S h a kt i Pu ja i n Trinidad  |  953
foster the sense that Caribbean countries are theocracies. “An Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.” 2002. http://www
Governments pander to this view, leaving the churches to
control the same-­sex debate and to place it within their doc-
trinal framework. It is to this state of affairs that the Guyana
Constitution Reform Commission pointed, when it accused
the Guyanese government of negligence in its failure to edu-
cate the Guyanese population on why Guyana’s laws crimi-
nalizing same-­sex practices are incompatible with Guyana’s
constitution (Stabroek News, February 5, 2001). The Church
has filled the space that should have been reserved for edu-
cating citizens about their constitutional rights with biblical
pronouncements hostile to homosexuals and detrimental to
civil rights.
H. Nigel Thomas
Note
This study is based in part on qualitative data gathered between 1998
and 2001. I prepared a questionnaire, which I sent to the Anglican
Caribbean bishops, the sectional heads of the Methodist Conference
in the Caribbean and the Americas, and to the Moravian Church
headquarters in Antigua. I also interviewed individual church
leaders. Another source of data was online versions of the Caribbean
newspapers, including commentaries by regular columnists and
printed letters, which provide a good sampling of opinion.
Bibliography
“AAC President Responds to Accokeek Verdict and Delaware Decision
to Bless Same-­Sex Union.” 2001. American Anglican Council.
November 1. http://www.americananglican.org/.
Alexander, Marilyn Bennett, and James Preston. 1996. We Were
Baptized Too: Claiming God’s Grace for Lesbians and Gays.
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Changing Attitude. http://www.changingattitude.org.uk.
Charles, Mark. 1998. “What About Homosexuality?” Vincentian,
January 16.
Cooper, Carolyn. 1994. “Lyrical Gun: Metaphor and Role Play in
Jamaican Dancehall Culture.” Massachusetts Review (Autumn–
Winter): 429–47.
Cress Welsing, Frances. (1974) 1991. “The Politics behind Black
Male Passivity, Effeminization, Bisexuality and Homosexuality.”
The Isis Papers. Chicago: Third World Press.
“The Dallas Statement.” 1997. Concerned Clergy and Laity of the
Episcopal Church. http://www.episcopalian.org/cclec/paper
-­dallas.htm.
“The Episcopal Church and Homosexuality.” 1996. Religious
Tolerance.org. http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_epis2
.htm.
“Human Sexuality: A Statement by the Anglican Bishops of Canada.”
1997. The Anglican Church of Canada. http://www.anglican.ca
/faith/identity/hob-­statement.htm.
“The Konoima Statement.” 1994. Concerned Clergy and Laity of the
Episcopal Church. http://www.episcopalian.org/cclec/statement
-­koinonia.htm.
Julien, Isaac, dir. 1994. Darker Side of Black (documentary film).
London: BBC.
“The Lambeth Resolution.” 1998. http://www.anglicancommunion
.org/windsor2004/appendix/p3.6.cfm.
Noel, Peter, and Robert Marriot. 1993. “Batty Boys in Babylon.”
Village Voice, January 12, 29–35.
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.prayers.netfirms.com/openlettertoac.htm.
“A Pastoral Statement to Lesbian and Gay Anglicans from Some
Member Bishops of the Lambeth Conference.” 1998. http://
justus.anglican.org/resources/Lambeth1998/lambeth.html.
Robinson, B. A. 2004. “The Church of England and Homosexuality.”
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. http://www
.religioustolerance.org/hom_coe.htm.
Shakti Puja in Trinidad
Shakti Puja (shakti, cosmic energy or power that activates
the universe in its polymorphous complexity, associated with
the devis, or female deities in Hinduism; puja, ritual worship
directed toward a deity) in Trinidad has been transformed
from an openly practiced ritual performance observed on
behalf of entire communities to a marginalized, somewhat
clandestine therapeutic ritual carried out weekly on behalf
of individuals and families in heterodox temples dedicated
primarily to Mother Kali (Kali Mata, Kali Mai) and her most
important spiritual associates. To put it simply, Shakti Puja
or Kali Puja has become something of an embarrassment to
many “respectable” Hindus. Yet ritualized devotions in honor
of Kali have not always been subject to such discrimination
in Trinidad, at least not in the way and to the extent that they
have been in the postcolonial period. Indeed, during the
period of Indian indentureship in the colony (1845–1917),
ritual supplications in honor of de Mudda (the Mother)—
as she is often called—were an important aspect of village-­
based pujas within the sacred calendars of many Trinidadian
Indian communities. Yet over the course of the twentieth
century, Kali has become stigmatized, and nonpractitioners,
Hindu and non-­Hindu alike, now look upon her worship with
mixed degrees of ambivalence, contempt, and fear.
