Garrison Churches in South India – A Deleuzian Perspective

Abstract

Abstract

Garrison churches in India are sites of imperial glory that construct a different history of the colonial rule to this day – a history of dedication and great sacrifice of the colonisers. These sacred spaces, exclusively created for the British forces and administrative offices, went beyond their normative spiritual and moral roles and their love-and-peace-keeping-mission, to boost the spirit of the British in the victory of the Empire. The garrison churches comprise of several tablets, commemorative plaques and such other symbols erected in memory of the army officers and regiments, who died in battles or succumbed to epidemics. They serve multiple functions, including that of obituary, tributes and historical records. There are also tablets raised by the officials in loving memory of their deceased family members.

This paper applies Deleuze’s notion of assemblage to identify the different ways in which the British colonial past is represented and interpreted and the co-mingling of faith and the imperial powers in colonization by studying two South Indian garrison churches – St.Mark’s Cathedral, Bengaluru and St. Thomas Church, Chennai. On the one hand, the “constellation” of tablets articulated a sense of pride and brotherhood in the British mission of colonisation and on the other hand, reinforced a hierarchy within the British through the identification of the Lt. Colonels, Captains, Majors and other significant officials but leaving out the innumerous individual soldiers in the salutations / condolences. There are large discontinuities in chronology of these tablets as well as its organization within the church space. From the territorialisation and reterritorialisation and of these memorials, the paper seeks to address the assemblage centric construction of the British identity and history.