Painful devotion: Thaipusam

Last Tuesday, 3 February, if you were in Serangoon Road, you would have seen the Thaipusam procession.  This can seem shocking when you encounter it for the first time. It’s an annual Hindu tradition. After lengthy spiritual preparation, devotees take part in a ceremonial procession. Many carry kavadis, elaborate cage-like structures made of wood or steel, many of them spiked or held in place by hooks pushed through the skin. 

This mortification of the flesh honours the deity Subramaniam, or Murugan. The kavadi is said to represents a mountain with Lord Subramaniam at the summit. The procession takes place usually in January or February (in the Tamil month of Thai). Women also take part, often carrying an offering, in the form of a pot of milk.

 The tradition comes from South India, where many of the people who make up Singapore’s Indian community have their roots. But there’s an irony. In India itself, during the 1940s and 1950s, many temples banned the traditional kavadis. Apparently, it’s only in Singapore and Malaysia that you can still see them – the celebration of Thaipusam at the Batu Caves in Malaysia is even more elaborate than what happens here in Singapore.

Over a century ago Thaipusam was declared a public holiday in Singapore, but lost that status to Deepavali in the 1960s. The issue of which festival should be officially recognized was hotly debated for many years by the Indian community, with Thaipusam backed mostly by Indians from the South.

The devotees prepare themselves at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Serangoon Road. They then slowly make their way along a 4-kilometre route to the Sri Thendayuthapani Temple at Tank Road, in the process crossing some major thoroughfares with predictable effects on traffic congestion in the city centre.

Many of the people in the procession have elaborately ornamented metal skewers pushed horizontally through both cheeks and/or vertically through their tongues. You might find this extreme self-mortification difficult to understand, bizarre even. But wait a moment. Is it any more so than the self-flagellation practised for centuries by some Roman Catholics?

I was one of maybe hundreds of people pointing my camera at the devotees. Are they a legitimate subject for photography by anthropologists (at the top end of the market) or gawping amateur snappers and tourists (my end of the market)? Were the crowds lining the routes indulging in slightly voyeuristic behaviour, intruding on what some might see as a private devotional experience? As a public procession, I suppose it’s fair game.