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.