Réunion

On a visit to this Indian Ocean island in 1989, the pope noted Réunion's reputation for racial and religious harmony. The landscape, dotted with Hindu and Buddhist temples, mosques, and Catholic and Protestant churches, matches this reputation for hybridity. As a French overseas department, Réunion is classified as mostly Catholic, and religion is considered mainly a private matter, as in the French tradition. However, a 2008 survey confirmed growing religious syncretism, especially among younger and poorer Réunionnese. Métissage (mixing) through religion and marriage first started with colonization, which officially began in 1665. African and Malagasy slaves and, later, Indian contract laborers and Chinese “coolies” were obliged to become Catholic. They were thus creolized, or welded together—their own ancestors’ religious beliefs and practices forced into the background. Ironically, the dominance of Catholicism helped lay a common basis for more religious syncretism recently, especially among younger and poorer people. Réunion does not have its own syncretic religion, such as Vodou in Haiti, but its population have many shared religious practices, as in neighboring [Page 1090]Mauritius, where the dominance of Catholicism has historically been much less than in Réunion.

During the colonial era, the religious beliefs, rituals, and faith-based practices of immigrant groups took mainly cultural forms. The maloya, a dance of Malagasy origin, for example, was originally performed in honor of the dead. Animist beliefs and devotion to the dead have remained widely shared and are expressed in servis malgas, a recent revival, for example, where people “speak” with ancestors. People's religious identities in Réunion are more mixed than the following separate identity categories of Creole society imply: Kaf is a person of African origin, descended from former slaves, and is distinguished from the Metis (mixed people). A Malbar or Tamoul person is of Indian, but not of Muslim, origin and can be called a Hindu. Ti Blancs (from petits blancs, or “poor whites”) now mostly live in mainland France or the mountainous interior. Chinois are descended from Chinese laborers and mostly run corner shops; like the Malbars, many Chinese converted to Catholicism while maintaining some beliefs, in their case from Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Hindus, from Malabar, Bengal, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry), similarly were forced to adopt Catholicism and were thus similarly creolized. Only economically independent and more recent migrant groups, such as the Zarab (Muslim traders, not “Arabs” as the term suggests) and the metropolitan French (Zoreil), who arrived in the past century, could resist creolization through conversion to Catholicism. Retaining their distinctive culture and beliefs, Muslims remain a distinctive faith-based group in Réunion, even though they share some ancestral and animistic beliefs with the rest of the island's population. It is interesting—again according to the 2008 survey—that younger and poorer Réunionnese tend to be more syncretic than wealthier and older people. Among low-and middle-income groups, it is more common to practice two or even three religions, with just one religion the norm among wealthier people, including mixed people, those from mainland France, or the Zarab. Syncretic religious practices in Réunion today are as much a matter of social class as of community or ancestry.

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