Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple

Kali is the fierce form of the great goddess, the Devi in the aspect of her power to destroy evil and to protect her devotees. In the Puranic accounts she springs forth in the fury of the goddess to slay the demons that no other could overcome, dark of hue, terrible in her weapons and her garland of severed heads, dancing on the field of battle in the frenzy of her victory. Her fierceness is the fierceness of a mother who will stop at nothing to defend her children, and behind the terrible form is the tenderness of the Devi as mother of the world.

In the Tamil tradition the goddess is worshipped as Amman, the mother, in her many local forms, fierce and protective, guarding her people and their village or their quarter. Kali worshipped as Amman is the fierce mother at once feared and loved, whose power is turned to the shelter of those who come to her. At Little India in Singapore she is Veeramakaliamman, a name read as the brave or valiant Maha Kali, the mother, the fierce goddess made the protector of a community of immigrants.

The temple gives her the iconography of her victory, the goddess in the moment of slaying the demon, in the fearsome form of Kali, and sets beside her her two sons, Ganesha and Murugan, so that the fierce mother is shown with her children. The devotion of Little India comes to her as to a mother whose fierceness is her strength to protect, and the tradition of the temple's survival through the war is held as the proof of that protection, the goddess who shelters those who take refuge in her.

The Sri Veeramakaliamman temple stands on Serangoon Road in the heart of Little India, Singapore, one of the oldest and most visited Hindu temples of the island, dedicated to the goddess Kali worshipped as Veeramakaliamman, the courageous mother. It belongs to the history of the Indian community of Singapore, raised by immigrant labourers who carried the fierce mother goddess with them and gave her a home in a new land.

The temple is held to have been founded around 1881 by Bengali and Tamil workers of the district, in the years when Serangoon Road and the quarter that became Little India were taking shape. It was a temple of working people from its beginning, and the fierce Kali they knew from their homelands became, in the diaspora, Veeramakaliamman, the brave mother of a community of immigrants far from home. Across the following century the temple grew with the community, its buildings raised and rebuilt, its gopuram gateway sculpted over Serangoon Road, and its shrines developed in the South Indian Amman manner, with the goddess flanked by her sons Ganesha and Murugan.

The most widely told tradition of the temple belongs to the Second World War, when the area was bombed and, the tradition holds, many took shelter within the temple, which came through the destruction largely unharmed. This survival was taken, and is still taken, as a sign of the goddess's protection over those who sheltered under her, and it is central to the devotion the temple draws. Through the later twentieth century the temple was renovated and rededicated in the successive consecrations of the Tamil temple tradition, keeping its worship alive as the Indian community of Singapore grew and settled.

Today the temple is among the most visited of Singapore's Hindu temples, a living centre of worship and a heritage landmark of Little India. The fierce mother is loved as the protector of her devotees, Tuesday and Friday are her special days, and her festivals fill the temple through the year, so that the seat raised by immigrant labourers a century and more ago remains at the heart of the devotion of Little India.