Societies evolve slowly but surely. Change in social mores always takes place at glacial speed. Traditions and practices handed down to successive generations by our forebears cannot be expected to be banished overnight despite some of the more pernicious ones being outlawed or frowned upon by modernists.
Therefore, use of force to force change down the gullet of an unwilling people should be avoided as far as possible. For example, discrimination on the basis of caste and religion was voided a long time ago but if it still persists it is because the people are slow to shun old habits handed down to them by their ancestors.
Of course, to say that the people are slow to change is not in any way to endorse their conduct. No. This is only to counsel patience and tact while dealing with the commendable crusaders who have taken the lead at some personal risk in propagating against those habits, those traditions which militate against basic human rights, which discriminate between people on the basis of gender and/or religion. It is in this context that one lauds the on-going movement by a group of activists against the age-old tradition of not allowing entry to women in the inner sanctum of the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.
Early this January a group of women under the banner of Bhumata Ranragini Brigade had made a vain attempt to enter the sanctum. They were prevented by a strong posse of police who had stood between the women-activists and an equally vocal group of men who appeared equally determined to uphold the age-old tradition and bar their entry into the temple. Last Friday, disposing of a PIL the Bombay High Court said that offering prayers at a temple was the “fundamental right of a woman,” and ordered the Maharashtra Government to “protect this right.”
However, despite the categorical court order the police were unable to ensure the entry of a group of women led by Trupti Desai who made a determined bid to enter the sanctum of the Shani temple. In fact, traditionalists have constituted an action committee to challenge the High Court order in order to maintain what they insist was a 400-year-old tradition. They justify their refusal to allow women into the inner sanctum of the temple on the ground that this was to ‘protect the faith of devotees.’
In short, the traditionalists and reformists were in direct clash in Ahmednagar, though it must be said that going by the same traditionalist approach both men and women need to ward off the malefic influence of Shani and, therefore, it is unfair that only females be denied to seek the blessings of the Shani god while leaving males to their own devices. In a patriarchal, male-centric society even gods seemed to have been unfair and unjust, if one goes by the logic of those resisting the entry of women into the Shani Shinganapur temple.
But this is not the only place of worship which seems to practise gender discrimination. Why, in the heart of Mumbai, the iconic Haji Ali Dargah, where lies buried the 15th century Sufi saint Haji Ali, does not allow women to visit his grave. The trustees told the Bombay High Court that allowing women near the “grave of a male Muslim saint is a grievous sin as per Islam” and that under the Constitution they enjoy the right to manage their religious affairs without any interference by a third agency.
In short, the trustees of the Haji Ali Dargah have told the High Court that it has no locus in the matter. This is a delicate matter and the court cannot seem to be withdrawing in the face of the frontal challenge to the constitutional scheme of things. In the name of religion, no one should be allowed to deny fellow citizens their fundamental rights to worship as they please in temples, churches, mosques and synagogues or even fire temples.
Yes, members of each religion can regulate their affairs so long as such regulation does not discriminate between devotees on gender or caste basis, to mention only two of the several criteria on which such discrimination is prevalent in some religious places for a long time. A number of other Hindu places of worship bar entry of women and it is only a matter of time before their managements would come to terms with the new egalitarian winds blowing in the country. Modernism and change might be slow in coming, especially in an educationally and economically backward country like ours but come it will. Women-activists have time on their side.
