Amid protests against the Supreme Court order opening the Sabarimala temple in Kerala to women of all ages, Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani on Tuesday, 23 October, said the right to pray did not mean the right to desecrate, reported PTI.
Speaking at the Young Thinkers’ Conference organised by British High Commission and the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai, Irani said:
“It is plain common sense. Would you take sanitary napkins seeped in menstrual blood into a friend’s home? You would not. And would you think it is respectful to do the same thing when you walk into the house of God? So that is the difference. I have a right to pray, I have no right to desecrate. That’s my personal opinion”Smriti Irani, Textile Minister
The Union minister added that she can’t comment on the SC verdict being a cabinet minister, but what she said was her personal opinion.
On 28 September, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, lifted the ban on the entry of woman of menstrual age into the Sabarimala temple.
However, ever since the doors of the shrine openned on 17 October, women have been stopped by Ayyappa devotees from climbing up to the temple.
According to a report in The Indian Express, Irani was also questioned about the protests at the base camp of the temple in Kerala, to which she replied by drawing a parallel from her own life.
“I am a practising Hindu married to a Zoroastrian. I have ensured that both my kids are practising Zoroastrians. Both of them have done their Navjote. When I took my newborn son to a fire temple in Andheri, I had to give him at the temple gate to my husband because I was shooed away.”Smriti Irani, Textile Minister
Irani Calls Her Comments ‘Fake News’
Soon after Irani made this statement in Mumbai, Michael Safi, a journalist with The Guardian, tweeted Irani’s statement along with a news article.
Irani was quick to respond to the tweet, calling it fake news. She also posted a video of her interaction at the ‘Young Thinkers’ conference and clarified her statement.
Irani also said her statement was being used as a bait against her, and that she hasn’t found any person who “takes a blood-soaked napkin to ‘offer’ to any one let alone a friend”.
Activist and Politburo Member of the CPIML, Kavita Krishnan questioned Irani’s statement about women wanting to carry “blood-soaked pads to desecrate Sabarimala” when the issue is that of them entering the temple.
Rumours About Rehana Fatima Carrying Sanitary Napkins
Earlier, similar rumours were doing the rounds on social media when Rehana Fatima, an activist who almost made it to the top at the Sabarimala temple, was accused of carrying sanitary napkins in her irumudi.
However, speaking to The Quint, Fatima had clarified, “People were using my Muslim name and tactics like spreading the idea that I was there to create trouble, that I carried sanitary napkins – all to misguide people. When people are already questioning if I am a devotee or not, planting this idea that I was a lady who had gone there to only create trouble, would aggravate them. So no one would anyway believe what I say.”
(With inpust from PTI and The Indian Express)
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