The Journal of Hindu Studies 2017;10:219–240 doi:10.

1093/jhs/hix011
Advance Access Publication 25 July 2017

Being Saivite, the South African Way:

Questioning Authenticity and Canon from the
Margins of the Saiva World
Ulrike Schröder*
University of Applied Sciences for Intercultural Theology, Hermannsburg
*Corresponding author: u.schroeder@fh-hermannsburg.de

Abstract: Modern Tamil Saivism as a global discourse emerged concurrently in

India as well as in other places. Yet, recent scholarship has barely given
attention to these global entanglements and their wider consequences for
conceptualising Saiva Siddhanta and Saivite religious practice today. This
article focuses on reformist Tamil Saivite movements in South Africa and
explores their origins and development during colonial and Apartheid South
Africa in the twentieth century. It will discuss the complex interplay between
modern interpretations of Saiva Siddhanta philosophy and notions of a con-
textualised ‘Tamilness’ in the South African setting. It will further explore how
Saivism in South Africa relates to back to Saivite scriptural traditions from
South India and elaborate how the close but hybrid connection between local
and global forms of Tamil religious identity is mirrored by questions of au-
thenticity and canon as well as recent attempts to reframe relations between
the (perceived) ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’ of Saivism.
Introduction
Modern Tamil Saivism (caivam)1 as a global discourse emerged concurrently in
India as well as abroad. As the papers in this special issue demonstrate, recent
scholarship has especially turned its attention to the origins of reformist religious
thinking and the complex trajectories of ‘reformed’ or ‘modernist’ Tamil Saivism
and its large implications for what is considered to be canonical or ‘authentic’
Saivite religion today. The global networks of Tamil Saivism have rarely been in
the focus of specialist research on this subject so far, in contrast to the attention
given to these religious currents by other disciplines, e.g. in Diaspora studies and
the Study of Religions (Jacobsen and Kumar 2004; Geaves 2007; Chatterji and
Washbrook 2013). However, a fresh look into the subject of modern Saivism is
not complete without taking into consideration the global dispersal and networks
of Tamil Saivism in the twentieth century. Therefore, this article will focus on
Tamil Saivism in South Africa and explore the origins of this religious movement

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220 Being Saivite, the South African Way

in the mid-twentieth century, the complex interplay between religion and notions
of ‘Indianness’ and/or ‘Tamilness’ in a diasporic setting, and explore how Saivism
in South Africa relates to Saivite canonical traditions from South India.2
Saivite reformist movements emerged in South Africa from the mid-twentieth
century onwards, advocating a strictly Tamil—interchangeably understood as
Dravidian—cultural and religious identity. This idea can be traced back to the
Saivite and Tamil/Dravidian revivalism in India from the late nineteenth century
onwards (Irschick 1969; Venkatachalapathy 2005; Vaitheespara 2015). Since the
end of Apartheid in 1994, various religious leaders have sought to re-establish
links with traditional South Indian authorities of Saivism. I will first sketch out
the context and early beginnings of Saivite revivalism in South Africa from the
mid-twentieth century onwards. Secondly, I will briefly analyse the concept of
Saiva Siddhanta (caiva citt@ntam) as it emerged within the major branch of this
movement and discuss how it questions traditional notions of ‘authentic’ Saivite
religious traditions and authoritative canonical traditions. Thirdly, I will briefly
explore the reconfiguration of ‘canon’ in South African Saivism locally as well as
part of a global Saivite network. Thus, I will argue that this movement has led to
the emergence of new forms of Saivite religion which should—in scholarly per-
spective—not be dismissed as ‘diasporic’ or ‘inauthentic’ forms of Saivism. Rather,
such new forms need to be assessed as questioning the hegemonic status of South-
Indian-centred definitions of authenticity and canon from the periphery and as
mirroring the dynamical and hybrid connection between local forms (South
African as well as South Indian) as well as global forms of Tamil religious identities.

The South African context

Contemporary South Africa is a place of much diversity in terms of ethnicity and
religion. In the post-Apartheid period, the country has constituted itself as a re-
ligiously pluralist society with a large variety of Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and
other religious communities of different origins and ethnic composition
(Burchardt 2016).
The majority of South African Indians live in the province of KwaZulu-Natal,
especially in the surrounding areas of Durban where large Indian settlements
(townships) can be found which emerged predominantly as a result of the forceful
relocation of the urban non-white population after the Group Areas Act in 1950
(Maharaj 1992). South Africans of an Indian origin usually consider themselves
‘Indian South Africans’ or ‘South African Indians’ and frequently emphasize an
understanding of themselves as having a ‘dual’ identity, i.e. being a South African
citizen and an ethnic Indian at the same time, with varying emphasis on both parts
(Vahed and Desai 2010; see also Schröder 2015). The population census of the year
2011 counted 1.3 million people who were identified as ‘Indian or Asian’ in the
census, constituting approximately 2.5% of South Africa’s population (Statistics
South Africa 2012).3 The numerical composition of religious communities in
 Ulrike Schröder 221

South Africa is currently difficult to estimate since the last census of 2011 did not
ask for religious adherence anymore. The numbers from the previous census in
2001, however, show that about 50% of the ‘Indian’/‘Asian’ population identified
themselves as ‘Hindus’, of which approximately 45% have a Tamil background
(Statistics South Africa 2001, p. 26; Diesel and Maxwell 1993, p. 6). South
Africans of Indian origin constitute a highly heterogeneous group with different
migration histories and different socio-religious and linguistic backgrounds. The
majority of Indians trace their origins back to the indentured labourers who came
between 1860 and 1911 to the province of Natal, on the south-eastern coast of
Southern Africa, to work on the sugarcane plantations and in the municipal ser-
vices of the newly established colony. The majority of these indentured labourers
originated from South India and were highly diverse in terms of language, caste,
and religious adherence. They were followed from the early 1870s onwards by so-
called ‘Passenger Indians’, mostly entrepreneurs from North India, who entered
the country under ordinary immigration law and engaged in commerce and trad-
ing (Bhana and Brain 1990; Desai and Vahed 2010).

