nous indica
The Tribune, October 15, 2018
It is for all religions now to embrace the spirit of the SC verdict
No science here: If faith becomes rational, can it be termed faith?
Rajesh Ramachandran
The Sabarimala verdict is being treated as a gender issue and a victory for women’s rights. As a Sabarimala pilgrim since my childhood, I can vouch that this verdict allowing fertile women access to the hill shrine is neither. The petitioners are not devout women devotees who are dying to seek Ayyappa’s blessings, or demanding rights of temple entry for their comrades-in-faith. In fact, they remind one of the BJP’s concern for Muslim women and triple talaq. The ban on menstruating women to the Sabarimala temple is a mix of a pre-modern sense of hygiene, tradition and superstition, which have all come to be packaged as faith. In Kerala, most Hindu households used to light a lamp in the evening, when the elderly and the children used to sit down to chant shlokas, recite spiritual Malayalam poetry or simply sing devotional movie songs (depending on the relative education of the household).
The woman of the house usually lit the lamp. And she didn’t do it during her periods. In an era before sanitary pads, the womenfolk probably thought it better to keep away than soil the puja room with bodily fluids. This applies to boys and men too, who were debarred from anything pious without a bath. Obviously, the logical extension was to keep off temples, too, during menstruation. The Sabarimala trek used to be a long arduous one through dense forests. The difficulty, the longevity and the unpredictability of the trek, and the Buddhist origins and traditions around the temple could also have been a deterrent for women. So, only girls below 10 and menopausal women used to make the trip; though there have been exceptions galore.
Whatever was the reason that kept women out of the temple for so long, the verdict is welcome as a judicial intervention in faith. It is difficult for a society to reform itself without an outside agency. Here the Anglo-Saxon law, the Constitution and rationalism displayed by judges, who probably do not believe, have decided to force open the closed minds of the faithful. Women are doing everything that they should wearing sanitary napkins. Now, why should the menstrual cycle stop them from going to a temple? It is very difficult for a woman devotee to logically shake off centuries of habit and traditions, which have the force of superstition. A belief becomes an oppressive compulsion when it is accompanied by fear. The wrath of God has kept societies in darkness. Unfortunately, rationalism is often the privilege of the entitled class. A weak person, miserably poor, with nothing but blind faith to help her suffer the ignominies of life cannot obviously afford to take the risk of inviting God’s displeasure.
The Supreme Court has now asked the women of Kerala to do exactly that. And that is why this verdict is indeed path-breaking. Otherwise, not going to Sabarimala is not like being thrown out of the marital home without alimony or becoming the fourth wife of a wife-beating, marital rapist or being denied equal property rights or representation in elected bodies or raping a nun. Not going to Sabarimala was part of a ritual for a devotee, just like going to Sabarimala was. There are women who wait for their hysterectomy to make the trip. If faith becomes rational, can it be termed faith? For instance, there is a Devi temple in Kerala where the goddess is believed to menstruate and the idol won’t be available for darshan those four or five days in the temple’s calendar.
Every religion has such quaint practices that seem abhorrent to someone from an alien culture. The verdict is an outsider’s gaze into the temple practices of Kerala. Only an outsider can easily pick out what is outlandish in customs that are the norm for a society. Now, this gaze has to be consistent in two ways. We need to look at all religions from a gender perspective and only then will we see the repressive patriarchy that rules all religious institutions. Menstruating women going to Sabarimala is a very minor issue when compared to the misogynist tyranny of the temples, mutts, deras, churches and mosques. Kerala has been a progressive state for all reasons. The Kerala society, instead of hanging on to moth-eaten traditions of a pre-napkin era, should herald a revolution by appointing women head priests in all temples. The majority community should always take the lead in social reform measures, for only then will the minorities gain confidence in its motives in bringing in a positive change.
Kerala had the first Dalit vedic priest in a traditional temple. Why not women? There ought to be a 50 per cent reservation for women in all big temples of India. Women priests should worship God, just as they fly aircraft, send rockets and run this country. As a next step, the Supreme Court should take note of the anti-women activities that are going on within other religious denominations, particularly the Catholic Church. In the very same state, five nuns had to do a sit-in for a fortnight for a rapist bishop to get arrested. The alacrity shown by the petitioners in the Sabarimala case ought to have been repeated here, but was sadly missing. It took almost three months for the bishop to get jailed and no Marxist leader of Kerala found it amiss.
The Sangh Parivar has all along thrived building a Hinduism-under-siege bogey. This narrative has started playing out in Kerala, highlighting the differentiated approach by the law-enforcing authorities towards Sabarimala and the bishop’s rape case. The Sabarimala petitioners can restore the balance by seeking to intervene in two issues: the treatment of nuns by the ruling clergy, and misuse of confession, a holy sacrament, by some unscrupulous priests to blackmail and rape the faithful women. Here, too, the solution is pretty simple: allow women to become priests in all denominations. Let the petitioners demand women bishops for the Catholic Church in India.
