Hindus also mark Christian piety
Hindus, the largest ethno-lingual bloc within the 1.4 million South Africans of Indian origin, will join the deeply religious rainbow nation of multicultural racial groups in the pastoral period of the holy Easter long weekend.
Over a four-day spell, Hindus — a diverse range of Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati-speaking Indians — will come together across the major cities to worship and pay homage to the gods of India.
The main focus, however, will be at a historic decades-old temple shrine established by Indian indentured labourers in their pioneering sugar-cane growing days across the expanse of sugar-cane plantations across KwaZulu-Natal.
While 1, 2million holidaymakers, tourists and day visitors alike will be flocking to Durban’s golden beaches, 100 000 Hindus would take time off over these religious days, beginning on Good Friday until Easter Monday.
They queue to offer their prayers and penitence peacefully to the revered goddess — Mother Mariammen — at the 160-year-old Shri Mariammen Temple in Mount Edgecombe, which overlooks Phoenix, one of the two largest Indian-dominated townships outside mainland India.
Across the city’s CBD, Christians will respond to the ringing bells on Good Friday to re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in a poignant march from the centuries-old Roman Catholic Emmanuel Cathedral Church from the bustling Victoria Street market to the high streets, with church leaders carrying the iconic wooden cross in a large procession of the faithful.
Jews, too, will attend prayers at the synagogues.
The city’s economically strong Muslim community will gather in prayers at the Grey Street mosque, Africa’s largest and oldest place of worship.
While Christians will be heading for Moria for the traditional Easter weekend religious jamboree, the 130-year fraternity of the Shembe Nazareth Baptist Church followers — mainly Zulu-speaking adherents will be heading for mountaintop vigils in KwaZulu-Natal.
Prince Ishwar Mabheka Zulu of the Sivananda World Peace Foundation said the religious weekend should bring all diverse groups together in social cohesion to face current challenges.
While the eThekwini Municipality, headed by mayor Cyril Xaba, gears up to welcome the one-million-plus traffic of visitors from Gauteng into Durban and from across KwaZulu-Natal cities and towns, for Indians, the Easter weekend marks a significant religious weekend of faith, rituals, repentance and offering of fruit, milk and sweetmeats to Indian gods and goddesses.
The focal point is the ancient temple in Mount Edgecombe, once a communal barracks for semi-slave planters and croppers who worked from dawn to dusk, doing a back-breaking job under the searing African sun under the watchful whips of the sugar barons.
It was doubly a blow as the British used their sidekicks of sirdars — conservative labourers who worshipped the colonial farm lords for favours.
These so-called supervisors extended the White man’s culture of cruelty to their fellow Indians, just to be in the boss’s good books to garner status and privileges.
Many labourers resisted the punishment meted out to them, despite their toiling — only getting days off during the Easter weekend, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day — hence the passion for prayers, penitence at this landmark temple and shrines across Durban and elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal.
“The ringing of the bells signalled the time when the labourers must get going to the plantations and return to their barracks each day. We therefore rejected the provincial government’s decision to build a bell tower to honour the 1860 Indian indentured labourers,” said Seelan Achary, chairperson of the Shri Mariammen Temple Society.
“The indentured community were only given public holidays off work. They turned to worship and prayed to the gods of their motherland. Hence, hundreds of thousands come each year to give their offerings to their spiritual icons and images.
Hundreds of poor and disadvantaged men, women and children queue for food while thousands queue to pray for a better life.”
The festive weekend also provides a platform for stall owners to sell fruit, prayer goods, snacks and sweetmeats, beverages, traditional clothing, fast food, samoosas and music CDs.
Brilliant and melodic strains of traditional classical singing and music greet the droves of worshippers, devoted, dedicated to fulfilling their religious vows at one of the holiest shrines in the country outside the ancient temples across the length and breadth of India and Asia.
In the main hall, the Shri Mariammen Awards will be presented to high-achieving men and women in various fields.
In other temples, like the one in Isipingo, south of Durban, which attracted hundreds of thousands of worshippers since the 1960s, worshippers offered red roosters to the gods to appease their hardships and pray for good tidings and fortunes.
As South Africa enters the solemn rhythm of the Easter long weekend, Hindus will prepare to join a deeply spiritual, multicultural nation in a shared period of prayer, reflection and renewal.
Once again during this pastoral pause, throngs of colourfully dressed devotees will gather to offer worship and homage to their deities. Central to this observance is a historic temple built by their forebears in homage to the 150 000 indentured labourers who built a religious legacy and cultural landmark that will continue over this holiest of public holiday weekends and many decades to come.
A young democracy gifted with diverse people protected constitutionally by the laws enacting freedom of religion and culture and breathtaking landscapes from the green valleys of swathes of sugar-cane plantations to golden beaches and skyscrapers, will go into prayers.
Prayers are needed to turn the bad tidings of a nation plagued by dark challenges of socioeconomic hardships, corruption, poverty, joblessness, crime and political tussles and filibustering on critical service delivery issues facing back-footed communities.
Marlan Padayachee, formerly a political, diplomatic and foreign correspondent, is a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.