Trajectories of Hinduism in South Africa

South African religious communities and their practices are, in general, pro-
foundly shaped by the historical impact of colonialism and Apartheid. As David
Chidester has observed in his studies on the discovery and denial of religion in
nineteenth-century Southern Africa, ‘comparative religion’—the search for reli-
gious systems among Africans and others in comparison or contradiction to
Western Christianity—permeated social and political relations in the colonies. It
was practised not only by colonialists and missionaries, but by African indigenous
people alike in their struggle to make sense of human experience in the colonial
frontier zone (Chidester 1996, 2014). Towards the end of the nineteenth century,
the colonial encounter in South Africa became even more globally entangled with
the advent of migrant labourers from Asia. In terms of religion, the Asian, pre-
dominantly Indian immigrants brought a variety of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian
traditions to South Africa. The cultural and religious practices of the immigrants
constituted an important basis for forming new collective ‘Indian’ and/or ‘Hindu’
identities on foreign soil. Recent research has shown that religious places like
mosques, temples as well as cultural and religious associations played a constitu-
tional role building up new communities out of people with diverse places of
origin, caste, and language backgrounds (Vahed 2001b; Gopalan 2010). Because
the majority of indentured labourers were from the south of the Indian subcon-
tinent, Hindu religious practice among the indentured Indians quickly developed a
strong South Indian flavour and followed to a large extent Saivite religious trad-
itions as well as local South Indian Amman (amma@) traditions (Bhana 1999; Kumar
2013). However, it has to be kept in mind, that in the first decades of Indian
existence in South Africa, the boundaries between religious communities were
222 Being Saivite, the South African Way

less strict and allowed even for the communal participation of Hindus and Muslims
in religious festivals. As Goolam Vahed has shown for the case of the Muharram
festival in Durban, Hindus and Muslims celebrated the event together in the public
space, much to the dismay of colonial authorities. Hence, the festival played an
important role in forging a pan-Indian ‘Indianess’ among migrants in Durban who
were positioned in-between a white and an African colonial society (Vahed 2002).
Furthermore, the formation of ‘Hinduism’ as a common signifier and organised
religion in South Africa owes a great deal to the various reformist Hindu organ-
isations which sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in
India. Activists of reformed Hinduism, most of them associated with the Arya
Samaj, visited the country in the beginning of the twentieth century and cam-
paigned together with local leaders for the formation of a common Hindu con-
sciousness through the establishment of religious associations and the reform of
religious practice. Two important figures of these early ‘Hindu missionaries’ from
the Arya Samaj were Bhai Paramanand (1876–1947) and Swami Shankaranand
(born in 1866), whose visits to Natal had a pivotal role in establishing institutional
Hinduism in South Africa (Vahed 1997; Gopalan 2010; Desai and Vahed 2010,
p. 250ff.). Local Hindus were active in bringing these activists to Natal.
Shankaranand stayed between 1908 and 1912 in South Africa and campaigned
for the unification of Hindus, their political rights and for refining religious prac-
tice, especially ritualistic temple worship. The primary concern of these Indian
Hindu activists was the so-called ‘upliftment of Hinduism’ among Indians in the
various diasporic places in the British dominion and the promotion of a ‘Hindu
consciousness’ in general. The general perception was that the indentured la-
bourers ‘lacked a “common” Hindu identity as they arrived from various parts
of India, bringing with them a whole range of different religious traditions as well
as different languages, caste identities, and other beliefs’ (Gopalan 2013, p. 42). In
1912, Shankaranand organised a conference of South African Hindus ‘to popularise
the teachings of the Hindu religion’, ‘devise means to make this Religious
Conference a permanent institution’, and ‘appoint officials to further the cause
of the Conference by communicating with the various Hindu societies in South
Africa’ (African Chronicle, 8 June 1912, cited in Desai and Vahed 2010, p. 256). The
outcome of this conference was the South African Hindu Maha Sabha which at-
tempted to act as an umbrella body for all Hindus in South Africa by providing
religious education and by campaigning for the political representation of Hindus
in the colonial public sphere (Gopalan 2010; Vahed 2013).4
However effective these early campaigns were to create a religious awareness
and a common notion of ‘Hinduness’ among South African Hindus, they did not
permanently bridge the cultural and religious divisions inside the Indian commu-
nity. Factions demarcated by language and religious practice remained vital inside
the Indian community for much of the twentieth century and exist even until
today. Further, as most of the indentured and ex-indentured labourers were of a
South Indian origin, the broadly North Indian and Vedantic character of these
 Ulrike Schröder 223

early Hindu umbrella organisations did not automatically appeal to Tamil-speaking

South Indians.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the nationalist (white) government enforced systematic
disfranchisement and a regime of racial segregation in South African cities under
the banners of modernisation and development. The white minority government
exerted political pressure on Indians to return to India and introduced a scheme of
voluntary repatriation which did not prove very successful. Ethnic tensions be-
tween Zulus and Indians in Natal were rising as a result of economic and political
competition between both groups. Durban was the place of violent riots between
Indians and Zulus in 1949 which fostered strict ethnic boundaries between
Africans and Indians and, vice versa, uniting Indians of different language and
religious backgrounds around ‘Indianness’ as a racial identity. As Jon Soske has
pointed out, the developments in the 1940s further show that the antagonism
between ‘African’ and ‘Indian’ racialised identities was not only shaped by official
politics of the white minority government, but also by the lived realities of a
shared urban experience which produced new forms of hierarchy and inequality.
Apart from the economic and political competition between both groups, ‘prac-
tices integral to maintaining diasporic identities—such as religious festivals, mar-
riage, caste (jati), language, and even dress and food—became signifiers of ranked
status and perceived exclusion’ (Soske 2009, p. iii). Together with the impact of
M. K. Gandhi on Indians in South Africa and, later, the independence movement in
India, these dynamics helped to shape powerful new signifiers of diasporic
‘Indianness’ which continue to dominate discursive dynamics inside and around
the Indian community today.

Cultural and religious revivalism in the early days of Apartheid

Within this framework, the 1930s and 1940s saw an increase in religious revivalism
and the self-organisation of Indians, especially Indians of Tamil descent in the
colony of Natal. Earlier associations dedicated to cultural and language education
were already founded under the influence of the ‘Hindu missionaries’, for example,
the Sathia Gnana Sungam (in 1895) and the Hindu Young Men’s Society (in 1905),
which later transformed into the Hindu Tamil Institute (1914) and then, finally,
merged together with the Young Men’s Vedic Society to form the Natal Tamil
Vedic Society in 1951 (Ariyan 1989, p. 114ff.; Kuppusami 1993, p. 47).5 The driving
figures behind these educational ventures were Tamils, either ‘Passenger Indians’
or ‘free Indians’ (i.e. former indentured labourers), who had gained a better social
and economic status and, like Poonoosamy Ruthnam Pather (1895–1970) and
Chockalingum Virudachalam Pillay (1880–1925), distinguished themselves as ‘lea-
ders’ inside the Indian community.6 The latter was a well-known Passenger Indian
and scholar of Tamil in Durban who came from Tamil Nadu to Natal in 1911.
Kuppusami portrayed him as a ‘highly cultivated personality from Madras’.
He had a small business and opened a printing press where he published a popular
224 Being Saivite, the South African Way

