Woman breaks shrine tradition, village upset

Villagers of Shani Shingnapur on Sunday observed a bandh for several hours to condemn the entry of an unidentified woman on the chouthara (sanctum sanctorum) of the famed Lord Shani temple in Ahmednagar district. A milk abhishek was performed in the Shani Temple in Shani Shingnapur on Sunday due to the entry of a woman on Saturday.

This comes on the back of an official at the Sabarimala temple in Kerala saying that women would be allowed into the premises the day a machine is invented to detect if they were menstruating.

Villagers at Shani Shingnapur held a meeting Sunday morning presided over by Sarpanch Balasaheb Bankar. He told The Asian Age that the villagers held the meeting spontaneously. “The meeting demanded the resignations of the trustees of the temple. The trustees have a room on the premises. There was security. How did this incident occur This is a serious lapse of security,” he said.

Mr Bankar also said that there are traditions in all religions, and religion works on tradition. Women have been banned in the temple chouthara for the past 500 years. “However, the villagers opened their shops after a few hours to avoid inconveniencing the devotees,” he said.

The woman climbed the security barricade to the chouthara (platform) where the idol is installed and offered prayers on Saturday, before disappearing into the crowd. Startled by this ‘breach’ of the age-old practice of prohibiting women from this area, the temple committee swung into action Sunday and suspended seven security personnel.

The Andhshradha Nirmulan Samiti (ANS) has led agitations in the past against this tradition, according to Advocate Ranjana Pagar-Gawande, executive president of ANS in Maharashtra.

“Our late founder Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Dr Sriram Lagoo and others were arrested when they agitated and spoke out against this tradition. How can an impure woman give birth to a pure son (man). If the mother is impure then the son is also impure. We have filed a writ petition in the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court, which is pending,” she said.

Mr Ranjana further said that the incident occurred ironically on Mahatma Phule jayanti day. “Mahatma Phule’s wife Savatribai started the fight for equal rights for women, 200 years ago. Swami Vivakananda said that “if a place or deity is rendered impure by someone’s touch, how will it make others pure,” she quoted Swami Vivekanand.

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 where villagers do not install doors and locks to their 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.