Sulabha’s Descendants

The Indian Express     22nd June 2021     Save    
QEP Pocket Notes

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.

QEP Pocket Notes