From the outside, Kali is considered a capricious, sinister
demoness who lures people into her devotions and then pun-
ishes them severely if they do not maintain the practice. The
sacrificing of live goats and chickens has long been a central
practice of Kali Puja and has retained its significance in some
of the more prominent contemporary temples. Moreover,
the ecstatic manifestation of Mother Kali and a number of
other related deities through the ceremonial performances
of human mediums is another central practice of modern,
temple-­based Kali worship. Both of these practices feed into
social class–inflected, “mainstream” public opinion, which
tends to view these forms of Shakti Puja as demonic or deal-
ing in Obeah, a West Indian term often used colloquially as a
gloss for “black magic.”
Following on the heels of her twentieth-­century fall from
public grace, however, Kali worship and other closely related
forms of Shakti Puja have undergone a noteworthy resur-
gence in Trinidad since the 1970s and have become some-
thing of a subaltern practice enacted on the margins of main-
 954  |  Shak ti Pu ja i n T r i n i da d
stream postcolonial Caribbean Hinduism. Thus, despite her
stigmatized spiritual status within the greater island society,
Mother Kali’s popularity and healing power have become re-
vitalized in heterodox temples, and the numbers of her devo-
tees have grown considerably. Moreover, important Shakti
leaders and practitioners from Guyana have crucially influ-
enced the resurgence of ecstatic Kali Puja in Trinidad. In-
deed, the Guyanese influence upon the contemporary Trini-
dadian scene should not be underestimated. (Whereas Kali
Mai Puja seems the predominant term for ecstatic shakti
practice in Guyana, Kali Puja and Shakti Puja are the opera-
tive phraseologies in Trinidad.) Although the population of
Shakti practitioners is probably not growing at the rate that
it was during the 1970s and 1980s, Kali Temple devotions are
certainly alive and well—only situated, and therefore orga-
nized, quite differently than they were a century earlier.
The Contemporary Scene
Shakti Puja services are often conducted on a weekly basis—
typically on Sundays but sometimes on Saturdays, or even
on Friday nights in one case—in heterodox Hindu temples
that range anywhere in size from makeshift shacks to com-
pounds capable of holding hundreds of people. There were
approximately fifteen to twenty Shakti temples in Trinidad
at the turn of the twenty-­first century. However, a handful of
these do not hold active weekly services, and at least two of
them are dormant at the time of this writing. Most temples
are oriented around a murti (sacred statue) of Mother Kali
that is typically housed within the most central sanctum
of the temple compound and often based iconographically
upon the popular Bengali chromolithographic image of
Dakshinakali (Kali standing upon a supine Shiva, with her
multiple hands offering boons and reassurance, as well as
signifying the destruction of evil and the impermanence of
the world), although there is significant and important varia-
tion in this regard. (See Murti of Mother Kali in Gasparillo,
plate 12 in the color insert.)
In her temples, statues and chromolithographic images
of other Hindu deotas (devatas, deities) of both orthodox and
nonorthodox derivation accompany Kali. The most com-
monly found orthodox deities include Ganesh, Surujnarayan,
Hanuman, Shiva, Radha and Krishna, Rama and Sita, Saras-
wati, Durga, Lakshmi, and Ganga Mata (the maternal deity
associated with the Ganges River). The heterodox divinities
that accompany Kali in her Trinidadian temples and who
are—with the important exception of Kal Bhairo—generally
not found in any of the other ostensibly mainstream Hindu
temples on the island include a form of Shiva known as Kal
Bhairo or Bhairo Baba (Maduraviran), Dee Baba (Sanganni),
Munesh Prem or Muni Spiren, Nagura Baba, and Mother Ka-
terie (Kateriyamma) (terms in parentheses here indicate the
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attributed “Madrassi” names of these heterodox deities for
some practitioners—on Madrassi identity in Trinidad; see
Firepass Ceremony). Thus there has been a pattern of ritual-
ized consolidation over time of a unique and dynamic pan-
theon of divinities encountered solely in that configuration
in Trinidadian Shakti temples (see McNeal 2010, 2011 for an
analysis of pantheonization and remodeled iconographies
in the history of ecstatic Shakti Puja and the evolution of
heterodox Kali temple praxis).
Devotees often arrive early before the weekly service
armed with flowers, milk, fruit, and other items that they
offer to any or all of the various deities in the temple before
the formal service begins. The general structure of the puja
consists of the pujaris (ritual leaders and assistants) and an
attending group of devotee-­observers moving to each and
every deota “stand” (place where the deity’s murti or image
is located) within the temple in order to make offerings of
fruit, flowers, green and dry coconuts, incense, and lit flame
and to possibly erect a spiritual flag ( jhandi) representative
of each divinity’s power. Performance of the various deity
pujas and the making of offerings are accompanied by devo-
tional songs sung in varying combinations of Hindi, liturgi-
cal Tamil, and English, and musically driven by the rhyth-
mic percussion of usually three to five tappu drums. These
are special, thin, goatskin drums held between the shoul-
der and forearm, played upon primarily by males using two
thin sticks, and found only in Kali temples in Trinidad. They
seem to be relatively direct descendants of the type of drum
used in the old-­style Madrassi firepass ceremonies practiced
in Trinidad until the mid-­twentieth century and revived in
modern Shakti temples more recently under the influence of
Guyanese models. Tappu drums also seem to have been used
in colonial-­era Madrassi funerary practices, and they happen
to be strikingly similar to the tambrin drum of Tobago.
