NEW DELHI // Fifty million pilgrims visit a Hindu temple in the south Indian town of Sabarimala each year, but none of them are teenage girls or women aged below 50.
The Hindu deity Ayappa is believed to sit in meditation there, having vanquished a demoness in battle. As long as he is at Sabarimala, the myth goes, he is sworn to celibacy. So the temple bars girls over 12 and women under over 50 to keep him from straying.
This centuries-old restriction is now under scrutiny by India’s supreme court. A special three-judge bench began expediting hearings last month on a petition filed nearly a decade ago by women members of the Indian Young Lawyers Association (IYLA).
The quick pace of proceedings suggests that a verdict may be imminent. On Monday, the head of the bench appeared to hint at the court’s thinking.
“Unless you have a constitutional right to prohibit women entry, you cannot prevent them from worshipping at the shrine,” justice Dipak Misra said.
He challenged the Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the temple, to prove that women had not prayed at the temple at any point in the past. “On what basis are you prohibiting women entry? What is your logic?”
The temple board argues that every Hindu shrine has a mode of worship specific to it and to its particular deity, and that the Sabarimala temple is predicated on Ayyappa’s celibacy.
“It is not a gender issue but the tradition of each shrine,” said Prayar Gopalakrishnan, the president of the board.
The Sabarimala case is one of several over the past year in which the judiciary has been asked to overturn traditional practices considered backward in the modern age.
On Wednesday, the supreme court refused to overturn its 2014 ban on jallikattu, a bull-wrestling event associated with the Hindu harvest festival of Pongal in Tamil Nadu, which fell on Friday.
The court had observed that the sport caused “considerable pain and distress to the bulls”.
In December, the court permitted temples to appoint priests as per the ancient Agama texts, which set down rules by which temples are to be built and run, and specify the knowledge that priests must possess. The court noted, however, that such appointments should not be based on caste. Traditionally, temple priests have been drawn from the Brahmin caste, the highest in the Hindu hierarchy.
Last August, the supreme court overturned a ban imposed by a lower court on Santhara, a ritual suicide act practised by members of the Jain religion.
“It’s difficult to say if there are just more such cases coming up before the court now, or whether the media is reporting them in greater detail,” said V Sivakumar, a Chennai-based lawyer.
In a country as deeply religious as India, these cases have inevitably drawn controversy.
Naushad Ahmed Khan, president of the IYLA, said he has received death threats because of the Sabarimala petition.
“I’ve received more than 700 telephone calls, including some calls from international [numbers], since Wednesday,” Mr Khan said.
Mr Sivakumar said India’s constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and held the state back from interfering with religious practices, except where such practices clashed with the rights of citizens or other fundamental freedoms.
“Normally the court does not interfere in age-old customs or what it calls ‘essential religious practices’,” Mr Sivakumar said.
The philosophical debates in these cases revolve around such distinctions. The court decided, for instance, that jallikattu is not “essential” to the festival of Pongal.
“Pongal will happen even without jallikattu,” justice Misra said on Wednesday.
In the case of Sabarimala, the court will decide whether the restrictions on women violate the gender equality guaranteed under the constitution. Mr Sivakumar said justice Misra’s remarks were made at an intermediary stage of the case.
“The court may well end up upholding the ban,” he said. “We may be reading too much into some ‘thinking out aloud’ by the bench.”
But critics maintain that the judiciary is simply out of touch with grass roots religious practices in various parts of the country.
“They don’t understand how important jallikattu is here in this part of the country,” said Balakumar Somu, a software engineer and a jallikattu enthusiast in Coimbatore.
“They don’t know the agrarian culture that produced a sport like this, and they don’t know that these practices hold rural Tamil Nadu together.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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Kamindu Mendis bio
Full name: Pasqual Handi Kamindu Dilanka Mendis
Born: September 30, 1998
Age: 20 years and 26 days
Nationality: Sri Lankan
Major teams Sri Lanka's Under 19 team
Batting style: Left-hander
Bowling style: Right-arm off-spin and slow left-arm orthodox (that's right!)
SPECS
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Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
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Points to remember
- Debate the issue, don't attack the person
- Build the relationship and dialogue by seeking to find common ground
- Express passion for the issue but be aware of when you're losing control or when there's anger. If there is, pause and take some time out.
- Listen actively without interrupting
- Avoid assumptions, seek understanding, ask questions
The specs
Engine: 2.7-litre 4-cylinder Turbomax
Power: 310hp
Torque: 583Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
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Married Malala
Malala Yousafzai is enjoying married life, her father said.
The 24-year-old married Pakistan cricket executive Asser Malik last year in a small ceremony in the UK.
Ziauddin Yousafzai told The National his daughter was ‘very happy’ with her husband.
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
TOURNAMENT INFO
Opening fixtures:
Friday, Oct 5
8pm: Kabul Zwanan v Paktia Panthers
Saturday, Oct 6
4pm: Nangarhar Leopards v Kandahar Knights
8pm: Kabul Zwanan v Balkh Legends
Tickets
Tickets can be bought online at https://www.q-tickets.com/apl/eventlist and at the ticket office at the stadium.
TV info
The tournament will be broadcast live in the UAE on OSN Sports.
More on Quran memorisation:
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Race 3
Produced: Salman Khan Films and Tips Films
Director: Remo D’Souza
Cast: Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Bobby Deol, Daisy Shah, Saqib Salem
Rating: 2.5 stars
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Specs%3A%202024%20McLaren%20Artura%20Spider
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The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 247hp at 6,500rpm
Torque: 370Nm from 1,500-3,500rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 7.8L/100km
Price: from Dh94,900
On sale: now