The Supreme Court has asked why women should not be allowed to enter Sabarimala temple.
Hearing arguments in a ten year old case filed by the Young Lawyers Association, the apex court asked if the government was sure that women had not entered the temple in the last 1,500 years. The court observed that according to the Indian constitution, women cannot be disallowed.
Recently, Sabarimala Temple Board’s controversial decision to install machines to test menstruating women had sparked outrage over social networking sites.
A campaign called ‘Happy To Bleed’ was launched after Travancore Devaswom Board president Prayar Gopalakrishnan said that women should be allowed in the Sabarimala Temple only after the invention of a machine to ‘check the purity of women.’
With the Kerala High Court seeking that the famed Sabarimala temple in the state’s Pathanamthitta district and its premises are kept clean and turn ‘green’, local authorities have launched an awareness drive and asked pilgrims to ensure that they adhere to the rules.
Situated on the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats at an altitude of 914 metres above sea-level, Sabarimala temple is four kilometres uphill from Pamba in Pathanamthitta district, which is around 100 km from Thiruvananthapuram.
Till a few years back, it was open only for two months – from mid-November to mid-January – but now is kept open for five days every month and as a result, the number of pilgrims has risen dramatically
In November 2015, the temple was in the news after Travancore Devasom Board Chairman Prayar Gopalakrishnan said that women should be allowed inside the temple only after a machine, which can detect their purity, is invented and installed in the temple.