Tamil Weekly known as Viveka Banoo. He also established an association called

Tamil Agam whose members had to make a personal commitment to raise the
cultural lives of Tamils in South Africa (Kuppusami 1993, p. 79). Apart from
celebrating these Tamils as ‘custodians’ of Tamil culture in South Africa, as it is
done by diasporic hagiographies, the significance of these figures is most likely to
be found in their role as transmitters of a modern Saivite Tamil religious and
cultural identity, which reflected the latest developments in South India
(Venkatachalapathy 2005; Vaitheespara 2012). Although the material traces of
this transmission are difficult to prove because not many of the textual sources
have survived the onslaught of forced removals and the dissolution of community
archives after 1994, the scattered hints allow us to reconstruct the contours of this
exchange of knowledge between South Africa and South India in the first half of
the twentieth century. The flows of modernist Saivite thinking as well as of
ideologies of the Tamil Dravidian movement to South Africa provided from the
1920s onwards the grounds for the Tamil Saivite revival in Natal. In parallel to
developments in India, the revivalist re-configuration of Saivism in mid-twentieth
century South Africa, with Saiva Siddhanta as its central philosophy and a canon of
Tamil Saivite religious literature (see Klöber in this issue) as its normative centre,
relied to a large extent on the language of modernist Saivite Revivalism with its
multiple facets (Venkatachalapathy 1995; Vaitheespara 2015). This included also
the philosophical and canonical re-conceptualisations by the promoters of a ‘mod-
ernised’ Saivism, for example, by Nallasvami Pillai (je. em. nallac@mi-p pi00ai, 1864–
1920), Maraimalai Adigal (maTaimalai abika0, 1876–1950), and others (Bergunder
2010; Klöber 2016, pp. 176–273). A key factor in disseminating these ideas were
private schools which were set up to provide education for Indians for whom the
government did not cater in terms of education. Schools and associations played a
crucial role in establishing cultural and religious subjectivities for a new urban
Indian class with aspirations towards social mobility and communal empower-
ment. The Tamil educational institutions were run by educated Passenger and
other Indian ‘leaders’ and ‘stalwarts’ of Tamil culture. Apart from primary educa-
tion, their main object was to impart knowledge to their students about
‘Indianness’ and/or ‘Tamilness’ and to build up subjectivities with an awareness
of Tamil ‘culture’ and ‘religion’. A number of these cultural and religious ‘leaders’
did not only run schools, printing presses, and books shops, but also produced
Tamil primers, prayer books, journals, and other religious and educational litera-
ture for their students and the larger audience.7 Virudachalam Pillai, who func-
tioned as Tamil teacher, trained several ‘cultural leaders’ active in the 1930s.
He was most presumably influenced by Maraimalai Adigal and his writings and
tied his agenda close to reformist thoughts from Tamil Nadu. In 1922, South
African Indians invited Maraimalai Adigal for a visit to South Africa, together
with Bhai Paramanand. ‘Representatives of Hindu Religious Bodies in South
Africa’ petitioned the Minister of the Interior in this year for visas, which were
obviously denied to both applicants by the government on the grounds that
 Ulrike Schröder 225

Paramanand’s activities were of a ‘revolutionary nature’ (cited in Desai and Vahed

2010, p. 452, fn 49).8 Virudachalam is also known for having initiated a prayer
group movement (Thirukootam Assembly) which became popular and spread
through the temples in Durban. He used his printing press for publishing two
prayer books, one named Arutpa Thevara Thirattu—obviously an extract of hymns
and poems from the TOv@ram and Ramalinga Adikal’s (ir@maliṅka abika0, 1823–74)
Tiruvarubp@—and the other book Mathamani Vasagam. Further, he wrote two popu-
lar prayers which are still in use among Tamil South Africans at the beginning and
end of religious occasions (Kuppusami 1993, p. 79ff).
The major organised attempt to unite Tamil Indians under the umbrella of Saiva
Siddhanta as the central religious creed of Tamils developed in the late 1930s
among low-class Tamils in Durban. The Saiva Sithantha Sungum was founded in
1937 by Siva Subramonia Guruswamigal (śri civacuppirama>iya kurucuv@mika0, 1910-
1953) who was, in his secular life, a worker in a local textile factory.9 In his
spiritual life he was a largely self-taught Saivite guru who claimed to have received
a spiritual call from Siva (civa@, civ@) himself when meditating under a palm tree.10
The various hagiographic accounts on his life reveal some further details which
complete the picture of a vibrant Tamil educational scene in the early decades of
twentieth-century Durban: Subramonia was born in 1910 in Tongaat on the Natal
North Coast. His parents were Telugu-speaking indentured workers who hailed
from a village called ‘Jalpina’ in the Vizagapatanam district of the former Madras
Presidency, today Andhra Pradesh. Due to the massive increase of population
numbers and due to several famines which struck the district during the course
of the nineteenth century, the place was a major hub for labour migration to other
colonies (Chittibabu 2015). Although coming from a Telugu family, he gained his
primary education in the Thiruvalluva Nainaar Free Tamil School in Umgeni Road
(Durban) and learned Tamil from Muthusamy Govender, a local Tamil scholar.
The readings obviously comprised much of the authoritative Saiva Siddhanta
canon (as it was constructed by modern Tamil revivalists, see Klöber in
this issue); the account mentions the Tevaram (tOv@ram) and Tiruvacakam
(tiruv@cakam) as his favourite readings. Some hagiographic accounts of
Subramonia’s life hold that Subramonia stemmed from a ‘very spiritual Veera
Saiva family, as a worthy descendant of the great and revered South Indian reli-
gious leader, Sri Veera Bramamoo Karu’, a ‘South Indian Telugu Mystic’ (A Brief
History, p. 1, Subramonium, p. vii).11 As Subramonia mentions his Varaśaiva
(varacaivam) descent in one of his hymns (‘vira caiva civa cuppirama>iyarc co@@a’,
see Subramonia, p. 234–36), this religious background seems confirmed, whereas
his portrayal as a descendant of the mystic saint Sri Pothuluri Veerabrahmam
might be seen as a rather recent inclusion into the latest versions of
‘Guruswamigal’s’ biography, relating him to another important South Indian reli-
gious tradition. A comparison between these hagiographic accounts further indi-
cates that the life of Subramonia is largely told along the pattern of sainthood
narratives of Tamil Saivite saints, with a close link to Ramalinga Adigal’s life
226 Being Saivite, the South African Way