The round of puja offerings to the various deities typically
culminates climactically in collective devotional puja directed
toward Mother Kali herself—via both her murti and her per-
forming trance medium. If the temple conducts live animal
sacrifice, it is at this point that the animals are beheaded as
offerings to Kali or her associated divine attendants.
The issue of live animal sacrifice is an actively contentious
one within the community of Shakti practitioners in contem-
porary Trinidad and has become something of a moral flash-
point topic among both insiders and outsiders to the commu-
nity. Though blood sacrifice is perhaps the most immediate
symbolic association that outsiders—Hindu and non-­Hindu
alike—make regarding Kali Puja on the island, most are not
aware that a significant number of practitioners and temples
do not engage in or condone the practice of animal sacrifice.
Indeed, evidence suggests that antisacrificial sentiments are
gradually becoming the more prevalent ritual framework

within local patterns of contemporary Shakti worship. Those
temples that perform live sacrifice do so with an emphasis on
ritually beheading the goat or cock with a single stroke of the
cutlass.
While some Kali temples maintain an adamant posi-
tion in opposition to live animal sacrifice or have intention-
ally discontinued the practice at some point along the way,
there is no question that ecstatic rituals of spiritual trance
occupy a centrally salient place within all temple-­based cen-
ters of Kali worship in Trinidad. The ecstatic manifesta-
tion of Mother Kali upon an experienced spirit medium is a
highpoint of Shakti Puja services, and many people visit the
temple on puja days with the specific purpose of consulting
with de Mudda about a wide range of problems, such as ill-
ness, domestic or work conflicts, infertility, sexual dysfunc-
tion, and tabanka (love depression). Trance manifestation
in these contexts is conceived of as the activation of Shakti
within the human body. This temporary activation of Shakti
in a human medium makes the practice of jharaying (spiri-
tual purification and blessing) with neem leaves (a sacred
Indian plant closely associated with Hindu goddess worship)
particularly powerful during spirit consultations in these
temples. Several of the nonorthodox deotas associated with
Kali in Trinidadian Shakti temples also manifest ecstatically
via spirit mediums and likewise offer consultative jharay ses-
sions to devotees in search of some form of healing power.
The other deities that commonly manifest are Bhairo Baba (a
form of Shiva), Dee Baba (“Master of de Land”), Mother Ka-
terie (often referred to as “Small Mother” or “Small Sister”),
Mother Ganga (maternal water goddess associated with the
Ganges River in India—also with an orthodox, non-­ecstatic
audience at large), and Munesh Prem (a moon-­related deity
associated with Dee; although his identity is considered rela-
tively obscure to practitioners, it seems clear in comparative
terms that Munesh Prem’s Trinidadian namesake derives
historically from Sri Munisvaran of south Indian religious
traditions).
Manifesting trance mediums often take flaming cubes of
camphor into their mouths as a sign that an authentic spirit
manifestation is taking place, the logic being that only super-
human power can withstand the heat as well as avoid get-
ting burned. Lay members and visitors to the temples on
puja days are also commonly possessed by Shakti energy on
a temporary, ritualized basis, but these manifestations are
typically considered to be generalized episodes of Shakti
and are not necessarily identified with a specific manifesting
divinity, although in certain cases, this may later come to be
seen as the beginning of one’s moral career as a medium, if
one indeed progresses in such a direction (see Guinee 1992
for an illuminating study of devotion and healing in an im-
portant Trinidadian Kali Temple).
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S h a kt i Pu ja i n Trinidad  |  955
Of the various forms of Guyanese influence on Trinidadian
Shakti Puja, perhaps the most important are the practice of
holding weekly, temple-­based services and an innovation in
spiritual mediumship oriented toward more direct and indi-
vidually specific use as therapeutic ritual. In 1963 Guyanese
Pujari Jamsie Naidoo entered into a decade-­long collabora-
tion with an anthropologist, Philip Singer, and the director
of Guyana’s only mental hospital, Enrique Araneta. During
this period, patient referrals were made bidirectionally be-
tween Naidoo’s Kali Mai temple and the state mental hos-
pital, located about fifteen miles apart from each other, and
there were a number of important reciprocal influences be-
tween them. In particular, in 1973 Naidoo dispensed with the
use of esoteric forms of language used by the mediums that
required the services of a ceremonial interpreter. From this
point onward, devotees could converse directly with Mother
Kali and her spiritual associates through mediums during
spirit consultations in their own local, Guyanese tongue (see
Singer et al. 1976). This astonishing intervention—stemming
from modern psychiatry and facilitated by anthropology—
deserves far more reflection than is possible here but should
nevertheless catalyze considerable expansion of received
notions of syncretism.
