Shri Kali Temple, Yangon

Shri Kali Temple was built in 1871 by Tamil migrants in what is now downtown Yangon’s “Little India” district, during the decades when Burma was governed as a province of British India and large numbers of Tamil laborers, traders, and clerks settled in Rangoon (as Yangon was then known). Dedicated to the goddess Kali, the temple is built in a Dravidian architectural idiom, its roofline covered in brightly painted stone carvings of Hindu deities that make it one of the most visually distinctive religious buildings in the neighborhood.

The temple remains an active center of worship for Yangon’s Tamil-descended Hindu community, a population that has persisted in the city since the colonial era despite the substantial emigration of Indian-origin residents from Myanmar during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Like a number of Hindu temples in Myanmar, it is described in secondary sources as reflecting a degree of local Hindu-Buddhist syncretism, though the specifics of that practice at this particular temple were not independently confirmed in this verification pass.