Chapter 6

Turning point Setapak Hindu temple demolishment on 8/6/06.

The Setapak Sri Siva Muniswarar Hindu temple demolishment in August 2006 was the first turning point in the open defiance and struggle against the powerful UMNO and their state authorities’ malicious demolishment of Hindu temples in Malaysia. The temple priest Sivalingam Patchiappan @ Siva was served a one week written notice of demolishment of the said temple. On the day in question the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) bulldozers appeared and broke a small shrine in the temple compound. Suddenly and “as usual” the local Setapak MIC Division Chief cum MIC “Mandore” appears with the Tamil Press and their camera crew. In collaboration with the DBKL this “mandore” does a puppet shadow play “wayang kulit” and then announces to the press that he has “succeeded” in stopping the demolishment of the Hindu temple and the Tamil press reports this to be so. The MIC Divisional leader gives the impression of having been the “saviour” who stopped the demolishment in the nick of the time. We have been informed that this Indian “mandore” was used by UMNO and DBKL to “negotiate” between the temple and DBKL so that the temple would be demolished by the temple people themselves within one week and in return DBKL would defer the demolishment for that day. It is a win win situation for both the MIC “mandore” and the DBKL vis a vis the UMNO and this is the classical scenario which precedes most Hindu
temple demolishments in Malaysia. This is the classical puppet shadow play “wayang kulit” played by the MIC mandores in collaboration with the local authorities vis a vis the UMNO puppet masters is put into practice in almost all of the Hindu temple demolishment cases in Malaysia. Most often when the Hindu temple is actually literally bulldozed to the ground and the deities therein smashed up to pieces with vengeance and with impunity using their sledgehammers, MIC does not get the Tamil press to report the same and neither does the MIC “mandores” appear. This was the order of the day until of course Hindraf’s emergence.