Sabarimala Row: Ayyappa Will Not Let Us Lose Hope

Far from the din and noise, the Sabarimala row calls for a real debate among women devotees, writes Vamsee Juluri.

A real debate needs to take place between women devotees who feel both a strong desire to worship at the Sabarimala and also that the custom as it exists is worth re-examining. (Photo: iStock)

For months, women activists of the Bhumata Brigade struggled relentlessly for their right to worship at the inner sanctum of the Shani Shingnapur temple; a place only men were allowed to access. In light of the Bombay High Court’s decision to finally allow women to enter the Shani temple after centuries of discrimination, The Quint is republishing pieces that were published during the height of the protests.

The first time I read about Sabarimala in a scholarly book, it was in the context of a discussion of a popular movie about Lord Ayyappa. I do not recall how much the authors explored the importance of the devotional and mythological genre in the lives of poor Hindus in India, but they certainly used what I thought was an exceptionally inaccurate-and harsh-phrase to describe the Ayyappa phenomenon. Ayyappa, they wrote, was a “lumpen cult.”

Why writers, who pride themselves on being progressive and pro-poor, resort to such condescending and ethnocentric claims is something I have never understood.

A liberal sensibility calls on us to understand the world of the believer, and at the very least – especially if he is not killing or hurting anyone else with his beliefs – give him or her their space to find meaning in a selfish, individualistic, and largely meaningless modern world. The poor men who go on the Ayyappa pilgrimage each year are not like rich tourists out on spring break or a beach holiday. They observe a religious practice that involves self-control, denial, and mastery. They believe, even if it is for a few weeks a year, that they have a higher ideal to aspire for. Their concerns and desires might sometimes seem mercenary, demands on the deity for mundane things like promotions and visas, rather than detachment and enlightenment.

Sabarimala temple in Kerala. (Photo Courtesy: The News Minute)

Religious Culture

But even in the guise of practical considerations, the truth is that they are part of a culture which reminds its members to carry out their duties to the world, to children, parents, and family, at the very least. That’s how religious culture plays out in India. It might be ostentatious, but there is also truth in a deeper, egalitarian, and democratic sense that our present-day discourses can’t often understand.

To call the media drama that has unfolded so far about Sabarimala and women a debate would be a euphemism. It has mostly been a barrage of presumptions, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. We find a position that in this context seems somewhat like a variation on a Groucho Marx statement. Some of those demanding to be let in to the club sound like people who don’t care one bit for it anyway. On the other hand, we have those who seem to be completely unaware of the fact that invoking tradition alone as a defence means nothing, considering how many bad things have been done in the very name of it.

Let’s Talk It Out

• Religious culture needs a deeper, egalitarian, and democratic understanding that our present-day discourses can’t fathom.
  
• Invoking tradition alone as a defence is not a substantive argument, considering how many bad things have been done in its name.
  
• A debate needs to take place between women devotees who seek to worship at the Sabarimala, and those who feel that the present custom is worth re-examining.
  
• In the wake of an ugly intellectual climate, assumptions of any kind should also be scrutinised.
  

Need for a Debate

A real debate, in my view, would need to take place between women devotees who feel both a strong desire to worship at the Sabarimala, and those who feel that the present custom is worth re-examining. This is needed in the light of modern practices and facilities on one hand, and the traditional management of the temple, on the other. It cannot be a charade, where the supposed opponents of gender discrimination doggedly ignore much wider and systematic practices of female exclusion from places of worship, and go after one remote and unrepresentative case as if they are on some exalted crusade for justice.

The problem is not with calling for freedom, but in the fact that unless those who are fighting for it are actually in the shoes (or barefoot and bound to vows as the case may be) of those who have a stake in it; the whole thing could well be an excuse for an invasion and conquest as we have seen all too well. Whole continents were stolen by people claiming to give the natives their “freedom.” Even in our times we have witnessed the disastrous destruction of countries with rich civilisational pasts all in the name of giving them “freedom.”

In the hands of those who fundamentally disbelieve in the whole premise of an institution and its philosophy, even a call for something as important and inevitable as freedom too sounds suspect.

None Should be Barred

After all, this is still a religion where they say that the exclusion of devotees because of prejudice led to whole deities turning around to vindicate them, as in Udupi (where, incidentally, the new Mathaadhipathi, the much-lauded Pejawar Swami, has made a strong statement about inclusiveness recently).

Hinduism is still a religion where they say that the exclusion of devotees because of prejudice led to whole deities turning around to vindicate them. (Photo courtesy: http://www.sabarimala.org/)

They say none should be barred from their right to God’s love because of their birth. They say, and we say it too, still.

But when we live in a skewed and ugly intellectual climate where even the most socially sensitive observers presume that there is a “lumpenness” to a popular religious tradition of the masses, then that presumptiveness must be questioned even more than the supposed tradition we have questioned so far.

Altering the Public Discourse

Traditional scholars of Hinduism, male and female, could engage with legal activists in a respectful and educated manner and have a real dialogue instead of the sort of self-righteous circus we have seen so far. This is not to blame the zealousness of the activists demanding change or the inarticulateness of those defending custom either. Both are a symptom of a neglect that has plagued the Indian public discourse for several decades now.

But the hope is that there are people who are still talking, both of change, and of the wisdom in what already is there that we did not know of. They know things that neither the simple worshipper nor the etic critic know very much about. There is still hope in our own knowledge, and agency. And Ayyappa, and all the names and forms by which we yearn to grow and become better in the course of our human struggles, will not ever let us lose that hope.

(Vamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco and the author of “Rearming Hinduism”.)

Also read:

Open Letter to the Man Who Doesn’t Want Women to Enter Sabarimala

Why Women Can Easily Tackle the Sabarimala Debate, Even Without SC