The Courts Went Tantri

The history of the blanket ban on women in Sabarimala is recent.

- Rohan Manoj

SAFEGUARD tradition. Save Sabarimala. Such have been the rallying cries of the prickled phalanxes protesting the recent Supreme Court judgment that over­ turned the ban on women bet­ ween the ages of 10 and 50 ent­ering the ayyappan temple at Sabarimala in Kerala. In the eyes of many Malayalis, this was an assault on a tradition that, since time immemorial, had defended the immaculate chastity of their naishthika brahmacharin (chaste, per­petual religious student) lord. But memory is short, and hoary observances can be of surprisingly recent prove­ nance; claims that the ban was only a few decades old—and not some eternal, divinely­ordained diktat—have been doing the rounds on social media and in news reports.

In a series of tweets, top Mala­yalam author N.S. Madhavan stated that women used to wor­ ship at Sabarimala before restrictions were imposed in the second half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, T.K.A. Nair, adviser and principal secretary to former PM Manmohan Singh, recalled that he had his ‘choroonu’ (first rice­feeding, or