Kerala protests after women defy an ancient ban and enter the temple of a celibate deity
▶ A priest shut the shrine for a ritual purification and rival parties were united in condemnation
Two women sparked protests yesterday when they became the first to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple after the Indian Supreme Court struck down a rule prohibiting their entry.
After a pilgrimage rest stop shortly after midnight, Bindu Ammini, 44, and Kanakadurga, 42, climbed the Sabarimala hill and entered the temple at the top at 3.45am.
A video shows the women, dressed in ritual black, walking among a group of policemen. At that early hour, the temple was mainly deserted and the women were able to hurry into the complex to pray.
“It is a fact that the women entered the shrine,” said Kerala’s Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan.
“Police are bound to offer protection to anyone wanting to worship at the shrine.”
After the visit, temple officials briefly shut the shrine for a ritual purification, hoping to atone for the breach of a rule they hold sacred.
The prohibition of entry to women, formally framed in 1991, had been observed as a custom for at least the previous century.
The Sabarimala deity is regarded as a celibate man, so only young girls or women over the age of 50 were allowed into the temple, so the deity will not be tempted out of his chastity.
But the restriction breached the constitutional rights to equality and to worship, the court decided in September last year in response to a petition first filed in 2006 by six female lawyers.
The verdict met with furious criticism from many Hindu groups, who viewed it as judicial interference in matters of religious tradition.
Beginning in October, the paths up the hill to Sabarimala became the sites of clashes between police and protesters.
Demonstrators came from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and even from the more secular Congress party, which is in opposition to the government in Kerala.
Women kept trying to make the pilgrimage under heavy police protection, but they were repeatedly thwarted as protesters blocked routes and threatened violence.
Ms Ammini and Ms Kanakadurga tried and failed to make their way up to Sabarimala last month. Often, police officers turned women back for their own safety, unable to ensure their safety.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested during these clashes, many of them belonging to the BJP and its allied organisations on the Hindu right.
Yesterday, a storm erupted after news broke of the first successful entry by women into Sabarimala broke.
“Let the devotees come forward and protest this,” P S Sreedharan Pillai, the president of the state’s BJP branch, told Reuters. He said his party would “support the struggles against the destruction of faith”.
BJP demonstrators held a black-flag protest at Guruvayoor, another temple town, where a government minister in charge of Hindu shrines was paying a visit.
In Thiruvananthapuram, BJP members attacked journalists outside the government’s secretariat and tore down advertising hoardings erected by Mr Vijayan’s party.
K Sudhakaran, an official of Kerala’s Congress unit, called the development treachery.
“The government will have to pay the price for the violation of the custom,” he said.
The two women entered Sabarimala a day after about four million women in Kerala stood hand-in-hand in a 620-kilometre human chain, running from Kasargod in the north to Thiruvananthapuram in the south.
The chain stood for gender equality, Brinda Karat, a leader of the Communist Party of India, said at the rally.
Some women may believe in staying away from Sabarimala, “and we respect that”, Ms Karat said on Tuesday.
“However, it is unconstitutional to stop women who want to seek his darshan [blessings] directly.”
The two women’s entry into the shrine has now prompted an even heavier level of security on the roads winding up to the temple, in anticipation of new demonstrations.
Although Mr Vijayan promised police protection for women going to Sabarimala, the face-off between security forces and protesters will make it harder in the next few days for any woman to complete the pilgrimage.
“We want the chief minister to resign,” said KP Sasikala, the president of the Hindu Aikya Vedi, an activist group that works to protect Hindu heritage in Kerala.
“We’re going to organise more protests, we’re talking to other organisations. They can’t hurt our sentiments like this.”
Ms Ammini, a lecturer in a college in the town of Koyilandy, told India Today TV that she and Ms Kanakadurga, a government employee in Malappuram, represented millions of demale devotees.
They encountered no opposition or protesters on their way, she said.
“We were not scared at all,” Ms Ammini said. “We followed our legal right as women.”
Women had been trying to make the pilgrimage for months, but were thwarted by protesters threatening violence