A Social and Cultural Geography of Tamil Hinduism - The Cult of Murugan in South India and in the Diaspora ; Une géographie sociale et culturelle de l'hindouisme tamoul - Le culte de Murugan en Inde du Sud et dans la diaspora

Abstract

Murugan is one of the gods of the Hindu pantheon, whose religious figure has been present in South India for more than two thousand years. Its worship is associated with the mountains and the cultural identity of Tamil Nadu (the "Tamil country"), a regional State of the Republic of India whose cardinal points are marked by the six great pilgrimage centres dedicated to this god. This type of symbolic and geographic interaction between the temples of Murugan, the territory and the religious circulations dates back at least to the Middle Ages. It is to be found today at the local level too, and at the scale of the Diaspora as well. The survey also shows that the cult of Murugan triggers human actions that are printed in the geographical space - such as the construction of temples, pilgrimages, or the use of a holy place as a political tool. So this cult is endowed with a real spatiality, whose expression depends on the position of Murugan in the pantheon and on its meaning for the Tamil society. Thus, the presence of a Murugan temple on the hill of the Mailam village (in Tamil Nadu) depends as much on the association of the deity with peaks, as on the local geography where deities, castes and their relating spaces are both classified and classifying. At the scale of the Tamil country, the figure of Murugan has been included in the regionalist ideology of the Dravidian Movement during the XXth century, in the name of the historical territorialisation of this cult in this region. In Mauritius, the famous processions for Murugan and the overrepresentation of its temples echo the assertion of the Tamil community against the Hindu majority originating from North India. It also confirms the degree of significance of the places and circulations associated to this cult, to the point of producing territorial acts. In the end, the thesis demonstrates the relevance of the methods of the Social and Cultural Geography to the geographical study of religion. ; Murugan est un dieu du panthéon hindou dont la figure religieuse est ...