Sri Krishnan Temple: Doing and Making Sense of a Shared Multi-sensorial, Multi-religious Space in Singapore
Abstract: Singapore is renowned for being a multi-ethnic, multi-religious haven, home to a plethora of religious communities that live in putative harmony because they tolerate and respect each other’s differences. My research paper is an attempt to modulate such a narrative, through an original study of the shared multi-sensorial, multi-religious space at the Sri Krishnan Temple in Singapore. Sameness, not difference, reigned there. This is possible because Hinduism, or for that matter, lived religion, is mediated through the senses. A non-Hindu devotee can find solace in a principally Hindu space because at the level of the banal, the otherworldly peels through the pressing of one’s hand and the “touching” of the burning lamp, not through an appraisal of the religious scriptures. Although the process thereafter of sense-making is not a homogeneous one, this is precisely the genius of a shared religious space that postcolonial regimes try in vain to replicate. Worshippers can rationalise their individual faiths and differences however they want, but take a step back into the material and experiential and all we have is, as one elderly Chinese lady exclaimed at the temple, simply and unassumingly, sameness.
Citation: Mah, James. “Sri Krishnan Temple: Doing and Making Sense of a Shared Multi-sensorial, Multi-religious Space in Singapore.” The Jugaad Project, 5 Dec. 2019, thejugaadproject.pub/home/sri-krishnan-temple-doing-and-making-sense-of-a-shared-multi-sensorial-multi-religious-space-in-singapore [date of access]
Figure 1: Hanuman and Garuda standing guard at the entrance of the Sri Krishnan Temple. Photo by author, 2019.
“Same, same lah!” an elderly Chinese lady remarked in Mandarin after I asked why she would pray at both the Sri Krishnan Temple and the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple along Waterloo Street. [Figure 1] Her comment disarmed me because it offered such a succinct explanation for the much vaunted religious diversity of the place. In one fell swoop, the lady married two religious realms, which would typically have been construed by outsiders as separate and distinct. This essay strives to illuminate the lady’s banal wisdom against Singapore’s variegated religious landscape and reappraise how and why devotees of different faiths can cohabit in a shared domain without much hassle. With this imperative in mind, I will begin by explicating how devotees in the temple experience God and the brand of multi-religious sociality that arises from this plethora of social interactions, over and in spite of official ambivalence with multi-religious encounters. I will then, with insights discerned from conversations with lay worshippers and the temple’s sentinels, ruminate how they make sense of their multi-religious encounters and arrive at creative conclusions of their own to grapple with the proximity of two Dharmic faiths, if not religions in general, in a highly urbanised, land-scarce terrain like Singapore’s.
Religious harmony through difference in Singapore?
Against the backdrop of religio-political conflict and unrest in such countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, one can be forgiven in seeing Singapore as the lone wellspring of religious harmony in Southeast Asia. In the wake of a spate of terrorist attacks in this part of the world, when its neighbours fell prey to Islamophobia and the accompanying Muslim backlash, state and society in Singapore resolutely closed ranks. [i] No effort was spared to defuse tensions along religious faultlines, at the heart of which included the Inter-Religious Organisation, a flurry of inter-religious dialogues, and even a Declaration of Religious Harmony that pledged to uphold the religious compact through mutual tolerance and understanding. [ii] Special opprobrium was and continues to be reserved for religious leaders, local or foreign, who trivialise other groups, typically with the threat of indefinite detention under the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act. [iii]
The logic of religious harmony here, at least at first glance, is one driven by difference, no less by a state which stakes part of its claim on legitimacy on the delicate management of difference between the Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, Muslims and Hindus – just to name a few among ten officially recognised religions in Singapore. Difference that turned awry is the theme of the Maria Hertogh riots in 1950, a brief orgy of Muslim-Christian violence christened by the state as a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of religious expression in the absence of moderation, tolerance and compromise. [iv] Conversion and shifts in the religious demographics of the population are the stuff of nightmares for those in the highest echelons of power. [v] On the level of the banal, however, there is a remarkably different state of affairs, pervaded not by a grating sense of doom and gloom, but the potential for sociality through and between religions. One such place is the Sri Krishnan Temple, a Hindu temple flanked rather interestingly by Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, a Buddhist temple, along Waterloo Street in downtown Singapore.
