Women’s entry at Sabarimala: Supreme Court refers matter to larger bench

Five judge bench rules by 3:2 majority, Justices Chandrachud and Nariman dissent

A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday referred to a larger bench pleas seeking a review of its 2018 ruling that allowed menstruating women from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice A M Khanwilkar and Indu Malhotra said a larger bench will hear if the court can decide matter of religious practice. Justices R F Nariman and DY Chandrachud gave dissenting opinion.

The bench said petitions had “sought to revive the debate about what’s the religion and essential religious practices”. “Individual right to pray at temple cannot be superior to what is considered as religious by another sect is what petitions have argued,” the court said, according to News18.com.

The court had on September 28, 2018, scrapped a ban on women and girls between 10 and 50 from at the temple, ruling that a centuries-old Hindu religious practice was illegal and unconstitutional. The verdict comes two days before the temple opens for the two-month-long pilgrimage season from November 16. The court’s verdict sparked protests across Kerala, mainly led by caste outfits like the NSS and right-wing Hindu organisations of the Sangh Parivar…

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Entry to Sabarimala a big step forward for gender equality? Ask Dalit women

Clearly, the people celebrating this victory at Sabarimala are predominantly dominant caste Hindu women

Current Affairs: Over the past few days, I, as a Dalit woman, have been trying hard to understand the reasons why the entry of two women into the Sabarimala temple was being hailed as a momentous victory for women’s rights in India. I must confess that I attempted in vain to try and see the logic behind this celebration. Finally, the only way I could wrap my head around this was to temporarily stop thinking as a Dalit woman.

I struggled to make this shift in my head. I told myself not to think about ‘intersectionality’. I kept telling myself to analyse this phenomenon in a vacuum (read: without caste). I tried to build a rationale in my head about the need for understanding this only through a ‘gender’ lens. Think as a ‘woman’, not as a Dalit woman, I kept repeating to myself. [I later figured why I could not do this – read on. You will know why.]

What is being celebrated? Who are the folks calling this a big step forward in women’s rights? How does the entry into the Sabarimala temple signal freedom for women?

Clearly, the people celebrating this victory at Sabarimala are predominantly dominant caste Hindu women. No single person is ever representative of the entire community and the same holds true for Dalit women as well. From an anti-caste feminist stand-point, the savarna-led feminist movement’s pressure to see this as a great victory for women – all the while being caste-blind – is reductionist, self-centred and hypocritical. There are three reasons I say so.

Dismantling patriarchy for gender equality?

For a long time, I assumed that the feminist movement in India aimed to puncture patriarchy. This primarily indicates that the path to gender equality meant freedom from male control, which in turn meant applying the brakes on obeisance to men.

For the life of me, I do not understand how ‘patriarchy’ is attacked when women devotees bow down before male priests and a male celibate god? Where in this spectrum lies the end of misogyny? So can somebody please explain to me how and why is the savarna women-led feminist movement in India claiming this to be a historic win for women rights?

Contain Source by Business Standard or BS

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.

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.|Read Source: BS

Sabarimala row: In a first, 2 women below 50 enter temple after SC verdict

The two women had attempted to visit Sabarimala temple in December last year but failed amidst massive protests

Latest News: Two women devotees, below the age of 50 years, have entered the renowned Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala for the first time, months after the Supreme Court overturned a ban on the entry of females of menstrual age (10-50 years) from visiting the shrine.

The two Keralite women, Bindu and Kanakadurga, who are in their 40s, entered the temple premises and offered prayers at around 3:45 am on Wednesday. They were accompanied by police personnel.

The two women had attempted to visit Sabarimala temple in December last year but failed amidst massive protests.The top court had lifted a traditional ban on entry of women in the barred age group on September 28 last year.

Despite the apex court’s ruling on the matter, a string of protests took place at the Sabarimala temple and its surrounding areas in the state, wherein several women attempted to visit the shrine, but were stopped by Lord Ayyappa devotees.|Read More: BS

Sabarimala temple updates: Shastras can be amended, says Subramanian Swamy

BJP, RSS, Congress and Hindu groups are up in arms against SC ruling lifting the ban on entry of women in Sabarimala Temple. Catch top developments at Business Standard

The gates of Sabarimala are set to open today. Tension prevailed in the morning in Kerala’s Nilackal after the police used force to disperse devotees opposing the entry of girls and women of menstrual age into the hill shrine. Acting tough, the police, deployed in large numbers in Nilackal, some 20 kms away from the Sabarimala hilltop, also removed a makeshift shelter erected by a protesting group Sabarimala Achara Samrakshana Samiti. The protesting group of devotees had been staging a sit-in chanting Ayyappa mantra in the shelter in protest against the Supreme Court order permitting women of all age groups to enter the shrine. The BJP, RSS, Congress  (BS)and Hindu groups are up in arms against a September 28 Supreme Court ruling lifting the ban on entry of women in the 10-50 age group into the temple, saying it will breach age-old traditions.

Here are top 10 developments on Sabarimala temple row

1. Police detain people protesting against the entry of women in the age group of 10-50 women to Sabarimala Temple.

2. Subramanian Swamy backs SC decision

Supreme Court has made a decision, but now you are saying that it’s our tradition. Triple Talaq was also a tradition in that way, everybody was applauding when it was abolished. The same Hindus have come to the streets now, said Subramanian Swamy.

It’s a fight b/w Hindu Renaissance and obscurantism. Renaissance says all Hindus are equal& caste system should be abolished. Because no Brahman today is only intellectual, they’re in cinema,business as well. Where is it written that caste is from birth?Shastras can be amended, he added.

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