Women are always given rules regarding temples, on what days to go (not during menstruation), what to wear and how far inside the temple to go too. How many temples have you seen with women milling around inside the garba griha or inner sanctum? The irony here is the name garba griha essentially means womb, exclusive only to women. And there are women deities in there too, but women aren’t allowed.
Most of us get pretty frustrated by this discrimination, but one woman in Maharashtra calmly decided to defy her village by breaking into a famous temple dedicated to Shani in Shingnapur, a town of 4,000 in Ahmednagar district and around 330 km northeast of Mumbai. Incidentally, this is the same town where no house has doors but only the frames as entrances.
Villagers said the woman at the centre of the storm jumped over the barricade, offered prayers and then disappeared into the large crowd.
“It’s a long-held tradition at our village that women are allowed only till a few metres from the Shani idol. We have never prevented women from offering prayers but they are not allowed on the platform (where the idol is placed),” said Sayram Bankar, president of the temple trust.
However, what is worse is that after it became known that the woman entered the inner sanctum, the temple staff did this frantic ‘purification’ ritual for the idol to wash away the presence of the woman! Really, are we living in the middle ages?
While justifying the milk ‘abhishek’ to purify the idol – a five-feet-tall slab of black rock — Bankar said it was done to “respect the sentiments of villagers” who were unhappy over the way the woman touched the idol.
“As part of the penance, I have also offered to resign,” said Bankar.
This episode only serves to re-emphasise how society thinks of women in context with god and religion. Right now, faith and god are a birthright for men and only a privilege for women – a privilege that can be taken away without warning, a privilege which comes with clauses and restrictions.
However, the unidentified woman found support from political leaders and rationalists who said that her defiant act on Saturday reflected the changing times in a country where gender bias is rampant in many parts.
Besides women, many places of worship in India also bar people from the so-called lower castes from entering the sanctum sanctorum.
Image Courtesy: Abhishekkisla.wordpress
