The sensitiveness of deities remains unknown; it is the sensitiveness of their devotees that is the stuff of politics. It is awkward for a country, any country, in 2018 that women should take to the streets to stop the entry of other women into a temple because it goes against tradition, even though the highest court in the land has lifted the ban and ruled in accordance with the constitutional principle of equality. But such awkwardness is nothing but grist to the election mill for political parties. The Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), being in government in Kerala, was bound to implement the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Sabarimala temple. But why does it give the impression that it was caught unawares by the scale of the protests against the ruling? The ban on the entry of women between 10 and 50 years into the temple of Ayyappa seems to have been lifted without preparing the ground for change, perhaps without adequate attention or patience. The issue had been hanging fire long enough for it to have been discussed extensively in different fora.
Now the CPI(M)-led government is willing to let the Travancore Devaswom Board that manages the temple to place a review petition, although the TDB seems happy to be part of the other petitions that have been filed. The CPI(M)’s present position is being seen as a climb-down by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who have been eyeing the state hungrily for a step-in. The Sabarimala protests, by bringing conservative Hindus together, offer fertile soil to the BJP-RSS, although they have denied charges that their leaders organised the protests. The Opposition Congress is in a bit of a fix, and trying frantically to seem coherent. Opposing the LDF — the Congress was never officially in favour of going against tradition in this case — puts it on the same side as the BJP. It is trying to suggest that the BJP’s encouragement of divisiveness will extend from gender to caste, but that sounds distinctly thin. Numerically strong backward classes, however, have not joined the protests. With 2019 round the corner, the political parties’ concern is understandable, although not laudable. Maybe the concern is always electoral, ignoring the need to address regressive patterns in popular thinking through education or cultural exposure. The lesson of Sabarimala is deeply ironic.