A couple of days ago, a 12-year-old girl and her family from Puducherry were stopped as they reached Pamba and asked to produce ID cards. After seeing the card of the minor girl, the police told her she would have to stay back at a room at the base camp and her family could continue the trek to the famous Sabarimala temple with the deity of a celibate god. Similarly, hours before the shrine was opened for devotees for the current season, ten women from Andhra Pradesh were sent back from the hill shrine.
Notably, after a long battle, the Supreme Court had ruled that women of all ages can enter the temple. A five-judge Bench headed by former CJI Justice Dipak Misra had delivered the most welcome verdict in a 4:1 judgment. The only dissenting one was Justice Indu Malhotra, a woman. The whole rational human community rejoiced over the landmark verdict. But a negligible number of self-proclaimed protectors of archaic, illogical practices raised angry voices of protest. As per the law of the land, the governments promised all security to young women devotees between 10 and 50 years of age. Countless episodes of activists-women scuffles ensued, but the security forces stood by the young women and tried best to keep protesters warded off the scene.
As expected, a series of review petitions were filed. Justice Dipak Misra had retired meanwhile and the matter remained pending until the successor CJI delivered the verdict on the review petition just before he was to demit office recently. Unfortunately, the five-judge Bench seemed to have taken the matter a little more seriously than usual; and no one knows why they disposed the matter saying a seven-judge Bench would be more appropriate to take the call and rule. All the same, they made it amply clear that until the new verdict came, status quo be maintained, meaning all women could visit the holy shrine with state protection.
But suddenly, the Kerala Government turned crazy and declared no young woman could enter, which is a gross violation of law. The news has spread like wildfire; and strangely, the apex court has not taken suo motu cognisance of the offence and booked the Kerala Government for contempt as yet. The Kerala Chief Minister has concluded that the seven-judge Bench will most certainly overturn the landmark verdict by the Justice Dipak Misra-headed Bench. More surprisingly, even Union Government officials including the Prime Minister have chosen to remain dumb over the simple issue. Evidently, most of the actors at play have never looked into the matter by simply digging into history just once.
Some eminent Malayalis began to believe in the recent times that permitting young women would mean an assault on a tradition that upheld the immaculate chastity of their perpetually celibate lord. But history proves their memory is unforgivably blunt. That the ban is only a few decades old, and not some eternal, divinely-ordained diktat, has been conclusively established already. This message has been doing the rounds vigorously in media.
In a series of tweets, top Malayalam author NS Madhavan has severally stated that women used to worship at Sabarimala before restrictions were imposed in the second half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, TKA Nair, Adviser and Principal Secretary to former PM Manmohan Singh, recalled that he had his ‘choroonu’ (first rice-feeding, or annapraashana) on his mother’s lap at Sabarimala in 1940. His mother would have been well within the restricted age range as he says, “I have two sisters and a brother, all younger than me.” The queen of Travancore is also recorded as having visited the temple in 1939-40 when she was in her 40s. Evidently, the history and nature of the ban is not clear to most noisy, violent activists trying to keep women away from the sanctum sanctorum.
Knowledgeable local temple historians say authoritatively that the temple was not a widely-visited, popular one for long because of the forest. Renowned historian MGS Narayanan concurs, saying, “Hardly anybody went there” and “it had no all-Kerala importance until it was rebuilt following a 1950 fire.” This newfound popularity is said to have provoked the first formal restrictions. That is correct history.
In 1955-56, the Travancore Devaswom Board, which controls the administration of Sabarimala, under some pressure, issued two notifications banning women between the ages of 10 and 55 from the temple, noting that this was contrary to ‘the fundamental principle underlying the pratishtha (installation).’Again, a similar notification was issued in 1972. In 1965, the Kerala Hindu Public Places of Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules barred from any sacred place all young women at such periods during which they are not by custom allowed to enter a place of public worship. Hence, prohibiting women from the shrine is only a very recently-adopted tradition on record, to which even the apex court paid heed.
The highly-contentious Ayodhya land dispute could be resolved by the top court with a five-judge Bench, but CJI Gogoi and colleagues lost self-confidence in dealing with a simple issue involving women's entry into the Sabarimala shrine, where non-Hindus of any hue are permitted to enter merrily.
It is also on record that women just couldn’t be stopped once until the late 80s of the last century. So, some stray controversy continued to crop up now and then. For instance, no one could stop the shooting of a Tamil film in 1986 that featured an actress dancing in front of the steps of the temple. Once again in 1986-87 when scholar Radhika Sekhar visited the temple, she was turned back at the top landing of the steps. When she raised hell, they allowed her in through the northern entrance. All this drama did not happen during a period when Duryodhan planned disrobing of Draupadi.
Crazy activists kept the new fight on by continuously petitioning the Kerala High Court which gave in1991 a judgment providing some clarity as to the thitherto porous nature of this ‘woman ban'. The petitioners complained of young women offering prayers at Sabarimala, and specifically referred to the rice-feeding ceremony of the granddaughter of a former Devaswom commissioner. The grandmother responded by pointing out that the restriction only applied during the main pilgrimage seasons and that there was no problem during other periods. The temple was also open for the first five days of each Malayalam month when the rice-feeding ceremonies could be performed in the presence of young women, for which the Devaswom Board charged a specific amount of money towards fees.
What hurts secular, freedom-loving Indians is that the Supreme Court has chosen to remain silent over its own ‘status quo' order being brazenly disrespected by the Kerala Government. It must pass an order instantly to let women in until the judgment is overturned, which is just notlikely.