Activist Trupti Desai on Sunday visited Haji Ali Dargah and offered a chadar at the shrine.
Activist Trupti Desai on Sunday visited Haji Ali Dargah and offered a chadar at the shrine.
Ms Desai, who was accompanied by 20 more women from the Bhumata Brigade, was surprisingly met with no resistance from other groups and was able to complete her visit peacefully.
Her visit comes three days after the Bombay high court lifted the ban from women’s entry into Haji Ali Dargah. Ms Desai said that she met with the trustees of the dargah and asked them not to appeal to the Supreme Court against the high court order.
“During my last visit to the dargah, we prayed for the verdict of the high court to be on our side. Since our prayer was fulfilled, we came here to seek the blessings of Haji Ali Baba and offered him a chadar,” said Ms Desai when contacted.
She added that she also spoke to the trustees during her visit. “I met with and spoke to one of the trustees who promised me that he would take up the matter with the others,” said Ms Desai. She revealed that the trustees were worried that the move of letting women enter would be against the religion. “I told them that our fight was not against the religion and it was a women’s right under the Constitution to be allowed in all religious places. We asked them to open the doors to women and not take away their rights,” she said.
“If the trustees prefer to knock the Supreme Court’s doors, nothing is going to change because the apex court too will uphold the constitutional right for the women to which they have been meted out since so long and I am fully confident about it,” she said. In April this year, Ms Desai had unsuccessfully tried to enter into the sanctum sanctorum.
She said that she only went up to the permissible limits of the dargah as she did not want to flout the court orders.
