The hill shrine of Sabarimala in Kerala is at the centre of a brewing confrontation between the authorities and the devotees of Lord Ayyappa over the Supreme Court nod for the entry of young women into the famed temple. Fierce opposition by traditionalists who want to perpetuate the age-old bar on the presence of menstruating women on the temple premises has resulted in sporadic violence, especially in areas close towards the temple, as the police try to enforce the apex court verdict. As the sensitive religious issue is on the boil, prominent people have urged restraint so that peace is not a casualty.
Hameed Chennamangaloor, social critic
If the atmosphere in Sabarimala has become so strained it is because there are people out there eager to milk the situation for political gains.
The decision has been handed down by the Supreme Court, no less. Instead of coming out against the court verdict, those who claim authority over Hindu consciousness should have actually tried to convince the faithful about the need for change.
This was precisely what the intellectual wing of the RSS and BJP had said earlier. The Kerala mind can be easily persuaded to shake off social ills. In fact, our history is replete with such magical transformations of the mind.
We also have to accept that the government has an obligation to implement the court order. But while saying that, there are other issues that need to be touched upon.
Last year there was a Supreme Court verdict regarding the Syrian Orthodox Church. Was this government as determined then as it is now about implementing the Supreme Court order? I suppose not. This is hypocrisy.
This government has not succeeded in giving the impression that it was acting in a fair manner. Such double standards will only feed majoritarian fundamentalism that has built itself on the premise that mainstream political parties were appeasing the minority communities.
Now I have read reports that certain Muslim women's organisations are moving the Supreme Court seeking the entry of women in mosques.
Muslim community leaders in the state have vehemently objected to the government or courts meddling in the affairs related to faith even before the case has reached the highest court. They are even more extreme than right-wing Hindu forces. How will this government respond to a Supreme Court verdict that allows Muslim women to enter mosques?
I heard chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan talking sense when Muslim League leader P K Kunhalikutty said that courts should not interfere in matters related to faith. He told Kunhalikutty that if faith was above the law he was giving in to the designs of the Sangh Parivar.
Pinarayi said that such thinking would only embolden the Sangh Parivar to raise their pitch for a temple in Ayodhya. He made this argument more forcefully at a public function in Thiruvananthapuram a couple of days ago.
But the chief minister could have extended his argument. It was less than a week before his Thiruvananthapuram speech that a Muslim women's organisation had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking entry into mosques.
Pinarayi should have been strong and just enough to state that if the apex court rules in favour of the Muslim women, he would do all that he could to implement the order, just the way he did after the Sabarimala verdict. A chief minister's boldness should not be restricted to matters related to the Hindu community alone.
Until the government is seen as fair, it will be celebration time for communal forces.
Manoj Kuroor, poet and novelist
Nothing could be more ironic than sectarian strife in front of the Sabarimala shrine. No other deity is the flower of as diverse cultural soils as Ayyappa. He is the product of a multitude of religious, regional and caste influences.
The lore of Ayyappa is also a magical blend of tribal and national Bhakthi narratives. At the local level is the worship of 'chathan' by the tribes in the area, a typically boisterous 'Shaivite' kind of worship with liqour and meat. Then there is the serene Buddhist influence. The very name 'sastha' is a Buddhist derivative.
The Sabarimala mantra (Swamiye Sharanam Ayyappa) is similar in tone to the Buddhist mantra (Buddham Sharanam Gachamy). Ayyappa is the lord of mercy, a very Buddhist construct.
Ayyappa's unique birth, that he emerged from the highly unlikely union of Shiva and Vishnu, is perhaps the most telling metaphor of the Ayyappa lore. This was a time, in the medieval ages, when the Shaivites and Vaishnavites were at daggers drawn.
He is the child of these warring sects. The deity is the resolution. Ayyappa is the lord of the middle path. How can anyone ever think of fighting for extremes in the name of this God.
But he is not just a serene God. The 'petta thullal' ritual, which celebrates Ayyappa's slaying of the demon princess Mahishi, infuses him with a superheroic radiance. Then there is his deep friendship with the Muslim chieftain Vavar.
In short, Ayyappa encapsulates the very idea of Kerala. Ayyappa worship must have had shaped even South India's secular religious philosophy.
Kerala is a land where religious conflicts are virtually unheard of. In fact, there is no evidence, in any surviving archival material, that even hints at such religious conflicts.
It is in this historical context that the Supreme Court has ruled that women of all ages can enter Sabarimala. The Court was merely emphasising the progressive modern ideal of gender equality. I don't think any number of review petitions will reverse the decision.
The only thing that can be done is to leave faith to women. Let them decide. If faith stops them from entering the shrine, let it be so. If it prompts them to seek a darshan, let them be free to do so. To prevent them would be sacrilege. Because the Ayyappa cult allows for any number of possibilities.
But I would also advise against anyone going to Sabarimala with the intention to provoke. Let us not forget that some of the faithful have genuine concerns. It has to be calmed, not fanned.
Let us also not forget that our renaissance leaders, be it Sree Narayana Guru or Ayya Vaikundar or Ayyankali, even while pushing for social reforms had always given faith its space. That was also why they were listened to.
M N Karassery, writer and critic
Kerala is the first state in the country that had demanded temple entry for lower castes. The Vaikom Satyagraha in 1924 was perhaps the first stab at the evil of untouchability.
