Petitions filed against SC’s Sabarimala order
Kerala CM hits out at Oppn, BJP plans march from Oct 10
NEWDELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:: Four review petitions were filed in the Supreme Court on Monday against its order that allowed the entry of women of all ages into Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, but chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated amid growing protests that his government was committed to implementing what has been hailed as a landmark verdict.
Nair Service Society, a forum of the influential Nair community; Delhi-based Chetana Conscience of Women; Pandalam Palace, considered the custodians of the temple; and an association of women devotees, People for Dharma, approached the court against the ruling that ended a centuries-old ban on the entry of women between 10 years and 50 years into the 800-year-old shrine in south Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district as its presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, is considered to be celibate.
Divinity and devotion cannot be subject to the rigidity and stereotypes of gender, the court ruled in a 4-1 majority verdict on September 28, adding that the exclusion on the basis of biological and physiological features was unconstitutional and discriminatory because it denied women the right to be treated as equals. Justice Indu Malhotra, the lone woman judge on the bench, dissented and found the practice to be integral to “essential religious practice”, and said “notions of rationality cannot be invoked in matters of religion by courts”.
The review petitions called the majority judgment erroneous, saying it ventured beyond the questions of law and delved into the question of customs. Events after the judgment “clearly demonstrate that overwhelmingly large number of women are supporting the custom” of prohibiting the entry of women of menstruating age group into the temple, the petitions said.
Prayar Gopalakrishnan, a former president of Travancore Devaswom Board — which is responsible for the administration of the temple — too might file a petition against the top court verdict, according to a Congress party leader.
For its part, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) decided to organise a protest march from October 10-15 from Pandalam, around 100km north of Thiruvananthapuram, to the state secretariat in the capital. Several outfits threatened to block the entry of women into the shrine on October 18, when the temple will open for monthly ‘pooja’.
CM Vijayan stressed the government will not file a review petition and accused the Congress and the BJP of not sticking to their stand on the issue. “Congress and BJP central leaders have called the verdict historic and path-breaking. Now they see an opportunity to exploit the situation and they are whipping up passions.”
He said changes in a social system were bound to face resistance, adding that his elected government was duty-bound to implement the Supreme Court order. Vijayan’s Left Front government invited Sabarimala temple’s priests and the Pandalam royal family for talks on Monday to defuse tension, but both declined the invitation.
BJP state president PS Sreedharan Pillai said, “We won’t allow the government to trample the age-old belief of devotees. Communists are atheists and they don’t have any right to change the custom of a temple.”
Sasikumar Verma of the erstwhile Pandalam dynasty said, “We still hope the court will review its verdict.”
Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had commented: “If you want to take a progressive step under article 14 and 21, it will apply uniformly against all religions. It cannot happen that you select a practice and apply it because that will have many social consequences in a pluralistic society like India.”