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Weapons of the meek
Andy Ho Wed, Jan 02, 2008 The Straits Times
JAN 23rd is Thaipusam in Malaysia this year. Easily over a million devotees will make the pilgrimage to the temple complex at Batu Caves, a huge limestone hill north of Kuala Lumpur, to celebrate the most important of festivals for Hindus across the Causeway. Attendance has been growing over the years. Perhaps the Malaysian government is viewing the festival with extra concern this year after last November's street action by tens of thousands of Indians under the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) banner, who had begun their march from Batu Caves itself. Is Hindraf then the vanguard of a Malaysian Hindu revivalism that is willing to resort to violence to achieve its religious aims, as some fear? Associate Professor Andrew Willford, a Cornell anthropologist and currently visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, says: 'I'm more inclined to see this as a cry for justice from the primarily working- class Tamil community.'

Their religious activities are what he calls 'weapons of the meek' that Tamils deploy to assert their identity in the face of the state's Islamisation programme over the past 30 years.

And there is a large vein of discontent for Hindraf to tap. After all, many see the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), the party supposedly representing their ethnic interests in the coalition government dominated by the Malay party, Umno, as having failed them.

Over the decades, Tamils have been languishing economically, with the closure of rubber estates and a concomitant growth of urban slums. Meanwhile, after the 1969 race riots, the Malays have been given set-asides and quotas for everything from corporate ownership to education and jobs.

Prior to Hindraf, with no political outlet to express their grievances, the Indian underclass - 80 per cent are Tamils, of whom 80 per cent are working class and also Hindu - had turned to politically- acceptable ones in the shape of cultural-religious activities to do so.

In this connection, the Batu Caves temple complex, probably the only one outside India to achieve iconic status in Hinduism, is more than sacred terrain, and the rites of Thaipusam there more than just religious.

They are, in fact, crucial to the political 'performance' of (underclass) Indian identity.

For them, the 'ecstatic ritualism' at Batu Caves, as Prof Willford puts it, serves more than spiritual functions. It is also a form of resistance to the Malay-dominated government's demarcation of (working class) Indian ethnicity as backward.

Every year, Hindu devotees with prayer requests - or giving thanks for prayers answered - undertake cleansing rites, carry ornately decorated palanquins called kavadis up the 272 steps to the temple at the top of the hill. These heavy metal cages are attached to the bearer's body by chains and steel hooks or spikes inserted into the skin of the chest, back and face.

Carried out in public view, this self-mortification commemorates the day the mother of Lord Murugan gave him the vel, a lance with a leaf-shaped blade, which symbolises sakti, or destructive and regenerative power. That is why kavadi carriers also have their tongues and cheeks pierced with small vels after they go into a trance.

On that day, attendees chant 'vel, vel' over and over again as if to emphasise the instantiation of Murugan's saving power for the Hindu in an oppressive Muslim land.

In his 2007 book, published by the NUS Press, entitled Cage Of Freedom: Tamil Identity And The Ethnic Fetish In Malaysia, Prof Willford describes it thus: 'The intoxicating effect reaches a climax in the sanctum, where the heat, incense and ringing of bells as well as the gentle push and pull of the devotees, all clad in yellow, create a powerful synesthesia of sight, smell, sound and heat...an almost numbing sensory overload.'

The whole phantasmagoric spectacle of pierced bodies, swaying and dancing to the loud devotional music, rhythmic drum beats and bells chiming in the cavernous, smoke-filled temple complex is not for the squeamish.

Hindus in Malaysia say the government forbids Malays from watching the proceedings because they form incontrovertible evidence of the truth and power of Hindu gods. Malays would find it irresistible and be drawn back into the fold. After all, pre-Islamic Malays were Hindu and Malay culture still carries many Indic elements, traceable to Srivijaya, the ancient Hindu kingdom that ruled the Malay world.

The Srivijayan king called Parameswara founded Malacca in 1402 and, by marriage, became the first ruler to convert to Islam. His sultanate dominated the region and helped spread Islam throughout the archipelago. Some even say Parameswara was not just Hindu but an Indian too - so Malays are really Indians after all.

To this day, the suppressed Indian-Hindu in the Malay still lurks just below the surface, the argument goes. But to forge a modernist Islamic identity for the Malay culture, the government must erase such Indic roots.

As experts like Prof Willford have argued, to create a Muslim- Malay modernity as enlightened, scientifically imbued and technologically advanced, a backward Other to contrast itself with would be convenient. This the Malay state finds in the familiar - the working-class Hindu Tamil - who is, however, also secretly feared as the originating fount of Malayness itself.

To suppress this fear, the Malay state posits Indians as recent immigrants even if archeology and linguistics say otherwise. (Srivijaya aside, the Malay monarchy is called Kerajaan, like the Rajahs of India; Malay wayang kulit or shadow play performances always rely on stories from the Ramayana epic; even the word 'bumiputera' for Malays is derived from the Sanskrit 'bhumiputra' meaning 'earth prince'. And so the argument goes on.)

But one day in a year, the powerless Indian is identified with miracles, endowed with the destructive power of a wish-granting god, and transcends his harsh existence in an ever-Islamising land. Amply covered by the national print and electronic media, for one day each year, this is a highly visible riposte to and transgression of the government's thorough-going inscription of a Malay-Muslim national culture with no space for the other races or religions.

Once a year, the Indians' political weakness is surmounted supernaturally. Yet this 'proto-political' gesture cannot be harnessed to invert the existing order. For the MIC oversees Thaipusam at Batu Caves, with its president - Datuk Seri Sami Vellu, who is Malaysia's Works Minister - always officiating with a message from the government.

With no political power of its own that is not derived from Umno, even while speaking in the heart of Hindu ritualism, the MIC is just Umno's voice, testifying to its gracious capaciousness in accommodating Hinduism within its Malay-Muslim modernism. The whole deal is thus co-opted by the State, that promotes Thaipusam far and wide to snare the tourist dollar.

So on Thaipusam, at Batu Caves, the docile Indian still remains trapped in his 'cage of freedom'. What can he do? Throw the cage doors wide apart and take to the streets? That may well be Hindraf's dream - but most likely it will remain just that, a dream.

andyho@sph.com.sg

DESPERATELY SEEKING AN OUTLET

According to Prof Willford, these disaffected folk have resorted to expressing their Tamil identity through cultural or religious activities precisely because they have remained politically emasculated and economically deprived.