Religion-State Encounters in Hindu Domains: From the Straits Settlements to Singapore by Vineeta Sinha (review)

With this book and her earlier monograph, A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore (2005), Vineeta Sinha has arguably provided the most comprehensive and insightful scholarly examination of Hinduism in Singapore in recent times.

In A New God in the Diaspora? Sinha furnished a fascinating ethnographic account of how diasporic religiosity is being fleshed out in the worship of a guardian deity (kaaval deivam) transplanted from Tamil Nadu to Singapore by migrant labourers nearly 170 years ago. By contrast, the book under review takes up the well-known Weberian thesis of the influence of rational-bureaucratic administration on religious practices to examine closely the morphing of Hindu temple life in the Straits Settlements in the colonial and postcolonial milieux. It pays particular attention to Singapore. Sinha draws inspiration from Frank Presler’s Religion under Bureaucracy (1987), which mapped the position of religion in India.

In a similar vein, the book under review seeks to decipher how local Hindus have negotiated an evolving culture of secular bureaucracy that was originally imposed from outside the faith but later taken up by Hindus in governing themselves. What emerges in the study is an intriguing genealogy of intentional and unintentional entanglements or, as Sinha phrases it, a series of “religion-state encounters” as enacted in the “Hindu domain”.

To reconstruct the changing tenor and durability of these encounters, Sinha combed through two main collections of archival materials, in addition to consulting secondary sources and contemporary newspaper articles (in English and Tamil). The annual reports of the Straits Settlements pertaining to the Mohammedan and Hindu Endowments Board (MHEB) from the time of its establishment in 1905 up to the end of the pre-war period constitute the first source. The second collection was drawn from the board minutes of the SMHEB (the Singapore Hindu Endowment Board from 1968, when the Muslim Endowment Board was created) from 1907 to 1979.

Sinha begins the inquiry by revisiting the “religious question” in the Straits Settlements during the early period of British colonial rule. Her analytical method is to “isolate ‘strategies in use’ rather than assume that the articulated policies and pronouncements on religion, which typically invoked the rhetoric of ‘non-interference’ and religious neutrality, actually operated on the ground” (p. 45). Historical ethnographic records suggest that the British authorities did have a rather liberal stance towards non-Christian religions. They allowed the building of temples, mosques, gurdwaras, and other religious structures through the provision of land grants in the Straits Settlements. Sinha speculates that one “strong motivation for such encouragement was inspired by the desire to appease migrant workers and provide an incentive for them to settle in the colony, and thus provide ready labour to serve the vital politico-economic needs of the English East India Company (EEIC)” (p. 60).

Interestingly, it was the unanticipated conspicuous public performances of religiosity by Chinese and Indian devotees in the shape of “loud” street processions held during religious festivals (and funerals) that consistently generated heated debates among the European public over the years. In particular, one question deliberated at length was whether a British (and Christian) government should handle “these manifestations of non-Christian religiosity in a space that that had not been colonized but ceded by agents of the EEIC” (p. 61f). Eventually, no bans or restrictions on processions were imposed. Arguably, this stance was largely informed by the principle of “non-interference” in religious matters in the day-to-day governance of her colonized subjects first proclaimed by Queen Victoria in 1858.

Nevertheless, Sinha contends that it would be a mistake to see the colonial discourse of “non-intervention” as indicative of actual non-involvement by the British authorities in matters pertaining to religion. Instead, what was discernible over time was a “new managerial approach to religion, one that was dominated by the need for order and regulation increasingly achieved through legislation” (p. 81). This central...