Sri Vetrimalai Murugan Temple

The Sri Vetrimalai Murugan Temple traces its origin to Ross Island, then the administrative headquarters of British India’s Andaman settlement, where a shrine to Vinayaka (Ganesha) was later expanded, at the request of a temple staff member, into a full Murugan temple modelled architecturally on the well-known Kandakottam Murugan temple in Chennai. Construction was substantially complete by 1926, with further structures finished by 1932. After Indian independence, as Ross Island’s administrative role declined, the temple was relocated to Port Blair, the new capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where it has since been maintained under the stewardship of a Tamil businessman and continues to serve as a focal point of Hindu — particularly Tamil-community — worship and festival life in the islands.

The exact year of the temple’s move from Ross Island to Port Blair, and the identity of the individual originally responsible for establishing the shrine, are not documented in the sources checked for this entry and so are left unstated here rather than guessed. What is well established is the temple’s continuous active use since its Ross Island origins, its distinctive architectural lineage from mainland Tamil Nadu, and its present role as one of the principal Hindu pilgrimage sites in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a territory whose population is majority Hindu but historically without deep-rooted indigenous temple architecture of its own.