion of land where the kalimai was located before selling and fragmenting his property. At that time, the Hindus planted the neem which is the most venerated tree in the kalimais under whose shade the deities are protected. The leaves of this tree

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are offered in cults to the seven sisters. A particular sacred song is reserved for him, as for the Gulaiti tree with its white flowers and the venerated Tulsi plant. Other deities are placed individually in the kalimai space. They each have their own altar and correspond to the different statutory groups who prayed in this place of worship. The second kalimai of the Daruty property is located at Plaine des Papayes as shown in Fig. 5.8 and differs from the previous one because eight deities were placed on the altar and not seven which is the rule. The presence of an additional deity, where the seven sisters are, refers to the hypothesis of a major social change, which must have occurred at the time the old Daruty Mill closed. The priestess of the place will tell us that the eighth deity represents a brother of the seven sisters. Here, Bairo – this is the name of the eighth deity – actually represents the power of Shiva known as the husband of Kali. This novelty introduced in this kalimai is the sign of the existence of changes in rituals dedicated to Kali and corresponds to a new balance of community relations that were established at the time of the closure of the mill.

FIGURE 5.8  Kalimai

of Plaine des Papayes.

The Daruty kalimai in Papaya Plain has eight deities. The eighth is placed very slightly behind the seven sisters and on the left. In front, one might think that there is another deity, but it is a tin in which one puts oil to lit the earthen lamp. The presence of Shiva, in the form of Bairo, deity placed to the left of Fig. 5.8, slightly apart but in line with the seven sisters, is an indicator of the social economic changes that took place, when the village Fonds du Sac was formed where the faithful of the kalimai reside. The gangs of workers from the old mill who lived in the camp grouped themselves in villages according to their kinship relations and their preferential alliances. Those who did not have the means to become small landowners, especially at Fonds du Sac, erected this new kalimai, different from the old one, to the extent that Bairo, the symbolic equivalent of Shiva, is considered as Kali’s brother for he could not have been placed on the

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same altar as Kali had he been a husband. The transgression of the rule that forbids Shiva from being on the altar of the kalimai, the fact that he is not on a small side altar, to protect the place as it is his role, the fact that he is instituted as Kali’s brother, suggests that the social group that founded this kalimai has sought to differentiate itself clearly from other groups by practising witchcraft. Their difference is expressed through Bairo, to whom, after the seven sisters, there are special gifts: gulaïti flowers, coconut, fruits such as bananas, apples and oranges.​

FIGURE 5.9 

Daruty kalimai.

The third Daruty kalimai is located in the area of the former Bellevue-Pilot mill. It is indestructible due to the presence of ancestors symbolised by the roots of the tree more than a century old. In addition, the altar of Kali is surrounded by a wall of stones and not concrete as is the custom today. Only the elders of the place continue to worship Kali and the seven sisters The difference thus instituted is, without a doubt, the product of a split with the other social groups practising the ritual of animal sacrifice. The informants of the place were clear enough that we could affirm that this change of form was identifiable with a change of content relative to the ambivalence of the local relations in permanent tension because of latent conflicts always ready to burst but controlled symbolically by the group of the faithful through the introduction of a new ritual. One goes first to Kali, then to Bairo who is not mentioned until the end of the ceremony. The inversion of the order of precedence of the deities emphasises the possible reversal of the relations between men and women concerning the management of the place of worship corresponding to the new equilibrium within the families that left in order to get closer geographically to the successful schools. They are called “Star Schools” because they have the highest success rates and the best rankings at the end of the national CPE competition presented at the time of transition from primary to secondary school. The fear which the Bairo deity is surrounded, in the event that the rites are not followed to the letter, this fear of doing wrong is a guarantee of sufficient protection for the residents to avoid the presence of unwelcome people, to the exact extent to which a stranger to the ritual does not venture into this place.

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Third kalimai called Daruty, witness of an old Hindu and Creole conflict today deserted The third and last old kalimai of the old Daruty estate (Fig. 5.10) is located near the Bellevue-Pilot windmill which belonged to Mr. Roussette. It is a kalimai of nearly 100 years, and it is the approximate age of the tree under whose protection it is placed. It is today deserted and little frequented. Young people are no longer interested in this cult. In front of this kalimai of Plaine des Papayes, the presence of the high-caste big planters of the place is marked by the existence of ritual objects in a small abandoned house located opposite, on the other side of the road and by the presence, in this place, of the deity Brahma. Regarding this deity, it has been said that Brahma has supernatural powers. He was associated with Dhi in the kalimai space, and moved after a misfortune, a sign of a conflict that would have occurred between the Hindu and Creole community about the mill lands and the appropriation of surrounding lands.

FIGURE 5.10  The

place where was installed the altar of Brahma.

Here we see when the Creole woman died, she asked to be buried where she had lived. All the villagers then came to pray to her here because she became the guardian of the village. Afterwards, priest Tulsi built a house to gather the deities Baram and Dhi. There was a story that is told saying that Baram killed a Creole woman. In this story, Creole is represented by Dhi. The house is on the ground of Mr Bissessur, there is an altar in it. Now this altar is on the property of Mr.Tulsi who bought it from Mr Bissessur. Misfortune has reached both Creole and Hindu families. The daughter of the Creole family died and Dhi was consecrated to her while the son of the Hindu family fell ill and was cured only after the foundation of the Baram altar. This story about this kalimai site reminds us of the intensity of the relationships that

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these rituals were once the scene, these being intercommunity relationships in this case. But this place of worship is today deserted by agricultural workers. Only the kalimais founded by the great planters as a sign of their success remain, and those built by the faithful to thank the deities to whom they attribute their earthly success. ​

FIGURE 5.11  The

association Dhi and Baram.

There is a small stone on the floor next to Baram. Dhi represents Christians in this kalimai, as opposed to Hindus, represented by Brahma and Kali.

Private kalimais: heritage issues and control of the labour force In this case, the kalimai usually carries their family name like that of Ramburun at Saint Julien d’Hotman. Sometimes, and this is the most common case, the kalimais of agricultural workers on the estate of a large planter have been renovated thanks to donations of land and money that he has made. Through these donations, planters seek to attract labour for work on their fields. An overview of the religious sites of the north leads to the conclusion that the kalimai renovation practice is not today the priority of cultural religious actions in the region. For there have been for a long time two Hindu temples, Gokoola founded in 1867 in Piton and the temple of Triolet founded in 1869. There remains finally few kalimais under construction, and when it occurs, their construction is due to reasons outside the lives of families. Renovation and relocation were made necessary as a result of major development works, as is the case in the area of the ​​ former Daruty Mill. The two kalimais that we could not find in 2004 are being rebuilt on other sites that were granted land by the owners. Land issues related to the reconstruction and relocation of new kalimais to Plaine des Papayes. The first piece of land is along a muddy dirt road, difficult to reach and virtually invisible from the road from Petit-Raffray to Port Louis. One wonders if the work done is indeed about the creation of a place of worship. Would not it be rather an alibi for the large planters of Plaine des Papayes who seek to gain

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ownership of the land, to build new residences and expand their concessions when the neighbouring lands will no longer be necessarily destined to sugar cane. The former Plaine of Papayes kalimai was located (moving the framed note) in the fields of cane, very old and neglected. Work on the Daruty property has resulted in the relocation of the old kalimais to a larger area corresponding to the scale of the work. A true temple will be built if one judges by the quality of the divinities bought in anticipation of their installation in the temple. They are deities like Sai Baba, Durga, Hanuman, Ram, Sita and Kali who were chosen. As a result, no animal sacrifice can be practised. This temple is the symbolic expression of the social identity of the groups of residents, future adepts. ​

FIGURE 5.12  Displacement

of the Plaine des Papayes kalimai.

The second displaced site of an ancient kalimai is the land of which was reserved by the Daruty property in a pine forest area, along a dirt road that immediately looks like a temple. It is the Fonds du Sac company that supports the operation. The faithful of this future temple are low-caste agricultural workers if we judge by the choice of deities who will be installed in the temple. ​

FIGURE 5.13  The

goddess Kali of the new kalimai.

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From the outset, this kalimai is designed as a temple dedicated to Kali and the importance of the construction work (Figure 5.14) undertaken for this temple suggests that the challenge of this new place of worship was to claim the surrounding land where will be built, eventually, private homes as was the case, in 1992 in Mahébourg, during the renovation of the kalimai which has today become a temple. One can sensibly wonder if the land challenge is not the decisive factor in this temple building operation. ​

FIGURE 5.14  The

temple under construction is called Kalimata Mandir.

From this presentation of the ancient kalimais of the Daruty establishment and the observation of the new constructions undertaken by the companies of Plaine des Papayes and Fond-du-Sac show that the north evolves differently from the region of Flacq in the east by the edification of temples or quasi-temple of Kali, a quasi-general alienation of the ancient kalimais while the two oldest temples of Triolet and Phuliar are the more general frame of the temporal/spatial historical references of the relations resulting from the national independence acquired in 1968 but prepared since 1930 with the founding of the PTR. The new places of worship under construction refer directly to the transformation of the labour and land markets which constitute the real stakes of the symbolisation of the new state/society relations already there and in the process of being legitimised. The oldest popular places of worship, however, retain their original historical function of having been places of political territorial inscription of past relationships which can reappear at any time according to the circumstances, as for example, the conflict/solidarity that has taken place between the Hindu and Creole kalimai of Bellevue-Pilot. Today abandoned, these ancient places of worship can serve as a framework in the challenge of those among the residents of the villages who remained on the spot and do not integrate the new societies formed for the construction/renovation of the relocated cults, marking for some the actual cleavage existing between large and small planters. What is the general political and economic meaning of the newly established state/society relations? What are the founding principles of an emerging Indo-Mauritian society?

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The New Deal The spatial projection of the kalimais in renovation the more and more central function of the temples, whether old and new, manifest themselves as a mode globally adapted to the specificity of the ways by which the Indo-Mauritian society operates, providing an answer to the constraints exerted by the markets – work and land markets – which leads to a new demographic distribution of populations. From a modernity (new kalimais, new temples) to another (industrial restructuring sugar and textile companies, and land development), an ineluctable process of individualisation is developing which, by the layoffs, the new modes of access to the land, generates new social inequalities according to the benefits that accompanied the redundancies as a result of joint negotiations between the State, industrial companies and employee representatives. The former employees redundant in the sugar industry have now cut the umbilical cord with the sugar establishments. They know what they have lost but not what they will find, or how they will convert within the new local economic and political landscape. More difficult is the situation of textile employees who are often dismissed without compensation. The multiplication of new temples has a general significance which is part of the new role of the State in directly intervening in production and trade. We will study the general process of individualisation, of social segmentation engaged through the intermediation role of the land and financial exchanges of the parastatal Sugar Investment Trust (SIT)4 which reveals the newly established organic relations between the State and civil society.

General sense of the multiplication of new temples: new land and financial issues The main change in the country in relation to years of immediate independence comes from the new role taken by the state in social and economic life. We are no longer in the days of colonisation and the liberal social and economic model is no longer adapted to the era of internationalisation of markets. The state is increasingly asserting itself as a key stakeholder. This is the case in the area of ​​negotiations between the state representatives, the employees and the bosses at the time of the recent sugar merging to increase the profitability of the factory, reduce the reduced labour costs through mechanisation and to invest in other sugar production units. This economic policy has been prepared and implemented, in view of the opening since 2005, of the sugar market to the international market. The added value of sugar production is now mainly industrial, and the factories have to run at full capacity if they want to make economies of scale, for example those achieved at FUEL, which has been running at full capacity since its concentration on Mon Loisir and its separation from the now autonomous group of Medina. However, the concentration process of the factories is not yet complete. It must bring the Mauritian sugar industry to a level of competitiveness equivalent to the largest producing countries in the world, such as Brazil and India. A number

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of companies are closing, others are extending their production areas by buying African sugar estates, while Mauritian farmers and sugar workers are being dismissed in large numbers. Thus, the company FUEL which was recently absorbed by the company Mon Loisir dismissed some 30% of its staff. Illovo, when it closed down, sold some 125,000 acres of land, which the Sugar Investment Trust Land Holding (SIT) bought on behalf of the state, which fragmented the land before putting it on the land market at a price considered very competitive. The government has predefined the maximum area of ​​land authorised for purchase, of which it controls in advance the distribution, through the sale of shares that represent only a future purchase right. The final transaction takes place a few months after the fragmentation lands have been developed by SIT. At the end of these operations, no charge will have been collected by the State, neither from the SIT, nor from the private planters, nor from the industrialists. Whatever the sugar company that restructures or liquidates its exploitation, it is always the SIT which is the governmental authority charged to process, with the social partners, the fragmentations to be envisaged, the land purchases and sales of the individuals as well as the financial and real estate operations planned for carrying out an integrated development programme. Several examples can be given to identify the mode of intervention of this parastatal business. Thus, the donation of five hundred acres of land by the late Highlands company to the government for the construction of the cybercity in Ebene. In return for these donations of land, the company Illovo has been exempted from all compulsory taxes with a view to fragmentation – the “conversion tax,” the “vendors’ tax”5 and the registration fees, etc. These land taxes are considerable and would have been too heavy to bear in view of the size of the areas offered for sale. The Lonroe therefore sold 125,000 acres of its heritage lands, exclusive of tax, to a parastatal Sugar Investment Trust Land Holding (SIT), which bought “wholesale” all the fragmentation lands. In this exchange involving land, taxes and sale of shares, the players are the private company that sells, the State that regulates, the SIT that distributes and the small planters who buy and must be necessarily shareholders members of the SIT to acquire lands. An important player in sugar history disappears from the terms of trade, who is the big planter at the head of more than a hundred acres. We can anticipate that on a short or long term, there will be more large planters, both the system of inheritance will have done its job of dividing the land and the tax constraints that weigh heavily once applied the ownership right to all villages that have become indistinctly municipality. The first consequence of this major administrative reform in the country will be the systematic levy of land and housing tax for all, which was not the case for rural land so far. The relations that we have just mentioned between the social partners – the private and the public through the mediation of the parastatal organisation of the SIT – have a kinship with the history of the origins of the rooting in Mauritius that the Indian communities have known as a part of the first sugar establishments. From the beginning of the formation of the camps, there was a system of land donations on which religious sites were established. This tolerance

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established the same collective relationship to the land of the inhabitants as that instituted today by the State with the creation of the Sugar Investment Trust (SIT). This collective relation governed the kalimai societies, which settled on the lands of the sugar establishments. In the fragmentation of land, CIT cycles – which are the tontines, the cycles of yesteryear – were organised by members of kalimai societies. The popular cults were part of the individualisation of those who were at the origin of their organisation and later became the great planters. They founded, managed and controlled the first temples. If the SIT is a semipublic company through which the collective good is transformed into a private good through the land transactions for which it is responsible, this same mechanism played at the beginning of the sugar industry – at the time of the small and large grindings of the 1840s and 1860s – explaining the rapid development of a small and large independent plantation. By a twist of fate, the SIT and the CIT are pronounced in the same way in French. Cooperative credit societies which developed much later, from 1940 in the region of Moka/Flacq6, were built on the same model of relations as that of kalimais. Such a comparison between the functioning of an institution, which emerged in the 1990s and that of an original institution that founded the major social distinctions of Hindu society, is not used to compare the situations of yesterday’s sugar workers with those of today. This historical reminder serves to remind us that social transformation, which generally accompanies economic changes, always comes from afar and calls into question all the forms of integration – family, community, racial, ethnic or religious – that take place locally. But these two levels of transformation – cultural and economic – do not prejudice in any way the quality of the new relationships being built.

Emergence of a class of small owners and multiplication of cults dedicated to Hanuman Since 1990, Mauritius has taken the turning point of globalisation, the first effects of which are felt in the sugar and textile sectors. This movement leads to a vast redistribution of cultures, lands, labour and financial capital. Many sugarproducing establishments close like The Mount, Beau Plan, St Antoine in the north, Constance in the east, Britannia in the south, Highlands in the centre, Bel Ombre and St Félix in the west. The textile industry is not left out and it knows its first closures of factories since 1995. The rural and industrial landscape of Mauritius has been considerably modified. Thus, many lands, formerly under cane crops, have been converted into residential land. The former sugar worker camps must have disappeared in 2005 and residents of these camps are gradually settling into new residential spaces created for this purpose. In the same year, the municipalities were created throughout the island in place of the Districts Councils. This change is not a mere formality, as Mauritians will become taxpayers. They will have to pay the property tax. In the space of four years, the cybercity (Fig. 5.16) already occupies a prominent place between Réduit and

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Rose-Hill, in Ebène instead of the cane fields that belonged to Illovo. The Hitech Development Sector is launched by the State in association with the Government of India with which a partnership agreement has been reached. ​

FIGURE 5.15  The

cybercity of Ebène.

The sale of the Highlands and Mon Desert-Alma landholdings has been referred to as a “land deal,” others evoked a “sugar deal.” We will go so far as to say that since 1995 we have witnessed a new division of the island concerning land, capital and the labour market in the textiles and sugar industries which are in the process of restructuring. Mauritius needs, at the same time, skilled jobs and unskilled but inexpensive labour. Many Asian workers are hired today for contracts of an average duration of three years, either because they represent the skill that Mauritians are still missing, or because they accept very low wages in comparison with Mauritians and because the exchange rate of the Indian rupee is favourable to the Mauritian Rupee. If we consider changes in the use of cultivated land7 into constructible land for social housing, relocations of agricultural workers still living in the camps, for residence land granted to workers dismissed from sugar, or land for agricultural diversification projects by the government or by the sugar company, land of private fragmentation for the recovery by the government of the cost of the dismissals and the lands belonging to the sugar establishment, we see that the land is at the centre of all the negotiations between the government, the sugar establishment and the representatives of the planters: the Mauritius Sugar Producers Association, (MSPA) and the Mauritius Planters Association (MPA). The land is exchanged for social projects, it is exchanged to recover the indemnities of the dismissed workers, it is a bonus to dismissed workers for services rendered, and it turns into residential and serviced land for a profit of 50/50 going to the state and the private sector. It is even provided for a land use tolerance of 800 acres, on behalf of the property FUEL. Some land has been grabbed by the ministries who develop their own projects; other pieces of land are State Land Development Corporations that the government recovers for its social projects such as the construction of schools, hospitals, etc. Certain plots of land are recovered by FUEL to sell them as private land for residential use; further land is intended to be sold by the government to individuals as residential land; some

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spaces comprise land reserved for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS); the remaining land is for the relocation of sugar employees who still live in camps. The area of morcellements given for sale by FUEL is impressive, while the land under cane growing in FUEL’s Factory Area has been prepared for the mechanisation of the cut. New residential spaces are developing at high speed as seen in Figure 5.18. We take as an example the new areas of residence in the east. First, there is social housing and the appearance of cities on lands once planted with cane. Prediction installs a football field is made to as there has always been within the sugar properties. More generally, the FUEL company of Moka/Flacq has planned eight morcellements, of which 75 acres are located in Lallmatie, Bel Étang, Brahmstan, Camp de Masque, which are reserved for new sugar retirees who, contractually, have received seven poles of land and their severance pay, corresponding to the number of years of service in the establishment8. For a total of 1,200 acres of land to be fragmented, 50 acres were reserved for Moka/Flacq, on the portion of the Mont Désert/Alma lands: Bel Air, Bel Étang, Médine and Quartier Militaire, and on the holding of FUEL in Saint Julien village. These 50 acres were divided according to the areas bought by the individuals, to which plans of construction of their houses were proposed, as it was done to the cybercity of Ebène. The selling price of these units of residence has been set at the average height of Rs. 3 million, if we take for reference the houses and land sold at the cybercity.​

residences at Montagne Blanche for the VRS of the Sans Souci camp of FUEL.