A multi-sensorial, multi-religious endeavour
Figure 2: An unveiled avatar of Lakshmi in the Sri Krishnan Temple. Photo by author, 2019.
I visited the Sri Krishnan Temple on two consecutive days – on a Friday and a Saturday – both times arriving around noon and as such, observed mid-day puja (prayers) there. Two priests would lead puja by chanting salutary hymns, and in procedural fashion, draw the curtain on respective incarnations of Vishnu and Lakshmi inside the sanctum of the temple. [Figure 2] As I understand from an informed worshipper there, drawing the curtain on the deities’ images is akin to “letting the gods rest”. Devotees chime in by repeating the rhythmic verses while sitting upright on the temple floor. The puja reaches a crescendo as a priest brings out a burning lamp from inside the garbhagraha (inner sanctum), which hosts images of Krishna and Rukmini, upon which worshippers reflexively rise to their feet and go their separate ways.
On my second day, however, the mid-day puja concluded with the curtain draped only for the garbhagraha, probably to cater to the litany of worshippers still paying respect to subordinate deities in the sanctum. Most devotees gravitated towards the priest charged with honouring the deities in the sanctum, who promptly proceeded to conduct the rites, ending always by waving a burning lamp before each image. Upon this, worshippers would have the opportunity to harness the “power” of the fire lit from the lamp, placing their hands over the fire then seemingly wiping it over their head, not unlike the act of washing their hair. As the priest moved on to a different deity, more worshippers would join in, including Chinese devotees. The other priest, however, was solely engaged to a family, which I surmise must be a “value-added” service available upon request, probably to solicit blessings for an upcoming milestone in their lives. A group of Chinese were exclusively attended to by a third sentinel: a Chinese staff member typically responsible for managing Buddhist worshippers outside the temple.
Figure 3: Buddhist worshippers offering joss sticks in a special zone within sight of the Sri Krishnan Temple. The man in the grey top is the Chinese sentinel in charge of affairs “outside” the temple. Photo by author, 2019.
Indeed, there is a special zone designated within sight from the temple for the offering of joss sticks, intended for use by Buddhist worshippers streaming in from the neighbouring Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple. Most would pray in two directions, one towards a miniature of Guan Yin statue inside the Hindu temple, and the other towards Tian Gong in the direction that placed the worshippers with their backs against the temple. [Figure 3] For most, but not all, Buddhist worshippers, this space also delineates the furthest extent of their presence around the Hindu realm: many would not venture into the Hindu temple.
My semantic choice for the observations above – the rhythm of the hymns, the sweeping motions of the hand – is meant to suggest that darsan, or sacred sightseeing, does not necessarily form the premise of all experiential encounters with God in Hinduism. [vi] At least for puja, there seems to be a tacit emphasis on doing God, deploying the whole body towards enacting certain rites and gestures to imbue the ephemeral power of deities in the sanctum. In fact, the sentiment I gleaned from one Hindu worshipper is that the religious sojourn would be woefully incomplete without seeing and praying to the deities. I am not sure what a comprehensive praying pedagogy entails, but most worshippers were ostensibly eager to “touch” the burning lamp when the priest completes the prescribed puja rites for each deity, and as aforementioned, sweep the “power” accrued across their head – as if only that gesture consummates the transfer of divine blessings from god to follower. The priest presiding over puja also expected worshippers to repeat his hymns, pausing from time to time to allow the latter to recite the verses in full. The multi-sensorial corporealities of puja – necessitating the sight, hearing and touch for an immersive, enriching experience – sit rather tersely with Diana Eck’s appreciation of Hinduism as a patently visual religion. [vii] This may not be unprecedented if we distil the divergence in cultural norms between India and Singapore. As one worshipper intimated, a trip to the temple is an opportunity to “calm the soul” and reinvigorate a body afflicted by the excruciating commitments of work and toil in the profane world. Praying would have been as much a spiritual rendezvous with God as it is a modulating experience for the body and the mind, which may explain the prevalence of certain puja techniques targeted at the hearing and touch. This is not to suggest that metropolitan worshippers in India, the heartland of Hinduism, do not lead taxing lifestyles and conduct worship in busy environments as well. It simply means lived Hinduism in the high-octane environment of Singapore is a modified religious experience because it galvanises a wider array of senses beyond sight/darsan, and more importantly, is a product of a specific cultural context that has to be understood on its own terms.
