Saint-Thomas-des-Indiens Chapel

You're now standing in front of Saint-Thomas-des-Indiens Chapel. There's not much left of it, but this modest building stands as a silent witness to an era of mass evangelisation targeting the Indian workers who arrived during Réunion's period of indenture. The church was built by the Jesuits in 1860 to preach the gospel to Tamil labourers, but given the number of Hindu temples you'll see in Réunion today, you'll quickly realise that the evangelisation didn't quite work as planned! Firstly, let’s explain indenture. It’s a colonial invention that emerged with the abolition of slavery to compensate for the sudden lack of workforce. In Réunion, isolated in the Indian Ocean, there was particular interest in recruiting men from East Africa and its neighbouring territories like Madagascar and the Comoros, but especially from India, whose booming population promised what seemed like an endless supply of cheap labour! Indenture was initially based on supposedly voluntary work for extremely low wages, but it quickly morphed into something disturbingly similar to slavery. It was eventually banned and disappeared in 1937, but the massive immigration, primarily from India, allowed Réunion's sugar plantations to survive the abolition of slavery without collapsing. At Saint-Thomas-des-Indiens Chapel, they even had a priest who spoke Tamil and conducted masses for the Indian workers. There were catechism classes too. The building later served as a boarding house for the Reparatrice Sisters, who used it to serve soup to the poor. In 1970, the chapel stopped functioning as a place of worship and served as a gymnasium for the local secondary school. Today, the chapel is protected by historical monument status, hosting temporary exhibitions and other cultural activities, but its future remains uncertain.