ArpitGarg's Weblog

The fight for entry to women in Shani Temple and Sabarimala has reached Supreme Court. SC has asked the Govt. to ensure that women have access to entire premises of Shani Shingnapur temple. It’s not an easy topic to take sides. Political correctness urges us to blindly bad mouth temples, pujaris and the blatant discrimination. But is it really discrimination? And is the movement akin to suffrage?

Even at the time of suffrage movement, there were men who reasoned why women shouldn’t be allowed voting rights. We all know it was their chauvinism coupled with skewed beliefs imbibed since childhood, speaking. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Is this temple movement the same? Let’s try and look at it with an open mind. On the face it looks like blatant discrimination and hence I decided to do some R&D. I have been to hundreds of temples through my life along with my parents. Never was my mother not allowed in the temple. Not never, I did visit Shani Shingnapur and my mother and sister were on the outer line, away from the raised platform. As per my understanding there are 4-5 temples in all (I might be slightly wrong), out of millions, that do not allow complete access to women.

Why are they termed discriminatory? For this we have to dig into the past. For a long time, scheduled castes were not allowed entry to temples. In fact they were not even allowed to access same wells. Total social ostracization. But it was the temple discrimination that made a lot of Dalit Hindus move to other faiths. After all what good is the God that can’t stop discrimination in his own home? It took a long time to eradicate such practices. With this background, any discrimination in temples is frowned upon.

Before going any further, I would again ask to keep an open mind, as things can get muddled very easily. Is there really someone behind all those temples; all those stones? Is the concept of thousands of Gods real? For the ones who believe in the concept of humanized Gods (majority of us), what more is left not to believe? We who believe in the logically stupid concept of worshipping stones are anyway gullible enough to believe in anything.

Women are not allowed entry to certain temples due to some reasons. They might sound insane. But given the context of worshipping stones, believe me they are very much sane. We worship Shiva Lingams (penis to be exact). We can be called stupid but are we discriminatory?

Coming to Shani Temple, Shani Dev is considered ominous. Most of us fear Shani ka Prakop. A lot of pujaris earn a lot of money doing Shani Pooja to ease off Shani. It’s a throbbing industry. Women are kept away from Shani to save them. The origin is not discrimination but protection. Those who don’t know the origin cry discrimination. Shani is in contrast to Sun. Sun stands for brightness, provides fertility to women. Shani is a bad dude. Even one glance from Shani Dev can do harm to fertility of women. That is the belief. Effect on male fertility is not clear. Males do Shani Pooja to keep Shani Dev off their family. They shield the women from ills of Shani. This is the origin. Again, you can call us stupid, but we are not discriminatory. We have Kamakhya Temple, where we basically worship women sexual part. Enough said. Period.

Now over to Sabarimala, it is Lord Ayappan’s shrine. He was a lifelong Brahmachari; a celibate. There is long story as to why we worship a celibate God. For our current context, knowing that he is Brahmachari should suffice. I have read a lot of articles where they mention that menstruating women being unclean are not allowed. This is wrong as it alludes to physical impurity. Menstruation is related to reproduction. Reproduction requires sexual activity. And here is where Celibacy of Lord Ayappan comes in. Hence women are not allowed. There are other stories too about how Ayappan did not marry a woman whose love remains unrequited etc etc. But all comes back to sex and celibacy. Now you can again call us stupid for the entire belief, but please not discriminatory. After all we worship a stone, that too a celibate one.

Similarly there is handful of temples where male entry is restricted. It goes back to what we believe is the origin of that particular God. It has nothing to do with discrimination. It has to do with stupidity. Some stupid people (agitating for allowing women) are fighting other stupid people (who feel its war against tradition). Both are not smart as far as I am concerned. As soon as they started believing in all those back-stories and all those Gods, they both lost the moral right to question each other.

If we believe in God, how can we question all the associated stupidities. Logically, concept of God is the biggest façade that can ever be. Either you believe in it or you don’t. Temple is a place where we worship stones, it’s not a picnic place.

To summarize: Stupid, Not Discriminatory.