While weekly services are the typical form of Shakti Puja
carried out through most of the year in Trinidadian temples,
most perform a grand annual puja at a specified time (often
in February, March, or April) that usually takes place over
an intense period of three days but involves many weeks of
preparation. The structure of the annual “Big Pooja” is simi-
lar to that of the weekly services, but the rituals, devotions,
and offerings are more frequent and elaborate. Indeed, this
ritual process is a sort of annual thanksgiving, purification,
and recharging of the temple by its leaders and commu-
nity of patrons. Perhaps the most significant difference be-
tween weekly services and the annual puja is that the latter
usually involves the carrying of kargams from a river or sea
into the temple for its several-­day duration. Kargams signify
the power of Shakti and are put together in an esoteric ritual-
ized procedure using a lota (brass vessel), dry coconut, neem
leaves, and several other ingredients. They are carried in and
out of the temple on the heads of devotees or manifesting
mediums at the beginning and end of the puja (see McNeal
2000 for more on kargams). The ceremonial period of the an-
nual puja also affords an opportunity for temple “members”
to display the purity and authenticity of their devotions in
one of two forms of “test,” which they undergo under the gaze
of the temple audience while experiencing the ecstatic influ-
ence of Shakti: receiving lashes from a whip without injury, or
walking or dancing through a firepit without getting burned.
Heterodox, temple-­based Shakti Puja and its range of
associated rituals are also conducted privately at homes for
 956  |  Shak t i Pu ja i n T r i n i da d
varying reasons by a small subset of temple pujaris, me-
diums, and assistants. These home pujas are most often
sponsored by either loyal temple members and their families
who keep an annual tradition of domestic worship, for ex-
ample, or on behalf of persons or families in whatever kind of
dire straits who seek some kind of divine intervention. Home
Shakti Pujas may or may not involve live sacrifice, depending
upon the chosen ceremonial approach of the temple carrying
out the ritual, but they do generally involve ecstatic manifes-
tations by Kali and her spiritual associates in order to purify
and bless the domestic space, exorcize evil influences or ma-
lignant forces, and jharay the inhabitants of the household
in order to insure their well-­being.
Historical Development and
Genealogical Connections
The emergence and rapid growth of modern Kali temples
in Trinidad and Tobago’s postcolonial era (national inde-
pendence was achieved in 1962) must be seen in light of the
country’s topsy-­turvy, late twentieth-­century socioeconomic
experience—particularly the cycle of oil boom-­and-­bust in
the 1970s and 1980s—and in relation to the forms of social
anomie mediated by industrialization and North American
neocolonialism. In specifically religious terms, the rise of
modern Shakti Puja should be understood in connection
with the resurgence of the Orisha Tradition and the Spiri-
tual Baptist Faith; the extraordinarily rapid, postcolonial
spread of Pentecostal Churches and other forms of evan-
gelical Protestantism; and the Charismatic movement (see
Roman Catholic Church—Charismatic Renewal in Jamaica)
within this multiethnic Caribbean island society at large.
As a ritual system, temple-­based Kali worship has attracted
the majority of its devotees from among the island’s Indo-­
Trinidadian rural and urban proletarian classes, but it is im-
portant to note that it has also recruited practitioners of Afri-
can and mixed-­African descent as well as from a handful of
upwardly mobile spiritual seekers, among others. The num-
ber of active Shakti practitioners reaches into the several
thousands at least, but any kind of specific estimate would
be difficult and probably misleading.
Shakti Puja as one encounters it today—in nonorthodox
temples dedicated primarily to ecstatic healing ceremonies
of spirit manifestation by Mother Kali and other marginal-
ized deities on a weekly basis—emerged in its contempo-
rary form during the mid-­1970s and has experienced growth
and change since that time. But Trinidadian Shakti Puja has
not always looked this way. What is curious in the particu-
lar sociohistorical evolution of local Shakti worship is that
Kali was not so marginalized among Hindus of the inden-
tured diaspora in colonial Trinidad. If anything, diverse tex-
tual and oral historical evidence suggests that she was a
commonly encountered divinity within the scattered array
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of Hindu ritual arenas and practices characteristic of that
time. For example, in At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies,
which was originally published in 1871, Anglican clergy-
man and novelist Charles Kingsley (1892, 300) offers a de-
scription of an early Hindu shrine structure that singles out
Mahadeva (Shiva) and Kali as representative deities. Mother
Kali’s relative centrality among Hindus in colonial Trinidad
is likewise implicit in Seepersad Naipaul’s (1995) description
in his series of short stories of the efforts of a would-­be pundit
(religious scholar and ritual specialist) to construct a proper,
rural Trinidadian place of worship (see Literature—Indian
Caribbean). The stories were most likely written through-
out the 1930s and collectively published as The Adventures
of Gurudeva. (See Maharaj 1991 for a useful ethnohistorical
study of pundits and the evolution of Hinduism in Trinidad.)
