Religion, Well-being, and Heritage: A “Mini” Hindu Fire-walking Festival in Singapore During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Religious festivals offer many dimensions of working toward well-being, including health and recognition on both the individual and collective levels. Safety measures linked to the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the possibilities for collective worship, causing devotees to adapt their ritual practices and to try to approach divine entities domestically and online. What are the implications of such adapted rituals for devotees who are working toward well-being? Based on offline and online anthropological fieldwork on the Hindu fire-walking festival in Singapore between 2019 and 2022, I show how the impossibility to participate in collective rituals both limited the options to work toward individual well-being and threatened collective well-being, including perceptions of the declining power of the divine in helping fight the pandemic. Conflicts were reinforced in direct relation to the pandemic, and were thus “pandemicized,” including anxieties about recognition of the heritage of this Hindu religious minority.