The Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala has generated quite a social turbulence. The initial response has been contradicted and a new studied reaction that takes to the streets has emerged. Organised Hinduism and disorganised mass belief have been dissimilar and often contradictory in evolutionary essence and intentions. Positions change and imputed rationale assume irrational proportions in the name of politics especially when religion is used as an opiate at the barricades to intoxicate at the hustings.
Orchestrated protests at the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala cannot be the voice of quintessential Hinduism or the enlightened Hindu. To deny and divide the lord in terms of opportunity of worship, or the monopoly to serve him ritualistically has been the curse of Hinduism and led to massive conversions in the past. The so called Hindu leadership has not learnt anything from history and continues to possess it as the monopoly of the upper castes imbued in the patriarchal. Divide and further divide, to monopolise power and wealth through religion, have been its unfortunate slogan. The British colonisers got their lessons on the methodology of perpetuating power from brahmanical Hinduism.
Will interdicting women from Sabarimala save the temple? Are women so accursed and impure? Are they not the form of Shakti, Durga and Kali or is that all hypocrisy raised to infinity to suit organised Hinduism’s intermittent interests. Are we justifying the injustices and wrongs perpetuated against women and Dalits from time immemorial? When Sati was banned, was it not a hallowed tradition and practice followed by the Hindus? There were strong protests led by women who cursed and derided Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the anti-Sati campaigners. When female infanticide was banned and windows allowed to remarry legally there were protests and curses flung against the reformers. Were not naked bosoms of low caste women part of tradition and ritualistic subjugation? Society has overcome all this and moved forward. Tradition had discouraged women’s education and the Hindu women were forced to use the veil/purdah long before the Muslims/Christians adopted it. Enlightened reformers intervening for democratic equality were accused of encouraging immorality, impurity and concomitant venality. They were imputed for playing with Indian tradition with the intention of despoiling Hindu religion. In Kerala, the profound advaitic scholar and sage Sree Narayana Guru, following in the footsteps of Adi Sankara, committed the greatest sacrilege that of an untouchable consecrating an idol of lord Siva. All hell broke loose but floods and fire did not consume the land. However, it did bring about revolutionary changes in the democratic sphere and equality and progress heralded the birth of a modern Kerala. Untouchability, unseeability, bare female bosom et al., became a thing of the past. Temple doors were opened to the ‘impure’ untouchables.
Kerala showed the way to the rest of India but in its progress, largely ensconced and represented by the former marginalised sections, was the hidden grievance of the lost feudal gentry and former upper castes who still nursed a grouse against the formerly shackled and exploited, who had now become their equals, if not masters. The former feudal elements still donning the role of secondary social contradictions saw in the right wing political parties their natural allies, hoping to turn the tables on the backward classes at a given political opportunity.
The Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala Sree Ayyapppa temple would go a long way in democratising worship and broad basing it- an unfinished historic task of Kerala’s socio-religious reforms and the freedom struggle. In democratic Kerala which fought feudal elements and exploitive monarchy there can be no recognised royalty – Pandalam or Travancore to pay obeisance to. All tradition in Kerala has to per se be subservient to the Constitution and democratic ethos. Bringing out women on the streets to challenge at the barricades a democratically elected government is not going to roll back the clock of progressive time. Bankruptcy in thought and action often lead to political frustration and religious symbols prove handy for political organisation and concerted action aimed at popular legitimacy. This is being demonstrated in Kerala in the aftermath of the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala Sree Ayyappa Swami temple. Religious fundamentalists of all hues often use such strategies to catch the public eye and announce their political relevance. Alarmed main stream political parties in a bid to neutralise the rightwing fundamentalist adopt a similar posture, with great vengeance polluting the socio-political landscape. Religion brought to the political core by secular political parties for organisational reasons, at the risk of nemesis, has historically proved catastrophic.
The socio-political machinations in the name of Sabarimala and its intentions are conspicuously abominable. In spite of the impiety and nefariousness of dragging Lord Ayyappa to the political streets of Kerala the show goes on with compunction. Community organisations, viz., the NSS and SNDP that played progressive roles in the past in terms of social reform have grown amnesiac to their own glory largely moved by personal ambitions of its leadership. Traditions as fossilised encrustations of the past economic and sociological aberrations have to make way for cultural transitions of the present. The attitude of the priests/thantris of Sabarimala are in many ways reminiscent of the attitude of Idanthuruttil Devan Nilakandan Nambiatiri who refused Gandhiji’s invitation for talks. Gandhiji was trying to reach a compromise with the orthodoxy but the haughty Namboothiri had refused to accept the invitation. The latter proclaimed that the ‘unapproachable castes were born as such due to their Karma and tradition enjoined that they be treated as worse than dacoits or robbers.’ (Correspondence on the Vaikkam Satyagraha, Vol.IX. English Records, Secretariat, Trivandrum). Are we carrying forward this tradition of Karma to justify ostracism? Sree Narayana Guru’s historic interventions in this regard are illuminative. The Guru after a thorough discussion with his disciple T.K. Madhavan and K.M. Kesavan, then general secretary of the SNDP had instructed: “Enter where entry is banned and face the consequences... Don't stop with walking through the road, enter the temple, every temple, every day, everybody.” It is only a question of time before all Hindu women will gain access to the Lord Ayyappa’s blessings at Sabarimala. Even if the right front of reaction succeeds in stalling the entry of women, their victory would be temporary and transitory relegating their roles to the dustbin of history. Attempts to make the Supreme Court verdict a political rallying point by misguided political parties is bound to be futile and politically unfruitful as a strategy in literate Kerala.
It is pertinent to remember that it was not tradition but reforms, like the Temple Entry Proclamation that stemmed the tide of Hindu conversions to Christianity and Islam. Historical facts and statistics clearly demonstrate that but for reforms, the Hindus would have been a small minority in Kerala. A night is not over by a single dream nor does a ‘single swallow a spring make’ as the adage goes’. A few vociferous demonstrations might attract media attention and political hullabaloo but does not stifle the sentiments of the people nor impede its long term march to progressive egalitarianism. Hinduism has to be the religion of democratic enlightenment and not of fossilized obscurantism and divisive hypocrisy.
(The writer is formerly director, School of Social Sciences and dean, faculty of social sciences, University of Kerala)