Other sources of evidence also suggest that what is gen-
erally referred to as Shakti Puja or Kali worship in contem-
porary Trinidad is a hybridized amalgamation of various
earlier, Shakti-­related popular practices, not all of which in-
volved Kali. This last observation makes it important to em-
phasize not only that ecstatic forms of Hindu religious prac-
tice now take place solely within heterodox Shakti temples in
contemporary Trinidad, but also that the deities of the Hindu
pantheon who do manifest through spiritual entrancement
in human mediums—including Kali, Kal Bhairo, Dee Baba,
Mother Katerie, and Munesh Prem—are found only in these
very same temples. At this point in time, in other words,
ecstatic Hinduism is conceivable within the local cultural
imagination only in temples devoted primarily to Mother
Kali. Thus Kali has become metonymic for any form of char-
ismatic or ecstatic Hindu practice on the island (neo-­Hindu
meditation and satsangs [devotional meetings] are not con-
sidered ecstatic here).
That previously autonomous traditions of Shakti Puja, at
least the ones not completely lost as a result of the colonial
experience, have been incorporated into a more unified and
compact temple-­based system under Mother Kali’s sacred
canopy necessitates some clarification regarding what came
before this contemporary configuration. Perhaps the two
most significant influences on contemporary Kali worship
are the older, community-­based forms of sacrificial Kali Puja
and the old-­style Madrassi firepass ceremony. Both of these
traditions have been transformed and hybridized with each
other as convergent influences within Kali’s current temple-­
based incarnation.
One of the most prominent characteristics of the older-­
style Kali Puja that emerges from mid-­twentieth century
ethnographic reports (Niehoff and Niehoff 1960; Klass 1988)
and oral histories (Mahabir and Maharaj 1985; McNeal 2000,
2003, 2011) is that various village members conducted this
form of puja openly on behalf of the entire community. Not
everyone from the village actually participated in the puja

itself or in the preparations prior to it, but they were certainly
cognizant of its performance and usually contributed money,
rice, and other items in order to receive both material and
spiritual benefits from the puja. Collections were made dur-
ing the weeks preceding the ceremony by organized groups
of women who would circulate through the local area, gener-
ally within a zone of five to seven neighboring villages. They
proceeded on foot, sang devotional songs accompanied by a
dholak (hand drum), and often carried wooden trays on their
heads to hold the offerings collected at each household. This
practice was referred to as Kalimai-­ke-­beekh (begging for
Mother Kali).
Each community usually performed its Kali Puja at the
home of the captain of the panchayat (neighborhood group
committee typically consisting of five male village council-
lors, although in practice this number was subject to varia-
tion), who often officiated as the puja’s head ritualist. The
puja was carried out annually and additionally at times of
crisis in order to thank the Mother for her blessings and to
seek her divine intervention for agricultural fertility and pro-
tection from sickness. The ritual’s structure was character-
ized by the sacrificial immolation of a live goat, although
chickens or pigs were also sometimes offered. Kali would ec-
statically manifest upon one of the main celebrants before
the sacrifice could take place in order to receive the offering.
Upon completion of the puja, the meat of the sacrificial ani-
mal was cut up and divided among the panchayat and its
associated families, then taken home to be cooked and eaten
as prasad (food ritually offered to a deity and then distributed
and consumed by supplicants as a form of blessing).
By the time of Klass’s research in central Trinidad in the
1950s, it is clear that any form of Kali Puja had already come
to be looked down upon as a lower-­status, morally suspect
religious activity. Klass and his wife encountered two forms
of Kali-­related Puja—panchayati-­Kali-­ki-­puja and ghar-­ki-­
puja—that were basically similar in structure, the only dif-
ference being that the former was sponsored by a number
of unrelated families and conducted on behalf of the entire
community, whereas the latter was a semiprivate household
ceremony sponsored by individual families and attended by
friends, relatives, and neighbors upon invitation. Klass re-
ports that families with claims to high caste contributed
regularly to these pujas even as they expressed distaste at the
notion of animal sacrifice. He also notes that all families in
his central Trinidadian village of study were known to con-
duct sacrificial Di pujas for the health and well-­being of the
home and its occupants, as well as nonsacrificial Di pujas for
agricultural fertility (see also Niehoff and Niehoff 1960, Klass
1988). Dee Baba and his heterodox associates have since be-
come primary divinities active in heterodox Shakti temples,
in which Dee has received his very own murtis for the first
time (see McNeal 2010, 2011).
