By Invitation: Sabarimala- No stairway to heaven for our women

Heckled and harassed, donned in riot gear, the women who made their way to Sabarimala took the metaphorical leap towards a more liberal India. 82 years ago, Kerala burned when the Maharaja of Tranvacore, in a desperate attempt to keep his flock together, allowed Dalits entry to all temples. While the Brahmachari deity at Sabarimala might not be any the worse for the change, the average devotee has had trouble adjusting. Even so, has the Indian  woman finally found her ‘Dalit’ moment?

September 28, 2018 was a momentous day for gender equality in the country. That was the day when a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court struck down a long held religious tradition that kept women between the ages of 10 and 50 from entering one of the greatest Hindu temples of India,  the Sabarimala temple, administered by the Kerala government with the taxpayers’ money.

The judgment is one of the most significant to be delivered by the Supreme Court and yet very few people seem to have taken the time or effort to read it extensively. 

Consequently, we have a groundswell of anger and resistance by a section of devotees and political groups that do not seem to understand its rationale.

The Sabarimala temple was open last week, but the Supreme Court judgment was frustrated as no woman between the ages of 10 to 50  was allowed to enter it. The Kerala government has nobody to blame but itself for what is technically, a contempt of the court’s verdict.

Kerala has the highest literacy of 94 per cent and in the ranking of Indian states with the highest population speaking the official language, it tops once again as 98 per cent of its people speak Malayalam, its official language. It also has a vibrant social media. 

These factors should have motivated the Kerala government to translate the Sabarimala judgment into Malayalam and circulate it among the people. An informed citizenry is the only anti-dote to a misinformation campaign by ignorant or vested groups. Had more people read the judgment in the Sabarimala case, there would have been a lesser likelihood of ignorant or obstinate commentators publicly inflaming passions of the unread and uninformed.

The events that followed the judgment also shed a disturbing light on how our political parties perceive the finality of a considered order of the Supreme Court. 

If a judgment is unpalatable to our political parties, you begin to publicly hear them calling for its review,  never mind the merit of their proposed review petition. Perhaps the Supreme Court should set a firm example this time and punish the Kerala government, the Devaswom Board of Travancore and the chief tantri of the Sabarimala temple for flouting its judgment and, as a prelude to it, dismiss the clutch of review petitions whose mere pendency appears to have emboldened the authorities in Kerala to not treat the Sabarimala verdict with the seriousness it demands.

It is not too late for these authorities to remedy this serious failure by keeping the Sabarimala temple  open for a day or two more and limiting the entry to it to only women on these days.  Male devotees will then not be able to complain as they would have had their regular visitation already and the authorities will be able to make sure they are not around to prevent the female devotees from entering it.  I sincerely hope that such a course of action is adopted and the Sabarimala judgment is promptly implemented this week. Once a few women of the previously prohibited age group enter the temple, the resistance on the ground will have been symbolically broken and more women will be able to effortlessly visit it in due course of time.

The Sabarimala judgment is for the women of India and is not limited to the women of Kerala or to women that possess a certificate of ‘devotion’ conjured up by a few male devotees. Though there is much resentment about  a Muslim woman activist  trying to enter the temple in the past week, I appreciate her for demonstrating such courage in trekking towards the temple against all odds. Let us not forget that she was appropriately dressed and even carried her offering for Lord Ayyappa. Nobody has a right under our Constitution to extrapolate his own bigotry or prejudice upon Lord Ayyappa and seek to enforce it as His will.

No religious tenet or value, let alone that of an exalted religion like Hinduism, can oppose the argument that Lord Ayyappa would want women devotees of all ages to visit his abode physically and would never turn away any under any circumstance. Finally, there is also talk in some quarters about the possibility of the Union government imposing President’s rule in Kerala to supercede the elected government over its failure to enforce the Sabarimala judgment. But let me explain as a Constitutional lawyer that should the Union government do this, it will have to immediately enforce the Sabarimala judgment and hand over the governance of the state back to the LDF government. 

There is no escaping executing the judgment!, religious thought or vested interests to delay that ‘momentous day’, any further!

The author is an advocate of Supreme Court.