(Dayanandan Francis 1990; Raman 2002). The Brief History, written by the current
leader of the Saiva Sithantha Sungum, Swami Sivayogananda, goes on to describe
his early childhood experiences as parallel to those of Ramalinga Swamigal (1823–
74):

In his early childhood, Guru Swamigal shared the same experiences as

Ramalinga Swamigal. When he appeared very sick as a baby, GuruSwamigal
[sic] was taken to a temple by his parents. The temple priest left the baby on
the steps of the altar to bless him. The child was so fascinated by the lights of
the altar that he burst out laughing. The priest then told the parents that this
[is] not an ordinary child but [h]as come as a saint and saviour of mankind.
Indeed this child emerged as a spiritual genius who mapped out a simplified
pathway in Saivism for all to follow. (Brief History, p. 1)

The biography contains a number of miraculous stories which underline the spe-
cial spiritual mission of Subramonia to the Tamils in South Africa and emphasize
the divine authorisation of his person and the mission by Siva: Subramonia’s main
mission was to provide a version of Saivism and Saiva Siddhanta to Tamil South
Africans which was appealing not only to the educated ‘leaders’ but also to the
Tamil and Telugu masses who lacked secular as well as formal religious education.

Saiva Siddhanta for working-class Indians

Subramonia’s movement was initially called ‘Shiva Sithantha Sungum’ (civa citt@nta
caṅkam), as the earliest copy of Subramonia’s songbook (ca. 1938) indicates. The
word ‘Siva’ was later altered into ‘Saiva’ when the group became locally known as
the ‘Saivite Universal Mission’. The Sungum was mainly active among the poor
Tamils in the Indian ghettos, for example, in the Magazine and Railway Barracks,
two settlements of extremely poor ex-indentured workers who were employed in
municipal services or were depending on other forms of cheap labour (Vahed
2001a; Home 1998).
The Sungum focused on reviving Saivism—regarded as totally synonymous with
the core teachings of Saiva Siddhanta philosophy—in a simplified, rationalist, and
easy-to-learn form; Saivism was seen as the religion of South African Tamils, being
perfectly suitable to the modern urban persons striving for socially upward mo-
bility.12 The critique of traditional South Indian forms of worship, especially
animal sacrifices, was fierce, yet these practices were only seen as indicators of
the moral and spiritual deprivation of Indians under the oppressive conditions of
indenture and early Apartheid. Thus, the introduction to the congregational song-
book of the Saiva Sithantha Sungum portrays Subramonia’s special role not only as
a revivalist of Saivism/Saiva Siddhanta, but as also a defender of religious freedom
and civil rights of Tamil Indians in South Africa:
 Ulrike Schröder 227

During the early [twentieth] century, religion was on the decline in South
Africa. The lofty teachings of the Saivite Saints had been cast into the back-
ground. In the name of religion people followed the footsteps of misled priests,
performing meaningless rituals and sacrifices and killing innocent animals. The
country was in dire need of a reformer, a saint and saviour. During this critical
period when cruelty, degeneration and unrighteousness prevailed, His Holiness
Brahma Sri Siva Subramonia Guruswamigal was born. It was his mission to
abolish priestcraft and animal sacrifices, to restore morality and to disseminate
the message of equality, unity and cosmic love. The arrival in our midst of our
Spiritual Master saw the dawn of a spiritual awakening in South Africa.
Guruswamigal stood, as it were, upon the threshold of immortality and bending
down raised the struggling individuals into the imperium of everlasting joy and
infinite Truth-Consciousness." (Subramonium, p. vii)

This description mirrors in various ways the concerns of Hindu reformers in ear-
lier decades. As J. Barton Scott has pointed out, the rhetoric of anti-priestcraft and
anti-ritual reform were part of a transnational discourse that involved Hindu as
well as Christian progressive thinkers and stimulated ideas of a self-ruling spiritual
subject as the central concern of modern spiritualities (Scott 2016). Subramonia
continued this rhetoric in close conversation with the influential Arya Samaj and
Christian revivalists in Durban. As in the case of the Arya Samaj and its travelling
missionaries to South Africa, the defence against conversions to Christianity was
another central concern to the Sungum’s object of organising and purifying Tamil
religious practice. This is especially visible in its ritual design and the missionary
strategies applied for propagating Saivism. The Sungum was a direct Saivite coun-
ter-mission to the Bethesda Temple, a Pentecostal church which was successfully
proselytising among working-class Tamils and bringing them into the Christian
fold.13
The Bethesda Temple was founded by John F. Rowlands (1909–1980). In spite of
its white founder, the church developed into a Pentecostal church with a large
Indian following over the decades. Early pictures of the Bethesda worship services
even show a significant number of other ‘non-Indians’ as well (Oosthuizen 1975, p.
191). As many early Pentecostal churches, Bethesda Temple understood itself in its
early days not as racially defined in theology and practice.14 Rowlands’ conversio-
nist campaigns, however, targeted mainly those Indians who had stayed in Natal
after the end of indentured labour (1911) and who were living in Natal mostly as
poor and marginalised people. Bethesda quickly grew into the most successful
single church among Indian South Africans with an estimated membership of
more than 30,000 followers and very unique mission methods. Bethesda’s evangel-
ist campaign attracted large crowds of working-class Indians because of its tailor-
made contextual messages that addressed the lived realities of urban Indians in
the South African context. Rowlands’ theology operated hermeneutically from an
Indian cultural background, transferring Bible stories to Indian cultural contexts.
By far most successful were the lantern mission and his slide-shows, called
228 Being Saivite, the South African Way