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S h a kt i Pu ja i n Trinidad  |  957
Another important and convergent strand of influence on
the development of modern, heterodox, temple-­based Shakti
Puja in Trinidad was the old-­style Madrassi firepass or fire-
walking ceremony. Firepass is significant not only because
it represents perhaps the most prominent religious ritual of
the Madrassi indentured immigrants who came to the Carib-
bean from south India by way of the port of Madras (Chen-
nai), but also because it has been partially appropriated by
and reframed within contemporary ecstatic Kali Puja and re-
lated forms of temple-­based Shakti worship that are prac-
ticed in postcolonial Trinidad. The firepass ceremony has
clear south Indian roots, and it has had an undeniable influ-
ence upon contemporary forms of Shakti Puja. Indeed, many
practitioners, nonpractitioners, and scholars have often
taken the connection with firepass as confirmation of Kali
Puja’s purported Madrassi origins. However, this influence
has been partial, dynamic, and refracted (see McNeal 2000,
2003). The significance of this influence is thrown into relief
when one considers the fact that the number of south Indi-
ans only constituted approximately 6 percent of the 144,000
or so Indians who emigrated to Trinidad during the period
of indentureship from 1845 to 1917 (see De Verteuil 1990 on
Madrassi emigration to Trinidad).
Certain aspects of the ritual structure of the old-­style fire-
pass ceremony as it was practiced in Trinidad recur through-
out many of the oral and written sources. These include
periods of fasting and other purification disciplines, exclu-
sive male participation, prayers recited from atop a tall pole
erected near the firepass pit, preparatory river or sea baths
taken just before crossing the hot coals, and the use of a thin,
handheld drum similar to today’s tappu. Several of these
characteristics, such as fasting and purification, preparatory
bathing in bodies of natural water, the specific type of drum-
ming, and the fire walking itself, seem to be related to simi-
lar practices within contemporary temple-­based Kali wor-
ship. (On the kargam ritual procession as another possible
connection between Madrassi firepass and Shakti Puja, see
McNeal 2000). It also seems likely that ecstatic Shakti mani-
festations were at least sometimes enacted within the space
of the firepass performance. Therefore, this practice seems to
have contributed its influence upon the contemporary scene.
However, evidence regarding live animal sacrifice, a prac-
tice fundamental to the emergence of temple-­based Shakti
worship in the 1970s, suggests that it was not highly integral
within the old-­style firepass—indeed, it is hardly mentioned
at all in materials from the colonial era. While firepass may
have involved trance praxis on occasion, we also know that
the older, community-­based, sacrificial Kali Pujas also in-
volved ecstatic Shakti manifestations. In fact, they seem to
have been much more integral to the old-­style Kali Puja than
in the firepass ceremonies of the colonial era. And there is no
ambiguity whatsoever concerning the centrality of live sac-
 958  |  S hak ti P u ja i n T r i n i da d
rificial offerings to the Mother in the community-­based Kali
Puja of yesteryear. The important point is that these sacrificial
Kali Pujas and Madrassi firepass ceremonies were originally
part of different ritual performance traditions altogether.
The continuities and discontinuities between the old fire-
pass ceremony and contemporary, temple-­based Kali Wor-
ship dramatize only one important dimension of her current
incarnation’s heterogeneous and hybridized origins. Indeed,
there has been much syncretism and innovation within the
Mother’s Caribbean “work,” as it is referred to, including the
temple-­based integration of Dee Puja, involving sacrifice and
ecstatic manifestation and, in the process, his transforma-
tion from an aniconic representation in India to an anthro-
pomorphized one with a murti in contemporary Trinidad; the
appropriation of north Indian–derived, sacrificial hog puja
for the goddess Parmeshwarie; multidimensional Guyanese
connections, including the influence of modern psychiatry
as compacted within Guyanese temple-­based practice; the
charismatic apotheosis of the monkey-­god Hanuman in
some Trinidadian Shakti temples; overlap and interchange
with a syncretic Hindu pilgrimage tradition centered on a
statue of the Black Madonna known as La Divina Pastora,
which is housed in the Catholic Church in Siparia and called
Suparee Mai/La Divina Pastora by local pilgrims; and an on-
going, partial interface with the Sai Baba devotional move-
ment in a number of temples in central and southern Trini-
dad (see McNeal 2003, 2010, 2011). Thus, when contemporary
Shakti Puja is simply and uncritically attributed to the legacy
of the Madrassis by many Trinidadians and by some Carib-
beanist scholars, we begin to see how ideological forces
have been put into play. This local “Madrassi origin” ideol-
ogy seems to reflect a scapegoating impulse in relation to
the vested interests of an orthodox Hinduism that has only
emerged gradually and with considerable effort throughout
the course of the twentieth century. (On the development of
orthodox Hinduism in Trinidad, see Khan 1995, 2004; Klass
1991; La Guerre 1985; Munasinghe 2001; Samaroo 1996; Van
Der Veer and Vertovec 1991; Vertovec 1992, 1996). To be clear,
there is no question about the important influence of south
Indian religious practices upon contemporary, temple-­based
Shakti Puja and Kali worship in Trinidad. But the complexi-
ties and partialness of this influence are effaced and ob-
scured by the simplistic reductionism of the prevailing Ma-
drassi origin ideology.