Figure 4: A non-Hindu worshipper with his hands pressed together and head bowed, to receive blessings from the Hindu gods. Photo by author, 2019.
The decentring of the visual praxis in the Sri Krishnan Temple may be one way to explain why a multi-religious sociality readily coalesces there, for it lowers the learning curve for aspiring non-Hindu worshippers who are keen to enter the temple premises yet are not well-acquainted with the primacy of images in the Hindu faith. Much like the phenomenon of red-hot sociality that Adam Chau purports for devotees in Shaanbei, there appears to be a common denominator for Hindu and Buddhist worshippers in the sanctum – not “social heat” but the language of pressing one’s hands together to pray while the priest performs puja for the respective deities. [viii] The non-Hindu worshipper would not feel out of place, given that the act of pressing the hands together to pray is a time-honoured practice grafted in images of Buddha and the pantheon of deities that Chinese renditions of the faith are renowned for. [xi] [Figure 4] It further helps that these prayers are silent, obviating the fact that the two faiths employ incompatible religious language. Reminiscent of Shaanbei’s inhabitants, worshippers at the Hindu temple can have different experiential takeaways yet recall puja in very analogous fashion, which could also be attributed to the amicable approach of the priestly authorities there. After puja, for instance, one priest had no qualms acquiescing to a Chinese worshipper’s request to unveil the image for her own perusal, even though the deities were supposed to be already “at rest”. During puja, the priests also did not discriminate between worshippers while offering the burning lamp for their spiritual consumption. This is not to say that the sociality in the Hindu temple is congruent to the one depicted in Chau’s article – the former is mediated by a common gestural language and abetted by the priests’ tolerant attitudes while the latter is predicated upon intense social discourse. [x] Still, Chau’s insights are instructive because they underlie the latent potential for affiliation at religious sites without explicitly referring to God, something that is made manifest in the Hindu temple, which I suggest behoves the comingling of two distinct groups of worshippers in the sanctum even though they identify with starkly different faiths. That the Chinese worshipper made her request after the ritual, probably an act of deference to the centrality of Hindu practices in the sanctum, suggests that non-Hindus are cognisant of their subsidiary role in worship in the temple. But this does not necessarily matter because by doing God, they blur the boundaries between the two Dharmic faiths and in the process, satisfy their own spiritual needs.
Making sense of a conjoined space
For this part of the anthropological inquiry, I have three principal informants: a relatively well-informed Hindu worshipper, the Chinese lady featured at the start of this paper, and the Chinese sentinel mentioned earlier who is responsible for Buddhist worshippers outside the temple. While they have diverging interpretations of the multi-religious sociality there, I do not seek to exaggerate their differences but to trace the organic process of sense-making at the heart of this kaleidoscopic social space.
The Hindu male worshipper exemplifies the archetype of a modern, learned individual, who has little difficulty amalgamating religion and history in a bid to rationalise confounding observations. When probed on whether he felt the presence of Buddhist worshippers, as well as a miniature of Guan Yin in the temple, might be discomforting, the man dismissed my reservations. Instead, he explained that Hinduism and Buddhism were really “all part of the same family”, alluding to the common geographical origin of both faiths, India, to corroborate his hypothesis. Why Buddhism became a separate religion, he reasoned, was that some ancient Hindus “resisted” Hindu hierarchy and coveted a more egalitarian faith. His readiness to marinate religious knowledge with history can be seen in the same light as the Malagasy Adventists’ preoccupation with ascertaining every figment of the Bible. [xi] Both embrace the virtues of empiricism and inferential thinking, not content to leave any inexplicable phenomenon to uncertainty or blind faith. In the way that his Malagasy counterparts pride themselves as “people who know the bible”, the male worshipper’s religious credentials seem to be founded upon his acquaintance with Hindu history. [xii] Such a scientific technique of sense-making is not surprising if one takes Singapore’s material and educational advancements to heart: history and reason are summoned as accomplices of religion, to address a question of which there is no straightforward answer.