‘Bethesdascopes’ where he mixed Biblical stories with photos and images from
India which he frequently visited (Pillay 1991). Thus, he developed a Pentecostal
theology for Indians which reflected the diasporic sentiments of his audience—the
liminal position of Indians as disenfranchised non-citizens of South Africa whose
collective and personal ties with India as the ‘motherland’ were slowly fading away
when return was no longer an option but full recognition as South African citizens
was not yet achieved. Sermon titles such as ‘Calvary’s Indian Eyes’ and ‘Fire
walking with Jesus’ (Pillay 1991, p. 262) aimed at illustrating for the audience
how the gospel message was to be understood in the context of the rapid cultural,
social, and economic changes which the non-white population underwent in the
early days of Apartheid.
The Sungum, in return, consciously adopted a Christian liturgical style for its
worship ceremonies and created a structured Saivite congregational ‘prayer ser-
vice’ for Sundays with a set of hymns, written by Subramonia himself and a
sermon given by a ‘guru’. The ‘reformed’ style of worship is particular to this
movement and not comparable to South Indian standards. The worship concen-
trates on the ritual veneration of Siva in his aniconic form, the Siva-Lingam
(civaliṅkam)—visible only as a two-dimensional, non-consecrated image.
Subramonia’s firm background in Varaśaiva traditions might have further helped
to design a religious aesthetics which is exclusively focussed on the Lingam. The
Lingam is placed on a tiered pedestal, usually accompanied by images of Siva in a
dancing pose (nabar@jar) and—a later addition—a picture of Subramonia.15 In the
current Sungum, the worship follows a simplified ritual style consisting of hymns
and prayers which are alternately sung by the congregation and the local ‘guru’
leading the prayer. The worship concludes with @ratti, the offering of the divine
lamp to Siva. The worship can be conducted everywhere and is not bound to
special sacred spaces. Some of the local branches do not even own property for
their gatherings. Therefore, some congregations—like many religious communities
in South Africa—use school premises or other temporary makeshift spaces for
worship, along with removable sacred equipment for the pedestals.16
Apart from himself being the leader of the revival, Subramonia initiated—
shortly after the foundation of the Sungum—twelve men as his closest disciples
and transferred the mission work to them. This first batch of disciples helped him
to conduct street mission—which was called ‘lantern mission’—and mass preach-
ing events. The reach-outs were always in competition with Bethesda Temple
which had its headquarters in close vicinity to the Sungum. Both parties encoun-
tered each other quite frequently while campaigning on the streets of Durban’s
city centre. An early poster advertisement from 1947 shows how close
Subramonia’s missionary language and visual aesthetics came to the Pentecostal
pattern. It portrays Subramonia in a black and white garment, similar to Christian
pastors, and announces a three-day ‘Siva-Sakti-festival’ (civacaktivi4@) cum lecture
series in August 1947 in the Arya Prathinithi Sahbha Hall in Durban.17 The meeting
was supposed to address ‘your vital needs’, and to demonstrate how Saivism would
 Ulrike Schröder 229

overcome the existential challenges imposed on a socially and spiritually vulner-

able person at the margins of society. Thus, the three lectures were framed under
the rubrics of

‘Education’ ‘Come unto me: I teach a doctrine which leads to deliverence [sic]
from all miseries of life.’
‘Provision’ ‘Preach the needs of our people (food, Clothing [sic], and shelter -
the vital necessities of life) and not mere religion.’
‘Protection’ ‘No nation can rise to a high place without being brave; it cannot
maintain its independence even it cannot push forward upon any path of life
without courage.’

Under these three rubrics the advertisement propagated Subramonia’s message as

catering for the three-most urgent demands of subaltern working-class Tamils in
Durban in the 1940s. In fact, the rubrics as well as the quotes attached to them
were not his own words but taken from Harold Fielding Hall’s (1859–1917) book
‘The Soul of a People’ (1898). This book was a rather esoteric and orientalist-
minded but all the more famous and widely read account of Buddhism in
Burma. Likewise, it possesses an intricate argumentation consisting of the
author contending with truth questions in different religions.18 Subramonia’s as-
tonishing use of this book might be a further trace for the popularity of theosoph-
ical thinking in Saiva circles (see Harlass in this issue and Bergunder 2010),
drawing from its critical potential towards Christianity in order to promote the
cause of a universal and inclusive Saivism. Within this framework one does not
wonder that the first quote taken from Fielding’s book is presented inside the book
as an original saying of Buddha. Most likely Subramonia understood this as a proof
that non-Christian ‘religions’ were, other than Christianity, able to cater equally
for the spiritual and the existential needs of their adherents. Simultaneously, the
term ‘deliverance’ also alluded to Pentecostal language. In Pentecostal Christianity,
the term ‘deliverance’ features prominently as theological concept and practice—a
practice which appeals until today to practitioners of traditional non-Brahmin
Hinduism in South India (Bergunder 2001; Kay 2011). It is clearly visible here that
it was Subramonia’s agenda to create a discursive space for his Saiva Siddhanta
project that was, on the one hand, inclusive to other religious traditions regarded as
‘Indian’ and, on the other hand, clearly positioned against missionary Christianity.19
The most significant contribution of Subramonia and his movement to the
creation of a modern South African Saivism is the compilation of a prayer book,
entitled Subramonium, which was purposely designed as the official songbook for
the Sungum. The 172 devotional hymns and poems cater to the Sungum’s worship
services as well as for private use. They promote the ideal of Siva ‘bhakti’ (pakti),
taking the philosophy of Saiva Siddhanta as the core essence of Saivism, stress the
importance of Tamil as the language of worship, and unity with god Siva. The book
comprises of a wide range of different songs which creatively adapt the religious
230 Being Saivite, the South African Way

language and literary style of canonical Tamil Saivite texts, but seem to be all
independent compositions of Subramonia. The songs include a large variety of
topics: praises to Siva in his different forms (no. 6 in the worship section), reflec-
tions on various scriptural traditions of Hindus and the ‘supreme wisdom
enshrined in Vedas, Puranas and Saiva agamas’ (no. 9), addressing social nuisances
in the Indian community (no. 82), as well as appeals to the ‘Dravidian people’ to
unite in the collective remembrance of their glorious past and to accept ‘Africa’ as
their new ‘property’ (no. 109).
It would be worth analysing the book in more detail, but for the purpose of this
article it has to be sufficient to sketch out briefly Subramonia’s relationship with
the canonical Saiva Siddhanta. The last section of the song book comprises 21
‘commandments’ (kabbalai) of Subramonia, which are directed to his disciples and
display a clear consciousness of his (self-)entitlement as a spiritual guide in the
Saiva Siddhanta tradition. According to Subramonia, knowledge of Saiva Siddhanta
could only be acquired through himself as the spiritual leader (‘Guruswami’) be-
cause he presents himself as Siva’s mouthpiece and authorised interpreter of Saiva
(Siddhanta) tradition. The spiritual and philosophical essence of Saiva Siddhanta
philosophy is summarised in the commandments in an easily accessible language
targeting people with almost no education but a bilingual background (presented
in Tamil and English).
The text carefully locates his teachings in the context of the Saiva tradition and
sees Subramonia’s creative religious writings in line with the authoritative Saiva
tradition:

