Le retour des ancêtres royaux suicidés : une histoire régressive malgache

Abstract

Since 1990, a royal possession cult has been spreading to the cities and villages of a sacred kingship in the Northern Madagascar. This religious tradition is based on narratives relating how some royal ancestors preferred mass suicide by drowning rather than submit to the yoke of the Malagasy pre-colonial Empire in the 19th century. Today, these royal spirits possess some constituents of this kingdom as well as Malagasy and Comorians migrants who settled down in the province during the 20th century. When taking control of people’s minds and bodies, these spirits ask for transforming the different places of their drowning into sacred sites. Royal and common dignitaries use this religious tradition for defending their land tenure rights and claiming their autochthony against the postcolonial Malagasy State, migrants, reformist religious movements, and multinational firms establishing on their lands. Each year, more than 5000 people participate to this possession cult, re-enacting and performing the way these royal ancestors committed suicide into the sea. State officials, Secretaries and mass media attend to this event and are taught about this religious tradition. But my fieldwork and historiographical survey demonstrated several facts which are antithetical to this official version: this tragic event took place in the 17th century, these royal ancestors tried to escape from their aggressive kin before funding this kingdom, this dynastic branch was drowned into a coastal area which never belonged to its territory, and this religious tradition has been introduced into the kingdom in the 20th century by Malagasy migrants and descendants of slaves affiliated to a neighboring divine kingship. How should we deal with these two antithetical narratives?