FIGURE 5.16  New

The fragmentation of the former camp Sans Souci, located near the village of Montagne Blanche, on the road from Bel Air to Quartier Militaire villages. New residents have all kinds of local shops in the village. It would not be surprising, however, that new, nearer shops, such as tabagies are growing on the spot. The houses (Fig. 5.18), built by the labourers of the Sans Souci section of FUEL, who lived in the old camp had an area of 100m 2 or more. The farm workers acquired seven poles of land at an unbeatable price of Rs 2,000/pole. Note the importance of these villas, many of which have a floor at first, possibly two floors to accommodate children. The average cost of these constructions was

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substantially close to Rs 2 million. It seems that the workers had, for the most part, a sufficient accumulation of departure to engage in these expenses, according to our informants. ​

FIGURE 5.17  The

kalimai of the former Sans Souci camp.

This kalimai could not be turned into a temple because it was placed on the holding lands of the sugar estate. It could not be moved to the new place of residence of the former farm workers of the camp who had gone to Montagne Blanche to settle on the lands reserved for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) where new residential neighbourhoods developed. The kalimai of the camp of Sans Souci could not be relocated because of the death of the pandit (priest),9 so the residents moved only the divinity Hanuman. This simple transfer from one place to another of the divinity opened the way to a change in the quality of Hanuman as a higher deity from the moment that he now occupies a place for himself without any reference to Kali, unlike the kalimai guardian status of the camp he had. Previously, Hanuman as guardian of the kalimai was the only tenant of the place (Fig. 5.18). In the future temple, there will not be the seven sisters, there will be only superior deities and males like Ram, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh or Brahma according to the kuls10 involving families. The new symbolic place of Hanuman is the expression of the change of the social organisation. In the camps, women’s power was dominant and the extended family was grouped together in one place, while in the new village, the homes are those of one- or two-generation ascendant nuclear families and their children. In the extended family, the power of women was critical for the balance of relationships. In the new village, the men took control of the religious organisation. This shift in power from women to men coincides with the change in the economic status of workers who have become small landowners.

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altar of Hanuman on the new place of residence of the inhabitants of the camp of Sans Souci in Montagne Blanche.

FIGURE 5.18  The

Busy lane The solution chosen was to move Hanuman and leave the kalimai of the camp on the spot without a guardian, which means his permanent abandonment. The future building to be built should be named after Hanuman as seen in Figure 5.18. It should also be noted that the place of the village where Hanuman was placed is at the entrance of the new residences. It is on a busy lane for residents who must cross this junction to arrive on the main road of the village of Montagne Blanche. The place of installation of the deity has already been tarred as seen in Fig. 5.20 in anticipation of the construction of a future temple, when the subsidies of the federation will be available, and when the villagers have collected the initial amount necessary at the beginning of the works. These fragmentations, because of the small size of the gardens and their location in the background of the villages, tend to fill the space which separates the villages between them. As soon as a human gathering is important enough, the merchants/street vendors tend to multiply and settle at the crossing of the roads so that, gradually, they will develop a market, a new commercial space, and of course, the football field, the village hall, etc. If we take the example of the village of Quartier Militaire, where a market has just been built, it was first extended in length as the number of inhabitants and merchants increased, and, for many years, a fair was submerging the bus stop and the trading booths were spread out along the road to Flacq until it forks to St Julien d’Hotman and Montagne Blanche. At each crossing of these roads, vegetable and fruit traders settled and the fair was held every Sunday morning. Thus, we have witnessed the development of small towns, both in width and height. This process of densifying the population of residential areas and businesses was reinforced by the fact that the large plantations were being fragmented by the big planters themselves. The change of the economic position of agricultural workers who are often considered as “small planters” in the eastern region results in the multiplication of cults dedicated to Hanuman. It seems that the tendency to renovate the kalimais,

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by the addition of many deities in the space around the altar, by the appearance of hard constructions that make them exact copies of shivalas,11 decreases. The wealth of materials used to renovate these ancient kalimais such as marble, insulated and double-glazed windows, large idols carved in stone, all this luxury spending is concentrated today in order to erect Hanuman cults, some of which are almost Hanuman mandir temples, like the one at Tranquebar in Ward 4 in Port Louis, which we have already mentioned. The Hanuman divinity has today become a major deity, belonging to the world of higher divinities, by which the social groups claiming them manifest their newly acquired social and economic autonomy. This is the case of the workers of the former camp Sans Souci, it is also the case of former sugar workers who now live in a house and on land that belongs to them. This is also the case of Tranquebar officials who differentiated from the working-class quarter known as “Bangladesh” which Rodriguans and Creoles coinhabit, becoming close neighbours of the inhabitants of this emerging district. The latter thus emphasise that they belong to different castes and communities. Society is fragmenting into smaller units, following the key lines of community, caste and socio-professional distinctions. Between small holders and big planters, there were essentially relations of dependency and counter-dependency, which were relationships of the smallscale farmers with the big planters who were behind the Hindu caste differences. These are also in the process of falling apart with the recent sugar concentrations, diversification and industrialisation. The big planters, who continue to exploit their farms in a family way are like the sugar factories, fragmenting their lands. This is the case with the Reetoo, Teeluck, Ramburun and Goburdhun families in Flacq. Those who have not invested in other sectors of activity than plantation, have lost their financial power, most often through the game of inheritance. Smallholders,12 at least those who are employees of the sugar industry, are now experiencing a radical change in social and economic situation. They become small owners. This is the case of those still living in the camps and those who have early retirement. These people affirm their new social position of homeowners in the sphere of religion in their daily life. It is enough seeing the high quality of their houses is enough to understand the aspirations of the workers who have acceded to this status. In the religious field, this is reflected in the renewal of the Hanuman worship at the expense of the kalimai. This change is not fully noticeable in public space because, for the moment, the only temples that can be built are shivalas according to the law passed under the first Ramgoolam government. This Sanatanist policy is being challenged by the multiplication of Hanuman cults. There is already a first Hanuman temple. The fact always precedes law. When shall we see the second temple and in what part of the island will this situation develop first? In all new residence sites where the VRS live, one must see what deity is placed to guard the village pending the foundation of a temple, if there is none on the site. In the district of Moka/Flacq, there are 22 villages, 22 temples at Flacq and 14 villages, 12 temples at Moka. These 34 temples are all shivalas. One can anticipate that the new religious sites will be cults dedicated

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to Hanuman which, in principle, should not have the status of temple. But the example of the fragmentation land located near the village of Montagne Blanche to replace the former camp of Sans Souci suggests that, if today there is only a small deity, the place where he lies at the edge of this land and a crossroads, allows to anticipate the foundation of a larger structure, the Hanuman deity deserving better than this small piece of land.

The development of temporary labour in agriculture and industry wage labour In addition to changes in the land market, there is a general reorganisation of the labour market. Thus, in the district of Moka/Flacq, the government has joined with the shareholders of FUEL, through the SIT for Rs 20 million. The company has planned the hiring of skilled textile workers for the future spinning mill under construction. In addition, the Lagesse Group, the majority shareholder of FUEL, has also set up Tessun, a high-tech textile factory for luxury production for the international market. Indian migrant workers came for a three-year contract for a salary estimated at Rs 4,000/month. They are kept in the old houses of the craftsmen who worked formerly in the FUEL factory, in the department of the maintenance of the equipment. The small houses hardly are equipped with any basic facilities which are behind the factory of FUEL. They are unmarried and six or seven people live in the same house. At the same time, the shareholders of FUEL (Lagesse, Gujadhur, Espitalier-Noêl for the most important ones) have invested to modernise the equipment in order to transform bagasse into electricity. The planting of anthurium flowers that existed at FUEL now takes place on a larger scale, given the increase in irrigated land. As for the breeding of prawns, the cultivation of asparagus, strawberries, papayas and pineapples, these productions were stopped because of lack of profitability and considering the investments already made for the mechanisation of the cut. Other diversification projects are to be expected, according to the government’s guidelines, for the development of gardens, hydroponics, vanilla, spices, medicinal plants and tropical fruits with high added value. It should be noted that the former Sans Souci camp, now empty of its former inhabitants, has been transformed into greenhouses for growing hydroponic vegetables (Fig. 5.19). In addition to these agricultural diversification operations, the site of the former mill Beau Rivage, located on the lagoon behind the village of Trou d’Eau Douce, is planned to be sold to foreign investors in return for investment in the off-shore market. The land is a key factor in all transactions. The economic choice of the country is clear and the changes expected or in the process of being made affect all areas of daily life, work, cultural life and forms of production. With the general redistribution of products and capital, the geographical mobility of men is increasing to meet the demands for unskilled and skilled labour as cheaply as possible.

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old houses of Sans Souci transformed into green houses for hydroponic cultivation of vegetables.

FIGURE 5.19  The

The route to employment for Mauritians today makes a detour via compulsory training, even if it is a failure when compared to higher education as is the case for training delivered in the semi-governmental school of the Institute of Vocational Training Board (IVTB). All tourism sector employees, even those who are not qualified, must now have this level of training. To anticipate the evolution of unemployment, it would be necessary to know the approximate number of redundant workers in sugar and textile sectors, figures which are not yet available on the whole island. What is known with certainty, however, is that among the 7,500 workers in the sugar industry, who accepted compensation in land and money, 4,500 among them were workers who had reached the age of retirement and 3,000 of them were young people, who were redirected to vocational and professional training. These redundant young workers have followed some courses that were offered to them free of charge by the sugar industry for their eventual reconversion, never came back, preferring to invest their small financial compensation in the opening of a small business like a tabagie or street sale of a factory outlet, etc. Unemployment tends to grow, although it is still difficult to quantify, as long as the textile and sugar sectors have not completed their layoffs. Let us not forget, however, that in the textile industry, the number of women workers is large, which can conceal the scale of current unemployment. The “New Deal”13 transformed some of the families of farm workers into small landowners, by chance of sugar restructuring, a situation that these families could not hope to have in the conditions of full professional exercise, without compensation and the distribution of land that was granted to them from the moment they chose to leave prematurely with regard to the age of retirement. But the level of their pension is not enough to support a family without it being necessary to supplement it with another salaried temporary activity. As for the FUEL Factory Area (FA),14 the lands of the new residences (VRS) are all located in the area of the former FUEL cane field. The inhabitants are therefore geographically close to field work and they could, in any case, seek temporary employment at the time of cutting. The youngest people, dismissed from the

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sugar and textile industries are the least protected, and the failure of their training for their possible conversion to more skilled jobs suggests that they will have difficulty finding a job locally in Mauritius. Are they emigrants like those who did it and still doing it by going to countries like Dubai? Finally, if poverty is not visible at first sight, we know that today there are identified pockets of poverty: Bois d’Oiseau, Poste de Flacq, Olivia, Argy, Riche Fond, Camp Samy and Unité are villages that have hardly changed since the time when the sugar industry covered Mauritian exports of almost 90% of national production. The existence of a destitute population in these villages emphasises that any economic change brings with it inequalities which tend to increase rather than to be compensated. However, as long as the extended Mauritian family maintains its cohesion on the occasion of ceremonies or major family events, the less affluent branches, which have not managed to progress economically, will not be totally marginalised. Finally, the situation of Moka/Flacq residents with regard to the labour market remains a concern, as it was one of the most covered districts in small textile production units. Almost every village had a textile factory that employed unskilled, mostly female labour. Some factories shut down like the Overseas Glove Factory owned by a Chinese investor from Hong Kong, or the Lower Parel factory owned by an Indian investor. Each of these two companies had two factories the first located at Lallmatie and Saint Julien d’Hotman and the second at Lallmatie and Flacq. These enterprises totalled about 2,000 unskilled workers who were laid off. A large part of the workers in the textile industry have found work in hotels that have opened in the region, such as “The Plantation,” “Coco Beach” and “Le Mauricia,” all located on the coast, between Trou d’Eau Douce and Bellemare. Since 1995, new investors from the Asian world have opened factories that mostly employ Indian workers from India, China and Malaysia. The largest textile companies in Mauritius have restructured by relocating their production units in the free zone in Madagascar (Floreal Knitwear). This geographical division of the tasks of the textile industry, which relocates its production units to the location of the cheapest labour force, has as a first consequence on the opening of the labour market of all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. All are looking for the cheapest skilled and unskilled labour in Madagascar, India, China and Thailand while Mauritian unskilled labour may not find local employment, having become too expensive. The movement of workers is based on skill levels and wage differentials between the countries bordering the Western Indian Ocean. The labour market is becoming increasingly regional and tends to follow investment paths. It follows the main lines of industrial relocations and preferential markets.

Emergence of international sugar capital and erasure of the large plantation Finally, with the weakening of the class of big planters, what will happen to the field workers while the company FUEL,15 this flagship of the national economy,

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became a consortium of companies controlled by the group Lagesse of Mon Loisir, which has been internationalised since the absorption of FUEL by this group? The absorption of FUEL by Mon Loisir has surprised many observers. Both groups of FUEL and Mon Loisir which opposed played on their differences of tradition, entrepreneurial for one, and sugar manufacturing on a logic of sugar manufacturers for the other. FUEL had a planter’s logic while Mon Loisir was a company founded for a long time on a logic of sugar manufacturers. The first (Sériès, Gujadhur among the largest shareholders) were more attached to land; the others (the Lagesse Group) reasoned more willingly in financial and industrial terms. Both Medina/FUEL considered that FUEL, located to the east on well-watered and rich lands, had a greater agricultural potential than Medina. In contrast, Medina had a “factory area” with a wide area of large added value land, ranging from Port Louis to Rivière Noire in the west and where the climatic conditions had always been less appropriate for cane cultivation. The two groups separated into two companies and the shares of each were exchanged. Each group is now developing its own logic. The differential land added value of Medina and FUEL (agro-industrial and commercial surplus-value) were considered equivalent. The oligopolistic structure of the “holding” of WEAL16 which linked FUEL to Medina disappeared at the same time as the shares were restructured, which, these we recall, being exempted from taxation. FUEL then issued new shares to buy back those of the owners of Mon Loisir, who became the majority in FUEL. The sugar history proves that in terms of concentrations, the meaning of a restructuring is difficult to anticipate by anyone who is not part of the “club” of shareholders. “Backward concentrations,” as one of our informants called them, did exist in the past and the financial and political balances always impose their laws on productive systems even the most established and competitive. Taking into account all these factors of mondialisation persists, the merging of FUEL on Mon Loisir is undertaken and, contrary to all forecasts, it was the factory of FUEL, known to be the most powerful sugar manufacturer which processed the canes of Mon Loisir and not the other way around. FUEL has thus moved to mechanisation and held the course for the sugar industry, which was its own, by gaining access to the regional market: after having bought “Bourbon,” the sugar establishment of Réunion island, the company has invested a considerable sum to rehabilitate the Marromeu and Luabo sugar factories located on both banks of the Zambezi river in Mozambique.17 This sugar manufacturer, an electricity producer in the east of the island, has become an international group, expanding its local scale of production to integrate the markets of the riparian countries and thus to better cope with international competition since, from 2005, the price of sugar is no longer protected18 by the Lomé agreements. As for the diversification strategy, this is partly related to electricity generation, as the construction of the spinning mill at the place – behind the plant – where the company used to grow prawns is based on a double rationale: that of selling its electricity to the Indian investor who created the textile factory in return for an up to 20% entry into the capital of the newly installed company.

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This market and financial opening of FUEL in the textile industry, where until now the company was absent, has not, however, been oriented with the aim of a possible conversion of the redundant sugar employees of the sugar manufacture, since the Indian company based in Mauritius employs preferably a low-wage expatriate workforce from India. The orientation of Mon Loisir/FUEL is still mainly sugar trade, and it is prepared for the international opening of the market. It can be assumed that redundant sugar workers, still of working age, can hope to find temporary work, especially during the harvest period. This is what made our main informant say that the delay taken by Mauritius in terms of sugar concentration compared to the island of Réunion came from the obligation of the sugar industry to hire agricultural workers at the time of independence19 rather than continuing to outsource the field labour to the sirdars, who were, during colonisation, almost independent agricultural entrepreneurs. Today, the capital increase necessary for sugar investments to achieve economies of scale has the direct consequence of the long-term disappearance of agricultural workers in favour of a temporary workforce. The labour market has opened up to international competition as well as to the exchange of products. In such a context, the social and economic disparities can only deepen, the status of the big planters on which rests the particular notion of small planters in Mauritius is changing and should disappear in a relatively short term. The religious and cultural transformations we are witnessing today are part of this overall change in society.