Colonialism and the Postcolonial Dialectics
of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
In their ongoing, self-­conscious search for legitimacy and
their gradual forging of a “respectable,” orthodox Hinduism,
members of the larger Caribbean Hindu community have,
not surprisingly, internalized some of the ideals espoused
within colonial Christianity and adopted these values as
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their own moral terms of reference. In many cases, then, the
colonial experience produced profound cultural conflicts
and moral ambivalences among Caribbean Hindus, in addi-
tion to recontextualizing varying forms of moral discourse
connected to ritual, caste, and purity that were brought from
India. Hindus in the Caribbean attempted to resolve these
tensions through various kinds of social compromise and
cultural reformulation. They, or at least a significantly influ-
ential group among them, managed to construct a standard-
ized form of Hinduism that came to be considered “ortho-
dox.” Most importantly for our purposes here, this orthodoxy
has sought to dissociate itself from religious modalities that
smack of morally suspect “primitive” practices, such as
blood sacrifice, trance performance, and fire walking. Where
the elimination of these practices has not been possible, the
predominant collective strategy seems to have been to con-
sider them peripheral, ostensibly low-­caste practices asso-
ciated with the generally darker-­skinned Madrassis.
The pundit-­dominated ritual practices that came to domi-
nate this standardized, Sanatanist form of Hinduism have
been associated with a subset of the deities found within the
Sanskrit-­based pantheon of the great tradition in India. (A
“Sanatanist” is a follower of Sanatan Dharma, meaning “eter-
nal duty, order, or religion,” and referring to a generalized
form of Hinduism that has evolved in India and overseas par-
ticularly since the nineteenth century.) But since what can
be considered properly “orthodox” in the Americas has been
profoundly influenced by the encounter of Hindus with Chris-
tianity in the latter’s various hegemonic forms over more
than 150 years, Mother Kali has come to be seen as beyond
the pale, even though, ironically, she is an important and
pervasive divinity of the great tradition in India—­particularly
in the northeastern part of the subcontinent from which the
vast majority of indentured immigrants came. There are a
number of interrelated reasons for this marginalization of
Kali: her devotions traditionally included animal sacrifice, a
practice considered abhorrent within the frame of colonial
Christianity; her ritual practices are intertwined with the ec-
static trance experiences so common within various forms of
Hindu worship; and her veneration has become connected
with the firepass performance associated with south Indian
styles of worship, which were likewise castigated as “pagan”
and “backward” under the colonial gaze. Kali’s dark icono-
graphic color, moreover, most likely made her a prime target
for moral scorn, given colonial racism as well as the demonic
associations of the color black within Christianity.
This helps to explain not only Mother Kali’s marginalized
fate but also the production of a scapegoating ideology attrib-
uting her devotional rituals to the dark-­skinned, ostensibly
“low-­caste” Madrassis from south India. We also encounter
this same diasporic dialectic of transgression and conformity
in a number of contemporary trends among Shakti practi-

tioners themselves. Recall that antisacrificial commitments
have been on the rise among contemporary Shakti devotees.
Furthermore, several temples have painted their Kali murtis
pink rather than the traditional black or dark blue, their ratio-
nale being that Kali’s standard iconographic color has scared
away too many visitors and potential devotees. Thus the am-
bivalent legacy of colonialism continues to inform postcolo-
nial Trinidad’s dynamic religious landscape. (See murti of
Mother Kali in Pasea, plate 13 in the color insert.)
It would be inappropriate to conclude this discussion,
however, without addressing one very important and com-
plex exception to the characterization of contemporary
Shakti Puja outlined here—an “exception” that does not
simply prove the rule but that might better be seen as mani-
festing the rule with an ironic twist. Indeed, there is one un-
deniably orthodox Hindu temple in Trinidad that houses a
large murti of Kali and conducts an annual, nonecstatic puja
toward the end of each calendar year: Paschim Kaashi, most
often referred to as the Port of Spain Hindu Mandir, located
in St. James. The impressive black marble murti of Mother
Kali was imported from Jaipur, India, and installed in its own
private sanctuary in 1991, all of which was made possible by
the financial benefaction of Simboonath and Indradai Capil-
deo. Although Mr. Capildeo passed away just before the ar-
rival of the murti and its subsequent installation, Mrs. Capil-
deo—family matriarch and a longtime celibate yogin (Yoga
practitioner), as she refers to herself—had an intense vision-
ary experience at the temple in 1996, in which she fell un-
conscious for a short time one night during a service being
given by a visiting Indian swami (religious teacher) and saw
Lord Shiva and Mother Kali. Her experience was considered
miraculous and received notable attention in public news
media at the time.
This exception to the general profile of Kali worship in
contemporary Trinidad is significant not only because it con-
cerns the observance of Shakti Puja at a more “respectable”
temple patronized by Hindus of a higher social class. It is
also important because it reflects the same dialectic of trans-
gression and conformity that likewise animates the more
grassroots forms of Shakti worship. Kali Puja at this temple
is decidedly nonecstatic—aside, that is, from Mrs. Capildeo’s
own initial, idiosyncratic visionary experience—and Kali’s
murti is housed in its own separate, typically locked, mandir
structure. Moreover, Mrs. Capildeo and others have observed
a relative decline in attendance at temple services, as well as
in the number of marriages conducted at the temple, since
the time that Kali’s murti was installed.
