Tradition, mobs, keep women out of Indian temple
SABARIMALA TEMPLE: At the Indian temple that is the focus of a battle over gender equality, Hindu hardliners are in festive mood, successful - so far - in their bid to keep women out. A Supreme Court decision to end a ban on women of “menstruating age” - those between 10 and 50 years - at the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala has sparked violent demonstrations on the roads leading to the site.
Traditionalists have threatened women trying to get to the complex and have clashed with police officers sent to enforce the court’s ruling. But up at the hilltop temple, conservative Hindus are in celebratory mood. “You talk to anyone - men or women - who know about this temple’s history and (they) believe in it,” said pilgrim Rajesh P., one of thousands queuing up to ascend the golden stairs at the shrine.
“I am happy my daughter is experiencing this”, he said, carrying the customary “irrumudi” offering made of coconut and clarified butter in a cloth bag on top of his head. If traditionalists have their way, his daughter will be banned from the temple in a couple of years, when she turns 10, unlike at most other Hindu sites. This reflects an old but still prevalent conviction - not exclusive to Hinduism - that menstruating women are impure, and the belief that the deity Ayyappa, to which the temple is dedicated, was celibate.
In rural and semi-urban pockets of 1.25-billion-strong Hindu majority India, some women are still made to sleep and eat separately when they have their periods. The ban at Sabarimala - one of the holiest sites in Hinduism - goes back centuries according to traditionalists, but was only formalized in 1991 by the Kerala High Court. However, last month India’s Supreme Court, following on from other recent liberal rulings like legalizing gay sex, overturned the ban, calling it discriminatory. “To treat women as children of a lesser god is to blink at the constitution itself,” said Justice DY Chandrachud. The move enraged hardliners, many of them supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP Hindu nationalist party — and this week their anger was on display. On Wednesday, when the temple was due to open for monthly prayers for the first time since the ruling, groups of mostly men stopped and inspected vehicles to make sure no women of childbearing age were inside.