Ten safe houses later, Sabarimala braveheart runs into trouble at home
After making history, Kanaka Durga now has to contend with a hostile family that hasn’t kindly to her path-breaking visit to the Sabarimala temple.
Thirty nine-year-old Kanaka Durga, one of the two women who made history by becoming the first to enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala after the Supreme Court lifted a ban on women’s entry last September, probably had no idea about the hostility the trek would breed in her family.
The hostility eventually landed her in hospital on Tuesday after a a fight with her mother-in-law.
Not much is know about her expect that she is a civil servant and mother of two and had made an abortive attempt to enter Sabarimala temple in December.
In an interview to The News Minute last week Kanaka Durga, who hails from Angadipuram in Mallapuram district, had said that her family had no clue that she had left home to go to Sabarimala and they would have opposed if they had known.
The two women’s daring trek to the temple had riled right wingers also who launched violent protests that raged for days and led to the arrest of over 3000 people. She and Bindu Ammini (40) a lecturer from lecturer from Kozhikode district shunted through more than 10 safe houses to escape angry traditionalists.
Both Kanaka Durga and Bindu had decided to return home two weeks after their Sabarimala entry, believing that the situation had calmed down. But Kanaka’s daring trek into the Sabarimala temple despite stiff opposition has triggered a spilt in her own family and led to a violent showdown with her mother-in-law.
Earlier, her brother Bharath Bhushan had accused the CPI(M) and Kerala police of hatching a conspiracy to enable Kanaka Durga and Bindu enter the temple. He had told The Times of India that the police did not allow Kanaka Durga’s husband and relatives to contact her for days and hid her in an unknown location after their first attempt to visit Sabarimala in December failed.