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THAIPUSAM IN MALAYSIA: A Hindu Festival in the Tamil Diaspora. By Carl Vadivella Belle. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2017. xxxii, 400 pp., [16] pp. of plates. US$45.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4695-75-6.
Carl Vadivella Belle's book, Thaipusam in Malaysia: A Hindu Festival in the Tamil Diaspora, has a slightly misleading title. This reviewer expected a highly focused and Malaysia-centric study of an immensely popular Hindu religious festival, with perhaps some theological explication situating the Malaysian manifestation of this ritual vis-â-vis comparisons with the Tamil heartlands in India and Sri Lanka. This book easily accomplishes this but offers so much more. What unfolds is a book that marks a major contribution not only to studies of Hinduism in Malaysia, but more broadly, Tamil Saivism, variants within Hindu philosophy, and the complex web of Sanskritic and Tamil sources that comprise, over the longue durée, the corpus of beliefs surrounding the worship of Lord Murugan, the son of Shiva, and the focus of devotion within the Thaipusam ritual. The book also provides an insider's view of the ritual. As Belle is a Hindu, and an annual participant in this ritual for decades, he is able to provide an incomparable perspective. The result is a work of passion, first-person experience, and exceptional scholarship.
One of the many unusual aspects of this study is its juxtaposition of ethnographic observation, personal experience, and rigorous textual analysis. Belle is able to map out, with admirable judiciousness and clarity, the heterogeneity and dissonance that exists under the big tent of Hindu thought and belief. For example, throughout the text he is able to show that within the bhakti or devotional traditions that evolved in South India during the times of the great...