E-Paper
Two or ten? Confusion over number of women who made it to Sabarimala
People close to the tantri have accused the police of tampering with the numbers to make their case strong by showing that more women have entered the temple even as the Supreme Court is gearing up to hear a bunch of review petitions in an open hearing on January 22.
How many women have gained entry into Kerala’s Sabarimala temple so far two or 10? A war of words seem to have erupted among a section of the Kerala police, the Tranvancore Devaswom Board and the supreme priest who runs the Ayyappa temple after the police claimed 10 women have entered the shrine, while the tantri (supreme priest) insisted only two—Bindu Ammini and Kankadurga— have gained access.
People close to the tantri have accused the police of tampering with the numbers to make their case strong by showing that more women have entered the temple even as the Supreme Court is gearing up to hear a bunch of review petitions in an open hearing on January 22. The court on September 28 had allowed entry of women of menstruating age into the temple lifting a centuries old ban that prevented their entry due to a belief that the presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, is a celibate.
According to them, after the publicised entry of Sasikala, a Sri Lankan woman, two days ago, the tantri had checked the CCTV visuals to carry out a fresh round of purification rituals but abandoned the plans after failing to obtain any evidence of her presence near the sanctum sanctorum. “These are lies. The government wants to create an impression that there is a steady stream of women visitors after the entry of the two women,” said activist Rahul Eswar who is at the forefront of the agitation against the court verdict. “We have checked the visuals in detail. In the case of the Sri Lankan woman, the visuals do not match,” he said.
The Sabarimala Karma Samithi, an umbrella organisation of several Hindu outfits which is spearheading a movement against the verdict, also said the claims of the police were farfetched. “Details have emerged on how police trained these two women for more than 10 days prior to their temple entry. Vijayan’s (Pinarayi Vijayan, the Kerala chief minister) police will get only such activists, not real devotees,” said its leader KS Sasikala.
Kadakampally Surdendran, Devaswom minister defended the police saying that if they said more women visited the temple, then it could be true. However, he added that he did not have any evidence to prove this.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday blamed the Kerala government for failing to ensure law and order in the state and condemned the attack on the residence of its Rajya Sabha MP V Muraleedharan.
Union minister Smriti Irani accused Kerala government of detaining Sabarimala temple devotees who had “raised voices against the state government.” “The social, political and law and order situation in the state has deteriorated and neither the citizens nor MPs are safe,” she said.
Meanwhile, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala in a statement on Sunday accused the BJP, RSS and the ruling government CPM of “throwing the peaceful society of Kerala into an endless cycle of violence”.
“We also want to say that the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee is only espousing long held traditions of people of Kerala in a peaceful and in an amicable fashion in order to arrive at a solution, which is justifiable and acceptable to everybody,” he said.
