Maharashtra temple 'purifies' shrine after woman offers prayers

Nine small steps taken by a woman to enter and offer prayers at a famous Shani shrine at a village in Ahmednagar district in ‘breach’ of the age-old practice of prohibiting entry of women has prompted the temple committee to suspend seven security men and the villagers to form purification rituals.

The woman climbed the security barricade to the ‘chauthara’ (platform) where the idol is installed and offered prayers on Saturday, before disappearing in the crowd.

Startled by this ‘breach’ of the age-old practice of prohibiting women from offering prayers to the Shani idol, the temple committee swung into action on Sunday and suspended seven security personnel.

Villagers also performed a ‘dudh abhishek’ (milk purification) of the idol and observed a bandh in the morning to protest the incident.

However, the woman’s action has been lauded by various quarters, including women and social organisations.

“She should be felicitated for doing what she did,” Congress MLA from Solapur Praniti Shinde said.

The idol of 'Shani Devsthan', a black rock over five feet tall, installed on a platform without a roof, sits at the heart of the Shani Shingnapur village in Ahmednagar district.

It is this temple that strengthens the local tradition of not installing doors and locks to the village houses. Once a humble affair, the temple has now grown into a large trust with extensive property and donations that run into lakhs.

But it still does not have a door, much like most homes of the 4,000-odd residents of the village, where empty door frames mark the entrance to houses.

The report comes in the wake of the Sabarimala temple trust chief saying that women would be allowed in -- but only when a scanning machine was invented to check whether or not they were menstruating.

Unsurprisingly, the comment sparked outrage in India, and across the wider world.

Women activists on Monday slammed the tradition of prohibiting entry to the fairer sex at a famous Shani shrine in Ahmednagar district and the “purification rituals” which were performed by villagers after a woman recently entered.

Terming the incident as “ridiculous”, Maharashtra’s former Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Chandra Iyengar said, “God has created everyone equal and who are we to force anyone to follow specific process of offering devotion or faith. At least God never said so that a woman, even if she is menstruating, cannot enter a temple.”

She said that since religious faith of a person is a specific and a crucial issue, hence the government cannot interfere in such cases as it has to follow the law of the land (administration of the religious places).

However, if these rules are made by human beings only, then it is time to rethink them, the former bureaucrat said.

“It is my firm belief that God has not provisioned such discrimination...we should not forget that there are ample number of women who also support such belief (of prohibiting women from entering temples),” she said.

Taking potshots at the temple management, National Commission for Women’s former member Nirmala Samant Prabhawalkar said, “Only experts on religious issues could have decided whether the temple became impure by the entry of a woman or not, and surely not by these people. They are just caretakers of the temple.”

These rules (of denying women’s entry into the temple) were made 400 to 500 years back and now society sees women as equal to men, she said.

Taking umbrage to the purification rituals performed by the villagers, Prabhawalkar said, “I am also a trustee of Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai. I know how to manage the day-to-day affairs of the temple where people throng with lots of hope and faith. So in this case, administration should have exercised some restraint while declaring temple as impure.”

“Hence, I feel that performing purification rituals by milk was unwarranted and I vehemently oppose such a move,” she added.