Sabarimala row: Held up at airport amid protests, Desai refuses to return

Local BJP leaders protesting at the airport said the devotees would not let Desai and her colleagues, reportedly total six in numbers, to come out of the airport and proceed to Sabarimala temple.

Business Standard : Activist Trupti Desai reached the International Airport in the early hours of Friday to visit the Sabarimala temple but she could not come out of the domestic terminal following a protest by devotees opposing the entry of menstrual women into the Lord Ayyappa temple.

Tension prevailed at the airport as protesters announced that Desai and her colleagues, who reached here at around 4.40 am from Pune, would not be allowed to go out of the airport.

The temple opens on Friday evening, for the third time, since the apex court verdict on September 28 allowed women of all age group to offer prayers at the hilltop Lord Ayyappa temple though none could do so following stiff resistance from devotees and activists, opposing any change in the temple traditions.

Local BJP leaders protesting at the airport said the devotees would not let Desai and her colleagues, reportedly total six in numbers, to come out of the airport and proceed to Sabarimala temple.

They alleged that Desai and her team came here to violate the centuries-old custom of the temple that prevents entry of women and girls in the age group of 10 and 50.

"She (Desai) came here not for darshan but for disturbing a peaceful Sabarimala pilgrim season beginning Saturday," they said.

The Ayyappa devotees comprising women and BJP workers, assembled in large numbers outside the airport, continued their protest chanting Ayyappa mantra.

ALSO READ: Sabarimala all-party meet fails, Govt firm on implementing SC verdict

Police in large numbers have reached the airport to control the situation. Police officers held discussions with Desai and protesters but both sides stuck to their stand.

Talking to media over phone, Desai said she would not go back to Maharashtra without a darshan at the Lord Ayyappa temple.

Taxi drivers at the airport said they would not take Desai and her colleagues outside the airport.

Police in large numbers were present in the domestic terminal of the airport to deal with the situation.

The Lord Ayyappa shrine will re-open for the two-month-long Madala-Makkarvilakku puja on Saturday.... Read More

Will you visit a friend if you're menstruating: Smriti Irani on Sabarimala

Do you think it is respectful to do the same when you walk into the house of God?, Smriti Irani said.

Amid protests against the Supreme Court order opening the Sabarimala temple in Kerala to women of all ages, Union minister Smriti Irani Tuesday said the right to pray did not mean the right to desecrate.

On September 28, a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, headed by then chief justice Dipak Misra, lifted the ban on entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine.

Women have been stopped by Ayyappa devotees from climbing up to the Sabarimala temple as protests against the Supreme Court order opening the hilltop shrine to women of all ages continued across Kerala.

"I am nobody to speak against the Supreme Court verdict as I am a serving cabinet minister. But just plain common sense is that would you carry a napkin seeped with menstrual blood and walk into a friend's house. You would not.

"And would you think it is respectful to do the same when you walk into the house of God? That is the difference. I have the right to pray, but no right to desecrate. That is the difference that we need to recognise and respect," Smriti Irani said.

The Union textile minister was speaking at the "Young Thinkers" conference organised by the British High Commission and the Observer Research Foundation here.

"I am a practising Hindu married to a Zoroastrian. I have ensured that both my kids are practising Zoroastrians, who can go to the fire temple and pray," she said.

Irani recalled that when her children were inside the fire temple, she had to stand outside on the road or sit in the car.

"When I took my newborn son (to the fire temple), I would give him at the (temple) entrance to my husband and wait outside, because I was shooed away and told not to stand there," she said.

Business Standard

An unholy mess: How BJP is using Sabarimala issue to make inroads in Kerala

The protests against Sabarimala verdict have exposed the ingrained obscurantism beneath the veneer of a progressive society and the cynical politics of religion that is at play.

Business Standard : Kerala is under siege like never before in its volatile history. As the state struggles to get back on its feet after the worst floods in a century, it is convulsed in a violent religious campaign that belongs to another time and place. For the saffron brigade, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the entry of women of all ages into the hilltop temple of Ayyappan in Sabarimala has come as a godsend, the perfect handle to reignite the regressive religious campaign that the RSS-BJP cohort has been pushing for decades in the last Left bastion in the country.

In just three weeks after the SC judgement, Kerala has been reduced to a violent, seething mass of agitators seeking to preserve the status quo at a forest-bound temple that debars women between 10 and 50 years from entering its precincts. From Pandalam, seat of the erstwhile royal family which claims a kinship with the deity, to Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, thousands of protesting women, organised by the hydra-headed RSS and various Hindu outfits, have been swarming across the state demanding that the CPM-led Left Democratic Front government file a review petition in the Supreme Court and also issue an ordinance to stop women of the restricted age group from going to Sabarimala. The protests have exposed the ingrained obscurantism beneath the veneer of a progressive society and the cynical politics of religion that is at play.

Coarse, violent language – unheard of in Kerala – is making the headlines as the BJP whips up religious frenzy. Actor Kollam Thulasi shocked listeners as he told an NDA rally in Kollam that women who tried to enter the temple must be ripped in half. For good measure, Thulasi, a known BJP supporter, said one half of the woman should be sent to the chief minister’s office in Thiruvananthapuram and the other half to Delhi. “What we are seeing is a repeat of the Ayodhya madness and north Indian barbarity, both new to our state,” says P Jyothsna, a high school teacher from Irrity.

All of a sudden, the discourse is about “vishwasam” or belief, an odd subject for Kerala where the semantics of dialectic materialism continues to be discussed. The state, however, is a paradox in many ways, a place where religion and rituals fill the calendar while communist governments are voted in regularly. This time though things could change and, possibly, in a lasting way. The frenzied politics of religion that is being played out over Sabarimala is extraordinary and could well tip the balance of power and the fortunes of the three main political formations in the state: the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), the BJP’s NDA and the United Democratic Front of the Congress and its allies which includes the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).

It was odd to see the IUML lead a rally, complete with party flags, in Changanassery, Kottayam district, in support of Hindus protesting the opening up of Sabarimala. But there’s a good reason why IUML general secretary P.K. Kunhalikutty is openly backing maintenance of status quo at the Ayyappan temple... Read More