A more complete urbanisation process in the north than in the south of the island All the observations made on the liveliness of the kalimais in the south-east of the island in relation to the north, which favoured the construction of temples and neglected popular cults, must take into account the social process of differentiation that has occurred in families of big planters, mostly in the north, and families of small planters located in the east.20 Big planters had early geographical mobility throughout the island. Between the north-east and the south-east of the island, there was a very strong social cohesion. Moreover, the Gujadhur family, which was the group of Indian capitalists who participated in the integration of FUEL, built its accumulation in the north by relying on the development of the Schoenfeld concession. Conversely, the Powakel family developed its land capital in Flacq, at Bon Accueil, to then extend it to Rivière du Rempart and turn it into commercial capital in Port Louis, where there are now various fabric stores on Desforges and Lacorderie streets, run by children living in Mauritius. All the Hindu temples of the north and east were founded by these big planters some of whom became traders, industrialists or professionals of the private or the public. The number of temples founded in the north, however, is greater than in the east, as families in the north have accumulated more quickly, causing them to invest their money in other sectors than plantation. They became businessmen and cut more fully and sooner the links with the small plantation. The same applies to

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the Baichoo, Nundlall and Sookai families, who are related and allied, who sold the majority of their land to invest their money in a movie theatre in Triolet. They also created a Subana biscuit manufacturing plant according to the two initial letters of the three associated families as well as the Triolet Bus Service public transport company serving the northern lines going to Port Louis, Pamplemousses, Triolet. and Grand Baie. Other families in the north, at Plaines des Papayes and Fond Du Sac, have also followed the same trend, as the Boodhoo, who sold their land to invest in the creation of the private secondary school Stradford College. The Nundoochand and Ramreka families, who are related and allied, also founded a textile factory in Quatre-Bornes. Other planters remained big planters, while developing chains of businesses such as the Beebeejaun and Prayag families in the north. The economic situation of the big planters in the east is very different, because those who have remained as large planters have remained in the plantation by working on their own land while taking care of sharecropping land inside the sugar plantations, activities to their exclusive benefit that they couple, for some of them, with their status of sirdar employee of the company. These big planters are the equivalent of agricultural contractors and foremen in the company. They manage large areas of cane and live on site. Villages like Laventure, St Julien d’Hotman and Brisée Verdière developed and structured around this type of agricultural enterprises. It should be noted, however, that the difference in economic position between planters from the north and east did not prevent families from contracting many preferential marriages: the eastern T. were married to the northern Nunlall and Ramreka. The eastern Reetoo married the Baichoo, Nundlall and North Sookai. The Vaish community preference was, in these two cases of alliances, determining the choice of partners. If families from the east are more willing to stay on site to continue managing their plantations within the family, those of the north have long settled in the cities of the Plaines Wilhems, especially Quatre-Bornes and Curepipe. The big planters of the north are of Vaish and Ravived origin, those of the east of Baboojee/Maraz and Vaish origin.21 In these areas, there are also large families of Muslims like the Fakim ​​in the east and the Beebeejaun in the north. Among the big planters already mentioned, daughters of the Baichoo family from the north of the Ravived caste married sons and daughters of both Baboojees and Marazs (B.) and Vaishs (S. and G.) community groups. There are also other examples of intercultural social mobility among smallholder families in the east. Nevertheless, despite these family alliances of large planters from the north with those from the east, the evolution of the northerners has been faster than in the east. Northern families invested in other sectors of the economy rather than in the plantation. Conversely, in the east, the big planters have professionalised, leaving a family member on the spot to become manager of the family property. That is why, the popular cults of the east remained as they were on the estate cane fields where they were erected.

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At most, family-owned private kalimais looking like temples have appeared recently, as the one of the Ramburun and Goburdhun family in St Julien d’Hotman demonstrating by its high building quality the economic power of these families. This privatisation of the temples dedicated to Kali is accompanied today, to the east, by the emergence of the Hanuman divinity as a major divinity alongside Kali. ​

FIGURE 5.20  Renovation

of the private kalimai of the Goburdhun family.

In the north, it is the deity Sai Baba who is established as a major deity alongside Durga. This symbolic opposition between Hanuman/Kali and Saï Baba/Durga is related to the urbanisation of the large northern plantation, while in the east, it is the small planters who have experienced a considerable economic emergence while simultaneously relying on sugar establishments and their status as agricultural entrepreneurs. The class of big planters in the east has remained more rural. The emergence of Hanuman’s role in the East is always an indicator of the social progression of the groups claiming it. We can say that there is a reminder or rather resurgence of indigenous rooting (Chazan-Gillig, 2000) where Hanuman, Kali, Dhi and the worship of Father Laval co-exist in one place. References to beliefs unrelated to Kali cults with Sai Baba, Durga, Ram, Sita, Lakshman and Krishna are found in more urbanised families. This is evidenced by the observation of the renovated Kalimais of the north, which has been observed on the new religious sites such as urban Mahebourg and Tranquebar in the southern suburbs of Port Louis.

Notes 1 One of the sons of this planter is an avowed and politician of the PTR. He was Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 2000, as part of the PTR/MMM alliance. He was elected not in this constituency but to Vacoas. 2 The number five, odd, evokes sorcery. We practise Biswa, that is, we sacrifice the suckling pig. 3 Described in the previous chapter.

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4 Parastatal institution through which land and financial transactions are carried out on lands offered for sale by sugar companies or lands granted to sugar employees who accept their economic redundancy. 5 These are the taxes relating to the conversion and sale of land. 6 We have developed this point in the previous chapter on associative strategies. 7 The “Factory Area” of FUEL and the fragmented land. 8 Compensation was calculated as follows: for 38 years of service, the salary base being Rs. 4,206, the compensation rate was two months’ salary per year of service, i.e.: 4.206/38/2 = 319.656 Rs. The voluntary retiree after receiving his seven perches of land and the total of his compensation countersigned a receipt issued by the employer. A total of 7,500 people volunteered to take early retirement, according to the contract proposed by the employer. To cover the costs of voluntary redundancies, the sugar establishments, including the MSA Mauritius Sugar Authority, the Mauritius Small Planters Associations (MSPA) and the Plantation House, borrowed 2 billion Rs. from the bank of Mauritius and 1 billion Rs. from other private banks such as Mercantile Bank and Barclays Bank. 9 The death of the pandit, in these circumstances, is always interpreted as having been linked to a major transgressed prohibition which makes it necessary to stop all the work undertaken and to move the place of worship. 10 It is the religious preference linked to family traditions according to the patriarchal succession. 11 Temple dedicated to Shiva. 12 We use the term “smallholders” in the broad sense, to designate all those who work in the plantations: as labourers, or as a sharecropper because, most often, the farmers are both employees of the establishment, the sirdar and tenants of the establishment. Whether or not to own the land being cultivated is not the exclusive element of the social and economic situation to be considered for this category of workers. 13 The quotation marks suggest that we have applied this term to the Mauritian transformation linked to the “mixed” policy of capitalist development. We see that the strategies are all oriented in the logic of the markets and that the state now plays a determining role, more or less direct or indirect through the parastatal institutions set up to meet the balance necessary to the globalisation. 14 These are the canes produces of compulsorily sold to the company that owns the factory. Refer to the Glossary. 15 We are very grateful for the trust placed in us by our informant and friend Yann Boullé, with whom we have spoken many times about the Mauritian development model at the time of the internationalisation of the markets. He is, with the late Philippe Lagesse, and other informants like Léon Pitot, Philippe Koenig, Mrs Regnard and Poncini, those who have understood, from the outset, the general meaning of our research. All knew that we were working on the Indian popular cults in connection with the history of the birth and the social and economic transformation of sugar, justifying the choice of FUEL and Bel Ombre in order to reconstitute the differential process of globalisation. Unfortunately, the research on Bel Ombre did not succeed, we could not push to the end the comparison of differentiated forms of development between the East and West of the island as we did for north and south-east. Our special thanks go to Mr. Edouard Rouillard former Chairman of the Board of Directors (said “Board” of Bel-Ombre), its director Jean-Alain Lalouette and the Public Research Office (PRO), Mr. Philippe Blackburn, who did not lay his hands down till he succeeded. We worked hard to help reconstruct the story of Bel Ombre and its transformation just before the concentration of the sugar factory. Thanks to these people, we think we have been able to retrace the general way in which economics was articulated with symbolic relations and politics during the period of change from 1991 to 2007.

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16 “West East Limited” is a company that operated as a decision-making authority structure dependent on a limited fraction of shareholders in the more general integrated system of centralised companies on FUEL. This oligopolistic structure of FUEL imagined by Fernand Leclézio before its installation in Switzerland belongs to the type of “wild” capitalism of the early 20th century. It had the effect of making any competition impossible between companies dependent on the sugar activity of FUEL whose centrality was only apparent since the decisions were taken at the intermediate level of shareholders grouped around WEAL. 17 We thank Hervé Koenig and Patrick d’Arifat for explaining the ins and outs of sugar concentrations and their social, economic and political issues. For example, the sugar concentration plan that began in 1990 had already been planned and discussed in the 1960s. At that time, no concentration was possible because of the injunction of the government to maintain industrial labour at a high level. The sugar sector itself was operating with a large unskilled labour force, larger than necessary, according to the expert reports of the time. This is the main reason that explains the differential evolution of the sugar sector of Mauritius compared to that of the island of Réunion where the concentration was done very quickly. 18 FUEL, 50 years from 1948–1998. This regional sugar strategy is not unique on the island, since the Beauchamps company has also invested in the sugar sector in Tanzania, the Antoine Harel group has invested in Côte d’Ivoire, and so on. 19 Under the first government of Sir Seewoosagar Ramgoolam (SSR). 20 There are families of large planters in the east, but they have remained rural and have not given rise to such advanced industrial and commercial development as in the north. 21 For preferential caste marriages, there is an English expression used in Maurice “Birds of a feather flock together” and a Creole expression meaning the same thing. The same image is used to mark the endogamy of caste (La liane, c’est la caste.).

6 KALIMAI TEMPLE TRANSFORMATIONS AND CHANGES IN RITUALS

Kalimais have been undergoing renovations since the 2000s. New temples have been built, temples of Hanuman and, what is more surprising, of Kali. The photographs in this book reveal the magnitude of the changes that allow us to clarify the simultaneously social-historical meaning, that is, political and economic, of the current changes. We have progressively constructed concepts to synthesise the main changes of Indo-Mauritian society: these are Hanumanisation, Shivalisation, brahmanisation and creolisation. These terms were coined to highlight the processes by which traditional society is transformed under the pressure of the rapid economic changes called “globalisation.” The proposed concepts are a synthetic formulation of the results obtained in the surveys which reflect the symbolic levels of social transformation. Mauritian Hinduism has been long articulated with the form of local capitalism born from the sugar plantation economy of the 1850s. Observations of the practice of cults, their evolution, and the modalities of their transformations plead for a religious/cultural “re-creation” from cultural/religious traditions in the context of past and present labour migration from the Western Indian Ocean. These issues have been raised for a long time. They date back to the 1980s, through the research of Eric Hobsbaum and Térence Ranger. This approach is in contradiction with those of the creolisation of Hinduism among which it might be tempting to include this book. None of the information collected, none of the cultural religious practices observed, argue for the idea of any assimilation. All it takes to be convinced is to observe the distribution of the cults in the space to understand that we deal with social universes which are perhaps reciprocally built but essentially separated: the strategies of separation are more significant than the forms of integration. If, as the society of yesterday, today’s Indo-Mauritian society seems to fit the external constraints of the contemporary globalisation of markets,1 it is at the cost of a deeper social fragmentation which DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-7

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modifies dramatically the relationships between individuals and community. It is what was observed during the elections of 2014 which showed how indirectly the electoral strategies manifested themselves when there was a protest of part of the population against the respective scheduled and competitor alliances of the five big national parties between which the voters were supposed to decide opposing by the way of elections, 21 small political parties which had no chance to place any representative in the parliament, even less in the government overturned the deal of the five big allied and rival national parties: “the Lepep Alliance made up of parties MSM/PMSD/ML overcame the MMM 2 nevertheless allied to the present incumbent.” This indirect mode of marginal opposition of the weak with regard to the powerful which acts in the favour of relationship of power is also displayed and intelligible in the Indian religious culture by the general mode of communication with the divinities. Thus, we objectified the symbolic stakes in certain rites studied in kalimais in renovation, in recently built temples which revealed the various significant social changes in the Indo-Mauritian society following the globalisation of markets.3 Would not the Indian religion question the prominence given to the early settlement of the Hindus symbolised by the existence of the guardian divinities always located under a tree in the space near the altar of Kali? These divinities tend to disappear with the construction of temples of modern architecture including a multiplicity of divinities. This study is too much isolated and incomplete to answer this complex question. The purpose of the above concepts is to draw a trial for future research.

Popular cults practised in the temples A unique model of religious representation The organisation of the religious space of the kalimais clearly distinguishes the altar – very often in height comprising several steps – at Petite Cabanne and the outdoor environment where Kali’s guardians are still located in the east in relation to sunrise. This symbolism reveals the mediation function of the guardians vis-à-vis Kali accessible to everyone on condition that they respect certain rules unwritten but known to everyone. The sovereign order of the guardians of the kalimai touches on the ritual practices and the types of gifts on which Kali’s effectiveness is focused to respond to the wishes of the followers. It is arranged around a symbolic duality of the kalimai4 without visible hierarchy other than that of the distinction of the altar in the centre in relation to the environment where are distributed many deities under trees – for the guardian deities and Dhi – or under flowers like the gulaitis,5 while the guardians are installed on altars frequently made of cement opposite the altar of Kali, the deity of the outside. The organic matrix of symbolic relationships expressed in kalimai cults such as the Baharia Puja described in the second part which reveals a scheduling of powers more based in form than in substance, each of the seven sisters representing different ways of accessing the divine essence of Kali. In the same way, the expression of power in a temple is mainly in form rather than in the background of the committed social

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relations between the deities, all masculine. This reality refers to the myth of the seven sisters who represent the forms of expression of the divine, those of the ontological relationship to the sacred. In this respect, kalimais and temples participate in the same order of relations depending more on the respective power of the divine representations than on a hierarchical order fixed once and for all. The organic matrix of the relationships mainly expressed in the relationship of women to each other in the kalimai has been transposed into the temples around the main deities like Shiva, Ganesh, Hanuman whose function presents itself as being more readily distributive of the most equal relations possible between the various individuals or groups who declare themselves followers of the divinity of the temple. The passage from the altars of Kali to the foundation of the temples led to equivalences of function of the world of women (management of the kalimais) to that of men (management of the temples) while the preference of devotees for such or such divinity has been affirmed. That is why we have considered the foundation of the new temples created since 1999 – for Hanuman and Kali – as social realities sometimes in rupture, sometimes as frameworks for overcoming conflicts between women/men through which a masculine sovereign order was established explaining the separation of married women (who have a sindoor 6 line that partitioned their hair) from single women who don’t have them in cults. Each social group having an assigned position in the space of the temple, that of the deities to which it is attached, the solution of conflicts necessarily involves a negotiation that acts as a law that is imposed on all the faithful gathered to resolve it. The experience we have had of the Hindu religion has been based more on a cultural phenomenon which commit the relationships of individuals to the community than on subjective relationships established by everyone to the deity, mediator of the expression of religious sentiment. The value system developed in the “recreation” of popular religion in the place of immigration as explained to us by our informants is a cultural fact described in several stages. The condition of migrant workers employed in sugar mills would have made possible the development of an ideal of autochtonie generated and produced as a result of the agreement of the owners of the mills to grant sugar employees a small plot of land to set up their guardian deities whose memory was still vivid by the recollection of oral traditions. This right of ownership was full and complete because it was legitimised by a notarised act so that the oldest popular cults are found on lands legitimised by modern law. This initial negotiation between employers and employees was the basis of the capital/labour relationship established locally. Beyond the very harsh working conditions, which Hugh Tinker (1974) equated with slavery, kalimais have been the scene of the revival of a past for cane workers at the same time as they have been the framework for an integration into the production relations of the beginnings of the sugar economy. The cultural aspect of the emergence of small-scale farming in Mauritius has not been mentioned. And yet, how to understand today the transformation of Mauritian society in the context of the disappearance of sugar without acknowledging the existence of negotiating practices which have been the basis on which external relations7

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have been internalised, considered in the game of traditional relations. It is the whole story of the deity Dhi which represents the “white,” the white manager of the mill that is not seen on the cane fields. Dhi, as the guardian deities is under a tree and cannot be destroyed, at most it is abandoned because the founders of the kalimai have gone elsewhere We have mentioned many times the symbolic importance of Dhi which refers to the traditional content of the Hindu religion in that it is a process of naturalisation of “external relations” that actually existed. The internalisation of the dominant production relations of the early sugar trade was further developed beyond all expectations by access to open land ownership thanks to the fragmentation of mill lands that were quickly concentrated from the 1860s. We insist that there was no “creolisation of the Hindu religion.” Contrary to the theses developed today on “Creole Hinduism”, Mauritian Hinduism is a “recreation,” a “reinvention” (Hobsbaum, 1983). We have evidence of this today that is the transformation of a kalimai into a temple, being the best proof of the mechanisms of social transformation still based on the galactic model of power of Indian society where if the form changes, i.e. the substance, the structure remains unchanging and stable.

Differentiated positions of deities in the Sacred Space The Hindu religion, like all religions, is structured around ideological categories that generate representations of the divine. The communication system staged in the practice of cults in the discourse of the participants before, during and after the celebrations, led us to understand from within the concrete relationships that got organised in all the cults presented in this book. The representations of the divine, the modes of communication that were established within the ceremonies, the scheduling of the deities in places of prayer such as Shiva, Ganesh, Parvati, Vishnu, Luxmi, Krishna, Rada, have built pluralist universes to accede to the divine. All deities are related in temples like Kali and Hanuman in kalimais. The social and historical approach of Hindu deities has made us sensitive to the mode of communication conveyed by religion which constitutes a cultural-political fact instituted by the many associations born from Mauritian sugar history. We have considered methodologically that there is no difference in value between scholarly religion and popular religion. We went from one order to another without knowing at the beginning that the deities mentioned could be of different nature. As a result, we treated the deities in the same way as the guardian deities which are more of the spirits that can invade a person to the point of possessing it like Gowraya, Sittla, Dhi, Kankar or Saher – and deities classified as part of the scholarly religion – like Shiva, Ganesh, Hanuman, Vishnu, Durga or Kali. Our learning of the Hindu religion was close to an initiatory relationship for the foreign researcher while the national researcher of the Hindu religion found himself going back to the very sources of religious sentiment, which had its roots in popular culture and its abstract categories giving rise to the rituals put into practice. These very diverse rituals took place in the kalimais, where there

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are trees like the neem, flowers like gulaitis found in large numbers in places of worship. These so-called secondary deities sometimes tell more about the relation with the religious of the devotees than the representations of the “superior” deities installed in the temples whose access is generally regulated. Access to the unequal representation of the divine has been easy because the diversity of religious practices and representations in Mauritius is beyond comprehension.

