First female to scale sacred Indian peak

AN INDIAN woman has shattered a gender barrier in her country after climbing a mountain from which women were previously banned.

Dhanya Sanal, a spokesman for India’s ministry of defence, scaled the 6,128ft Agasthyakoodam peak in the state of Kerala on Monday, weeks after the provincial high court rescinded a ban imposed by the indigenous Kani tribe against women climbing it.

The Kani people opposed female presence on the slopes, believing it would “desecrate” the sanctity of the statue of their celibate Hindu god Agastya Muni, located at the summit. In November, the Kerala high court ruled in response to a petition by female activists that restrictions on ascending the mountain cannot be based on gender.

It also dismissed the Kani people’s plea that the verdict offended their beliefs and that allowing women would “slight” their god’s celibacy.

Armed with the court order, Ms Sanal, 38, scaled the 14-mile-long forested route to the summit. She was the only woman in a group of 100 trekkers, and was confronted by a large group of Kanis who shouted but made no move to stop her. Earlier, she told the BBC that she was prepared to turn back if the Kani people barred her way. “We protested to express our pain and an- guish at breaking the customs of the Agastya hills,” Mohanan Triveni, a tribal leader, told the Press Trust India, adding that he respected the ruling.

Meanwhile, Hindu devotees in Kerala yesterday barred two women from entering an ancient Hindu temple, in defence of a centuries-old ban on females of menstruating age from praying inside it.

A supreme court ruling found that banning women aged between 10 and 50 from entering Sabarimala was unconstitutional and an infringement of human rights and of equality of worship. However, protesters physically barred the women from entering.