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The majority of Mauritians are descendents of laborers from India that began coming to Mauritius in the early 1800s from the north Indian state of Bihar. These Bihari Indians and some fellow Hindi-speaking Hindus settled as a community in Mauritius and began to build temples for their religious practice. This temple, the Shri Jagannath Kchetra Mandir, is an example of a contemporary Hindu temple of the Hindi-speaking community in Mauritius. |
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This temple exemplifies the often simple architecture based on a North Indian style. The early settlers built basic shrines on the sugar estates and only later where able to build more significant temples as the population of Hindus in Mauritius grew in size and prosperity. |
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This is the Vishnu Kchetre Mandir, built in 1931. Although this temple is primarily dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, the main shrines of a majority of Mauritian Hindu temples of the Hindi-speaking community are of Lord Shiva, and the temples are referred to as Shivalas. |
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In 1910, a Hindu reform movement called the Arya Samaj was established in Mauritius, attracting large numbers of Hindi-speaking devotees into the movement and away from their more traditional forms of rituals and temple worship. Partly in response to the work of Christian missionaries and to the popularity of the Arya Samaj movement, some leaders among the Hindu priests felt their religious practices and traditions were threatened in their role as the predominant form of religious culture among the Hindi-speaking Hindus of Mauritius so they founded various religious organizations. |
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In contemporary Mauritius, the Mauritius Arya Sabha is the main organization of the Arya Samaj movement, organizing events and festivals specific to the Arya Samaj, as well as administering the funding and leadership of its 450 branches around the country. The Mauritius Arya Sabha continues the social service projects, especially of education, that were introduced in the early years of the movement. The group also places great emphasis on the propagation of the Hindi language in Mauritius, one reason why they have their own high school in the capital. |
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Splitting from the central organization over issues of caste and representation, two other groups emerged from within the Arya Samj movement in Mauritius. The first group, called the Mauritius Arya Ravi Ved Pracharini Sabha, known locally as the Ravi Veds, was founded in 1934 and aimed to promote the interests and well-being of its members, who usually joined on a caste related basis. Their administrative headquarters are pictured here. |
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After the allocation of funding for all recognized religious groups on the island by the secular government in 1956, the Ravi Veds also took on the administration of funding for approximately 130 branches and were able to build additions to their main center in Port Louis. |
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The second of the other Arya Samaj groups is the Rajput Gahlot Maha Sabha, founded in 1965 when the politics of independence were at the forefront. This group was again formed to protect the interests of a traditionally lower caste group, although they claim to trace their ancestry to the Rajput leaders of the Indian state of Rajasthan despite no records indicating any immigration from that region of India. This group is based today in Port Louis, the capital city, where it maintains a large temple. The group also has about 75 branches around the island, some of them very small. |
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The first immigrants from India actually arrived before the mass immigration of indentured laborers. Beginning as early as 1728, Tamil Hindus, Indians from the southern state of Tamil Nadu were brought to Mauritius from the French port of Pondicherry in South Eastern India. These Tamils were brought as skilled crafts men for the construction of the French colonial buildings and port in the city of Port Louis. The Tamil craftsmen remained small in number and influence until the influx of more Tamils during the immigration of indentured laborers beginning in the 1830s. Tamil Hindus share not only a geographic ancestry but also a linguistic and cultural heritage that is intimately linked to their distinct religious practices. With such a visible cultural and religious presence on the sugar estates, Tamils were soon able to secure land for shrines and later temples, known as kovils. Pictured here is one of the largest Tamil Hindu temples in Port Louis the Kaliammen Kovil. |
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Tamils are primarily Shaivaite, devotees of Shiva and his theological line, and most Mauritian kovils are dedicated to Murgan, son of Shiva, or a form of the mother goddess such as Mariammen, or in this case Kali-Ammen. |
