No place for women: Sabarimala a blot on Kerala's progressive state status

The Sabarimala protests are a blot on the progressive state whose highest literacy has not translated to good education.

Business Standard : From the time I can remember my grandmother, only one image of her comes to my mind – of a widow with a tonsured head, wrapped on top by a dull brown cotton saree worn in traditional style, a blank forehead without the usual red vermilion or ‘kumkum’, bare neck, empty ears and hands unadorned and shorn off all jewellery. Her ankles and feet were bare too – without the traditional anklets or silver rings worn on the toes of both feet – the symbol of married women.

A very vivid story of my grandmother is etched in my memory. I had gone to Melkote, the idyllic temple town near Mysore – where she lived with one of her sons, my maternal uncle – during my school summer holidays from Gorur, where I studied in the local government Kannada medium school.

ALSO READ: BJP-RSS and CPI(M) workers clash over Sabarimala issue in Kerala again

In those days, a favourite vacation was being taken to your mother’s birth place to be with your grandmother, carefree and pampered. I must have been eight or nine. My older sister was by my side. I’m not sure what triggered this poignant episode that my grandmother recounted, but it was heart rending. Her eyes had welled up in tears, and with dreamy eyes into her distant past she narrated this event.

She was married off as a child-bride of 13 to a boy – also young, just 16 – who was studying to be a Sanskrit pundit and training to become a purohit (priest) in Melkote, a Srivaishnavite pilgrim centre founded by Ramanuja a thousand years ago. When she was in her late thirties her husband took ill and died. She had three children – two boys and a girl, my mother. They were all in their teens and in school.

She was in total shock and grief. But what she remembered with unbearable pain was the day the various ceremonies and rituals were performed in public in the presence of relatives and other locals of the village, the manner her widowhood was formalised and announced. She was seated on the floor amid two priests, who surrounded by many relatives, chanted various mantras.(Sabarimala Temple)

First they removed all her ornaments, including her mangalasutra – the holy necklace that her husband had tied around her neck on the day of her wedding – then they smashed the glass bangles on her wrists contemptuously, removed the rings in her ear lobes and her toes, unfastened the anklets, erased her vermillion roughly even as she shook and sobbed inconsolably and was drowning in her sorrow.

A village barber was ready and waiting with his sharpened blades who was ushered in to perform the ritual of tonsuring her head. As she was bent , broken in sorrow, the barber shaved her and she recalled with tears how her copious and luxuriant tresses fell to the ground. The chanting continued. She was dizzy and overwhelmed by the events. Then she was led to the bath and after her relatives poured water on her and scrubbed her, she was given a plain brown cotton saree which became her prison uniform for the rest of her life... Read More

Sabarimala braces for pilgrims, protests after Hindu group leader's arrest

The temple had opened Friday evening for the two-month-long annual pilgrim season as a stand-off continued over the entry of menstrual age women into the shrine.

Business Standard : Thousands of pilgrims offered prayers at Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala early Saturday, the first day of Malayalam month of 'Vrischikom,' even as a 12-hour strike against the preventive detention of a Hindu Aikya Vedi leader began. 

Pilgrims, including children, queued up in large numbers since the temple opened at 3 am.

The temple had opened Friday evening for the two-month-long annual pilgrim season as a stand-off continued over the entry of menstrual age women into the shrine. All regular pujas began this morning under the supervision of the new Melshanti (chief priest) Vasudevan Nampoothiri.

Amid unprecedented security, Kerala State Transport Corporation buses were bringing pilgrims from Nilackal to Pamba and no services had been stopped, KSRTC sources said. Shops and hotels near the temple complex were open.

However, normal life was hit elsewhere in the state as the strike progressed; buses and auto-rickshaws remained off roads in several areas.

KSRTC Managing Director Tomin J Thachankary said the corporation was running buses in Sabarimala with police protection to help pilgrims reach the temple.

In Balrampuram near Thiruvananthapuram, protesters attacked a KSRTC bus and damaging its windows, he told PTI.

In the state capital, passengers had a tough time in getting vehicles to reach their respective destinations due to the hartal. Many patients and their relatives were unable to reach the regional cancer centre and Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital.

The Aikya Vedi state president, K P Sasikala, who was on a pilgrimage to the Ayyappa shrine, was taken into "preventive custody" near Marakkootam, close to Sabarimala, at 2.30 am after she allegedly defied the orders, police said.

Police had decided not to allow devotees enter the temple premises when it was closed for the night.

Sasikala was stopped by them late Friday night when she was on her way to the shrine with the traditional "Irrumudikettu" (offerings to Lord Ayyappa carried by devotees on their head) as the temple would have been closed by the time she would have reached there.

She was later taken to Ranni police station.

Sudheer, leader of another outfit, was also taken into preventive custody.

Aikya Vedi protesters, meanwhile, gathered outside the Ranni police station and Erumeli and began "Nama Japa" protests Saturday morning.

Condemning the police action, BJP state president P S Sreedharan Pillai said the state government's effort is to "destroy" the Sabarimala pilgrimage... Read More

Sabarimala row: Protest erupts over woman's entry, journalists heckled

Police intervened and after ascertaining the woman's age, informed the protesting devotees that she was not in the 'barred' age group and escorted her away.

There was high drama at the Sabarimala temple complex Tuesday morning with devotees protesting against the entry of a woman pilgrim, suspecting her to be in the menstrual age.

Lalitha (52) from Tirur had come to the temple with 19 relatives, including women, for her grandson's 'chorunnu' (rice giving ceremony).

She was near the 'nadapandal' (area just before devotees climb the 18 steps to reach the sanctum sanctorum) when her group was suddenly surrounded by about 200 frenzied protesters clapping and chanting 'Ayyappa saranam' mantra, suspecting that she was below 50 years.

Police immediately intervened and after ascertaining the woman's age, informed the protesting devotees that she was not in the 'barred' age group and escorted her away.

Local media channels said journalists were also heckled in the protests, however, police denied that any such incident occurred.

Lalitha was later taken to a hospital after she complained of uneasiness.

However, after a while she and some of her relatives returned and offered prayers at the temple, which opened this morning for the "Sree Chitira Atta Thirunal" puja to mark the birth anniversary of the last king of the princely state of Travancore Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma.

As they were speaking to mediapersons after the 'darshan', some of the protesters heckled them.

"We didn't expect such a situation," Lalitha and some of her women relatives said.

On Monday, a 30-year-old woman, who had reached the base camp at Pamba along with her husband and two children, went back early this morning without offering prayers.

She had told police that it was her husband who was keen that she should worship at the Ayyappa temple.

The Ayyappa temple here opened Monday for the second time in three weeks for a two-day special puja amid unprecedented security over apprehension of protests by those opposing the Supreme Court order allowing women of all age groups into the shrine.

Hundreds of police personnel, including armed commandos, are keeping a tight vigil in the temple complex and nearby areas to prevent any untoward incident.

The doors of Sabarimala had opened for six days on October 17 for the first time since the Supreme Court allowed women of menstruating age group to enter the shrine, but none could make it to its hallowed precincts amid a welter of protests and violent clashes.

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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.

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