Reflecting on the profile and experience of the Port of
Spain Hindu Mandir only serves to remind us that contem-
porary Kali worship and related forms of Shakti Puja in post-
colonial Trinidad are characterized by sociohistorical dyna-
mism and complex forms of pattern and variation. The fate of
6 Tseng Proof  •  2013.03.25 13:17  9170 Taylor  •  The Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions  •  Sheet 429 of 616
S h a kt i Pu ja i n Trinidad  |  959
this ritual system is unclear, but one thing is for certain: the
future shape of Shakti Puja, be it through the persistence of
current forms or the evolution of new ones, will be one that is
increasingly refracted by the ongoing globalization of Indian
ethnicity occurring throughout the Caribbean and differen-
tially facilitated by mass-­mediated forms of communication
(including the Internet); the circulation of texts, films, and
mass-­produced chromolithographic imagery; international
travel and tourism (to India as well as to other parts of the
Caribbean); and other as yet unforeseen factors.
Keith E. McNeal
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Sikh Tradition
The Sikh tradition reaches back more than half a millen-
nium to northern India, where the bhakti movement, blend-
ing elements of Vaishnava Hinduism with Sufi Islam, was
able to challenge the teaching and practice of both brahmini-
cal Hinduism and classical Islam. Bhakti refers to a spiritual
movement that emphasizes pure love and personal devotion
to God. The Sikh tradition was founded in the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries by Guru Nanak Dev (1469–
1539), who took his inspiration from the teachings of several
sant (knowers of the truth), including Ramananda, Bhagat
Namdev, Kabir Das, and Sheikh Farid, whose work forms the
basis of contemporary Bhakti Vaishnavism and Sufism in
India today. Sikhs today, in the spirit of Guru Nanak Dev and
the nine guru (spiritual mentors) who followed him, continue
to struggle against such forms of social injustice as poverty
and discrimination based on gender and caste, while simul-
taneously promoting an enriched spiritual life through the
study and singing of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth
Sahib. Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib to be their final
guru and the living embodiment of the teachings of the first
ten gurus, beginning with Guru Nanak Dev, as well as other
sant such as Kabir. In this context, the term granth refers to
the book, sahib means master, and guru carries the Sanskrit
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root meaning of gu (darkness) and ru (divine light), referring
to that which guides one from darkness into light.
As with all religious traditions, differing interpretations
and institutional relationships have produced a number of
divisions within the Sikh tradition. Cutting across these divi-
sions is the recognition of the central significance of khalsa
(purity). Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708) was the tenth
Sikh guru in a direct spiritual lineage beginning from Guru
Nanak. Under his leadership, a number of institutions were
established, the first and foremost of which was the khalsa.
The late seventeenth century was a period of substantial reli-
gious persecution under the brutal rule of Aurangzeb. During
the Baisakhi celebrations of 1699, an annual spring agricul-
tural festival observed in Punjab, Guru Gobind Singh asked
for volunteers to be sacrificed at the altar of Waheguru (the
Ultimate Divine). Five individuals from various castes came
forward, each believing that he would be sacrificed. Instead,
Guru Gobind Singh presented them to the celebrants as the
Panch Pyare (five dear ones). This first group of Panch Pyare
and the entire gathering thus formed the first Khalsa Panth
(pure community), a devoted group of Sikhs who would de-
fend the innocent from injustice. All of the men would take
the name Singh, and all of the women would take the name
Kaur. They were commanded to keep strict observances that
have come to be known as the “five K’s”: kesh, keeping one’s
hair uncut; kangha, carrying a comb; kachha, wearing cot-
ton undergarments; kara, wearing an iron or steel bracelet;
and finally, kirpan, carrying a dagger or sword. Guru Gobind
Singh also decreed that the lineage of individual guru would
stop with him, and he named the Guru Granth Sahib the ulti-
mate and final living guru providing divine access to Wa-
heguru. The anniversary of this event is a major holiday for
all Sikhs around the world. Although the recognition of the
khalsa cuts across the divisions within the Sikh tradition, not
all Sikhs belong to the Khalsa Panth.
A small number of Sikhs currently live in the Caribbean.
Forming part of the global diaspora of Sikhs, they arrived in
the Caribbean either through the migration of indentured
laborers from the Indian subcontinent during the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, or through the more recent
migration of businesspeople and intellectuals. The actual
numbers of Sikhs in any given nation of the Caribbean is dif-
ficult to determine as they are not enumerated separately.
The distinction between Sikhs and others of Indian origin
has been blurred since the period of indentureship, not only
by colonial authorities but possibly by Indian immigrants
themselves. The vast majority of Indian laborers who arrived
in the Caribbean were identified by colonial administrators
as either Hindu or Muslim, while a minuscule minority was
identified as either Buddhist or Christian (see Christianity).
Sikhs may have been classified as Hindu. Given the close as-