Cultural Identity of Mauritius through Kovils
Department of English Studies, University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius
ABSTRACT
The paper attempts to understand how Tamil-speaking Indo-Mauritians vehicle their cultural identity through their attendance to kovils (Tamil temples). A kovil is space of meanings and also a language on its own where specific rituals, celebrations and activities (treated as ‘texts’) blend together creating a communal sense that demarcates Indo-Mauritians fluent in Tamil and their rituals from the globalization effect of homogeneity. In that sense, there is a postcolonial movement through the perpetuation of faith in Mauritius. This study demonstrates also that culture itself is in constant movement; the postcolonial island of Mauritius in fact continually re-defines amidst the flow of different ‘texts’ at three selected kovils located at QuatreCarreaux, Camp-Diable and Rose-Belle.
KEYWORDS
identity, kovils, Mauritius, postcolonial, culture, ecology