The Mahashivratri cult at Grand Bassin To do that, you just have to look around. For example, when you arrive at the quasi-national place of worship of Grand Bassin,8 what do we see? On the right, a 108-feet9 (33-metre) statue of Shiva was unveiled in 2015; on the left, a 108foot statue of Durga was also unveiled in 2017. The deity Shiva and Parvati, his wife in the form of Durga, have taken on a national scale, visible in the much frequented public10 space of the place. Is it the accelerated modernisation of Mauritius that would be at the origin of such an enlarged representation given by the greatness of the Hindu deities? What is the symbolic meaning of Durga’s11 presence in this place of worship (Mahashivratri) dedicated in principle to Shiva? The uneven order represented in space by the height of Shiva and Parvati brings us back to the roots of the Hindu religion. The distinction between higher and lower deities a subject of criticism by some readers of the book shocked at this representation of unequal relations12 of deities, is a fact when one observes the distribution of places of worship around the lake. Whether they are “higher deities” or “inferior deities,” these labelled divine qualities do not concern primarily, nor exclusively a hierarchical order but they designate the social power of the deities of those who believe in it. Mahashivratri, the place of worship at Grand Bassin, after having been formerly centred (1993) on a single building where the faithful of the various communities converged in the same place of the lake to make their offerings and devotions to the sacred water known as Ganga13 Talao, has relocated and multiplied into as many small temples and altars around the same lake, all dedicated to Shiva. To these altars were added three large luxurious and imposing temples dedicated also to Shivalingam.14 These temples were built by the various wealthiest federations15 made up of three population groups: two high-caste associations and the more general association that groups all Hindus regardless of their affiliation to high or low castes. The discerning visitor will not fail to notice the existence of a large temple of Hanuman located at the top of the hill, to the left of the lake as well as a last temple of modern materials belonging to an individual, a Hindu MP from the Flacq region. Upon entering each of the four temples, the goddess Kali does have her place on the altars of Shiva beside the other deities, but she does not have her particular altar. In the temple of Hanuman, she is not even represented16 but she is still depicted on the small altars dedicated to Shiva. The shores of the lake where these altars are located and the temples of great modernity represent places of distribution of a virtual IndoMauritian society segmented into small social units that remain introverted.

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The faithful are organised around the three polarities in relation to the deities of the three temples – Shiva/Parvati, Hanuman and Kali.17 However, any individual, if he or she has the means, is allowed to found his or her own temple as is the case of the member for constituency No. 9 of Flacq/Bon Accueil. The spatial organisation of the cult celebrated on the lake that represents Ganga Talao the water of the Ganges in India conveys, geographically speaking, a circular totality where the most important is that each family group can honour the sacred water of the lake assimilated to the Ganges to which are offered multicoloured flower petals. After purifying themselves in the lake by spraying their heads with water, the faithful offer the sweet dishes in the water (Ganga). The social organisation of the place filled by a dense crowd at the time of worship consists in preserving the place devolved to each one by maintaining an equidistant relationship with his neighbour, despite the crowds. The model of individual and collective relations thus established in worship projects the global image of a sphere polarised on the Parvati/Shiva couple through which can establish a personalised communication with the supreme God represented by water of the lake. This galactic model of relationships is embodied in the course of worship where everyone and all are simultaneously at equal distance from a God never localised or identified, and is akin to the endless search for perfection. The relationship that emerges at the peak of the cult on the shores of the lake is constitutive of the Indian culture where the individual/community relationship is controlled less by a hierarchical ordering of roles and statutes than by the uninterrupted social chain to the divine. The divine centrality, more virtual than real, accommodates any disturbance whether it comes from within or from outside, this one deforming only the figure of the circle18 but not changing its structure.

Emergence of Hanuman and Kali temples Hanuman on crown land and new peripheral areas for early sugar retirees of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) Crown Land of Tranquebar The birth of the first Hindu temples shows that their edification corresponded to the time when the labourers experienced their first economic emergence by becoming small planters after the “small and large parceling of lands”. The first Hindu temple Gokoola was built in the north of the island in 1867. Subsequently, the temples multiplied at the same time as the small Indian plantation developed as signs of “better-to-be” labourers who have progressively owned small-area cane fields which they worked on their own account in addition to their work as sugar workers. Today, the story of the foundation of the temples of Hanuman is very different. Thus, the Hanuman Temple of Tranquebar was built in 2005 in the particular context of the closure of the textile industries of the Plaine Lauzan free zone where laid-off unemployed workers were living in basic conditions on the edge of the capital. This coincidence between the foundation of the temple and the closure of the textile factories is not fortuitous because the

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district where the temple appeared was formed by former resident traders around whom the relatives/allies able to purchase their residence on site had gathered while slightly to the north, there was the so-called “Bangladesh” neighbourhood where unemployed textile workers had received no compensation at the time of their dismissal. Two very uneven social and economic population groups faced each other. They could not share the same places of worship because of too different practices. The wealthiest were vegetarians, the second prayed to the ministering deities under the tree where they placed ex voto after having sacrificed animals – goats, hens or cockerels – and offered their gifts to the deities they used to honour. The following miniature photograph taken in 2007 shows that members of the Kalimai Association have barricaded the informal access path to the “Bangladesh” neighbourhood to the site of cults to limit the inhabitants’ access to the tree they used to pray. By enlarging the miniature photograph, we see written in red paint on cinder blocks the prohibition to cross. The path is blocked while it was a shortcut allowing to come and pray to the deities of the tree. Obviously, the temples of Kali first and Hanuman then were built in a conflicting class context more or less accentuated by the inequalities of origin of former traders who had gathered their parents/allies to reside on the flanks of the hill. The first phase of renovation of the kalimai of Tranquebar, after a final ceremony in which many goats were sacrificed, led to the building of a Kali temple which was the framework of opposition between the two sections of the population, as evidenced by the photograph taken in 2007 where appear a stone scree and the closure of the cement path to the cult. Subsequently, the temple of Hanuman was built. Between 2007 and 2019, the access road to this temple looks like a pedestrian path surrounded by well-groomed plantations while new niches have appeared to install deities according to the belief of new residents to come. We studied the geographical position of the deities representing Shiva and Ganesh who share the same small tiled glass construction on the ground at the entrance of the temple facing Hanuman becoming the central deity of the place. Ganesh and Shiva, considered higher deities have become Hanuman’s guardian mediators in the new temple while their traditional position in the order of divinities is the opposite. In the absence of interviews conducted in 2019 at the same time as the photographs taken, we sought the meaning of this symbolically inverted religious order. As it stands today where Shiva and Ganesh share a common space, the meaning of this displacement out of their respective territorialities is twofold: it is symbolic first, it is social-historical second; that is, economic and political. The common positioning of these two higher deities, without proper territoriality, depicts a symbolic dialectic of Shiva’s relationship with Ganesh, which is that of a triangular relationship Shiva/Ganesh/Hanuman marked by the lineage of Ganesh to Shiva on the one hand and by the existence of a brotherhood of Ganesh to Hanuman on the other hand because these two deities are considered – one in the scholarly religion (Ganesh), the other in the popular religion (Hanuman) – like intellectuals capable of innovating by seeking and finding solutions that are

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acceptable to all at a time when the relationship between traditional and modern lifestyles is at odds and may call into question established balances. Faced with the danger of a shift in the balance of power between tradition and modernity, Ganesh by his major influence with Shiva, leads him to proceed in order: to appease the protracted conflicts by joining with Hanuman – both the double of Shiva and the opposite – so that the new social and economic order that is imposed on the former small-scale sugar planters or the workers dismissed from the free zones is experienced as an ordinary situation, even a challenge to transform their situation in the changing society. This process of symbolic normalisation of potential conflicts is a cultural trait linked to the Hindu religious ideology19 that we pointed out in the first chapter about the relationships of autochtonie which is a French concept of indigenousness and the term indigeneity can also be used that have been built between sugar workers (labourers and technicians) and owners of mills through an internalisation of the business logic that gave birth to the small and large Indian plantation of the years 1860–1880. Besides the symbolic model of communication of the guardians of the temple (Shiva and Ganesh) towards Hanuman always alone in the altar of his temple, there is what we know of the history of settlement of this constituency known as the “Ward 4” by reference to electoral divisions. This suburb of Port Louis has been completely rebuilt since the 1980s. Located on the slopes of the Montagne des Signaux of Port Louis, this suburb has changed its population since 1976, more than 15 years after independence. At that time, it was the high castes, the Baboojees/Marazs, that were the dominant groups in the district. From the 1980s, with the political alliance of the MMM and MSM 20 parties, the social composition of the population changed considerably: the high castes moved elsewhere to live in Curepipe, Rose-Hill and QuatreBornes. New and more mixed social groups have settled in the area: middle-class21 urban Creoles, low-caste traders, Tamils and Rodriguans. It is in this context that stands the Hanuman deity of the new temple of Tranquebar supported by the federation Mauritius Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation located nearby as well as by the MMM political party that has won the election since 1976 in this electoral district No. 4. Hanuman would represent a precarious, volatile, more formal than real electoral unit perhaps, but less closed than Shiva, more open to other communities such as Catholics or Tamils in so far as they do not practise the sacrifice of animals. Hanuman is a vegetarian open to all castes. The transfer of fervour from Shiva to Hanuman since 2005 is, however, only barely begun if one observes the hill at the foot of the mountain called Montagne des Signaux where niches are distributed today to be used in the end for the construction of new religious buildings for which we do not yet know what deities these small constructions will serve.

New neighbourhoods and the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) in Montagne Blanche The second example of the founding of a Hanuman temple is in Montagne Blanche, where former sugar workers had seven perches of land to build their residences

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after leaving the Sans Souci camp, located not far away. In 1995, we had photographed the new housing plots, a kind of suburb of Montagne Blanche on the road from Bel-Air to Quartier Militaire. At that time a small area had been tarred where a statue of Hanuman had been placed on this parcelling of land of beneficiaries of the sugar Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) granted free of charge by FUEL to the inhabitants for the purpose of building a future temple. This has been done since then, but it is no longer a temple of Shiva as when Hanuman was one of the guardians. Hanuman has become the central deity of the new temple that he does not share with any other deity. When a temple to Hanuman is built, the potential conflicts of any community against one another conveyed by other deities such as Shiva, Ganesh, Kartikeya (Murugan) (in the suburban temples Tamils call kovils), Krishna, Luxmi or Sarashwati (in Hindu temples), etc. must be solved. As a result, in the VRS districts, such as Montagne Blanche and Tranquebar on the geometric steps of the hills of the Montagne des Signaux on the outskirts of Port Louis, only Hanuman is represented in the temples by a single statue with his effigy.

Hanuman and Kali, symbolic management of conflicts between tradition and modernity in globalisation In these two selected examples, we have retained that the emergence of the temples of Hanuman is the sign of a displayed and public modernity in place of Shiva. On the strictly symbolic level, a real revolution has occurred since the beginning of the third millennium when these temples appeared. The new temples erected are not erected just, nor are they issued from any deity. We have studied the temples of Hanuman and will present the emergence of the temples of Kali that emerged in the same globalised context. The social and economic raison d’être of the changes made around the deities of Hanuman became evident when we approached the emergence of Kali temples. Already, the examples given of the first built temples of Hanuman were on the crown lands, which were not neutral because they are spaces particularly claimed by the State for tourism issues. By being installed on the crown lands where workers in free zones hardly made a living from their wages in the unhealthy neighbourhoods of the capital like “Bangladesh,” Hanuman delivered a strong symbolic message about the precarious situations of some employees even though they have benefitted from social protection which has guaranteed them private ownership of their family residences in the new VRS neighbourhoods and in the outlying areas of cities such as Flacq where apartments were distributed in full ownership to textile licensees. Where social housing was built, the recent foundation of the new temples of Kali administer in another way the proof of a major social change relative to the complete reorganisation of the Mauritian economy or in the space of barely ten years, the former sugar companies concentrated on the three large companies producing electricity22 and special sugars on the best land previously supplied with water, allowing a real mechanisation of the harvest and a computer

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assistance of the irrigation by the groundwater as was the case of the former sugar company of Bel-ombre which has now disappeared. ​

FIGURE 6.1 

Bonhomme Salute

Temples of Kali on crown lands and private lands All the temples of Kali have appeared like those of Hanuman since the 1990s when globalisation accelerated in Mauritius. They were erected on the site of an ancient kalimai whose place is still preserved even if there are no more cults in the place because the faithful who built it are no longer there to practice the cults. Where there was a first kalimai, this one cannot disappear. Its roots are renewed, while this is not the case for Dhi, who represents the owner of a sugar establishment called the “Kaptan.”23 The difference is essentially as shown by the side story of the figure Bonhomme Salute installed in a cane field at Saint Julien d’Hotman, near the town of Flacq to the east of the island where it represents the deity Dhi as in Figure 6.1. An unknown Dhi enthusiast had become accustomed to installing replicas of the Bonhomme Salute in various places. All the statues scattered by this unknown faithful in kalimais under renovation were broken. The original statue remained intact. The moral of this anecdote lies in the symbolically asserted fact that Dhi represents a bygone time, that he does not regenerate himself unlike the guardian deities associated with Kali, from India, the product of a reincarnation on the place of migration of Indian labourers who came for the cultivation of sugar cane. The popular religion imported from India has always been represented as a re-creation of Hinduism through the cults of Kali whose traditions are unanimous in saying that the deities rose up from the ashes because the roots were never cut, the reason as to why the guardian deities are always under a tree. If the memory of traditions is not history, this very widely shared representation of Mauritian Hinduism is contradictory to the idea that Mauritian Hinduism would be Creole in nature, a form of syncretism of beliefs that would have mingled. What the cults dedicated to Kali affirm, a matrix of the Hindu religion in Mauritius – through rituals, traditions, songs, memory symbols – is the idea of a recreation of the Hindu religion in the context of a migratory rootedness. The donation of land by the owners of the early sugar mills did the

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rest. In other words, through these gifts, the revival of popular cults has become possible. In fact, the owners of the sugar mills where the Hindu labourers’ camps were not only accepted in addition to the installation of small altars on plots of land so that their workers could install their deities, they also granted a right of ownership legally attested by a notarial deed. It was a way to retain the labourers in a context of labour shortages. All kalimais visited are established on legally established lands. The existence of Kali cults in Mauritius is based on capital/ labour relations clearly established at the beginning of sugar. Thanks to these cults described in the previous chapters, the labourers n’ont pas coupé la chaine, i.e. they have not severed the link from the relationships that linked them to their places of origin in India. Until about 2000, the deity Kali remained an outside deity. Even recently, some of the faithful considered it nonsense for the goddess Kali to be locked up in a temple.

The first temple of Kali on crown land: Grand Baie in the north The history of the Kali temple in Grand Baie in the north of the island began in 2002 with a political conflict because of the renovation of the kalimai envisaged by followers, some of low caste, others of high caste who were opposed to each other. In addition, the kalimai was located on the crown land by the sea. These lands reserved for the state could not be claimed by any individual, not even a cultural association. The administration was planning to create a public square on the waterfront slightly off the tarmac road. In the face of too many occupations in the lands of the crown lands, the State had promulgated a law prohibiting all construction of religious buildings in these places reserved for tourism. For this reason, the local conflict between associations was coupled with a political conflict relayed at the time by the press. To this was added a frontal disagreement between the national association Voice of Hindus and the kalimai associations which brought up the idea of erecting a temple rather than merely renovating the kalimai. Faced with the discord of the Kali faithful, the Voice of Hindus association opposed to the building of a temple in this place intervened by saying that if others – Tamils or Christians – had a religious building on the coast, why could a kalimai not have a chance to find its place? Voice of Hindus campaigned for justice, calling for an additional allotment of land to move the place of worship elsewhere if the public square were to be built. The Voice of Hindus introduced a court injunction to claim replacement land for the kalimai. This claim too many created confusions, especially since the political conflict of prohibiting the construction of religious buildings on the coasts was not far from becoming a government matter because the former minister in charge of Land and Housing had bequeathed so-called crown lands in Belle Mare, in the east of the island, after which a real craze of construction of places of worship took hold of the associations that had just got the land from the then Minister. Places of worship were built opposite the public beach by various associations – Brahma Kumari, Islamic

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Cultural Centre, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Rama Krishna Mission, etc. on the crown lands. At the time this issue made headlines, we focused on the problem of renovating the kalimai in Grand Baie. While measuring the impact of political strategies between cultural associations, the government and the Kali devotee groups being in conflict with each other, they were interested in the project to build a temple in Grand Baie in the north that everyone had come to agree on because the issue of the crown land at Grand Baie had nothing to do with the corruption scandal caused by the sales of the crown land in Palmar on the east side of the island. We studied which deities had been installed in the temple knowing their importance for the model of communication they engaged for the faithful of the temple. Three deities were quickly and unanimously chosen by the associations formerly opposed: Shiva, Kali, Hanuman. The interest of the devotees was then mobilised by the necessity that each social group find its place in the entente of the deities of the temple. More than ten deities were placed on the altar of Kali, among which we recognised Shiva, Parvati, Krishna, Luxmi, Durga, Ganga, Ganesh, Saraswati, etc. All these deities were known for their symbolic force known as Shakti. This is since all of them are highly related to Shiva. The plethora of temple deities, each stronger than the other, if everyone were allowed to be represented in the temple, then this was also a sign of social segmentation of the communities of devotees involved. Their multiplicity made possible the implementation of divergent strategies difficult to control by the central deities: Shiva, Kali and Hanuman. As for Hanuman, he was initially represented by a small statue which was replaced by a very large figurine installed in a glass room on all four sides. The geographical position of Hanuman on the temple gave the impression that it could empower Kali and Shiva if the rich devotee who offered this great statue were to form a social group devolved to Hanuman of which it is known that he is the support of more individual than collective strategies, he who shares his altar with no one. As always, Hanuman was outside at the entrance to the temple. He occupied two spaces, the first one where he appeared as a miniature next to a very large statue that looked gigantic. In the same way Shiva occupied two places. As for Ganesh, true to form, he was a small divinity that was seen inside the entrance of the temple. He was acting as an adviser to Shiva. The symbolic dialectic of this temple associates three deities: Shiva/Kali/Hanuman. The competition between Shiva and Hanuman is visible and measured by the differential size of the statues. The photograph of the temple taken in 2019 shows an imposing temple, of sumptuous and modern architecture while the little deity at the edge of the water photographed in 2004 had not moved because the conflict between the associations had been resolved. This is why the precaution taken to place another deity when building another temple – in the event that there was no agreement – had become useless. Shiva’s presence in this kalimai has no other explanation than that of a transfer of power from Shiva to Kali. This symbolism suggests that the passage of the kalimai into a temple was accompanied by a brahmanisation of the rituals. The temple became a shivala name given to the

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temples of Shiva where the devotees are vegetarians. Hanuman was the guardian of the temple. He was outside and seemed to eventually become autonomous by creating as in Tranquebar his own temple.