My intuition, however, is that the old Chinese lady is more representative of the wider population – a cohort who would exclaim that all gods are “same, same” and be mistakenly typecast as oblivious and ill-informed. Her remark was not without recourse, however, since she opined that there is a miniature of Guan Yin in the Hindu temple, demonstrating at least an inchoate attempt at rationalising her presence in a predominantly Hindu space. She also consecrated a link between praying to multiple gods and an ease of mind – the more, the merrier. Interestingly, without much prompting, the lady added that she would never pray at a mosque, drawing an irreconcilable distinction between Islam and the Dharmic religions. As primordial as her comments sound, my take is that the old Buddhist worshipper was extolling the taken-for-granted cosmology of Singapore’s multi-religious landscape, much like the residents of Wae Robo-Kombo glimpsed in Catherine Allerton’s work. [xiii] Both embrace the totality of their parochial social environments and conceive metanarratives which duly regurgitate that reality. The Wae Robo-Kombo people, for example, see spirits in eels because of water’s centrifugal place in Manggarai culture – likewise, my informant was liable to conflate deities of the two religions not only because of their physical proximity but this subliminal presupposition of Singapore’s diversity that was supposed to meld different faiths together. [xiv] It is also telling that she excluded Islam from her cosmology, which may unmask some subterranean ambivalence towards a religion that has earned itself some bad press because of its complicity with religious extremism. [xv] Above all, my point is that not everyone would try in vain to rationalise a conjoined religious space, as my first informant did, even if they are equipped with the pedigree and knowledge to do so. As I overheard from a conversation between two Chinese office ladies, “since I’m here already…might as well pray at the Hindu temple as well”. The remark may sound patronising, but it effortlessly epitomises Singapore’s diversity that I reckon many, including the old lady, would conscientiously animate.
Figure 5: A miniature of Guan Yin, sitting among the Hindu gods, in the Sri Krishnan Temple. Photo by author, 2019.
My final informant, the Chinese sentinel, however, has a wholly different conception of the multi-religious sociality within and around the Sri Krishnan Temple – one framed by demarcation and segregation. [Figure 3] As the only intermediary between a predominantly Hindu realm inside the temple and a visibly Buddhist one outside, he postulated that most Buddhist worshippers would not enter the temple because they are “scared” or “impure”, leaving special mention for women, whom he noted are more susceptible to “malignant forces” than men. More revealingly, when I consulted him initially, he claimed dismissively that he was only responsible for affairs “outside” the temple, and my inquiries should be directed to the Hindu priests who “took care of business inside” the temple. Unlike the first two informants, the sentinel commands a very rigid ordering of the religious space, perhaps symptomatic of his work as the de facto gatekeeper of the temple. His rendition of the multi-religious sociality is a useful rejoinder to many anthropological works which focus slavishly on how members in-group fathom their surroundings but not nearly enough about those at the interstices. [xvi] The sentinel is a living example of how a man at the fringes – stationed literally between Hinduism and Buddhism – becomes acutely aware of different rules and parameters in and outside the complex and adeptly attributes irreducible, if unsavoury, reasons for the difference in demographics within and outside the Hindu temple. Never mind the fact that those boundaries are at every moment undermined by the presence of Guan Yin, a Buddhist deity, within the temple! [Figure 5] However marginal the sentinel’s conceptualisation of the multi-religious space, he reminds us that not all is rosy and more poignantly, there is replete potential for conflict, especially when differences between the two faiths are made pronounced.
The perennial refrain for this part of the discussion is that there is no authoritative script to dictate how worshippers deliberate and make sense of the multi-religious space at the Hindu temple. Still, this lack of instruction does not forestall unrelated individuals from reaching similar conjectures about the two religions’ sameness. It is precisely such embodied, personalised narratives, I argue, that fuels and sustains the multi-religious sociality in and around the temple, for worshippers can craft their own self-contained logic to comprehend a diverse, disorientating space without impinging on another’s metanarrative.
