Churning the Kalapani: Dark Water Histories, Oceanic Origins, and Marine Deities of the Indo-Caribbean Madrasi Diaspora

Abstract

After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, South Asians were shipped to plantations across the Caribbean as indentured workers. The system of indentured labor produced the Indo-­Caribbean diaspora. The oceans that witnessed the voyages of indentureship came to be known as the kalapani (dark waters). Named after their port of departure, the Madrasis are a religious minority within the Indo-­Caribbean diaspora. They cohere around southern Indian kula (community) and kaval (guardian) deities and practice healing, drumming, and spirit possession rituals. Since the 1980s, Madrasis have been migrating to the United States. Despite its dark history, the kalapani continues to inundate the Madrasis’ religious worlds. In this article, I draw on archival research on kalapani ship logs and ethnographic fieldwork among the Madrasis of Brooklyn to map the history, mythology, and contradictions of the kalapani. The Madrasis, I argue, can be understood as a kalapani kula—­a community with opaque (kala) and oceanic (pani) origins. The community’s gods have undergone a kalapani metamorphosis to become migrant and marine deities. Churning the kalapani offers us new perspectives on and from the diasporic ocean. In place of stability and transparency, the kalapani invites us to think with motion, opacity, and displacement.

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