Other private temples of Kali have multiplied They are small altars of the wealthiest families able to invest financially in a temple such as at Camp de Masque, the current temple of Boutique Joseph studied earlier with new photographs.

Social strategies, electoral strategies: 2014 All these symbolic manifestations of the building of the new temples of Hanuman, Kali and the brahmanisation of certain rituals are inscribed in the electoral field – as we saw in the 2014 elections, which were particularly revealing of the real transformation of society, which was increasingly asserting itself as a less unified society as it advocated an obsolete ideology of “unity in diversity.” Marriage alliance strategies between caste groups were key to achieving electoral balances as we have seen in the constituencies where we have worked the table shows where it is the preferential wedding alliances of the Baboojees/Marazs, very different from the other castes, such as the Vaish, which have always dominated. This aspect of inter-caste relations was involved in terms of possible anticipation of electoral scores in a general context where no caste was a majority. It was the minorities who made the majorities. It is generally known that the Baboojee/Maraz wedding social alliances are mainly in favour of the Chamar lower castes, more precisely in the case of the Tantwa group whose internal organisation is based on exogamy. More outward-looking, these social groups have contracted many marriages with the Baboojees/Marazs and with the Vaishs. The same is not true of the Chamar/Jaswara, Chamar/Dussiah or even Chamar/ Ravibram sub-castes which are organised on a caste endogamy basis. Quite different is the practice of alliance of the Vaishs who have several sub-castes, about 20, of which the best known in Mauritius are: the Ahir, the Koyrees, the Kanhar, the Gowala and the Lohar. This group usually takes its women from outside, apart from a few isolated people who sometimes practice endogamy like the Vaishs/Koyrees. Preferential marriages have however always been valued with Baboojees and Marazs, although without endogamous strategies. Contrary to appearances, the power relations at the time of the elections generally involve all minority groups confronted with the strength of existing alliances in previously constituted networks. This unrecognised reality of elections is played out even in the representations of voters who can vote for a political representative whose historical identity as a caste is different from that which it affirms as it is the case of a Member of Parliament regularly elected in the region of Flacq. In the end, it is around constructed representations that electoral choices work. No matter what the actual “identities” are as long as they are accepted

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into the local society. The kalimai places of worship – which are the real historical supports of the origins of the candidates – find here their anchor point in the democratic reality of the elections. This explains the very current social vigour of the revivals of certain cults as is the case of the Amourou Puja cult of the Telugus studied in the third part. As previously mentioned, this cult had moved several groups of families living in places very far from the riding of Flacq-Bon Accueil where we attended the ceremony. These residents of other electoral districts were fully involved in the event. They wore the binde24 in the parade that led to Kali or they took their assigned place by their resident parents on the spot. The great planter of the region of Flacq of Chamar/Tantwa origin who deployed a strategy of alliance with the high castes could only build the myth of an origin that was not his own because it was instituted long ago, probably in the distant days of the origins of the “indenture trade” when the oldest migrants were instituted “IndoMauritian” by the British administration. Thus, the Labour Party (PTR) was the object of the same ideological construction based on the historical seniority of its foundation in 1930 which made it recognised by the people as the party of the high castes, which is far from the truth in fact. If the ideology of unity in diversity could have served as a basis for the conflicting debates over the problems to be solved on the eve of national independence in 1968, it is logical to ask today if this concept studied in all its complexity by Julie Peghini (2018) was still Le grand dérangement (Balandier, 2005) 25 of the society and the Mauritian economy of the third millennium. From our point of view26 obviously it was not. Moreover, all our field studies show that the demand for unity is all the more assertive since it seldom holds true requiring numerous recourses to bitter negotiations to find solutions to conflicts. We have just seen that the emergence of the temples of Hanuman or Kali has always been established after long negotiations by the associations concerned, some of which have lasted several years. The sometimes tense atmosphere of these agreements that have taken place in the symbolic domain of the religious/cultural since the 1990s, was evidently reflected at the electoral level both in the negotiations on the choice of candidates for constituency/electoral districts and in the final choice of voters. In strictly electoral terms, the situation in the years of immediate independence has varied considerably with the gradual consolidation of the four major national parties – the PTR, the PMSD, the MMM and the MSM 27 – since the election results of the year 2000, one year after the “Kaya affair” mentioned above. These elections recorded the first non-unanimous vote of 60/0 gained since the national independence of the elections from 1967.28 The same symbolic reality of differentiation as that of the elections manifested itself in the conflict between Hindus and Tamils in Mahébourg presented in Chapter 5. In the new temple built around Murugan – the main Tamil deity – the deities Shiva, Krishna, Kaliamen, Draupadi, Ganesh, Luxmi and Hanuman, all are superior Hindu deities to which have been added guardian deities. Here lies the true symbolic mutation of these new temples, for the divinities of the guardianship are never installed on the altars of the temples. Not only did the guardian deities like Kateri leave their

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tree, but the distinction usually made between the pure and the impure around the guardian deities, left (impure)/right (pure) disappeared. The reading of the relations thus symbolised by the solution of the conflict centred on the building a new temple is clear. This temple organises the overcoming of caste divisions while the precarious condition of the Hindus resulted in a brahmanisation of their kalimai symbolised by the white flag29 that replaced the red flag. On the other hand, the male deities are always on the right and the female deities are always on the left. From this point of view, the situation has not changed. This temple symbolises a society of class difference rather than caste. This was our conclusion reinforced by the fact that the various Hindu associations concerned contributed to the rehabilitation of the temple. It is worth noting, however, that the local small caste group retained the distinction between pure and impure. Important social changes such as the overcoming of caste distinctions never come about abruptly. They are never based on majorities. Therefore, there is no need to generalise this caste/class mutation. It was still a local fact which only reflects the views of the authors.

Political redistribution of 2014 elections The evolution of the electoral balances recorded in 2014 confirmed the process of the Mauritian society towards differentiations more and more clearly started since the 2000 elections, one year after the “Kaya affair.” Even a new score of 60/0 was realised, it appears today that better to take a retreat position in order to understand more how to deal with a situation to overcome the racial/ethnic differentiation and castes too well established since independence gained in 1968. We see today in 2020 that social fragmentation is symbolically observed with the emergence of new temples, with the brahmanisation of others, with the expression of new forms of creolisation in Father Laval’s cult. These cultural distinctions of Mauritian society are reflected in the cleavages of political parties as well as in the electoral results achieved in the 2014 electoral districts where we worked. In 2014, new political parties confronted the large traditional parties that reformed with the founding of a new party known as the “Lepep Alliance.” Alongside the main political blocs of the PTR,30 the PMSD31 and the MMM,32 a new Lepep Alliance party was created, consisting of MMM33 dissidents, militants of the former MSM party and those of the newly-born “liberating movement” (ML). The new Lepep Alliance party produced from the concluded agreement largely dominated the 2014 elections by winning numerous seats in the key constituencies of the former major parties: Nos. 5, 9 and 7 for the ridings where we worked. Five political leaders opposed: Paul Bérenger for the MMM, Nuvinchandra Ramgoolam for the PTR, Anerood Jugnauth for the Le Pep Alliance, Yvan Colendaveloo for the ML and Xavier Duval who represented the PMSD. In addition to these alliances and fragmentations of the main national parties more than 20 small parties34 competed in the elections although each of them could not have a representative. The recent Lepep Alliance group posted a

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tight government agenda on topics that most of them were sore points of social issues: housing, education, health/social security, and transportation. Despite the political agreement between the MMM and the PTR, it was the Lepep Alliance that triumphed in many constituencies, both in the city and in rural areas. This resounding failure of the old parties MMM, PTR, is due to a real fragmentation of society that we observe in the mutation of rituals and cults. Yet none of these small parties had an opportunity to place their candidate as a local MP, let alone be part of the government. If we count the votes obtained by the small parties in the constituencies Nos. 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12 concerned by our study, the votes of these small parties totalled 9.21% of the votes compared to the winning party – the Lepep Alliance – which won 90.09% of the votes in the same six regions studied while its score was 78.04% at the national level. In the last elections of 2014, the real political role of small parties was played on the differential results between the two competing alliances of national parties: Lepep Alliance/ PMSD/ML and PTR/MMM. It is reasonable to say that the low score of losing allies could be related to the historical opposition of the MMM/PTR parties because some voters had told us that they considered this political alliance against nature, which is why they had preferred to vote elsewhere. Thus, in electoral district No. 4, the Hindus and the general population voted an absolute majority of 3 Lepep Alliance candidates (Lepep Alliance), in electoral district No. 5, the Hindus having voted for 3 candidates from the same party, in electoral district No. 7, the Hindus also passed three elected Lepep Alliance with an absolute majority, in constituency No. 9, the Hindus elected three candidates, and finally in No. 12, the Hindus chose three candidates. Only in constituency No. 10 were the votes more divided: the Hindus elected two Lepep Alliance candidates while the third and last elected candidate was from the PTR/MMM alliance with a score of 45.065% of the votes. From a more general point of view, on the Lepep Alliance side, following the election agreement between the MSM, the PMSD and the ML, the “ticket distribution” being 36-24, the leadership of these parties had to choose their candidates. As for the MMM/PTR party, the two leaders decided to make a balanced split of 30/30. The winning party anticipated the possibility of winning these elections by getting a new score of 60/0.

Symbolic terms of transformation Knowing that memory is not history, we propose to interpret social practices according to the symbolic modalities of their manifestation without prejudging the distinctive categories of castes. What dialectical modalities of relations are organised through the associated deities of the new temples: culture and religion in this perspective are inseparable. We note the three types of symbolic transformation encountered in our investigations to which we have given a name in relation to the distinctive representations of Shiva, Kali, Hanuman and Ganesh mediators of the kalimai mutation, the foundation of new temples, the transformation of rituals.

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Hanumanisation If the creation of the Hanuman temples is a symbolic manifestation of the economic differences that got deeper, there is no reason to think that there would be a general class consciousness today, especially since the plantation of sugar workers have been left with social protection that has enabled them to become small owners. The same is true, but to a lesser extent, of textile workers who are now housed on the outskirts of cities in social housing that has been allocated to them by the government as a result of the closures of numerous textile companies. This social protection has, however, fallen far short of meeting the primary needs of the Mauritian population, many of whom have been excluded from globalised development. The symbolic individualisation of Hanuman is still far from meeting the dissatisfaction of those who live in precarious cities. Today, however, it is the large-scale migration of low-wage labour that threatens the future of society in that these migrations tend to turn into permanent residence even if the social and political integration of migrants is weak. It is foreseeable that the emerging society will have to gather its symbolic capital, all religions and cultures taken in account, to meet the conditions of local integration. What we have conceptualised as “Hanumanisation” is a generally long process, beginning in the 1990s when the globalisation of markets accelerated. The option taken by successive governments to prepare for market competition by an unprecedented sugar concentration, on an island-wide basis, by creating the conditions for greater productivity and diversification of the country’s activities, has not given any choice to all city employees, textile workers, sugar workers, tea workers and craft workers. Hanumanisation has so far, in 2020, been an attempt to articulate the individual aspirations of devotees to the collective lifestyles of traditional society. Hanuman would be a useful mediator for the individualisation needs of the faithful, he who is single and admits no other divinity to his side in the temples that are dedicated to him. The future difficulties of Mauritian society will be played out in all likelihood in the strategies for welcoming migrants,35 as for all Western countries. Hanumanisation is also for the Indo-Mauritius a way of proposing an organic framework for overcoming the caste distinctions linked to conflicts that can sometimes be overcome by the mere desire to study all the possibilities so that economic inequalities do not identify with caste differences. Of course, other symbolic forces should emerge through the various beliefs affirmed by the Indo-Mauritian population.

Shivalisation Kali temples are very often private temples and the sign of a tension in the relations of statutory inequalities that are increasingly recorded in a personalised, individual way in the cults considered the economic relations that put pressure on everyday life. Between 2000 and 2020, religious practice increased, which led to the de facto renovation of places of worship, the creation of temples for

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collectives able to bear the prohibitive costs of modern temples, all built with luxurious materials with the aid of the subsidies granted by the federation to all associations of the faithful. Individuals who have created temples represent either a restricted branch of the family, at best an alliance network. They often have a relatively modest residence. The two conversions of the kalimais in the temple of Kali – Boutique J. at Camp de Masque and P. in Clemencia – are quite impressive in their size and modernity. The recently built temples are sumptuous. The first is that of a so-called “small planter” who managed a family-owned company “société and Co” on behalf of relatives residing elsewhere when there were still 18 sugar companies operating in Mauritius. The second, the temple of the former healer, recently deceased, should be a determining support for his son if he should commit to resuming his father’s function according to new norms which he seems to have chosen in view of the deities of his temple. The fact that he introduced Ganesh and Shiva into this temple dedicated to Kali by his father who was one of the great specialists of these rituals, symbolises the fact that he will no longer make animal sacrifices as was the case with his father before. This temple is apparently dedicated to Kali. The strategy of the future healer is based on a symbolic break with the old practices of his father without opposition to the traditions of the kalimai. The individualisation adopted is different that of the devotees who usually address themselves in Hanuman in that there is no symbolic inversion of roles in the space of the temple as when Shiva became guardian of Hanuman. The mode of mutation involves the presence of deities charged with neutralising Kali. It is a quantitative model of mutation. The temple of Kali described in Grand Baie is a place where an impressive number of divinities all superior to each other crowd in. The son asserts himself by the choice of divinities as a future normalised healer who respects the law officially forbidding the sacrifice of animals. We use the concept of “Shivalisation” by reference to the term “Shivala” which is a temple in principle dedicated to Shiva in which the deity Kali, strongly established as in the case of the Temple P. in Clemencia, is a framework of the production of strategies, sometimes individual, more often collective, as tradition dictates.

Brahmanisation The brahmanisation of certain places of worship would come from the followers of a temple whose will would be to affirm their superiority by playing according to the rules of rituals to bring about the change of nature of the divine powers engaged in a temple. Whatever the identity of the official deities of a temple, be it Shiva, Kali or Hanuman, these deities are not immune to a change of their qualities in favour of strategies of a group of devotees or individuals. Brahmanisation would be a process of caste domination that would occur when someone or a collective seeks to rank higher on the social scale. In this case it is enough to create an incident in the course of a ritual always negotiated with the organisers of the worship before the ceremony. This situation occurred in our investigation so

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that the ritual practised by the priest (pandit) split into a cult to the goddess Kali where the majority of participants went to honour her while, at the same time young girls came out of the temple enclosure to honour the fire Agni according to the rite. These girls were all members of the Arya Samaj Association.

Creolisation Several times in this book we have defined the concept of “creolisation.” In particular, in the first chapter, we attributed the cleavage of the “Creole world” from the “Indian world” to the political division organised by the British administration in the constitutional form of the census categories and their evolution over time. More precisely, the singularity of the Mauritian experience would come from the fact that ethnicity would have taken, from the outset, an economic form of overcoming the condition of slave and committed, itself based on the appearance of differentiated forms of accumulation similar to class differences, what Richard Allen highlighted by showing the emergence of a domestic capital” that would have contributed to the island’s economic success through sugar trade. For this, he relied on a comparison of historical statistical sources from the most reliable archives (1999). We never use the term “Creole,” preferring to evoke the processes of social transformation. It goes as far as the naming “creolisation” is used sometimes to evoke forms of cultural assimilation, sometimes to highlight situations of interbreeding. Ethnological research generally shows the impossibility of any acculturation. We showed that “Mauritian Hinduism” was a process of “re-creation” according to the concept developed by Eric Hobsbaum and Térence Ranger in 1983. Mauritian Hinduism should not be described as Creole Hinduism.36 Tantrism is developing today in the context of globalised sugar industries being restructured towards international tourism and large-scale power generation in the same way as Kali had been established at the very core of the sugar industry.

Recent development of Tantrism This study on the kalimai in Mauritius emphasises the role of Goddess Kali in that the Indian “coolies,” the Tamils in particular, arrived under French colonial rule almost a century before migrants from north India, had erected Kali altars within the early sugar estates where these places of worship had been situated. Upon their arrival, the Indians from the north, who shared the similar working conditions on the sugar estates, observed their own rituals along with the Tamils, on the altars already erected. Within this common framework of popular religion, the internal differentiations of Indo-Mauritian society in terms of castes were instituted in the sugar estates in the same places of worship where altars dedicated

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to Kali had already been built. The castes were reinforced thereafter as the gap in the economic status among the migrants widened their respective position in the hierarchy of the sugar organisation was defined. These caste affirmations were socio-historical in nature, depending on their plural geographic and economic origins in India and on their position within the sugar estates. Those migrants who arrived first, so-called “old migrants,” became the high castes in Mauritius, who are today referred as Baboojee-Marazs. To these statutory distinctions of a political-economic nature, were added those brought about by groups of Muslim and Hindu large traders such as the Gudjadhur of the time of Nehru, who were the exclusive exporters of race horses from India. Indian Tantrism came much later to Mauritius (see Annexure 6.1). We situate it in the 1990s when the sugar industry took a new turn and diversified its investments. The development of Tantrism is concomitant with the development of the tourism sector between 1990 and 2010, this is the period of restructuring of the sugar economy which reduced the number of companies from 18 to three large electricity producing companies: Omnicane, Alteo and Terra. Tantrism followed the main lines of sugar restructuring. Several tantric cults and rituals arose in the aftermath of the final structuring of the sugar economy.

