01The bankers’ temple
The Nattukottai Chettiars of Chettinad were the bankers of the Tamil diaspora, lending across Burma, Malaya, Ceylon and Indochina, and wherever they settled they built a temple to Murugan, their family deity. In Singapore they chose Tank Road, at the foot of Fort Canning, in 1859. The temple’s Murugan is Dandayudhapani, the renunciant with his staff, as at Palani. By the 1970s the old building had grown too small, and the community paid for a complete rebuilding, consecrated on 24 November 1983, with a five-tier gopuram and a hall whose ceiling is set with glass panels of the deities.
02The end of the kavadi walk
On the eve of Thaipusam the Vel and the utsava image of Murugan go out in a chariot through the city to the Sri Layan Sithi Vinayagar temple in Chinatown and back. The next day the kavadi bearers who set out from the Srinivasa Perumal temple on Serangoon Road arrive here, through the morning and into the night, to lay down their burdens and their milk pots before Murugan. It is one of the largest Thaipusam observances outside India. The temple was renovated again in 2022.
The life of this place
- 1859The Chettiars build the temple on Tank Road.
- 24 November 1983The rebuilt temple is consecrated.
- 20 October 2014Gazetted a national monument.
15 Tank Road, near Fort Canning MRT. Thaipusam crowds peak through the afternoon and evening.
