Kartikeya's Tamil form Murugan has one of the most visible living festival traditions of any deity discussed in this atlas, and its largest modern expression takes place not in India but in Malaysia, at the limestone hill complex known as Batu Caves on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, where a Murugan temple set inside a natural cave system has become the site of one of the largest Thaipusam gatherings anywhere in the world, drawing enormous crowds of Tamil Hindu devotees from across Malaysia and neighbouring countries each year. A colossal golden statue of Murugan, among the tallest statues of a Hindu deity anywhere, stands at the base of the 272 steps leading up to the cave temple, itself a modern addition completed in the early twenty first century that has become one of the most recognizable images associated with the festival internationally.
During Thaipusam, devotees fulfilling vows carry kavadi, ornate structures often attached to the body by hooks or skewers piercing the skin, a physically demanding act of devotion undertaken to fulfill a vow or express gratitude, and the procession to Batu Caves draws not only worshippers but large numbers of spectators and, increasingly, international visitors and media attention. Malaysia's substantial Tamil Hindu population, descended largely from indentured labourers brought to British Malaya in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has maintained and grown Murugan devotion into one of the most publicly visible living Hindu festival traditions outside South Asia, an example of how a specific South Indian deity's cult became, through the channel of colonial-era labour migration, a major festival tradition in Southeast Asia in its own right.