Globalisation and migration Globalisation in the past, different from that of today, was studied starting from the present changes by going back to the birth of Hindu religious/cultural institutions which carried the process of development of Mauritian capitalism born of a cultural/political form most often related to the structuring of European countries. By questioning international migration in the multiple contexts in which it took place, and focusing our attention on the birth and development of the sugar plantation economy, by focusing our reflection on the period of transition from slavery to indenture, we have considered a keen qualitative approach, carried out by direct contact with institutions and informants representing the communities present in the island. These newly produced sources in the course of the investigations have been the raw material for new questions concerning secondary sources of archives and, among them, the correlations on the meaning of contemporary history topics. This dual anthropological and historical approach has made it possible to problematise a major questioning of the modes of production, the so-called community link, which must not be considered exclusively in terms of origin, but in terms of the process of sociocultural and therefore political and economic differentiation. Taking the legal/political reality as originally proposed as a research subject, the final formulation of this study was inspired by the late Uttamma Bissoondoyal. We have just clarified the processes of transforming popular Hindu cults into scholarly religion. The forms of contemporary globalised capitalist development give us the opportunity for a prospective reflection on the relationship of culture, the economy and politics

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involved in this type of Mauritian development. We have seen that it plays the card of globalisation by looking forward to its future. Worship of the Great Goddess is one of the central tenets of Hinduism and this mode of devotion is known as Shaktism. The Goddess may manifest in various forms: as an iconic village goddess; or as a high caste, pan-Indian goddess; or sometimes, as an esoteric tantric goddess. In folk Shaktism, the devotee does not chant mantras but instead offers devotion to please the Goddess. The folk strand of goddess worship is most prevalent among tribal and low caste Hindus, mainly in rural India. The folk goddesses may either be some tribal goddess or local Hindu goddess. They are often worshipped by both the groups irrespective of the fact which group initially worshipped it. These goddesses are usually fierce and fear-inspiring and demand propitiation/offerings from the devotees. Once they are pleased, they are generous and benevolent. No priest is needed to offer oblation to them. Very often, either a shaman or an older woman or a possessed woman performs the Puja. Usually, these folk goddesses bestow fertility (plants, animals, people), help in healing of diseases, protect from danger, or grant wishes like long life of a spouse. The various names by which these folk goddesses are known are not restricted to a particular region; rather they have existed across the whole of India, known by various names like Mansa, Kali, Chandi, Shitala, Yoginis. Kali is both a local, folk deity who is most popular in Bengal as well as a Brahmanical Pan Indian goddess. In her folk form, Kali is worshipped by both tribal and low caste Hindus. The low caste Hindus like Bauris worship Kali both individually in private on a daily basis or in groups in public fairs and festivals. A wizard calls on whoever seeks Kali to exorcise a witch or some supernatural spirit. There are divergent views on whether Shaktism is an independent beliefsystem or mere a strand of Shaivism. In its ritual practices, tantric Shaktism is not much different from tantric Shaivism. In this form of Shakta worship, the goddess is worshipped with tantric rituals and also through certain ways of meditation and visualisation. There are two subtypes of tantric shaktism – scholarly tantric strand and a folk tantric strand. Tantric elements can be traced in tantric writings and such texts were written through 9 A.D. Tantras are scriptures, usually believed to be related to mystic worship of numerous female deities; though in common perception, they are believed to be associated with shakti alone. Contrary to this popular perception, Tantras deal with the male deities as well and belong to various other sects, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, etc. Tantric belief and practices often bear a stigma because of their involvement in “various revolting, depraved and immoral rites.” The magical rites of Tantrism may be taken to represent religion of primitive people, and it does consist of some revolting sexual rites. However, tantric Jainism Tantrism is much more sacred and mystic than just depraved rites. Tantras are abridging into a kind of algebraic formulae of some mantra that would be long and run into scores of syllables. Tantra writing gives accounts of cosmology,

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origin of gods, destruction of universes, of places, of pilgrimage, royal duties and mythological stories besides other topics. There are several theories of its origin, some consider it of Persian in origin while some consider it of indigenous origin. India is the original home of Tantra and later spread to other countries of Asia. Tantra branched off into other religions too. Apart from tantric Hinduism, tantric Buddhism too is practised. Tantra as a distinct system has existed since centuries. In Banabhatta’s Kadambari, we find a mention of Tantras. The tantric mode of worship has occupied a significant place in the religious life of Hindus for the last four or five centuries. Tantric rituals are somewhat similar to some rites performed at midnight at the time of outbreak of disease for Kali either rakshya kali (the preserver) or masan kali (the goddess of burning ground). Chintaharan Chakraborty states: Worship is offered on … festive occasions in the night, usually at midnight. Special worship is also generally performed in shrines on new moon nights which along with Tuesdays and Saturdays are regarded as sacred to the deity. Worship is offered also at times of rejoicing (as on the occasion of a marriage ceremony) and thanksgiving as well at times of calamity such as outbreak of epidemics, especially cholera, with which the deity is particularly associated, at least in some parts of Bengal. Crook 2005(p. 92) William Crook too confirms this fact. Public worship was performed when an epidemic broke out. It was a popular belief that Kali (rakshya kali) controls epidemics and her worship could eradicate diseases and the villagers would worship her at a four-point crossing (chauri chaurha) at night. In some cases, in times of epidemic, similar rites to cure, were performed at the burning ground for masan kali or people will march in a procession making sacrificial offerings on the way. Crook recounts such incidences: During an epidemic in Bihar, the local exorcists used to march out for the Kali shrine in Calcutta carrying a pot with burning incense and a sheep for sacrifice. They used to shout the goddess name and beg from the villages which they passed on to other villages. As the roads were dreaded in those days, few of them succeeded in reaching the shrine. On the way, the sheep was killed and eaten by members of the lower caste. Sitala, one of the goddesses controlling the small-pox develops into her sistergoddess, the bloodthirsty Kali during the turmoil caused by an epidemic. As the indentured labourers were transported to Mauritius, they carried these rites and practices with them as part of their cultural memory. On the plantations, they performed worship of Kali in the residual manner. They uttered no mantras, had no priests or any enlightened teacher to initiate them in these tantric offerings. Being illiterate, living on an unfamiliar Mauritian land, they tried to make sense of the hostile world that they inhabited and also sought

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explanations of strange occurrences in their lives. They were superstitious and believed in witches and black magic etc. They offered sacrifices of sheep, goat at the altar of the kalimai and indulged in gory rituals like drinking its blood, as they believed they would acquire power the power of Kali and then they would become the headman or most wealthy person in the village. At times, they would extract the teeth of the sacrificial animal and slit its throat. These ritualistic offerings were mostly made at night as they used to do it in India.

Annexure 6.1 Tantra: Kali in India Worship of the Great Goddess is one of the central tenets of Hinduism and this mode of devotion is known as Shaktism. The Goddess may manifest in various forms - as an iconic village goddess; or as a high caste, pan-Indian goddess; or sometimes, as an esoteric tantric goddess. In folk Shaktism, the devotee does not chant mantras instead offers devotion to please the goddess. The folk strand of goddess worship is most prevalent among tribal and low caste Hindus, mainly in rural India. The folk goddesses may either be some tribal goddess or local Hindu goddess. They are often worshipped by both the groups irrespective of the fact which group initially worshipped it. These goddesses are usually fierce and fear-inspiring and demand propitiation / offerings from the devotees. Once they are pleased, they are generous and benevolent. No priest is needed to offer oblation to them. Very often, either a shaman or an older woman or a possessed woman performs the puja. Usually, these folk goddesses bestow fertility (plants, animals, people), help in healing of diseases, protect from danger, or grant wishes like long life of spouse. The various names by which these folk goddesses are known are not restricted to a particular region, rather they have existed across the whole of India, known by various names like Mansa, Kali, Chandi, Shitala, Yoginis. Kali is both a local, folk deity who is most popular in Bengal as well as a Brahmanical Pan Indian goddess. In its folk form, Kali is worshipped by both tribal and low caste Hindus. The low caste Hindus like Bauris worship Kali both in the private individually on daily basis or in groups in public fairs and festivals. A wizard calls on who seeks Kali to exorcise a witch or some supernatural spirit. There are divergent views whether Shaktism is an independent belief-system or mere a strand of Shaivism. In its ritual practices, tantric Shaktism is not much different from tantric Shaivism. In this form of Shakta worship, the goddess is worshipped with tantric rituals and also through certain ways of meditation and visualization. There are two subtypes of tantric shaktism – scholarly tantric strand and a folk tantric strand. Tantric elements can be traced in tantric writings and such texts were written through 9 th A. D. Tantras are scriptures, usually believed to be related to mystic worship of numerous female deities; though in common perception, they are believed to be associated with shakti alone. Contrary to this popular perception, Tantras deal

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with the male deities as well and belong to various other sects, Vaishnavism, Shaivism etc. Tantric belief and practices often bear stigma because of their involvement in “various revolting, depraved and immoral rites”. The magical rites of Tantrism may be taken to represent religion of primitive people, it does consist of some revolting sexual rites. However, tantric Jainism Tantrism is much more sacred and mystic than just depraved rites. Tantras are abridging into a kind of algebraic formulae of some mantra that would be long and run into scores of syllables. Tantra writing gives accounts of cosmology, origin of gods, destruction of universes, of places, of pilgrimage, royal duties and mythological stories besides other topics. There are several theories of its origin, some consider it of Persian in origin while some consider it of indigenous origin. India is the original home of tantra and later spread to other countries of Asia. Tantra branched off into other religions too. Apart from Tantric Hinduism, tantric Buddhism too is practiced. Tantra as a distinct system has existed since centuries. In Banabhatta’s Kadambari, we find a mention of Tantras. Tantric mode of worship has occupied a significant place in the religious life of Hindus for the last four or five centuries. Tantric rituals are somewhat similar to some rites performed at midnight at the time of outbreak of disease for kali either “rakshya kali”( the preserver) or “masan kali” ( the goddess of burning ground). Chintaharan Chakraborty states: “Worship is offered on …. festive occasions in the night, usually at midnight. Special worship is also generally performed in shrines on new moon nights which along with Tuesdays and Saturdays are regarded as sacred to the deity. Worship is offered also at times of rejoicing (as on the occasion of a marriage ceremony) and thanksgiving as well at times of calamity such as outbreak of epidemics, especially cholera, with which the deity is particularly associated, at least in some parts of Bengal” (p. 92). William Crook too confirms this fact. Public worship was performed when epidemic broke out. It was a popular belief that Kali (Rakshya kali) controls epidemics and her worship could eradicate diseases and the villagers would worship her at a four-point crossing (chauri chaurha) at night. In some cases, in times of epidemic, similar rites to cure, were performed at the burning ground for Masan kali or people will march in a procession making sacrificial offerings on the way. Crook recounts such incidences: “During an epidemic in Bihar, the local exorcists used to march out for the Kali shrine in Calcutta carrying a pot with burning incense and a sheep for sacrifice. They used to shout the goddess name and beg from the villages which they passed on to other villages. As the roads were dreaded in those days, few of them succeeded in reaching the shrine. On the way, the sheep was killed and eaten by members of the lower caste. Sitala, one of the goddesses controlling the small-pox develops into her sistergoddess, the blood thirsty Kali during the turmoil caused by an epidemic. As the indentured labourers were transported to Mauritius, they carried these rites and practices with them as part of their cultural memory. On the plantations, they performed worship of Kali in the residual manner. They uttered

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no mantras, had no priests or any enlightened teacher to initiate them in these tantric offerings. Being illiterate, living on an unfamiliar Mauritian land, they tried to make sense of the hostile world that they inhabited and also sought explanations of strange occurrences in their lives. They were superstitious and believed in witches and black magic etc. They offered sacrifices of sheep, goat at the altar of Kalimai and indulged in gory rituals like drinking its blood, as they believed they would acquire power the power of Kali and then they would become the headman or most wealthy person in the village. At times, they would extract the teeth of the sacrificial animal and slit its throat. These ritualistic offerings were mostly made at night as they used to do it in India.

Notes 1 Labour market, land and credit/financial market. 2 Mauritian Militant Movement, Labour Party, Mauritian Socialist Movement, Mauritian Social Democratic Party. 3 Labour and land, in particular. 4 Given the relationship between the central altar of Kali and the universe of security and management of the place by the keepers of the place. 5 Yellow flower. 6 A red line drawn with a red powder of kumkum. 7 Capitalist relations engaged in the sugar economy. 8 Which represents the Ganges, the sacred river of India where all different rituals are practised. 9 Symbolically related to the 108 ball-shaped grains forming a rosary. 10 Including the tourists. 11 Durga and Kali are at the origin of the same cults of the seven sisters. 12 Of which it was said that this distinction would not exist in the Hindu religion. 13 Which means Great Basin Lake which in turn symbolises the Ganges of India. 14 It is a representation of Shiva, in raised stone of rounded shape at the top. 15 The associations Mauritius Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, Hindu Maha Sabha and Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad. 16 We shall see later that the building of the recent temples of Hanuman and Kali refers to very different social and historical realities. 17 Kali is represented at Grand Bassin in the form of Durga. The deities Hanuman and Kali were recently placed at Grand Bassin. 18 That is why Tamils and Hindus break the coco in their ceremonies where the circular shape represents a perfect figure in that all points are at equal distance from the centre. 19 We have shown in the first chapter that relations of autochtonie have been built between sugar workers (labourers and technicians) and businessmen through the internalisation of the capitalist logic engaged in the sugar plantation economy that gave birth to the small and large Indian plantation in the years 1860–1880. 20 Mouvement Militant Mauricien and Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien. 21 In a soft sense. 22 The three current utilities are in the north (Terra LTD), in the east (Alteo LTF) and in the south (Omnicane Ltd.). 23 This term of authority originated in the history of the long-range ship-master’s office that was crossing the Indian Ocean at the time of the great discoveries and the slave trade that followed. 24 See Glossary. These are copper pots filled with dishes to offer to Mother Kali. 25 Le grand dérangement published in the Presses Universitaires de France edition in 2005.

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26 Which only reflects the views of the authors. 27 Labour Party, Mauritian Social Democratic Party, Mauritian Militant Movement, Mauritian Socialist Movement. 28 Presented in the previous chapter constituency wise. 29 White represents Brahma, considered a higher deity of India. Not to be confused with the deity Brahma of Mauritius which is found in some kalimai as in the Valley of the Priests in the vicinity of Port Louis where this divinity did not take root, not having any dedicated temple like Shiva. 30 Founded in 1930. 31 Founded in 1960. 32 Founded in 1967. 33 Maurician Socialist Movement founded in 1983. 34 For the constituencies that are relevant to our work: Nos. 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12, we counted no less than 21 small parties whose representatives varied in the various constituencies. 35 In any case but it is likely, labour migrations indeed, but also poverty migrations will be labour migrations. 36 “Quand l’Hindouisme est créole – Plantation et Indianité à l’île Maurice.” Jean Benoist also spoke of social “creolisation” of the Tamil cults of Réunion. This qualifier is perfectly suited to the Réunion situation because we are in a political context of assimilation. Mauritian society is very different, whose British colonial model that succeeded France’s differs in its insular, bureaucratic and control-oriented nature of long-distance exchange networks.

CONCLUSION

Hinduism and forms of capitalism We have seen that the temples are multiplying, that the rituals are changing throughout the island and that the federations are leading the game of this tremendous religious change in close connection with the political and economic changes which Mauritius has experienced. The five major divinities instituted – Hanuman, Brahma, Saï Baba, Krishna and Durga – convey new ways of instituting the differences of origin, caste or economic background. The ceremonial practices that have changed profoundly since 1990 since the sugar economy no longer had the pre-eminent place that it had before national independence, refer to the new urban/rural relations that are being established today. The world of small-scale farmers has been considerably weakened, especially since there are many redundant sugar workers who, although they are once again employed as temporary workers during the cutting, have broken their link with the sugar estate on the one hand and the large plantation on the other. As for the big planters remaining agricultural entrepreneurs, they rely on the sugar economy by exploiting, sometimes directly, the lands they manage as sirdars of the establishment, sometimes indirectly by using the same workforce on their own plantations, or on the lands of the sugar estate cultivated in sharecropping. The era of the big plantation, the era of agricultural entrepreneurs ends and the very concept of a small planter should shrink to the only category of agricultural workers who have become owners of the cultivated lands they continue to exploit for their own account. The era of small property is everywhere, predominantly alongside the large restructured sugar estates, the emergence of new hotels and golf courses and the construction of luxury villas in all parts of the coast. This change in the rural world and the new relations established with the city coincide with the current reorganisation of the labour market. Workers in textile DOI: 10.4324/9781003298137-8

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factories are not protected in the same way from collective redundancies as sugar workers. They leave most of the time without compensation and have to cope with a labour market undermined from within by the industrial employment strategies of the free zones that turn to the cheaper unskilled external labour force. Nationals face competition from cheaper wages in Asian countries, while retraining is often difficult and they face low wages at hiring. At the same time, the relocation of major groups in the textile industry to Madagascar has put many women on the labour market who were previously employed in factories that have recently closed their doors. The existence in the smallest village of textile factories providing unskilled jobs and geographically close to places of residence, is now a thing of the past, especially since new investors in the high-tech textile branch, whether Indian or Chinese do not have the same hiring strategy. They import their labour and some of them are skilled workers, which was not the case in the first free-zone textile units of the 1970s. It is therefore not surprising that throughout our investigation, we have recorded the signs of social fragmentation accompanied by a tendency toward a certain community withdrawal in the face of the new social inequalities that are occurring. Between the dismissed workers of sugar and those who have been dismissed in other branches of activity, there is a whole world of differences. Between a small voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) owner or farm workers relocated from the camps and the unemployed textile worker, there is hardly any comparison possible: neither from the point of view of professional reconversion, nor before the hope of a new work, even so, a temporary one. Faced with this, the small shops of the style of the tabagies (small outlets) multiply in relation to this general tendency toward unemployment. The inadequacy of the labour market is of a structural nature to the extent that unskilled and cheap jobs are reserved for immigrants from India or China with employment contracts, three years for some and informally for the others. In addition, the qualified jobs opened as a result of the recent installation of high-tech companies in Ebène cannot all be offered to Mauritians whose level of training in computer science and international languages ​​is often considered insufficient. As for high-tech textile factories, they also come with their skilled workforce, trained to handle the new machinery they use. This is why Mauritius is restructuring the education system in order to increase the number of students with a relevant university degree in the required disciplines such as computer science, engineering, agricultural and industrial mechanics to qualify for the high-skilled employment market. It is at the cost of a higher quality university education that Mauritius will achieve the second stage of its development. Catching a second wind of development depends on many environmental, social, political and financial factors. The strong point of Mauritius is the presence of a class of capitalists and businessmen accustomed to international competition who have already shown their ability to react quickly, even more to anticipate new areas of investments able to increase their commercial and financial surplus value. The risks are always the same when one moves without a safety