Oh! Members of the Saiva Sithantha Sungum clearly understand that the Saiva
Sithantha Sungum was founded to preserve and propagate the worship of
Sivaperumaan as taught by our saiva saints and sages. (Subramonium, p. 294)

In another paragraph, the devotees are encouraged to patronize ‘spiritual arts’,

including the use of the Tirumurai hymn book (pa@@iru tirumuTai), and scholars of
Saiva Siddhanta. References to canonical Saivite texts, including the different parts
of the Tirumurai, are scattered throughout the songbook, highly esteemed as
advanced religious knowledge for devotees with a higher educational level.20 For
devotees with less education, Subramonia projected his own role as being the
spiritual guide who skimmed the milk of Saivite canonical traditions and teachings
and, then, imparted the quintessence into his followers’ minds through his own
compositions:

You will learn (Pathi, Pasu Paasam) from the Sivaguru that the body appears,
exists and is finally dissolved by the Divine Grace of Sivaperumaan. You should
therefore have immense faith, devotion and trust in the Sivaguru and worship
the formless form of Sivaperumaan which is the sacred Sivalingam.
(Subramonium, p. 294)
 Ulrike Schröder 231

You, the members of the Sungum, must practise the four virtues of: Aram,
Porul, Inbum and Veedu (as taught by St Thiruvalluvar in the sacred
Thirukurral). (Subramonium, p. 295)

Once again, ‘education’ and ‘upliftment’ were the key concerns tied to this agenda.
Thus, another paragraph reads:

Oh! Scholars of Tamil and Saiva Sithaantham, spiritual education is the only
instrument that can assist us to improve our society. Every member of our
Sungum, both men and women, must make it their duty to receive spiritual
education. Realize that the little message and wisdom given in the sacred
Subramonium, which is the Sungum’s Holy scripture, are the utterances of
Sivaperumaan, Himself. If you have trust in the Subramonium, every aspect
of your life will improve.

By talking about the Subramonium as the Sungum’s holy scripture, Subramonia

subtly transgressed the canonical realm of established Tamil Saiva Siddhanta and
added a new, contextual dimension. It only seems appropriate, then, that the book
cover of the first manuscript collection containing the handwritten sheets of his
songs bears the (handwritten) title Ñ@@aprtam: Our Bible. The title alludes to the
Sivagnana Botham (civañ@@aprtam, i.e. the comprehensive knowledge of Siva-
wisdom), the authoritative treatise of Meykanda (Meyka>batOv@r, first half of the
thirteenth century) which is seen as a divinely inspired text. It is remarkable, that
the title ‘Gnanabotham’ never transpired into the print version of the Sungum’s
songbook, which appeared in 1943 under the title Subramonium.
The popular key principles of Saiva Siddhanta philosophy (god [pati], soul [pacu],
bondage [p@cam]) are shortly mentioned, yet there is no systematic elaboration of
it in the ‘commandments’. Presumably this was part of the oral teachings of
Subramonia. The issue of ‘spiritual education’ is frequently emphasised as a tool
for combating against pan-Indian/Neo-Hindu and Christian influences, yet it sim-
ultaneously mirrors the hegemonic signifier of ‘upliftment through education’,
which exerted its power both in religious discourses as well as in the secular
political sphere of Apartheid. In this context, Subramonia’s ‘Saiva Sithantha’ mes-
sage stands pars pro-toto for the social and spiritual ambitions of Tamil working-
class people to emancipate themselves from their subaltern position both inside
the Indian community and inside the racist discourse of South African early
Apartheid.
As previously mentioned, Subramonia frequently utilised his cross-religious lit-
eracy, also to the extent of advancing the inclusive message of his Saiva Siddhanta
project to non-Tamils and non-Saivites as well. Hymns in other portions of the
song book (Subramonium) include ideas from various branches of Hindu religious
and philosophical traditions and make frequent reference to contemporary Indian
thinkers and movements whose teachings were also read and received in the
232 Being Saivite, the South African Way

South African context. Further, Subramonia’s emphasis on social, linguistic, and

religious equality as an inclusive agenda pointed again to the competitive multi-
ethnic and multi-religious context in Natal, where different options to establish
‘modern’ religious subjectivities were available at the same time.

Oh! Brothers and sisters, have a thirst for spirituality; join the Saiva Sithantha
Sungum which does not discriminate against caste, creed, gender, religion,
status, language etc. and worship Sivaperumaan and improve your spiritual life.
Oh! Devotees of Sivaperumaan, do not condemn any religion. All religions were
created by Sivaperumaan. Do not condemn ritualistic worship. (Subramonium, p.
294)
We have come here to foster the faith of Saiva
Along with the sweet words of Buddha, the merciful sage,
The sacrifice of Jesus, who was crucified to remove the misery of the Jews and
The noble words of the prophet Mohammed,
Who got belaboured to dispel the sufferings of the Arabs. (Subramonium, p. 81)

Consistently, the theology advocated by Subramonia had an exclusive and an in-

clusive dimension. Whereas the exclusive dimension can certainly be seen in the
strict advocacy for the worship of Siva, the inclusiveness was primarily directed
towards other Indian and Hindu traditions, especially towards Neo-Hindu philo-
sophies based on Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. Yet, this was much more than a
friendly gesture; it was a subversive response to the presence of other Neo-Hindu
organisations in the immediate context of the Sungum. The rhetorical adoption of
inclusive speech was not only—as in the case of the competition with the
Pentecostal church—a strategy to keep Tamils in the fold of Saivism, it subverted
the dominant (Neo-Hindu) discourse spanning across the Indian Ocean between
India and the ‘diaspora’ communities and established an effective counter-dis-
course with a different option for (Tamil) Hindu/Saivite modernism, in contrast
to what was proposed by the largely North-Indian and Vedanta-based organisa-
tions. Consequently, the Saivite tradition needed to be reformulated as an authen-
tic South African contextual message even to the extent of contesting the
discursive limits of the canonicity of Tamil Saivism.