No science here: If faith becomes rational, can it be termed faith?
Rajesh Ramachandran
The Sabarimala verdict is being treated as a gender issue and a victory for women’s rights. As a Sabarimala pilgrim since my childhood, I can vouch that this verdict allowing fertile women access to the hill shrine is neither. The petitioners are not devout women devotees who are dying to seek Ayyappa’s blessings, or demanding rights of temple entry for their comrades-in-faith. In fact, they remind one of the BJP’s concern for Muslim women and triple talaq. The ban on menstruating women to the Sabarimala temple is a mix of a pre-modern sense of hygiene, tradition and superstition, which have all come to be packaged as faith. In Kerala, most Hindu households used to light a lamp in the evening, when the elderly and the children used to sit down to chant shlokas, recite spiritual Malayalam poetry or simply sing devotional movie songs (depending on the relative education of the household).
The woman of the house usually lit the lamp. And she didn’t do it during her periods. In an era before sanitary pads, the womenfolk probably thought it better to keep away than soil the puja room with bodily fluids. This applies to boys and men too, who were debarred from anything pious without a bath. Obviously, the logical extension was to keep off temples, too, during menstruation. The Sabarimala trek used to be a long arduous one through dense forests. The difficulty, the longevity and the unpredictability of the trek, and the Buddhist origins and traditions around the temple could also have been a deterrent for women. So, only girls below 10 and menopausal women used to make the trip; though there have been exceptions galore.
Whatever was the reason that kept women out of the temple for so long, the verdict is welcome as a judicial intervention in faith. It is difficult for a society to reform itself without an outside agency. Here the Anglo-Saxon law, the Constitution and rationalism displayed by judges, who probably do not believe, have decided to force open the closed minds of the faithful. Women are doing everything that they should wearing sanitary napkins. Now, why should the menstrual cycle stop them from going to a temple? It is very difficult for a woman devotee to logically shake off centuries of habit and traditions, which have the force of superstition. A belief becomes an oppressive compulsion when it is accompanied by fear. The wrath of God has kept societies in darkness. Unfortunately, rationalism is often the privilege of the entitled class. A weak person, miserably poor, with nothing but blind faith to help her suffer the ignominies of life cannot obviously afford to take the risk of inviting God’s displeasure.
The Supreme Court has now asked the women of Kerala to do exactly that. And that is why this verdict is indeed path-breaking. Otherwise, not going to Sabarimala is not like being thrown out of the marital home without alimony or becoming the fourth wife of a wife-beating, marital rapist or being denied equal property rights or representation in elected bodies or raping a nun. Not going to Sabarimala was part of a ritual for a devotee, just like going to Sabarimala was. There are women who wait for their hysterectomy to make the trip. If faith becomes rational, can it be termed faith? For instance, there is a Devi temple in Kerala where the goddess is believed to menstruate and the idol won’t be available for darshan those four or five days in the temple’s calendar.
Every religion has such quaint practices that seem abhorrent to someone from an alien culture. The verdict is an outsider’s gaze into the temple practices of Kerala. Only an outsider can easily pick out what is outlandish in customs that are the norm for a society. Now, this gaze has to be consistent in two ways. We need to look at all religions from a gender perspective and only then will we see the repressive patriarchy that rules all religious institutions. Menstruating women going to Sabarimala is a very minor issue when compared to the misogynist tyranny of the temples, mutts, deras, churches and mosques. Kerala has been a progressive state for all reasons. The Kerala society, instead of hanging on to moth-eaten traditions of a pre-napkin era, should herald a revolution by appointing women head priests in all temples. The majority community should always take the lead in social reform measures, for only then will the minorities gain confidence in its motives in bringing in a positive change.
Kerala had the first Dalit vedic priest in a traditional temple. Why not women? There ought to be a 50 per cent reservation for women in all big temples of India. Women priests should worship God, just as they fly aircraft, send rockets and run this country. As a next step, the Supreme Court should take note of the anti-women activities that are going on within other religious denominations, particularly the Catholic Church. In the very same state, five nuns had to do a sit-in for a fortnight for a rapist bishop to get arrested. The alacrity shown by the petitioners in the Sabarimala case ought to have been repeated here, but was sadly missing. It took almost three months for the bishop to get jailed and no Marxist leader of Kerala found it amiss.
The Sangh Parivar has all along thrived building a Hinduism-under-siege bogey. This narrative has started playing out in Kerala, highlighting the differentiated approach by the law-enforcing authorities towards Sabarimala and the bishop’s rape case. The Sabarimala petitioners can restore the balance by seeking to intervene in two issues: the treatment of nuns by the ruling clergy, and misuse of confession, a holy sacrament, by some unscrupulous priests to blackmail and rape the faithful women. Here, too, the solution is pretty simple: allow women to become priests in all denominations. Let the petitioners demand women bishops for the Catholic Church in India.
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