LAUSR

ABSTRACT This paper explores why Hindu Surinamese continue to propitiate autochthonous Amerindian spirit owners of the land despite the threat that these rituals pose to ideologies of Hindu exceptionalism and secular state sovereignty. Hindu rites to native spirits emerge from lingering diasporic doubts about whether Hindus possess or are in fact themselves possessed by the Surinamese land. Though Hindus feel compelled by uncertainties about familial safety to appease the land’s sovereign indigenous spirits, to do so risks undermining the three key justifications Hindus give for their presence and influence in Surinamese society: Hindu ethnic ethical distinction, the universality of Hindu tradition, and state-sanctioned legal title to the land. This impasse results in an aporia – the inability to achieve resolution – that expresses the contradictions that arise when the paradoxes of Hindu tradition encounter the coercive logics of secular state sovereignty in a pluralist, post-colonial nation state.