Conclusions: South African Saivism in local and global perspective

Today there exists a large network of Saivite organisations in South Africa.
This network promotes ‘Saiva Bhakti’—identified with the philosophy of Saiva
Siddhanta—and stresses the importance of Tamil as the language of worship.
Subramonia’s Saiva Sithantha Sungum has emerged into a large network with
different branches. Most of these organisations still adhere to the teachings and
worship style of ‘Guruswamigal’, although different dynamics to redefine this
specific tradition have become visible during the recent years.
 Ulrike Schröder 233

Apart from the influence of Subramonia’s movement, other Saivite reformist

associations were established from the 1950s onwards that established alternative
visions of Tamil Saivism. Each of them defined what has to be regarded as their
canonical literature for the purpose of worship. The Arutpa Kazhagam (1953)
traces its origins back to Rajarutna Mudaliar who arrived in 1900 in Natal and
was a devotee of Ramalinga. The Kazhagam exclusively follows Ramalinga Adigal’s
version of Saivism, using a hymn book which contains predominantly the hymns
of Ramalinga and Tiruvalluvar (Tiruva00uvar).
The Saiva Vazhipatu Kazhagam (Sivan Kovil, established in 1942/1974) promotes a
purely Tamil form of worship. Its founder P. A. Pillai was known as a strict adherent
of the Tamil nationalist movement who completely rejected the use of Sanskrit in
Saivism. The organisation defines the Saivite tradition more narrowly and has
edited a songbook which only contains the hymns of the four-most ‘classical’
Saivite saints, i.e. Tirugnana Sampantar (Tiruñ@@acampantar), Tirunavukkarasar
(Tirun@vukkaracu), Suntarar (Cuntaram+rttin@ya@@r)—all part of the Tevaram—and
from Manikkavacakar’s (M@>ikkav@cakar) Tiruvacakam. The Siva Manram (1966), an
offspring of the Kazhagam has gone again a different way and has reverted to the
full recognition of the complete Tirumurai as authoritative source. Its founder K. C.
Gounden was a prominent Tamil scholar in South Africa who had studied in India,
and has re-edited an abridged version of the Tirumurai called pa@@iru tirumuTai
tirabbu (first published in 1970) in close cooperation with the Dharmapuram
Adhinam (taramapuram @ta@am). Like the Saiva Vazhipatu Kazhagam, the Siva
Manram uses a physical lingam in its worship. The organisation has gone back to
a more agamic style of worship in recent years and re-established close ties to
Varaśaiva institutons in India, including the initiation of its leader by the head of
the Perur Aadhinam. Further, there are a considerable number of independent
prayer groups with different orientations, some of them trying to find a middle
path between the ‘Guruswamigal tradition’ and canonical orientations by publishing
songbooks which contain Subramonia’s songs as well as traditional canonical texts.
An important recent development is the re-establishment of personal links with
traditional Saivite authorities and the import of physical lingams from India.
Nowadays, after the end of Apartheid, heritage tourism and religious pilgrimage
to India are affordable to many people. In the case of the Saivite movement, this
has produced inside the Indian community a new reassurance of cultural roots and
religious ties to India. Some organisations try to re-establish links with traditional
authorities of South Indian Saivism, mostly on a personal level. Others take an
active part in the World Saiva Council, an organisation which propagates Saivism
as a global religion. In 1995, only one year after the official end of the Apartheid
regime, the ‘World Hindu Conference’ took place in Durban. A South African
branch of the World Saiva Council was formed in the year 2000. While these
processes in fact do create a re-orientation towards India and towards global
organisations, this re-orientation is contested in the South African context at
the same time. The desire for cultural authenticity attributed to India as the
234 Being Saivite, the South African Way

original ‘motherland’ dissolves as quickly as people realise the historical and cul-
tural gap which has deepened during 150 years of separation. In the eyes of trad-
itional Saivite authorities in South India, the distinctive traditions which
developed in South Africa are still treated with suspicion (Klöber 2016, p. 343).
Therefore, South African reformed Saivism can be seen as a quite unique form of
Saivism which will most probably keep its characteristics in the near future, even
though recent attempts of realignment exist.
The problem of how to relate these diasporic ‘inventions’ of religion to the
authentic, ‘original’ traditions of Indian Saivism is a matter of contestation that
extends beyond South African Tamils and their exchange with Indian authorities
of Saiva Siddhanta. Even in the scholarly field one finds a general dismissal of
diasporic Saivism as inauthentic. In a recent comprehensive account of Hinduism
in South Africa, for example, one can read the following comment:

During my interviews with many Tamil devotees it became clear that . . . the
Saiva Siddhanta Sangam is . . . unable to transmit the Siddhanta teachings sys-
tematically because of the lack of such knowledge among the leadership. . . .
The Saiva Siddhanta Sangam in South Africa illustrates the important social
phenomenon among the diaspora Indians in general, namely, their desire to
adhere to the original traditions in India on the one hand, and their inability to
maintain those traditions in the face of not only the generational gap, but also
the urbanisation and modernisation in the societies in which they reside.
(Kumar 2013, 113ff).

Kumar’s account interprets the distinctive form of Saivism as practised by the

Sungum as a proof for the demise of ‘diasporic’ forms of religion. He simply
dismisses the particular features of South African reformed Saivism as a disability
of diasporic communities to keep up the ‘right’ faith and to stick to the canonical
traditions. Needless to say, the implicit template for this comparison is the trad-
itional Saivism as it is practised in South India with its canonical scriptures and
authentic practice. Yet, it needs to be questioned whether this approach at all
provides meaningful answers to questions of global religious histories as they are
posed by such examples like Subramonia’s South African Saivism. As this article
has demonstrated, hegemonic notions of ‘canon’, ‘authenticity’, and the overall
formation of religious traditions are never bound to a particular place in time and
history, but are historically contingent propositions ‘on the move’, especially in
our globalised world today. Hence, they are alterable and diffuse. A careful look at
these (constructed) margins of religious traditions is required in order to under-
stand the creative affirmation and re-development of religious traditions which
are on the move and do not stop at India’s continental shores.
The contribution of Saivism to creating ‘Tamil’ religious identities in the South
African context should not be underestimated. There, the discourse of ‘Tamilness’
is primarily based on the overlapping of the domains of origin, language, and
 Ulrike Schröder 235

religion—particularly since political frameworks have lost their significance after

the end of Apartheid. It is rather a matter of everyday life and religious identity
than a consciously deployed political concept (Ganesh 2010, p. 35). The various
categories of Indianness, Tamilness, Hinduness, and/or Saiviteness as well as being
‘true South Africans’ can all be asserted by Tamil/Indian South Africans, yet at
different times, spaces, and levels of discourse. Hence, Saivism at the margins of
this ‘great tradition’ provides a dynamic resource for creating and re-creating
nuanced discursive affinities to local and global forms of identity, making South
African Saivism—for South Africans—authentic, canonical, and equal to other
forms of Saivism.

