By HARI S. MANIAM
Associated Press Writer
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Defying pain, hundreds of Hindus
pierced themselves Thursday with steel rods, needles and hooks in
an annual religious ritual of thanksgiving and atonement.
The festival, known as Thaipusam, was brought from India by
19th-century immigrants who came to then British-ruled Malaya as
laborers and government officials. It is no longer practiced in
India.
With eyes rolling and bodies shaking in religious trance, the
devotees climbed the 272 steps on a hill on the outskirts of the
Malaysian capital to pay homage to their god, Muruga, in a cave the
size of a football field.
Bare-chested men smeared in holy ash, wearing orange sarongs,
and women draped in orange saris chanted ``Muruga, Muruga'' amid
the thundering beat of drums.
Priests pierced their bodies with spikes in an operation as much
tourist spectacle as religious service.
They thrust rods up to three feet long and nearly half an inch
in diameter through their cheeks. They pushed smaller steel pipes
through their lips or tongues. Others had needles poked into their
chests. Some hung limes from their backs with small fish hooks.
After about two hours, the priests remove the piercings.
Devotees say they feel no pain as they are pierced. Also
inexplicably, virtually no blood comes out of the wounds.
``It is all faith and belief in God. ... There can be no
scientific answer,'' temple priest Krishna Vadyar said.
The festival began with a procession of 70,000 people led by the
statue of Muruga in a five-ton silver chariot drawn by bulls. They
paraded along a seven-mile route from a downtown temple to the
cave.
About 800,000 people were estimated to have attended the parade.
The festival was marred by the first death reported in the
decades of Thaipusam. A young man who took part in the procession
shouted, ``I want to die!'' and dived into a pond along the parade
route. Hundreds of people watched, but no one tried to save him and
he apparently drowned.
Similar celebrations took place in neighboring Singapore and
other Malaysian towns with large numbers of people of Indian
descent. About 7 percent of Malaysia's 19 million people and
Singapore's 3 million people are ethnic Indians -- and most of those
are Hindu.