Even Mahatma Gandhi came here to take part in the satyagraha. But the demand was just short of temple entry for low castes. The struggle was to allow the lower castes to use public roads.
The Temple Entry proclamation came more than a decade later, in 1936. Mahatma Gandhi was so mesmerised that he said that this achievement would remain even if all the gains that Travancore had accumulated were drowned in the tide of time.
But now I fear that instead of taking at least a step forward from where such a revolutionary decision had catapulted us, Kerala is moving backwards. It was not as if there were no ultra-conservatives then. P Krishnapillai was thwacked on his head for ringing the bell of Guruvayur temple by intolerant Brahmins. But the fact was, the declaration was widely welcomed by the people.
We should realise that major social victories, the right of low caste people to walk on public roads or enter temples, happened during the rule of Kings or under the British Raj, and not when democracy was in place. They were also the result of popular mass movements.
But this right granted to women of all ages to enter Sabarimala was not won by a progressive reform movement or decreed by a democratic government but was something secured through a Supreme Court order.
Stranger is the fact that this is being opposed by women themselves. When the Supreme Court pronounces a verdict, we oppose it by calling a hartal and threatening to burn the Constitution. There is always a legal recourse. You can file a review petition. If we cannot respect the courts, what is the point of democracy.
But democracy has a congenital defect. It can employ people to fight themselves. Hitler is the product of democracy. See how women empowerment has been reinterpreted.
It has now come to mean the objection to women's entry into a temple. It has now come to mean the right of Muslim women to walk in public in purdah. The idea has been flipped upside down.
I strongly fear that Kerala has always been unfriendly to women. In 1986, after decades of legal struggle, educationist Mary Roy won inheritance rights for women. No one had stood by her. No different is the plight of women plantation labourers, salesgirls in large textile shops, nurses, and female actors.
Paul Zachariah, writer
Everyone should be willing to respect the Constitution. This is of paramount importance. Without adhering to constitutional values, how do we hope to bring peace in this country. It is the book that binds all of us.
This being the case, it goes without saying that a Supreme Court verdict that is based on the principles laid down in the Constitution should also be respected.
One cannot toss aside a Supreme Court verdict and then talk about peace. It beats me why people think that they can secure peace by rejecting a Supreme Court verdict.
Sabarimala's is not an isolated case. All that happens in Sabarimala will have repercussions not just for the state but for the entire country.
Of course, there is always the legal recourse open to those opposed to the verdict. You can file a review petition. But any protest that is founded on overturning the Constitution and court verdicts is anti-democratic.
To say that the law should submit to our needs is unpatriotic, even foolish. It strikes at the root of our nationhood. It negates our very existence as a nation.
You cannot build a democratic nation by faith alone. If faith is the sole guiding principle, it becomes a theocracy.
What the Supreme Court verdict essentially said, if you could break it down into its fundamentals, was that the state will have to remove the police women posted at the base of Sannidhanam to prevent the entry of women of certain age into Sabarimala. A barrier has been removed. It is as simple as that, but radical.
And it is one of a piece with the changes sweeping through the rest of the world. With the members of the European Union throwing open their borders, people travel from one country to the other as casually as we travel from Kochi to Kottayam or from Kottayam to Pala.
For a person like me who had travelled through Europe a lot, this change was stunning. There were enough economic and security-related reasons for them to close it down, but they have not. Barriers are meant to be torn down.
To me the only option left is for the political parties, media and other influential persons to take upon themselves the task of convincing the faithful why it is important to accept the Supreme Court verdict.
The majority in Kerala do not want a conflict in Sabarimala. Their sentiment has to be respected. Of course, it will also help if the state government acts sensibly while implementing the verdict of the highest judicial body.
N R Madhava Menon, founder of the National Law School of India University
It is mainly up to the state government and the Supreme court to restore peace in Sabarimala.
Just because there is a Supreme Court verdict does not mean that the government has to blindly implement it. Law and order is of primary concern. Police should not be used in such a large and menacing way as long as the protests are not violent. Hundreds of policemen escorting a women to Sabarimala is not the way to enforce a Supreme Court order. Such show of strength can be highly provocative. Then, given that things have developed in a manner no one had anticipated, the state government can very well approach the Supreme Court saying that the issue needs reconsideration.
The Supreme Court, too, can step in to ease the situation. There is a doctrine that the judges adopt at the apex level called the 'judicially manageable standards'. If they find that a particular issue not judicially manageable, they will defer it. The case will be kept in abeyance unless and until a solution is found that will not create new problems.
The Supreme Court also champions alternate dispute resolution methods. There are reconciliation and mediation cells in the Supreme Court itself. The Sabarimala is the kind of case that should have been referred to the mediation cell. Even now, it is not late.
It will be interesting how the Supreme Court will respond to the review. They can either dismiss it or they can say they are willing to conduct an open hearing. They can have a larger bench to examine the issue. There are innumerable instances where the Supreme Court has corrected itself.
At stake are two conflicting fundamental rights. The right to equality (Article 14-18) and right to practice and profess the religion of one's choice (Article 25-28). There is a need to find a balance. If you give all the weightage to equality, what will happen to religions like Hinduism that are based entirely on faith. These religions do not have an organised church or does not draw its spiritual energy from a single holy book. What if someone argues that worshipping a stone is unscientific and therefore unconsitutional? Faith has to be acceptable so long as it does not affect public order or public health.
Sections