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Notes
1 Transliterations of crucial terms are all given in Tamil. For the purpose of a reader-
friendly text, I do not add Sanskrit transliterations.
238 Being Saivite, the South African Way

2 Field research for this article was carried out in South Africa between 2010–12 as
part of a larger research project of the collaborative research centre 619 ‘Ritual
Dynamics’ at the University of Heidelberg, funded by the German Research Council
(DFG). I thank Goolam Vahed, Pratap Kumar, and Morgan Yegambaram for their
valuable support and insightful discussions during my visits in Durban. Special
thanks to Rafael Klöber, Srilata Raman, and Eric Steinschneider for helpful com-
ments and thoughtful inspirations.
3 The official terminology in the census documents still operates with the (now)
ethnic and (previously) racial categories of ‘Black African’, ‘Coloured’, ‘White’,
‘Indian or Asian’, etc. Even though these terms are deeply rooted in the colonial
and Apartheid history of South Africa, these racialised schemes have become part of
the ‘corporeality’ of South Africans today (Hansen 2012, p. 292). I put these terms in
quotation marks here to indicate this genealogy and their questionable character.
4 The Swami was a controversial figure who impacted not only local Hindus dis-
courses, but had a wider political agenda which brought him into conflict with
M. K. Gandhi, who was at that time living in South Africa (1893–1914). Further,
Swami Shankaranand’s strong emphasis on clearly defined ‘Hinduness’ in terms of
religious practice and religious subjectivities, was negatively received by many
Indians who saw his activities as evoking religious dissent and fostering commu-
nalism between religious groups among the Indians, Hindus, Muslims, and
Christians alike (Vahed 1997).
5 For a comprehensive list of such organisations, see Bhana and Vahed 2005,
Appendix 1.
6 The so-called ‘Passenger Indians’ came to South Africa as economic entrepreneurs,
not as indentured laborers. They occupied a legal status and social position in
Natal’s colonial society that differed from the indentured laborers. For a collection
of detailed biographies of these figures, see Kuppusami (1993).
7 See Kuppusami (1993), Chapters 3 to 5, covering a large variety of these activists.
8 Kuppusami (1993), 51 even notes that Virudachalam Pillai and Maramalai Adigal
were together present at the inauguration of the Vedic Sanmarka Sabha in 1920 in
Sea Cow Lake, hence Adigal would have travelled to South Africa even before 1922.
I was not able to verify Kuppusamis account so far.
9 The spelling of his name varies and is not defined inside the movement. Other
versions include ‘Soobramonia’, ‘Subramania’, etc. Most followers of the movement
simply call him in short ‘Guruswamigal’. I use the form ‘Subramonia’ as it is used by
the Sungum. The songbook of the Sungum is officially named Subramonium.
10 See Saiva Sithantha Sungum (2006), Subramonium (rev. edn), pp 150–51 (song no. 60)
and the hagiographic account on pp. vii–viii. This account was apparently written
by the Swami Sivayogananda, the fifth spiritual head of the Saiva Sithantha
Sungum. The spiritual call is seen as a direct ‘initiation’ as a religious guru by Siva.
11 The hagiographic accounts of Subramonia would be worth to receive a more de-
tailed analysis, but within the scope of this article it will be briefly noted here that
the biographical accounts of Subramonia’s life have some undergone changes
during the decades. See also the biographical account in Kuppusami (1993),
pp. 136–38.
 Ulrike Schröder 239

12 ‘The gracious Guru Swamigal was a source of supreme inspiration to all the
[S]aivites of South Africa, kindling in them an urge to practice meditation for
their spiritual evolution. Thus began a Saiva Siddhanta meditation revolution in
South Africa. The Master . . . explains the Saiva Sithantham in a manner that was
logical and appealing to the modern person, thereby creating a Saiva spiritual
renaissance in the Republic of South Africa.’ (Yegambaram (n.d.): Soobramoniem,
p. 9).
13 Pillay (1994).
14 The temporary transgression of racial divides was a particular feature of early
Pentecostal churches, e.g. in the Azusa street revival in 1906. Therefore, new re-
search on the early history of Pentecostalism has criticized ‘older’ Pentecostal
historiographies and their implicit racial biases (Anderson 2005, Hollenweger
1997). However, the umbrella organisation Full Gospel Church of God in Southern
Africa, to which the Bethesda Temple belonged, was subject to perpetuated racial
subordination of Indians and Black Africans as well, see Anderson and Pillay 1997,
p. 235ff.
15 This assemblage can be also seen as reflecting other recent innovations of Saiva
religious aesthetics, e.g. Ramalina Adigal’s practice. I thank Srilata Raman for point-
ing this out to me.
16 This flexibility in terms of organising religious space is partly caused by the ex-
perience of forced removals of Indians in Durban from the city center to the town-
ships at the outskirts of the greater Durban area. The forced removals also led to
the demise of many religious places at city centre when these central places of
worship and assembly were no longer reachable by most non-South African Indians.
As a consequence, new religious places were established in the townships, some of
them were turned into solid buildings after some time (see Maharaj 1992, Gopalan
2014 and Schröder 2013).
17 It should be noted here that the poster also advertises the talks of three female
followers of the Sungum which were supposed to be the opening speeches of the
evenings. According to the Sungum’s oral tradition, women played a central role in
supporting the revival. In the current Sungum, women can—equally to men—attain
the position of a ‘guru’, i.e. the local leader of a congregation.
18 I was able to locate the first and third quote in Fielding’s book (pp. 47, 58). The
origin of the quote in the second rubric could not be traced so far. The popularity
of Fielding’s book can be estimated from the many editions and reprints it had;
the fourth edition appeared already in 1902. A translation into German was
published in 1931, see Fielding 1931. Quotes from the book frequently appear
in printed materials from the Saiva Sithantha Sungum as well as in its oral
teachings.
19 Here it should also be taken briefly into consideration that C. Iyothee Thassar’s
(Tam. k. ayrttit@car, 1845–1914) Movement of Tamil Buddhism was also active
among Tamils in Durban. This movement presented another form of modern ‘ra-
tional’ religion that was specifically appealing to Tamil Indians (see Van Loon 1980
and Aloysius 1998).
20 As far as my own observation goes, no other text from the Saivite canonical scrip-
tures was ever actively used inside the Sungum. This is certainly caused by the loss
240 Being Saivite, the South African Way

of knowledge of Tamil language among the newer generations which regard English
as their first language. The current religious practice solely relies on Subramania’s
literary works which are constantly reproduced in translated form in booklets and
in oral teachings.