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net in the globalisation environment, but the political will is there and the private and public actors play the hand of globalisation as we can see by the choice made very early to launch a national economic policy oriented toward the development of country of information and communication technologies (ICT). It is a difficult challenge, a situation some people call “the eye of the storm” because of the diagnosis they make an insufficient preparation of the Mauritian workforce to qualified jobs needed in the high-tech sector. But balance and reason keep guiding the choice of investments to be made while ensuring, at the same time, a rigorous control to avoid any land speculation through the parastatal institutions and taking the multiple measures that are necessary to accompany the restructuring of local sugar companies. Therefore, the results of our 15 years of research to gather qualitative field data have always been put in the proper context of ongoing development. This long-term work has taught us that it is not useful for anyone to evaluate in a purely quantitative way the chances of economic success of a country that has reached stage two of its development – neither investors, nor policies, nor social actors directly involved in the modernisation of the country. The true level of intelligibility of the new equilibrium of the Mauritian society and their visibility depends on a fine observation of the symbolic relations like the one we made about the Indian community to give meaning to the contemporary transformation. The radical empiricism of this study came from the need to integrate the lessons of the past in the present thinking of a country, which must face external competition in all sectors of its economy by generating enough local surplus value, to bring about partial developments capable of counterbalancing the growing internal inequalities. To grasp the internal dynamics, we had to go beyond the disciplinary boundaries and adopt a comparative approach to the forms of capitalist expansion and the new relationships actually engaged in today’s society. We have not found in the notion of diasporas – Indian, African, Chinese – fashionable notions in contemporary research, a design useful for today’s issues. Our reading of the works based on this reference has led us to consider that the way in which this question is dealt with not only does not address the issues raised by an island society remote from world markets like Mauritius, but still generates interpretations of reality that are often out of step with the supposed existence of social networks from old migrations that do not even explain the new positioning of the island on world markets. Moreover, some works go too far in the application of this concept while leaving aside the study of institutional, financial, commercial or environmental links that have been recomposed to face the need to take place in the new distribution of exchanges linking India and more generally Asian countries to African countries and considering the importance of South Africa in this new regional situation of the Western Indian Ocean. It is as if, in order to make the explanation process credible by identifying the “nodes” or characterising the networks transiting the Indian Ocean, it was necessary to establish the term diaspora as “the smallest or the largest common denominator” of transformation at work.1 Thus, in 2007, we became acquainted

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with a recent theorisation of the Mauritian transformation through the all-round application of the concept of diaspora. In this text, we are surprised to see notions such as those of “vertical diasporic practices” seen as being the prerogative of “Indo-Mauritians” opposed to “horizontal practices” of equally diasporic nature that would be those of “Creoles” of Afro-Creole “origins, then to evoke the existence of ” ethno-diasporic groups “that can lead to a “diasporic racism.” These discourses on and these analyses focused on the existence or the resurgence of diasporas more virtual than real are characterised by the absence of a reflection on the way in which the particular form of the French colonial state was articulated to the new English Colonial Order in the aftermath of the Treaty of Paris of 1814. They testify to a profound misunderstanding of the original Mauritian political culture elaborated from the colonial institutions existing since national independence in 1968, some ten years after African Independence. That is why we focused in the book Hinduism and Popular Cults in Mauritius: Sacred Religion and Plantation Economy on the period of transition from slavery to indenture that lasted a quarter of a century, from the official abolition of slavery in 1835 to the first decade of sugar development in the 1860s. To interpret the classification categories of the reorganising colonial society, we used Richard Allen’s research data, which we learned about in 1997,2 two years before his work was published in 1999. These are the first results of his work that led us to construct a critical reflection of internal differentiations that perpetuated over time while wondering on the sense of duality that seemed to resurge in every time of crisis (Chazan-Gillig 2001),3 drawing a symbolic boundary between an unfinished Creole world and an expanding Asian (wider) world. Without a global approach of real social formations, by the detour of the long duration of the history, without an anthropological approach which is not limited to simple interviews but focuses on the concrete and direct observation of the situations of investigation it is not possible to grasp the different ways of building the social bond. Those which shape the society in depth in the current context of globalisation. Our research is meant to be specific by the social, symbolic links that we have observed and highlighted in our surveys. These are very different depending on whether they apply to the values conveyed ​​ by Christian religions – where the individual is at the origin of the production of meaning for changes due to the globalisation – or according to which they take on a more collective form given by the values ​​conveyed by the Hindu religion. By inference, we have argued that there are two models of capitalist development in Mauritius by the fact that the Hindu religion differs from Christian religions in that it is the religious/cultural societies or federations which maintained privileged relations with the administration. But deduction is not worth comparison. That is why we think that the unprecedented subject of this research on “the transformation of Hindu popular cults into scholarly religion in globalisation” should lead to a comparison to be made between the other great religions of the island – Christianity and Islam – and Hinduism in the context of Mauritian capitalist expansion. We have paved

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the way in studying the Hindu religion from this very general point of view. This research that was carried out opens up to in depth study of the popular cults of Père Laval and Ghoun who are reactivated now in Mauritius in order to highlight the types of relationship that these cults maintain with the orthodoxy – Catholic and Muslim – and compare them with those of the Hindu religion. The central issue raised would be the relations of the different religions with the State in the context of the Mauritian political and economic transformation. Other paths for future studies might be a comparison of the relations of the Hindu religion with markets and the State in different parts of India as well as in the Indian Ocean countries which were settlement areas for Indian migrations, where the symbolic capital of the Hindu religion of origin of the migrants of migrants has been reinvented as is the case of Indo-Mauritian society. In this way, the reflection we have undertaken in the limited context of Indian society in Mauritius could extend to other social formations of this island and to other countries bordering the Indian Ocean where there is a large Hindu population. Thus, we could compare the forms of articulation of the symbolic systems of the Hindu religion, that of the beliefs and the various rituals with the social economic and political forms instituted in the riparian countries of the western Indian Ocean in comparison with the regions of origin in India. In the development of such a project on “Hinduism and the forms of capitalism,” the translation of Max Weber’s book Hinduism and Buddhism4 into French in 2006 (L’hindouisme et le Bouddhisme), will be of great use to researchers who are not German-speaking plus the wellknown works of Louis Dumont5 on India. The epistemological choice that we made to approach the Mauritian society in its historical implications with the State allows us to affirm that the enlarged accumulation of capitalist type was played, in Mauritius, on a mode of mutation. Qualitative/quantitative and through financial intermediation games in each crisis period. From the period of the founding of the empires, to the commercial triangulation, with the opening of the Asian axis by way of the structuring of the colonial markets and the contemporary globalisation, the relations of the State to the society built at the time of the transition from slavery to indentured labour have always had as a main purpose to restore, maintain or reinforce the great social and productive equilibrium, even up to and including the equilibrium instituted at the time of national independence, which has made at the least social cost, leading at most to the departure of part of the white, mixed-race and Creole population to other destinations, mainly in Europe, South Africa or Australia. Finally, the administration has always been the place of registration of the major balances of the dominant political social groups officially represented in the census categories of population. The immutable and stable category of “general population” denoting the white world and that of people of colour assimilated by their common affiliation to Catholic religion, has been the support of a duality of social organisation, mixing and opposing both forms of colonisation, French and English. Two ideologies of development – racial and ethnic – were built during the colonial era. Today, they have not quite the same social

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efficiency, given the recent shift in the role of the government in the production and the negotiated distribution of free land after the recent sugar concentrations. The current development of a high technology sector under the aegis of the Government, the land division of the former sugar companies of Highlands, Britannia and Mon Desert/Mon Trésor, the development of local investments as the “Investment Resort Scheme” (IRS) generate new relationships of social interaction that affect small and large planters, financial companies, sugar employees, executives of sugar companies, private owners of residences on “crown lands” and former sugar estates. The opening of Mauritius to all markets is no longer aimed at people related to each other by exclusively community or personal relationships. It is therefore not surprising that the tensions of today’s society, which are all too often referred to as racial or ethnic conflicts, are a sign of a more general malaise that points to a growing inadequacy between institutional functioning and the play of social legitimacy. A double type of awareness is at work today. It is part of the ideology of a borderless Créolité –racial or ethnic, caste or class – that seems to be resurging, having been experienced for a long time, at the time of the incomplete closure of the colonial markets between 1810 and until Madagascar becomes a French colony. This common ideology of a greater or lesser opening or closing on the outside translates into practices of religious inter-culturality, observable in popular Christian cults such as those of Père Laval and the Indian popular cults in the kalimais that are being converted into temples. A greater need for national integration is also evident in the current events,6 in connection with the recent disengagement of foreign capital formerly associated in the sugar companies of Highlands, Britannia and Lonroe, and with the complete mauritianisation of the large private consortium “Ireland Blyth” (IBL) formerly associated with English capital. Finally, to enter the big leagues fully, Mauritius finds in the origins of its settlement a position that places it at the interface of African and Asian countries around which the north/south relations are reconstructed. The general restructuring of all markets that we are witnessing today is disrupting the rural landscape. Economic changes are redefining all long-standing relationships: from small plantation to large plantation, to production relationships within the sugar economy, to relations of urban dwellers with those stayed in the countryside. Society as a whole is facing economic changes and we have seen that it is more pronounced in the north than in the south-east of the island as a result of a more advanced urbanisation process. The instrumentalisation of religion is even more evident in the districts of Pamplemousses and Rivière du Rempart than in Flacq. It is no longer quite the same deities that serve as a symbolic register of the transformation at work. To the east are the deities of Hanuman, Brahma and Dhi on which the societal changes are based. To the north, new deities have appeared in the traditional field of popular religion: Saï Baba, Durga alongside Brahma and Hanuman. Their symbolic register applies to the same types of situations encountered as in the east: displacement or renovation of the ancient kalimais, transformation of kalimais into temples. The peculiarity of the

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north compared to the east is due to the affirmed status of the temples vis-à-vis the popular cults whose erasure process is engaged for a longer time. It ends today and the unprecedented situations that we encounter testify to the fact that every “enterprise … is experienced as … a sort of private contract between the community that engages it and God”. We have been more interested in reconstructing the stages of capitalist development than in an ideology presuming the influence of a preferential culture able to create such networks that they would be both closely linked and long lasting within the global area of the migrations of their groups. These networks of sociocultural belonging referred to today by the term “diaspora” are studied in all countries. Starting from the political and economic reality of the island, from the form of Mauritian capitalism as it prevails in contemporary globalisation, we knew that we would find our earlier focus on community social differentiation in relation to religion/culture and politics/economics by which merged the key lines of human exchanges, products and capital markets. They still count today in the formation of elites belonging to the various communities with the exception of those of “mixed-race.” We hope that the intensive fieldwork on which we have relied, will once again rule in our favour to believe that the knowledge highlighted in this book will fuel future theoretical debates among numerous “academies of social sciences” in the world.

Notes 1 Simple work and a reminder of this arithmetic calculation of the GCD plus grand commun dénominateur (PGCD) and the LCP plus petit commun dénominateur (PPCM) that we learn at the end of secondary school. 2 We will never be grateful enough to the author for sharing his analysis even before his book is published. 3 The analysis of the Kaya affair in 1999 (published in 2001) has been decisive in our understanding of the State-society relationships that we have seen in our investigations begun in 1992. The articles subsequently published on the Kaya case do not deal with the practice of the State in a crisis, nor can the formidable lesson given by the Mauritians who made us understand that the relationship they have with the “nation” of Mauritius, their island, be seen only when the social balance is in danger. As one of our informants aptly reported, “we are doomed to live together” (in French « nous sommes condamnés à vivre ensemble »). This is the realism of a settlement society where migration has been the real framework of constructed inequalities. 4 A book we did not have in 1992 when we started our investigations. 5 The work was essentially completed in 1913 and first published in 1921. Excerpts were presented in 1913 at Lukacs and Troeltsch and published in the journal Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Socialpolitik in 1916–1017. Finally, in 1921 the book is published in volume 2 of the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. See note 1 L’hindouisme et le Bouddhisme (Hinduism and Buddhism) page 7. 6 Like the Kaya affair that we have already spoken about and which broke out after the suspicious death of a Rasta singer dragged into the police premises for smoking a joint publicly. See bibliography.

GLOSSARY

Andra Maha Sabha  Association of the Telugu people of Mauritius. Amourou Mother Kali. Arya Samaj  Arya Samaj is a monotheistic Indian Hindu reform movement that

promotes values and practices based on the belief in the infallible authority of the Vedas. The samaj was founded by the sanyasi Dayanand Saraswati on 10 April 1875. Members of the Arya Samaj believe in one God and reject the worship of idols. It has a great presence in Mauritius. Arti “Arti”, also written as Aarti, Arati, Arathi, Aarthi (In Devanagari): आरती is a Hindu religious ritual of worship, a part of Puja, in which light (usually from a flame of camphor) is offered to one or more deities. Arti may also refer to the songs sung in praise of the deity, when the light is being offered. It is performed on every important occasion like marriage, inauguration of something etc. and is part of Puja or worship. Baboojee  Higher caste in Mauritius. Baharia Puja  Ceremony during which the sacrifice of goats are offered in honour of the deity Kali. Baïro  Baïro or Bhairava is the name of Shiva in the kalimai sites where he is present. It is on the altar slightly removed from the seven sisters. baitka  Hindu educational centre, located not far from the camps or villages of residence in the sugar plantations. Oriental languages were taught there at a time when there was no school for education. Beta Son. binde  Copper container in which rice cooked with saffron and mixed with tamarind is transported by women on their heads when they go in procession to carry it as an offering to Kali. Camp de Masque Pavé  Adjacent to Camp de Masque, located on the inner road, which runs from the National Road to Bel Air following the valleys below Montagne Blanche. Camp de Masque  Former Unité camp which is a village today.

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Glossary

Cavadee  The main cult of the Tamils, dedicated to the divinity of Muruga or

Murungan.

dewassia  The officiant of the ceremony, acting as Kali. He goes into trance to

invoke the goddess.

Dhi  Protective divinity of the village, most often placed at the entrance of the

kalimai on the side, under the tree.

Draupadi  Heroine of the epic Mahabharat. Flacq  The biggest district of Mauritius. Ganesh  God represented by an elephant’s head. Ganesh is one of the sons of

Shiva and Parvati. He is considered the God of wisdom and prosperity.

Ganga Snan  Ceremony where the great sacred river of India is invoked: the

Ganges. This ceremony takes place by the sea in Mauritius, where there is no river of this size. ghendha  Ghendha or genda, or in English “marigold,” is a yellow flower, used in many ceremonies: Cavadee, Kanwar, etc. Ghoun ou Yamsey  Celebration commemorating the martyrdom of Houssein, grandson of the Prophet. Gowraya  One of the kalimai deities. gulaiti  Tree whose flowers are offered to the deities and whose garlands are also made. Hanuman  Divinity considered as the devotee of Ram and Sita. Hawan kund  Three-legged stool on which the holy fire is prepared. Hawan  Ritual wherein an oblation or any religious offering is made to the God of Fire. Hindu Maha Sabha  Association of Hindus. Kalash  Clay pot. Kalemencia  Name once given by the Indians to the village of Clemencia, which is mispronounced by the immigrants. Kali Mata Mandir  Temple of mother Kali. Kali  Name of the goddess Kali. Kalika  Another name for Kali. kalimai  Place of worship of Kali. Kateri  Tamil divinity, invoked in witchcraft. It’s a kind of black virgin. kovil  Tamil temple. Kovolon Dome. Laddoo  A sweet dish made of flour, margarine, sugar and milk; it is served in yellow meatballs because a colouring agent is added. Lilas Pers  Tree with bitter leaves, which is used in traditional medicine. Lota  Brass pot. Luxmi  Luxmi or Laxmi is the wife of Vishnu, goddess of prosperity. Mahashivratri  A pilgrimage celebrated each year in the month of February to fetch sacred water from Grand Bassin (a sacred lake) and then poured on the Lingam of Shiva. Mariamen Kovil  Tamil temple, situated near the port. MGI  Mahatma Gandhi Institute. Moutaidevelou  Telegu term or word for a married woman. pandit  Hindu priest. Parsadi  Hulled grain or semolina.

Glossary  187

Père Laval  Priest became holy and beatified since 1994. It is the object of an

annual syncretic worship that gathers baptised Christians, but also other communities on the island. Pechai  A Tamil divinity. Petite Cabanne  Village at Camp de Masque Pavé. Prabha  Flowered altar with yellow flowers. Its structure is made of bamboo, like the cavadee in the Thaipoorsam festival and the Kanwar in Mahashivratri. Prasadi Offering. PSM  Mauritian Socialist Party, a political party. PTR  Labour Party created by Emmanuel Anquetille, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam etc. Puja  General term for ceremony. Pusari  Tamil priest. Ravived  A lower caste in Mauritius. Saï Baba  Saint of reference to the cults of the same name who lives in India in the Bangalore region in the South of India, Tirupati. He’s supposed to perform miracles and he is worshipped for his healing gifts. Sari  Clothing in the shape of a drape, worn by Indian women. Sri Rama Mandiram  Name of the temple of Telugus at Camp de Masque Pavé. sindoor  A vermillion-coloured powder. sirdar  Supervisor in sugar plantations. Sita  Wife of Ram. Sitla  Goddess, prayed by people who have a skin disease formed of spots like those of measles. Telugu  Indians from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. tikka  Red dot, applied on forehead to married women. Young girls wear a black dot. Tranquebar  Location in the suburbs of Port Louis. Triolet  Village of Pamplemousses situated in the north of the Island. Trou D’eau Douce  Fishermen’s village in the east of the Flacq district. Tulsi  An aromatic perennial plant which we pray and worship by pouring water and which represents a mother deity, wife of Vishnu.

