Ganga Talao (Grand Bassin)

The holiness of Ganga Talao rests on two things joined together: the ancient sanctity of the river Ganga in the Hindu tradition, and the faith the Indian labourers carried across the sea to Mauritius. In the tradition of the homeland, the Ganga is no mere river but a goddess and a purifier, descended from heaven onto the matted hair of Shiva, and her water is held to wash away sin and to carry the soul toward liberation; to bathe in the Ganga, to offer her water to Shiva, is among the deepest acts of Hindu devotion.

When the indentured labourers came to Mauritius in the nineteenth century, crossing the ocean the tradition called the black water, they were cut off from the sacred rivers and temples of India, yet they kept their gods. In the crater lake high in the mountains of the island they found, at last, a water that could be their Ganga. The tradition holds that a priest, in the early twentieth century, dreamed or saw in a vision that the water of this lake was joined beneath the earth and the sea to the holy Ganga of India, so that the two waters were one; and that water brought from the Ganges was poured into the lake and mingled with it, sealing the link. The lake, once called Grand Bassin by the French, became Ganga Talao, the Lake of the Ganga, and was given that name in 1972.

Dedicated to Shiva, whose hair the Ganga is said to fall upon, the lake became the place where the Hindus of Mauritius could offer the sacred water to their lord as their forefathers had done on the banks of the Ganges. Above all at Maha Shivaratri, the night sacred to Shiva, the faithful walk to the lake to gather its water and carry it home for the worship of the god, so that the whole island is bound each year to this one still water in the mountains, a Ganga made in a far land by the memory and the faith of those who would not let their gods go.

Ganga Talao, the crater lake known in French as Grand Bassin, lies in the mountainous interior of southern Mauritius and is the holiest Hindu site on the island. Its history is the history of the Indian community of Mauritius, and of the faith they preserved across the ocean.

From the 1830s, after the abolition of slavery, the British brought indentured labourers from India to work the sugar plantations of Mauritius, and over the following decades hundreds of thousands crossed the sea, many from the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of north India, so that people of Indian origin came to form a large part of the island's population. They carried their Hinduism with them, and though cut off from the sacred rivers and temples of their homeland, they kept their gods and their festivals through the hardship of indenture.

In the crater lake high in the mountains the community found a water that could be their Ganga. The tradition holds that in the early twentieth century a priest saw in a vision that the lake was linked to the holy Ganga of India, and that water from the Ganges was brought and mingled with it, sealing the bond; the lake, dedicated to Shiva, became a living tirtha, and in 1972 it was formally named Ganga Talao. Temples to Shiva and other deities were raised along its shore, and the pilgrimage grew until it became the central act of Hindu devotion on the island.

In recent decades the site has been crowned by two monumental statues beside the lake, the Mangal Mahadev, a figure of Shiva rising to some thirty-three metres and among the tallest such statues, and a tall statue of the goddess Durga, so that the pilgrim approaching the water is met by the great forms of the god and the goddess. Above all, Ganga Talao is the goal of the Maha Shivaratri pilgrimage, when hundreds of thousands of Mauritian Hindus walk on foot from across the island, carrying decorated kanwars, to gather the sacred water for Shiva. It stands today as the holiest Hindu place of Mauritius and one of the great expressions of Hindu faith beyond the shores of India, a Ganga made in a far land by a community that would not let its gods go.