Sulabha’s Descendants

Context: Giving women full rights on all temple rituals is an idea whose time has come.

Background: Recent Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister PK Sekar Babu’s remark that women could be appointed priests in the 35,000-odd temples in the state is long overdue.

• However, what stands in the way is the dead hand of convention, the power of patriarchy, and politics.

Arguments for appointment of women as a priest in Hindu temples

• Priesthood as an inherited office: The term “priest” denotes a vast range of social, ritual and redemptory functions: From purohits to pandas to being a medium of divine power.
  • There are several examples in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, where women perform all rituals. Often, the priesthood was an inherited office.
  • In Raj Kali Kuer vs Ram Rattan Pandey 1955, the Supreme Court held that women have the right to succeed to the religious office.
  • While codifications like Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions: disqualified women from performing certain ritual functions, this disqualification was not sufficient grounds to deny them priestly office. The court emphasized that “hereditary is not a principle of competence.”
• Religious grounds:
  • In Srimad Bhagavad, Brahma tells Bhrigu that worshipping in deity form is the most beneficial of all spiritual practices for women and Sudras.
  • The authority of men, or of Brahmins, to conduct rituals is not literally vested in their bodies. This authority is created through a liturgy of signs and symbolic substitutions.
  • They are not pure or worthy. They are made pure or worthy through ritual.
  • Revival of Bhakti Revolution: Opening up all modes of worship, including the inner sanctum ritual to all people, is completing the Bhakti revolution that has been resisted by the last vestiges of social Brahmanism.
  • In Mahabharata’s Janaka-Sulabh samvad, Sulabha questions the binary of gender distinctions. The fact that Janaka sees the world in gendered terms is a sign of his attachment, his failure.

Obstacles in women priesthood

• Notions of purity and pollution: The fear of women coming in contact with men, especially associated with menstruation.
• Different social bases marked by taboo: Standard principle operates differently in Agamic or Shastric temples versus non-Agamic temples.
  • In temples with Tantric traditions, both Kashmiri and South Indian, women can perform forms of worship prohibited elsewhere, even though there are some restrictions.
  • The Shaligram Shila Puja was the lakshman rekha that could not be crossed; even non-menstruating women could not touch the Shila.
  • Overcoming this taboo is a tall order, as we just saw in the Sabarimala case.

Conclusion: Hinduism will do itself a favour by emulating Sulabha and throwing off the needless restrictions that divide and exclude. Giving women full rights on all temple rituals is an idea whose time has come.