ZCZC
BFF-34
INDIA-RELIGION-GENDER
Fresh clashes in India temple dispute
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Jan 3, 2019 (AFP) – Clashes broke out in
southern India for a second day Thursday as Hindu hardliners went on the
rampage, seeking to enforce a general shutdown in protest at two women
entering one of the country’s holiest temples.
A day after violence among rival groups and with police left one man dead
and 15 people injured, authorities said that 266 protestors had been arrested
across the state of Kerala.
Anger erupted among Hindu traditionalists on Wednesday after news that the
two women in their 40s, escorted by police and dressed in black, wrong-footed
devotees to sneak into the Sabarimala temple via a side entrance before dawn
to pray.
This was the first time that any woman of menstruating age — deemed as
those aged between 10 and 50 — had set foot in the gold-plated temple,
located on a hilltop in a tiger reserve, since India’s Supreme Court
overturned a ban in September.
Thousands of Hindu devotees, many of them female, had previously succeeded
in preventing women from accessing the site in the weeks following the
landmark ruling, with some hardliners throwing stones at police and
assaulting female journalists.
On Tuesday, tens of thousands of women, in a local government-backed
initiative, had braved harassment to form a huge human chain called the
“Women’s Wall” across Kerala to back the demand for access to the temple.
Kerala police told AFP that the man who died on Wednesday was part of a
demonstration organised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP).
– ‘Battle zone’ –
Kerala’s chief minister said later that the man, Chandran Unnithan, died
from a heart attack after being taken injured to hospital, but a later post
mortem report said he died from injuries sustained to the head.
Police on Wednesday had used tear gas and water cannon, including in the
state capital Thiruvananthapuram, as protestors set fire to tyres and blocked
roads.
On Thursday, police clashed with protestors pressuring shop owners to
comply with a call by the Sabarimala temple hierarchy for a dawn-til-dusk
“hartal” shutdown.
Most shops remained shut in the state, while bus services came to a
standstill.
Four people were stabbed, media reports said, with stone-throwing
protestors smashing the windows of 99 buses and causing an estimated 33.5
million rupees ($480,000) worth of damage. In the coastal city of Kozhikode
police used tear gas to disperse protestors.
Twenty offices of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which governs
Kerala in a left-wing alliance, were attacked, said Kodiyeri Balakrishnan,
state party secretary.
Journalists were assaulted in the city of Palakkad during a march
organised by the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a hardline
Hindu group and ideological mentor of Modi’s party.
Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan accused the BJP and the RSS of
trying to turn Sabarimala into a “battle zone”, saying that more than 100
people including 38 police officers had been injured.
Vijayan also slammed the head priest of the Sabarimala temple for carrying
out a “purification ritual” after the two women entered the site, saying he
should quit if he is not prepared to accept the Supreme Court verdict.
The restriction on women at the temple, atop a 3,000-feet (915-metre) hill
that takes hours to climb, reflects a belief — not exclusive to Hinduism —
that menstruating women are impure.
September’s verdict was the latest progressive ruling from India’s top
court, with judges also overturning bans on gay sex and adultery last year.
The Supreme Court is to start hearing a legal challenge on its ruling to
allow women into the temple from January 22.
Women are still barred from a handful of Hindu temples in India. The entry
of women at Sabarimala was taboo for generations and formalised by the Kerala
High Court in 1991.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1735HRS