THAIPUSAM IN MALAYSIA A HINDU FESTIVAL MISUNDERSTOOD? BY CARL VADIVELLA BELLE i CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi INTRODUCTION: 1 1. In the Beginning: Thesis Origins: 1 2. Thesis Statement : 6 3. Review of Literature:11 4. Methodology: 15 Notes: 22 ONE: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THAIPUSAM AT BATU CAVES 28 1. Introduction: 28 2. Thaipusam: Puranic Mythology: 29 3. Batu Caves: An Overview: 45 4. Thaipusam: Basic Structure: 55 5. The Kavadi Ritual: 68 6. Conclusions: 90 Notes: 92 TWO: MALAYSIA:THE SOCIAL AND ETHNIC CONTEXT 115 1. Introduction: 115 2. British Colonialism: 115 2.1 British Theories of Rule: 116 3. Indian Immigration and Society to World War II: 118 3.1 Indian Labour: Indentured and Kangany: 118 3.2 Other Indian Immigration: 122 3.3 Indian Political Development to 1941: 122 4. The Japanese Occupation: 124 4.1 The Japanese Occupation: The Indian Experience: 126 5. Malayan Politics to Merdeka: 127 5.1 The Malayan Union and the Federation of Malaya Agreement: 127 5.2 The Emergency: 129 ii 5.3 The Attainment of Merdeka: 130 5.4 Malayan Indians – Politics and Society 1945-1957: 134 6 Post Merdeka Malaysia :134 6.1 From Malaya to Malaysia : 134 6.2 1969 and the New Economic Policy: 135 7. Contemporary Indian Society and the Plantation Culture: 137 7.1 Indians: Post Merdeka: 137 7.2 The “Plantation Culture”: An Indian Dilemma: 138 8. Contemporary Malaysia, Islam and Ethnicity: 142 8.1 Mahathir’s Malaysia: 142 8.2 Islam and Ethnicity: 148 8.3 Islamization: The Government’s Response: 155 8.4 Islamic Revivalism and Inter Ethnic Relations: 158 9. Conclusions: 163 Notes: 165 THREE: OTHER THAIPUSAMS 191 1. Introduction: 191 2. Penang: The Malaysian Alternative: 192 3. India: 207 4. India: A Brahman Thaipusam: 210 5. Singapore: 223 6. Sri Lanka: 228 7. South Africa: 229 8. Fiji: 234 9. The Seychelles: 239 10. Medan, Indonesia: 241 11. Mauritius:244 12. Conclusions: 245 Notes: 247 FOUR: SOUTH INDIAN HINDUISM 261 1. Introduction: 261 2 The Development of Tamil Segmentary Society: An Overview: 262 iii 2.1 South Indian Kingship: 265 3. Caste in South India: 270 4. The Development of Tamil Hinduism: An Overview: 277 4.1 Temples and Kingship in the Tamil Country: 282 4.2 The Tamil Bhakti Movement: 285 4.3 Bhakti Devotionalism and Transgressive Sacrality: 290 4.4 Saiva Siddhanta: 294 4.5 Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy: An Overview: 296 5. British Colonialism and Indian Society: 303 5.1 South Indian Reform Movements: 308 6. Murugan: A Tamil Deity: 313 6.1 Earliest History: 313 6.2 Sanskritic Skanda: The God’s Northern Presence: 315 6.3 The Northern-Southern Fusion: 317 6.4 Skanda-Murugan in the Tamil Country: 319 6.5 Murugan: Sacred Geography: 321 6.6 Ritual Chronometry and the Murugan Cultus: 323 6.7 Murugan’s Marriages: 325 6.8 Murugan and His Consorts: The Implications: 330 7. Conclusions: 335 Notes : 338 FIVE: HINDUISM IN MALAYSIA: AN OVERVIEW 362 1. Introduction: 362 2. Caste in Malaya/Malaysia: 364 3. Agamic Hinduism: 368 4. Popular Hinduism: 369 5. Malaysian Hindu Temples: 374 5.1 Agamic Temples: 374 5.2 Non-Agamic Temples: 380 5.3 Ritual Specialists: 383 6. Major Festivals: 384 7. Malaysian Hindu Reform Movements: 386 7.1 Early Hindu Administration and Reform: 387 iv 7.2 Dravidianism: 387 7.3 Middle Class Reform: 389 7.4 Thaipusam and Reform: 392 7.5 Sanskritization/Agamicization in Malaysia: 393 8. The Kerling Incident and Hindu Renewal: 397 9. Conclusions: 398 Notes: 400 SIX: THAIPUSAM CONSIDERED: THE DIVINE CROSSING 411 1. Introduction: 411 2. Pilgrimage: the Tirtha Yatra: 411 3. Batu Caves: A Malaysian Hindu Pilgrimage Site: 419 3.1 Ritual Worship: 421 4. Kingship and Thaipusam: 422 5. Rites of Separation: 425 5.1 Divination: 430 5.2 The Divine Crossing: 437 6. Trance and Thaipusam: Trance as Tirtha: 441 6.1 Trance States: An Overview: 442 6.2 Thaipusam and Trance: Some Preliminary Observations: 448 6.3 Amnesia and Trance: 451 6.4 Inducing Trance: 452 6.5 Trance: The Individual Impact: 455 6.6 Trance: The Demon Devotee: 460 7. Beyond Trance: The Pilgrimage: 463 7.1 The Stairs: Towards Stabilization: 465 7.2 The Temple Cave: 467 8. Rites of Reincorporation: 470 9. After word: Colour and Heat/Cold in Thaipusam: 470 10. Conclusions: 473 Notes: 475 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 489 Notes: 500 v BIBLIOGRAPHY 502 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who have assisted me throughout the period of my studies and fieldwork, and the list of those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude is far too extensive to detail here. However, I should like to thank my supervisors, Dr Greg Barton and Dr Ian Weeks for their encouragement and support, as well as Dr Purushottama Bilimoria for his initial suggestion that I embark upon this thesis. I