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INDEX

Agni 39, 96; see also fire agriculture 5, 122, 154; temporary labour 143–145; see also sugar estates agwa 33 Albion 54 Allen, R. 181 alliances: caste 108–109, 111, 114–115; family 17–18; marriage 164–165; political party 46–48, 99, 153 altar 16, 20, 25, 32, 33, 35, 56, 67, 93, 153, 156; Prabha 35, 36 Ambé Gawri 23 Amourou Puja 17, 25–31, 43, 165; altar 32, 33; Brahmanic nature of the cult 40; duality of the ceremony 35–39; family and 33–35; high priest’s speech 38–39; interethnic relations and 34–35; intrinsic rationality of the ceremony 39–40; local association attendees 36–37; meal preparation 32; parade 36–38; politics and 45–46, 48; Prabha 33–36; a priori meaning of 40; role of the priest 32, 35–39; social relations in the ceremonial process 31–32, 33, 34–35 Andra Maha Sabha 3–4, 8, 28, 29, 96 animal sacrifice 9, 13–15, 43, 106 Anse la Raie 53 Arti 25 Arya Nawyuk Samaj 56 Arya Ravived Pracharni Sabha association 97–98



Arya Samaj movement 19, 39, 45, 48, 95–97 associations 45, 49–50, 54, 55, 58, 70, 82, 90, 102; Andra Maha Sabha 3–4, 96; Arya Ravived Pracharni Sabha 97–98; Arya Samaj 19; community meals 7; electoral alliances 46–48; female members 107; kalimai 80; Naw Jiwan sangh Tagore Patshala 72, 82; Sri Rama Mandiram Telegu 27; Vaish Mukti Sangh 100; Voice of Hindus 162; see also federation(s) autochtonie 154, 159 Baharia Puja 7–9; altar 10, 16; animal sacrifice 13–15; at Camp de Masque Pavé 10–14; ceremonial issues 15–16; dewassia 9; donations 26; family and 15–17, 26; flowers 21; fruit offerings 11, 12; meal preparation 18–19; music 10, 23–24; offerings 10, 19–20; pavilions 11; politics and 45–46; prayer 22, 24; Purnawati 25; rite of purification 11; role of the priest 9, 21, 25; of Royal Road 18–25; sexual division of labour 14–15, 18–19 baitkas 96 “Bangladesh” 76, 78, 80–81, 142, 158 Belle Mare 53; construction of places of worship 56, 57, 61 Bellevue-Pilot kalimai 128 “best loser” system 46, 48, 70, 111, 124

Index  197

big planters 20, 57, 92–94, 114, 118, 122, 124, 131, 136, 142, 146 binde 32–35, 37, 39, 43 Bissoondoyal, B. 117 Bissoondoyal, U. 171 Bonhomme Salute 161 bourgeoisie 2 Brahma 105, 106 Brahmanic tradition 3–4, 15, 23; Amourou Puja and 40 brahmanisation 6, 93, 152, 164 Camp de Masque 7–8, 29; Amourou Puja cult 28; dewassias 9 Camp de Masque Pavé 7–8, 31, 93; Baharia ceremony 10–14 capitalism 3, 5–6, 152, 180–182, 184 caste 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 20, 29, 33, 35, 45, 55, 60, 65, 82, 83, 91–94; alliances and electoral strategies 108–109, 111, 114–115, 164–166; constituency No. 7 and 123–125; egalitarian ideology and 95–98; family alliances and 17–18; marriage alliances and 164; power and 42–43; Ravived 16, 17; Vaish 17, 96, 100, 101, 107 ceremonies 7, 9, 155; fasting and 41; holidays and 29–30 Chakraborty, C. 175 Chazan-Gillig, S. 2, 8–9, 18, 22, 25 Chemin Cimetière 17 CIT 137 colonialism 3–5 Communauté d’Action Musulman (CAM) 98 compulsory training 144 confidentiality, cults and 7 conflict 50, 51, 63, 76–77, 84, 86, 107, 114–115, 154, 159; between federations 58–59, 64–68; Hindu/Tamil 120–121; innovation and 68; social 44–45, 80; between tradition and modernity 160–161 constituency No. 7 123–125 construction of places of worship 57–60, 84, 91, 135, 152; at Belle Mare 56; on crown lands 162–163; in Grand Baie 55, 56, 61; in Mahébourg 62–64; subsidies 91–92, 95; in Tranquebar 72, 80; see also development Creole community 3, 62, 63, 78, 81, 84 creolisation 5, 152, 166, 170 Crook, W. 173 crown lands 72, 84, 86; Kali temples 161– 164; kalimais 55; law of prescription and 73–74; places of worship 54–55

cults 3; Amourou Puja 17, 28; Baharia Puja 9; confidentiality and 7; religious holidays and 29–30; rituals 7; see also Amourou Puja cult; Baharia Puja cultural associations see associations cultural centres 91–92; baitkas 96 culture 2, 6 Daruty estate 125, 131–134; BellevuePilot kalimai 128; kalimai at Plaine des Papayes 128–130 deities/divinities 8, 23, 33, 34, 36, 49, 72, 153, 155; Brahma 105, 106; Dhi 9, 76–78, 103, 104, 153, 155, 161; gender and 41–42; guardian 153–155, 158–161; Hanuman 21, 25, 64, 65, 79, 93, 103– 104; inequality and 156; Krishna 106; of Mariamen Siva Soopramanian Kovil 120; positioning of 156, 158–159, 163, 166; Ram 106; Saï Baba 106; secondary 156; seven sisters 1, 21, 22, 24, 25, 36, 37, 50, 64, 76, 77, 121, 154; Shakti 163, 172; Shiva 41, 106; superior 106, 156; tutelary 76, 77, 93, 94; vegetarian 61; Vishnu 40; see also Kali; Kaliamen Desmarais, G. 118 development 54, 55, 57, 90, 179–180; Grand Baie 61; inequality and 91 dewassia 8–11, 15–17; animal sacrifice and 13; purification ritual 11–12; Vishnu 41 Dharma 92 Dhi 6, 9, 76–78, 103, 104, 153, 155, 161 dholok 10, 11 diaspora studies 4, 180–181 Divali 29 Doctor, M. 96 donations 26, 90; land 136–137 Draupadi Amen Kovil 93–94 Durga 35, 41, 121, 156 Duval, G. 76 Dyanand, S., The Light of Truth 96 earth 15 Ebène 137–138 economic(s) 4–6, 8; inequality 91 education 96, 97, 107, 179; compulsory training 144; “Star Schools” 130 egalitarian ideology: Arya Ravived Pracharni Sabha association 97–98; Arya Samaj movement 95–97; Hindu Maha Sabha movement 97 elections 47, 68, 83–84, 99–101, 109, 153; of 2014 164–167; “best loser” system 46, 48, 70, 111; constituency No. 7 and 123–125; gift-giving and 107–108;

198 

Index

party strategies 108–109, 111, 114–115; see also political parties evil 42–43 family(ies) 8, 19, 45, 48, 73–74; alliances 17–18; Amourou Puja and 29, 33; Baharia Puja and 15–16; private kalimais and 132–133 fasting 33, 41 feasts, Amourou Puja 29 federation(s) 8, 18, 26, 29, 30, 48–49, 54, 55, 71, 82–84, 92, 95, 107, 156; conflicts 58–59, 64–68; development of 98–102; Mandiram 66; Mauritius Sanatan Dharma Temples 159; power and 90; Sanatan Dharma Temples 8, 11, 53, 58, 65, 67, 68, 83, 114; Tamil Temples 63, 65 festivals 29–30 fire 15, 20, 25, 39, 96; Hawan kund 21 Flacq 46, 58, 61, 89, 90, 96–97, 103, 104, 107, 108, 111, 114 folk religion 9 Fonds du Sac 129, 130 fruit offerings 9–12 FUEL 135–136, 139, 143, 144, 146–147 Gandhi, M. 96 Ganesh 159 Ganesh Chaturti 29–30 Ganga Snan ceremony 56 Ganga Talao 156–157 Gatlot Rajput Maha Sabha 98, 99 gender 43, 92; deities and 41–42; power and 43; sexual division of labour 18–19 ghenda 11 gift-giving 107–108 globalisation 4, 5, 54, 57, 60, 115, 137, 152, 153, 160–161, 180, 181; migration and 171–174; see also transformation goddess worship 174–175 Gokool 105, 157 Grand Baie 54; construction of places of worship 61; Kali temple 162–164; kalimai 55, 56, 60 Grand Bassin, Mahashivratri cult 156–157 Grande Gaube 53 Grotius, H. 84 guardian deities 153–155, 158–161 Hanuman 21, 25, 64, 65, 79, 93, 103–104, 140, 142–143, 156–160 Hanumanisation 1, 6, 93, 152, 166–168 Hindu community 71, 93; conflict with Tamil community 64–68 Hindu Maha Sabha movement 97, 100

Hinduism 3, 5–6, 9, 15, 34; caste 3, 4, 7; Christian religions and 181–182; creolisation 152; Dharma 92; Tantrism 173–176; see also Baharia Puja; caste Hobsbaum, E. 152 holidays 29–30 Île d’Ambre 117–121 immigration 3, 94, 154; globalisation and 170–174 Independent Forward Block (IFB) 98 India 3, 4, 29, 37, 157; immigration and 94, 170–171 indivisualisation 135 Indo-Mauritian society 91, 93, 94, 98, 134, 135, 152, 168; see also associations; Hindu community; Hinduism; intercommunity relations; Tamil community; Telegu community; transformation inequality 4, 29, 47, 60, 72, 77, 82, 90, 92, 94, 111, 135, 179, 180; of deities 156; economic 91, 122; social 2, 158; see also caste; intercommunity relations information and communication technologies (ICT) 180 initiations 9 innovation 68, 70 Institute of Vocational Training Board (IVTB) 144 Integrated Resort Scheme (IRS) programmes 55, 60, 183 intercommunity relations 61, 70–72, 80, 83, 93, 131–132; Hindu/Tamil 120– 121; marriage alliances and 164–165; see also caste; conflict interethnic relations 30, 31; Amourou Puja and 34–35 international law 84 international relations 5 Islam, Arya Nawyuk Samaj 56 Jan Andolan movement 98 kalash 12 Kali 4, 9, 11, 13–15, 20, 25, 29–31, 36, 40–43, 50, 93, 94, 172; Durga 35; temples 160–164 Kaliamen 93 kalimai(s) 4, 7–9, 49–51, 53, 54, 71, 86, 92, 93, 106, 107, 117, 152, 155, 162; altar 153; of Bellevue-Pilot 128; Brahma 105; Chemin Cimetière 17; on crown lands 55; of Daruty 125, 127, 131; decline of 114; Grand Baie 55, 56, 60; guardians

Index  199

153; of Île d’Ambre 117–121; Lallmatie 49; Mahébourg 63; Petite Cabanne 9–10, 17; at Plaine des Papayes 128–130; private 132–134; renovation 7, 72, 75–76, 78, 152; Royal Road 18; of San Souci 139–141; Sanskritisation 61, 83; spatial organisation 153–154; temples and 93–94; see also temple(s) kavus 35 khirs 10 Kolatom 37 kovil 63–65, 67, 68, 71; Draupadi Amen 93–94; Mariamen 93; Mariamen Siva Soopramanian 119–121; Sri Vinayagur Seedolamen 67 Krishna 106

meal preparation: Amourou Puja cult 32; Baharia Puja 18–19 modernisation 4 Montagne Blanche 140, 141, 159–160 Montagne Faïence 20 Moore, H. 95 Moulin Cassé 16–17 Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) 48, 83, 84, 100, 101, 159, 166 Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien (MSM) 48 movements 102; Arya Samaj 95–97; Hindu Maha Sabha 97; Jan Andolan 98; “liberating” 166 “mulatto” 5 multiculturalism 6 music: kalimai songs 23–24; ritual chant 25

Labour Party (PTR) 99, 107–111, 122–125, 165, 166 land ownership 71, 86, 137–138, 154, 155, 160; law of prescription and 73–74; politics and 80; tax and 59–60; see also property rights law of prescription 73–74 Lepep Alliance 166–167 “liberating” movement (ML) 166 local associations see associations local-to-global relations 30–31, 35 Lomé Conventions 4 lota 32

Naw Jiwan sangh Tagore Patshala 72, 82 networks 91–92, 108, 180, 184 New Deal 5

Mahashivratri cult 29–30, 54, 156–157 Mahébourg 54, 55, 122; construction of places of worship 64 Mangalam Sutram 33, 34 Mariamen kovil 93 Mariamen Siva Soopramanian Kovil 119–121 marriage 17, 29, 30, 33, 34, 107, 154; alliances 164–165 Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD) 98 Mauritius 1, 2, 5, 30, 40, 54; colonisation 3; economic development 2–3; Hinduism 3. See also Hinduism; Integrated Resort Scheme (IRS) programmes 55, 60; land deals 137–140; multiculturalism 6; Pas Geometriques 4; public holidays 29; select committees 2; sugar estates 5 Mauritius Planters Association (MPA) 138 Mauritius Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation 159 Mauritius Sugar Producers Association (MSPA) 138

offerings 10, 12, 19–20, 29, 78, 107; fruit 9; to Hanuman 21; see also sacrifice “old migrants” 94, 171 Palmar 4, 53; places of worship 56, 57 Panchavati 117, 118 pandit 8, 11, 12, 15, 17 pas géométriques 4, 53, 59; see also crown lands Peghini, J. 165 Petite Cabanne 9–10, 17, 29, 35, 43, 90 Phuliar temple 93 places of worship 56; on crown lands 54; renovation of 63–64; see also kalimai(s); temple(s) Plaine des Papayes kalimai 128–130, 134 plantations 93, 102, 159; erasure of 145–147; see also sugar estates PMXD 83, 84 political parties 68, 70, 84, 98, 107, 159; alliances and electoral strategies 46–48, 99, 108–109, 111, 114–115, 123–125, 166–167; Labour Party (PTR) 99, 107–111, 122–125, 165, 166; Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) 48, 83, 84, 166; Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien (MSM) 48; PMXD 83, 84 politics 4–6, 8, 26, 35, 41, 45–46, 48, 67; Amourou Puja and 45–46, 48; Baharia Puja and 45–46; land ownership and 80; regional 48–49; religion and 82–84, 95 popular religion 89, 111, 155

200 

Index

Port Louis 3, 8, 9, 26, 28, 31, 54, 55, 63, 81, 93, 94, 97; Ward 4 142, 159 poverty 2, 76 power 41, 42, 50, 51, 67, 90, 92, 107, 153; cast and 42–43; gender and 42 Prabha 3–4, 33–36 prayer 7, 8, 11, 22–24, 36–37, 39, 66, 96 priests 38, 71; Amourou Puja ceremony 32, 35, 36; Baharia Puja ceremony 9, 15, 21; see also dewassia; pandit private kalimais 132–134 privatisation 89 property rights 81; coastlines and 86 property tax 59–60 puja 172 Puranic tradition 15, 17, 20, 26, 39; offerings 20 purification ritual 11, 12 puris 10 Purnawati 25 Ram 106 Rambhajanum 29–30 Ramhota, P. 2, 8 Ranger, T. 152 Ravived caste 16, 17 regional politics 49; electoral alliances 46–48 religion 3–5, 8, 41, 155, 181–183; folk 9; politics and 82–84, 95; popular 89, 155; scholarly 20, 41, 43–45, 89, 111, 114 religious sites 54 renovation of places of worship 63–64, 106, 158; donations and 90 Research Institute for Development (IRD) 2 Reunion Island 5 ritual(s) 4, 7, 9, 33, 50, 65, 91, 107, 155–156; Arya Samajist 39, 45; Baharia Puja 9, 10, 12; Brahmanic 3–4; chants 25; harmonisation 43–45; Prabha and 33, 34; purification 11; Purnawati 25; Tantric 175; see also Amourou Puja; Baharia Puja Rivière du Rempart 30 Roosevelt, F. D. 5 Royal Road kalimai 29, 31, 43; Baharia Puja 18–25 sacrifice 26; animal 9, 13, 43; dewassia and 15; vegetable and fruit 9, 38–39 Saï Baba 33, 106 samagri 25 San Souci 139–142 Sanatan Dharma Mandir Parishad 83, 100, 101

Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation 8, 53, 58, 65, 67, 68, 83, 98, 100, 101, 111, 114 Sanskritisation 61, 83, 84, 98 scholarly religion 20, 41, 43–45, 89, 111, 114, 155; see also transformation sects 3, 102–103 select committees 2, 5 seven sisters 21, 22, 24, 25, 36, 37, 50, 64, 76, 77, 121, 154; see also Kali sexual division of labour 18–19 Shakti 163, 172 Shiva 36, 42, 106, 156, 159, 163–164; Vishnu and 41 shivala 58, 59, 67, 74, 83, 142–143 Shivalingum 120 Shivalisation 6, 152, 168–169 sirdars 119, 122, 124, 147, 148, 178 slavery 5, 181 small towns 89–90 smallholders 5 squatters 81 Sri Rama Mandiram 27, 28, 34 Sri Vinayagur Seedolamen kovil 67 “Star Schools” 130 subsidies 90–92, 95 sugar estates 5, 30–31, 54, 57, 94, 96, 102, 104–105, 138, 145–147, 152, 154, 155, 160–162, 178; big planters 20, 92–93, 114, 118, 122, 124, 131, 136, 142, 146; sirdars 119, 122, 124, 147, 148, 178 Sugar Investment Trust (SIT) 135–137 superior deities 106, 156 syncretism 161 Taipoorsam Cavadee 29–30 Tamil community 29–33, 35, 45, 63, 80, 84, 93, 120–122; conflict with Hindu community 64–67; construction of places of worship 62–63; temples 93; see also kovil Tamil Temples Federation 63, 65 Tantrism 171–176 tax 54–55, 137–138; property 59–60, 86, 136 Telegu community 34, 40, 71, 84, 124–125 temple(s) 3, 4, 8, 10, 23, 26, 28, 49, 50, 53, 54, 80, 90, 91, 152, 154, 155; Amourou Puja 33; on crown lands 55; of Hanuman 79, 142, 152, 154, 155, 157–160; of Kali 160–162; Kaliamen 93; kalimai and 93–94; kovil 63–65, 67, 68, 71; Mariamen Siva Soopramanian

Index  201

Kovil 119–121; Phuliar 93; positioning of deities in 156, 158–159, 163, 166; spatial organisation 93; Sri Rama Mandiram 34; Tamil 93; see also construction of places of worship; deities/divinities; kovil temporary labour 143–145 tenure rights 55 Terracyne 90 textile industry 73, 121, 122, 135, 137, 143–145, 179 tikka 22, 33 Tinker, H. 154 trade unions 55 Tranquebar 55, 80, 82–83; “Bangladesh” 76, 78, 80–81, 142, 158; construction of temples in 72; Hanuman temple 79, 157–158; kalimai 73–74; renovation of kalimai 75–78; Temple 82–84 transformation 121; brahmanisation 6, 93, 152, 164, 169–170; creolisation 170; Hanumanisation 1, 93, 152, 168; Shivalisation 152, 168–169 Triolet 89, 109 Trou aux Biches 53 tutelary deities 76, 77, 93, 94

unemployment 62, 70, 81, 122, 144, 179 United States, New Deal 5 urbanisation 102, 114, 147–149 Vaish caste 17 Vaish Mukti Sangh association 100 Vaishs 35, 47, 60, 61, 68, 70, 83–84, 96, 100, 101, 107; see also caste Vedic tradition 20, 23, 26, 96 vegetable and fruit sacrifice 9, 38–39, 43 villages 54, 89–90, 104, 114; Fonds du Sac 129, 130; Montagne Blanche 140, 141, 159–160; Panchavati 117, 118; Quartier Militaire 141 Vishnu 36, 40; Shiva and 41 Voice of Hindus association 162 Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) 139, 140, 144, 160, 179 water 15 Weber, M., Hinduism and Buddhism 182 women 22, 25, 39, 45, 62, 96, 106–108, 154; binde 33–35, 37, 43; see also family(ies) World War II 5 worship 16, 55; goddess 174–175; of Kali 175–176; see also places of worship; prayer