Sabarimala is not a question of gender, it’s not a question of culture, it’s not a question of fashion, it’s not a question of misogyny. It’s a question of certain traditions which has its origins which have been contorted and distorted and played out in a very different light in the public domain.
An open message to Indian Judiciary, Who does Sabarimala belong?
There is a very important and urgent need for Indian Judiciary to get educated on Hindu cosmology. Because if they are going to pass judgment on an issue concerning temples and various Hindu practices, they should understand a lot more than they seem to at the present time.
What is distinct about Hindu cosmology compared to all others is that the one divine, the one person, some will call God or lord takes from manifests in innumerable ways, an infinite variety of ways of coming and representing as a person in this world?
So, the deity, this is what we call, deity, the murti, in a temple that we go and worship is a living deity. This is a person sitting there and we have our interaction. It is not symbolic of somebody sitting in heaven. This is very different. The God in Abrahamic religions remains outside the cosmos always.
But in Hinduism the cosmology says very clearly, the divine is present in the cosmos.
So, we have a sacred murti which means, sacredness means divine presence. So, when this, to bring about the divine presence. So to bring about a certain process called pran pratistha is carried out when the temple is installed when the deity is installed. It’s a piece of stone until there is pran pratistha . Pran pratistha invites the deity to come and take this as their residence. So that particular deity starts living here. It is his or her home from this time onwards.
Now each form each deity has a distinct personality, a distinct lifestyle, a distinct set of habits, what they like and how they want to be approached. It’s a male deity, it could be a female form. There are many male forms, there are many female forms and each has its own character, it’s own persona and it’s own prescribed method for a person to have darshan.
Darshan means, I and the deity, we are having an interaction. It’s like with a real person. That’s what it is. In a church, you are not having Darshan. You are praying to God who is somewhere else. In a mosque, you are not having Darshan because Allah is not present there.
So for people to understand what happens in a temple, why it even exists, what is the purpose of Darshan, and who are you doing Darshan with. All I have just said is the minimum required knowledge that any judge, any court ought to have before they start tinkering around with our tradition.
Who does a temple belong?
It doesn’t belong to a state, it doesn’t belong to anybody other than the people who put it together to invite this deity to live there so they can have darshan. So it’s between the devotee and the deity, that the devotee having darshan with. It’s between the two of them. If they say that they bring this fruit, well then that’s what they bring.
If the deity has prescribed method on certain days of the week we do certain things, we eat or we don’t eat . We go in certain clothes, we don’t go in certain ways. Whatever is the does or don’t are specific to that deity and we respect it and we honor it because that's our tradition.
There is no one monoculture applicable to all deities. There is uniqueness for every deity. And if you don’t understand this, and you don’t respect this, then you are actually insulting the whole Hindu faith. Each faith has its own specific requirements.
And if you want to respect the faith you have to respect it on its own terms rather than projecting your idea of what is right. Because it is not the faith of this judge. It is a faith of the people who worship there. And the judge has to be honest enough, humble enough to set aside his own ideas of faith. And to judge what is going on according to the faith of the people who are involved. It is their investment of hundreds of years. They have been donating, they are keeping up this temple. It is their deity and their right to worship the way they are prescribed according to the agamas and according to their tradition.
Therefore, it’s a serious violation of religious freedom to treat such a temple as a secular place. As a place of just history or a museum. That’s a dead place with no living God’s somebody’s home. It’s somebody’s place of residence, somebody we worship.
So, you can not remove that sacred element and treat it like some place that is just a carving or statue or has some nice paintings. It is not a tourist spot. It is not for entertainment.
I think this is a very important message that the Indian judiciary will understand. They should take a tutorial on this from either the Akhada Parishad or the Hindu Dharmacharya Sabha or Iskon.
So my request is that the Indian judiciary should get it’s act together, should understand the separation of religion from state. And not interfere in the religious lives of Hindus.
Every person who talks on this particular issue, I just want to ask him or her one question please comment your answer
”What do you know about the origins of the practice and the reason for the existence of the practice and the scriptural bases for the practices to arrive at the peremptory conclusion that this is a consequence of gender inequality? You have thrown the conclusion first, I would want you to retrace your steps and teel what is that you know about this practice in order for you to arrive at this supposedly informed conclusion that it is based on misogyny.” Snehashis Mohanta