must acknowledge the remarkably efficient and invariably friendly assistance provided by the staff Deakin University Library who worked miracles in procuring materials including many obscure works. With regard to my fieldwork in Malaysia, I offer my profound thanks to Mr and Mrs V. Thanapal and family; Mr and Mrs N. Selva (Thanam); Mr and Mrs N.S.K. Sundrasekaran; Mr K. and Mrs Ah Leng Thuruvan; Mr Kumar and Mrs Nui Menon; Madam V. Jayaladchumy; Tuan Puan Uma Sambanthan who shared her vast knowledge with me; Puan Sri Janaki Athi Nahappan who spoke to me about the INA/IIL, Subhas Chandra Bose and her role in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment; Dr S.M. Ponniah; Dr Raymond Lee (Universiti Malaya); Dr K. Loganathan (Universiti Sains Malaysia); Sri N. Thiruvasagam, long time President of the Saiva Siddhanta Mandram; and Guru Sri Doraisamy, of the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, Batu Caves. During my time in India, I owed much to Mr Patrick Harrigan who provided invaluable assistance and offered much salient advice and criticism; the Brahman community of Palakkad who invited me to participate in the Thaipusam pada yatra; Swami Balananda of the Vallimalai Asrama, for his words of wisdom and encouragement; and the staff at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chennai. In London, I received much kindness from Mr Rainer and Mrs Saroja Krieg-Ganesan. I also extend my gratitude to the professional and courteous staff at the India and Oriental Office Library. To those who provided academic references – Professor David Dolan, Mr Wes Kilham, and Ms Jenelle Davies, I offer my thanks for your act of faith and for your continuing friendship. Finally, I must pay tribute to my wife Wendy Valli, a true devi, whose support and belief never wavered even when mine did, and who responded to my frequent crises with humour and unfailing commonsense. To those whom I have not included, or have inadvertently overlooked, I offer my apologies. 1 INTRODUCTION 1. IN THE BEGINNING: THESIS ORIGINS At 5 a.m. on 24 January 1978, accompanied by my wife, Wendy, four visitors from Australia, and a young Tamil man, a relative of our amah's (1), who had agreed to act as our interpretive guide, I made my way to the main stairway leading to the Temple Cave of the Batu Caves complex, about 13 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After threading a path through the crowd, already vast, despite the early hour, we stationed ourselves at the very foot of the steps. We had come to view the Hindu festival of Thaipusam, devoted to the deity Murugan, a South Indian god so seemingly obscure that he earned a mere paragraph in one of the putatively authoritative texts which had provided my background reading into Hinduism, and no entries at all in the remainder. We had heard highly seasoned stories of the festival of Thaipusam, principally of its more dramatic elements; the hundreds of kavadi (ritual burden) bearers pierced with skewers and hooks, carrying their burdens up the steep flights of stairs leading to the Murugan shrine within the caves; the immense crowd; the constant noise – a product of shouting devotees, blaring loud speakers and incessant drumming; the visiting political dignatories. But most of what we had heard was second hand – the impressions of the few expatriates who visited the festival, and who generally tended to view it as a form of local colour, an incidental divertissement which formed a suitably exotic backdrop to their stay in “oriental” Malaysia, rather than as a meaningful religious observance, worthy of consideration in its own right. We had been informed that if we chose to negotiate the crowds and view the festival we would witness a series of amazing exhibitions – people who performed remarkable and bizarre acts in the name of religious belief. We were also told that we would require strong stomachs and reserves of tolerance. However, these rather cursory descriptions had give me no insights into what Thaipusam as a festival actually signified, nor indeed did it provide any deeper impressions of what I might experience as a visitor to the festival. But then the fifteen months I had spent in 2 Malaysia had been a constant exposure to the unexpected. Posted as an Attaché to the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur, I had been furnished with a pre-departure schedule of briefings which had adumbrated only in vague outline some of the political and social realities of the country in which I now found myself. As a consequence I was manifestly under prepared to deal with the complexities of Malaysian life, in particular the array of ethnic, religious, socio-economic, educational and linguistic issues which dominated Malaysian political discourses, and to which my work daily exposed me.