History of Pulicat - Religious Traditions

Religious Traditions

Pulicat was an atypical multi-religious community with a history of three prosperous religious traditions.

Hinduism flourished in Pulicat from early 300 BCE, when it was dominated by the Hindu ancient Tamil kingdoms. By 1825, there were several Hindu temples dedicated to the worship of Shiva, Vishnu, Murugan, Amman (mother goddess) and the Gramma Theyvathai (family goddesses). Unlike the Brahmin temples, the Amman temples were open to members of every Jāti.

The Muslim religious community began here in the 9th century with the arrival and settling of Arab maritime traders. After the Dutch fortification of Pulicat, two large mosques and some small places of worship and scripture reading were built by the Moslem traders in Pulicat proper. The mosques built earlier were then used by Moslem boat builders. The traders, descendants of the Khadems from Medina who were previously socially undifferentiated from the boat builders, became a distinct group of "nobility" called Labbay.

Christianity prospered here from the 16th century initiated by Portuguese traders and continued by the Roman Catholic Church they built. There was also a Roman Catholic church in the Christian hamlet of Pattanava, with a Roman Catholic priest appointed by the Madras Bishopric.

The arrival of the monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity, combined with the breakdown of the earlier Hindu ruled kingdoms and imposition of colonial rule, evolved new forms of rank and communal affiliation among the areas' religious communities. South India was not always a strictly "orthodox" Hindu Society. To the contrary, Christianity, Islam and Brahmanical Hinduism were forces which all came to impinge on the warrior cultures of South India.