Celebrating sameness, not difference
The insights derived from studying the Sri Krishnan Temple – how a multi-religious sociality is made possible by the experiential regime there, and the why: participants’ thought processes regarding their multifarious surroundings – evince the wholesome dynamism and adhesive potential of social processes on the ground. It challenges the orthodox narrative in Singapore that harmony could only be managed by recognising and inadvertently, exaggerating religious difference. [xvii] As worshippers of the temple can attest to, regardless of one’s religious affiliation, it is not implausible to partake in puja and other activities there if one is prepared to immerse in the experience without much consternation. Granted, one can argue that the temple authorities lowered the floodgates to begin with by installing a miniature of Guan Yin, but it should not detract us from the multi-directional social interactions – between priest and devotee, and among devotees – that helps sustain the multi-religious sociality inside the temple. More importantly, worshippers seem capable of fashioning individual, introspective anecdotes and narratives to make sense of diversity without being prescribed contrived ones by the state. Perhaps, it will do Singapore wonders if it embraces the old lady’s relaxed disposition, celebrates sameness and venture into “same-same” territory – it is certainly preferable, I think, to endlessly stressing all the irreconcilability of difference. Relishing the lived banality of religion, not perpetuating the spectre of imagined conflict, may well hold the key to real religious harmony in Singapore.
Acknowledgment
Thanks to the two anonymous peer reviewers of this article for their invaluable feedback.
Endnotes
[i] Thio Li-ann, “Relational Constitutionalism and the Management of Religious Disputes: The Singapore ‘Secularism with a Soul’ Model”, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 1, 2 (2012), 446-469.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Eugene K.B. Tan, “Keeping God in Place: The Management of Religion in Singapore”. In Religious Diversity in Singapore, ed. Lai Ah Eng (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008), 55-82.
[iv] Michael Hill, “The Rehabilitation and Regulation of Religion in Singapore”. In Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe, ed. James T. Richardson (New York: Plenum Publishers, 2004), 343-358.
[v] Eddie C.Y. Kuo, Jon S.T. Quah, Tong Chee Kiong, Religion and Religious Revivalism in Singapore (Singapore: Ministry of Community Development, 1988).
[vi] Diana L. Eck, “Seeing the Sacred”. In Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, ed. Diana L. Eck (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 3-31.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Adam Yuet Chau, “Red Hot Sociality”. In Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China, ed. Adam Yuet Chau (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 147-168.
[ix] I am certain that there are other common, everyday practices, involving the pressing of hands together, that fosters in non-Hindu worshippers a sense of affiliation with their Hindu counterparts in the temple. It is an intriguing line of research fully deserving of its own essay and limelight.
[x] Adam Yuet Chau, “Red Hot Sociality”. In Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China, ed. Adam Yuet Chau (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 147-168.
[xi] Eva Keller, “Why Exactly, Is The World, As It Is,” Questions of Anthropology, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology 76 (2007).
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Catherine Allerton, “Earth, Stone, Water: The Animate Landscape”. In Potent Landscapes: Place and Mobility in Eastern Indonesia, ed. Catherine Allerton (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2013), 97-126.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Toh Ee Ming, Francis Law and Stacey Lim, “Some Muslims in Singapore worried over anti-Islam backlash”, Channel NewsAsia, accessed 6 March 2017.
[xvi] Some noteworthy examples of such anthropological works include: Signe Lise Howell, “Knowledge, Morality and Causality in a ‘Luckless’ Society: The Case of the Chewong in the Malaysian Rain Forest”, Social Analysis: Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 56, 1 (2012), 133-147; Catherine Allerton, “Earth, Stone, Water: The Animate Landscape”, in Potent Landscapes: Place and Mobility in Eastern Indonesia, ed. Catherine Allerton (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2013), 97-126.
[xvii] Chong Zi Liang, “Shanmugam outlines Singapore’s different approach to issues of race and religion”, The Straits Times, 30 July 2016, accessed 6 March 2017.
