Over 700 women are seeking permission to visit the temple.
A day before she landed at Kochi airport on a chartered flight wanting to go to Sabarimala for a darshan of Lord Ayyappa, Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, to a query as to whether the state government would provide security to Trupti Desai, countered by asking, “Who is Trupti Desai?”. On Friday, Vijayan’s police confined the leader of Bhumata Brigade along with six other activists to the airport in a high-voltage drama lasting over 14 hours, before herding them off in a flight to Pune, citing law and order problems. Desai and company were not allowed to step out as “devotees” of Lord Ayyappa, mainly BJP workers, opposed to the entry of women of a certain age to the shrine, had laid a siege on the airport as the police stood watching. The Sabarimala temple formally opened on Friday for the first two-month-long pilgrim season, known as “Mandala puja”, when millions converge, after the Supreme Court verdict on 28 September, allowing entry of women of all ages to the temple. Before this the temple was opened for five days in October and for a day early this month that saw large scale violence and arrest of thousands protesting the government decision to implement the court order at any cost. As was then, on Thursday too, at an all-party meeting held at the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, CM Vijayan turned down all appeals for a conciliatory move and asserted that the state government was duty bound to execute the Apex Court order, leading the Opposition Congress and BJP to stage a walkout. Still, the Kerala police could not ensure even the travel rights of an individual, considering the fact that only a motley crowd of protesters had collected in front of the airport when Desai and other activists landed at 4.30 am on Friday. No wonder certain Opposition leaders had termed the day-long dharna at the airport as a farce enacted by the government to divert attention from its failure in providing even basic amenities for the pilgrims en route to the shrine.
As Trupti Desai and other activists were held captive at the Kochi airport and the protesting crowd gathered strength under the watchful gaze of the police and CISF personnel, who did nothing to disperse them, elsewhere in far off Pamba at the foothills of Sabarimala, a real farce unfolded when the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which controls the temple, announced its decision to move the SC seeking more time to implement its order. On the face of it, this is seen as a climbdown on the part of the Pinarayi government, which had refused to approach the court on its verdict in any manner, but actually it is inconsequential. Board president and CPM legislator, A. Padmakumar, who was publicly chided by Vijayan for announcing TDB plans to move a review petition one-and-a-half months ago, said the petition would cite the dilapidated condition in and around Pamba after the devastating flood in August, restrictions on infrastructural developments imposed by the Supreme Court’s empowered committee and of course the violence last month. “The petition will not mention any time frame for delaying the implementation of the SC order,” he said, adding it would be submitted on Monday. Ironically, the court had not set “any time frame” regarding entry of young women into the temple. Instead, it was the state government which hurried with its decision to facilitate entry of women of all ages at the first instance when the temple doors opened for pujas at the beginning of the Malayalam month of Thulam, which was in October. A Constitution bench of the Supreme Court headed by the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra in a 4-1 verdict had simply struck down a rule that disallowed girls and women in the 10-50 age group from entering the Sabarimala temple. So where is the question of a deadline on such entry coming into the picture at all, many wondered; this is nothing but a ploy by the ruling government to paper its own failure in implementing the order while taking a grandstand over the issue, they said.
A wiser Trupti Desai and friends have vowed to return, unannounced, before the end of Mandala puja. Meanwhile, there are apparently over 700 women who have so far registered with the police seeking permission to visit the temple. Before leaving, Desai had told some newspersons that the police had repeatedly urged them to return as the “possibility of violence cannot be ruled out”. The government seems to be unfazed about the stand-off with protesters of different hues. While one minister has said that Desai was a Congress agent, another claimed she was a “paid agent of the RSS”. This shows that the government and CPM are still viewing the ongoing agitation through the prism of politics. No saner element in Kerala will deny the fact that the Opposition, especially the BJP, is trying to capitalise politically in the name of Lord Ayyappa. It is appalling that the government is trying to paint every aggrieved devotee with the same brush. Basically a god-fearing society, it will take time for a majority of believers in the state to accept the changing mores. But there is hope floating around for millions of women and men who wish that at least one young woman sets her sight on Lord Ayyappa this mandala season itself, at least to break the man-made myth surrounding the deity’s celibacy and end politicisation of a place of worship cutting across all religions and boundaries.