Kedah Menteri Besar Muhammad Sanusi Mohd Nor insisted that the state government's decision to cancel Thaipusam as a holiday next week was not meant to sideline Hindus.
He added that if MIC wants Thaipusam to be a holiday, the party can lobby Putrajaya to make it a federal holiday.
Thaipusam had been marked in Kedah as an 'occasional holiday' (cuti peristiwa), and not a state holiday.
Yesterday, Sanusi announced that Kedah will not be marking Thaipusam as an occasional holiday this year due to the second movement control order (MCO 2.0).
In a statement today, he said that religious events for the occasion are still allowed, albeit under strict observations.
"Everyone is placed 'on holiday' (dicutikan) because of the MCO 2.0. All this while Kedah had not marked Thaipusam as a holiday except for the last two years; it was an occasional holiday, not an official one," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.
Kedah had actually marked Thaipusam as an annual occasional holiday since 2016.
"Kedah's decision (to cancel the Thaipusam holiday) is not intended to sideline the rights of anyone in this state.
"When it was not marked as an occasional holiday, since before Merdeka, Thaipusam was still observed freely in Kedah," Sanusi added.
The decision to nix the holiday has courted flak from MIC, Pakatan Harapan, and even former Umno president Najib Abdul Razak.
Responding to critics, Sanusi - who is from PAS - said the matter should not be politicised as the country was facing a bigger issue which is the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Don't politicise everything. This is a matter of safety and the lives of all Malaysians.
"If some MIC people want a public holiday for Thaipusam, they should lobby the federal government to declare it a public holiday for the whole country. Kedah has decided on the matter," he said.
Prior to this, Sanusi had been accused of being anti-Hindu by critics, after the PAS state government demolished two Hindu temples.
He also hit back at critics then, saying they should not be "drunk on the toddy of popularity".
However, he denied the remarks were racist but were instead metaphorical and proverbial. - Mkini
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