It is Visit Malaysia Year 2007. The country is being packaged to be 'sold'. All its natural and cultural heritages are now subject to greater levels of commodification so that they can be 'sold' to our 'guests'.

As part of this general drive today, all cultural festivals are implicated in the act of commercialisation. Cultural festivals are sold with emphasis on their exoticness. One such festival was Thaipusam.

All the critically important social values couched deep inside the rituals surrounding Thaipusam are lost in such commercialisation. Strangely, it seems okay for the government to commercially exploit a religious festival but has reservations about promoting its deeper, meaningful values.

This commercialistaion (and vulgarisation) was clear in a Tourism Malaysia advertisement. The use of Hollywood/Bollywood movie promotional print ad format to promote a religious/spiritual event lacked taste, cultural creativity or sensitivity.

I address this with Thaipusam in mind though the real aim is to capture the deeper values of Thaipusam that are missed in such ads as above. The values are consistent to us 'being Malaysian'. They are values embedded in our many religious and cultural festivals. They constitute a universal meaning that have the real potential to make us a living, vibrant and sustainable multicultural society.

Certainly, many of us lose sight of this and are caught up in the structures of power, strategies of commodification and commercialisation, ethno-and religio-extremism and hedonistic self-seeking, which threaten our future together.

Good and evil

(i) Thaipusam is an emotional, social and cultural complex. Thaipusam, like Deepavali, is about good and evil, and about good overcoming evil. This theme is reflected in the main feature of Thaipusam carrying a kavadi. A traditional form of kavadi , the pal kavadi , is, in one interpretation, about carrying a pole slung across the shoulder with two kudams (pots) of milk on either side, one connoting the good one has done and the other the bad. It is to carry both of these 'burdens' to Lord Muruga to seek his forgiveness for the bad and acquire his blessings for the good.

This offers us an opportunity to reflect on our bad deeds, continue our mortal journey to reduce that burden and improve the good in this life. This certainly has great social relevance. Though a general Hindu (in fact, a general oriental practice) practice, another important aspect of Thaipusam is annadanam , offering of food to devotees and all those who attend Thaipusam.

Sharing of food is a critical social and spiritual act. Sharing by itself, and the sharing of food in particular, is an act by which we touch upon our deeper self dissolving away greed, material possessiveness and atomising individuality (based on excluding) bringing out our collective being. It is looking out for our fellow beings and enriching our social experience. It is in such experiences, we can seek to find or shape 'Malaysia'.

(ii) Thaipusam in Malaysia is moving away from mere 'spectatorship' to 'involvement' (though unfortunately the ads as mentioned above want to intensify spectatorship). Devotees of Lord Muruga Hindu Indians and members of other communities - would perform the role of spectators watching the kavadi 's journey to the Lord Muruga temple and the devotee carrying the kavadi rhythmically swaying or dancing to drums, devotional songs and the chorus of vel, vel .

But in recent times this has changed significantly. An additional activity has developed. The significant development involves pal abhisegam (milk offering) to Lord Muruga. From an increasing number of Hindu homes (or temples), some or all family members carry a pal kudam , a bulbous container with a narrow neck containing 'blessed' milk for the local Lord Muruga temple. This inclusive journey is also undertaken by Sikh and Chinese devotees of Lord Muruga. The devotion to Lord Muruga during Thaipusam is a cross-cultural experience, including foreigners too.

The most significant aspect of this milk offering is the symbolic potential it holds for us Malaysians devotees coming from all over, some walking long distances, with their containers of milk, carried on their shoulders, to their local Lord Muruga temple. All the milk transported, carefully by the young and old, by men and women alike, is offered from 'head to toe' of the Lord i.e. the milk is poured over him. It is a single point of confluence of multiple reasons why the milk is being offered, a single point of dissolution of all our differences, a unifying experience of the devotees as human beings stripped to their essential nature as they stand in front of a sacred presence. This single point captures a complex spiritual experience. This experience re-casted in secular space has the potential to help us experience one-ness and provide us an intense emotional ground for our unity as 'Malaysians'.

Building harmony

(iii) Thaipusam is completed with the journey of the ratham (or sacred chariot) from the Lord Muruga temple. This journey takes place through the main streets of the town/city so that devotees can make offerings and receive Lord Muruga's blessings. An important aspect of this journey involves the breaking of coconuts. This has become a major religious ritual across many parts of peninsula Malaysia. While the hundreds of coconuts that are broken every year are seen as a waste and an unsustainable practice by some, it is worthwhile to be sensitive to the symbolic import of this act.

Coconut for Hindus is God's fruit. Its inner core of fruit (white kernel), milk from it, and water are pure as God. Offering a coconut is like offering what is pure in all of us to God. The act of breaking coconuts is to denote the crushing of our inflated ego in order to offer our pure selves to God. It is an offering that has the symbolic potential to return us to our Self as a true devotee, a creature of purity, selflessness and mutuality. Imagine us in such an authentic state of peaceful co-existence in multi-cultural Malaysia.

(iv) Over the years in many areas in Peninsula Malaysia the breaking of coconuts during Thaipusam has developed a positively inter-communal tinge to it: an inter-racial community breaking coconuts together to offer their pure, common self (as devotees) of Lord Muruga. Of course, there is some element of fun but fun and frolic helps build communities and nations. In addition, there is the organised clearing of the road 'littered' with the broken coconuts (to put it to useful ends). These intense experiences have a potential career beyond the confines of the sacred space of Thaipusam. They have a potential career in building harmony. Can we harness this?

The ratham 's journey through our town or city is not only a journey through our hearts to help us recognise that we belong together but also a realisation of our common destiny. In a sense, the ratham's journey 'beads us' into a single chain.

The Thaipusam experience is a spiritual one. But if the values and meanings that animate it are re-casted on a secular plain, they offer us a way to constitute a sustainable multi-cultural Malaysia. Perhaps our 'guests' will see beyond the exotic Thaipusam or its representation as a mega-cinematic experience, a pathway to a shared destiny.

Dr M Nadarajah is a sociologist by training. He is the secretary of the Asian Communication Network (ACN) based in St John's University, Bangkok. He also belongs to the Asian Public Intellectuals (API) Community, a community of filmmakers, theatre people, song writers, poets, activists and academics working in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Japan for a better Asia. He works on cultural and sustainability issues. All photos taken by writer.