The Entry Of Women Into The Sabarimala Temple

The Sabarimala Temple is a temple that is located in Kerala, in India. Women who are in their reproductive age are actually not permitted to enter or even worship here, because of a ban which was laid out in the year 1991. This ban is said out of respect to the celibate nature of the God or a deity who is an underage teenager mail, in this temple. The Kerala High Court judgement had actually legalised this particular interpretation and ended up prohibiting women from entering the women since they are 1991. In the month of September in 2018, a judgement of the Supreme Court of India actually ruled that all Hindu pilgrims, regardless of their gender, can actually enter this particular temple. The Constitution bench of the Supreme Court said that any exception placed on women because of their biological differences would actually violate the Constitution.

I feel the above ban was definitely sexist and very backward of the people. I feel that human beings are allowed to worship whichever God they want to. It is all about the most basic rights of human beings. Continually, the ban actually violates the right to equality under the article 14 and also freedom of religion under the article 25. It was in clear violation of a lot of things in the Indian Constitution and the articles under it. This particular verdict led to a lot of protests by millions of Ayyappa devotees. A lot of devotees ended up opposing the verdict. 10 women, who were mostly leftist activists from Kerala itself actually attempted to enter the Sabarimala temple, despite threats of all kinds of physical assault against them, but they failed to reach the sanctum sanctorum. Two women activists, defying the protests who belonged to the previously barred age group actually entered the temple through the rear gate, after successfully hiding their identity by making use of camouflaging attires on the second day of January in 2019 with the help of the state police. This illicit action was actually brought to the notice of the priest of the temple and the authorities. They actually ended up closing the temple for purification.

There are actually a lot of legends that exist when it comes to the God Ayyappa and how the temple actually came into existence. According to one of them, the God of the Sabarimala temple is a celibate being. When he defeated the evil demoness Mahushasuri, she actually turned into a beautiful woman. She had been cursed to live the life of a demoness, until the child is born out of the union of Shiva and Vishnu defeated her in battle. Ayyappan, being the abandoned son of Mohini and Shiva who is also an incarnation of Vishnu, could actually set her free after defeating her in battle. She proposed marriage to him, but he refused to say that he was going to live the life of a celibate.