A Government Restriction Still in Force Since the 1970S

Singapore has restricted the public conduct of Thaipusam processions since 1973, when the government banned the playing of music and drums along the procession route following unrest connected to the festival, a restriction that remains in force today and that requires devotees carrying kavadi along Singapore's procession route to do so without the drumming and musical accompaniment that remains a standard and expected part of the festival in Malaysia, India and elsewhere, a specific and long-standing government limitation on religious practice that Singaporean Hindu organisations have periodically but unsuccessfully sought to have eased.

Malaysia, by contrast, has increasingly embraced Thaipusam as a major public and even tourism event, with the government declaring it a public holiday in several states and the crowds at Batu Caves now drawing significant international visitor and media attention alongside the devotional pilgrims, so that the same festival occupies markedly different positions in the public and legal life of two neighbouring countries with substantial Tamil Hindu communities, one treating it as a constrained and specifically limited religious practice and the other as an increasingly prominent national and touristic occasion.