Breaking 400-year-old tradition, women enter Shani Shingnapur inner sanctum

The Shani Shingnapur Temple Trust has allowed women to enter the temple following a Bombay High Court order.

Priyanka Jagtap and Pushpak Kevadkar inside the sanctum of Shani temple. (Source: Express photo)

The 400-year-old tradition at Shani Shingnapur temple that bars women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the temple was on Friday broken by two women from Pune at 5.15 pm.

The two women, Priyanka Jagtap, 21, and Pushpak Kevadkar are members of the Bhumata Mahila Brigade which had parted ways with the Trupti Desai-led Bhumata Brigade.

“I was there at the sacred platform for 20 days. I offered worship …Unfortunately nobody opened the gates to the inner sanctum. We had to scale the gate…but nobody stopped us…it is the moment I will cherish all my life,” said Priyanka Jagtap, a student who is preparing for MPSC exam.

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READ: How a 400-year-old tradition fell apart in barely four months

Earlier in the day, after the Shani Shingnapur Temple Trust announced that it will allow the entry of women, Trupti Desai and her Bhumata Brigade also headed for the temple town to break the 400-year-old tradition.

ALSO READ: Why women can’t enter some temples

Sanjay Bankar, manager of the temple trust, said, “We are simply following court’s order and are allowing women in the temple.” The Bombay High Court had ruled on last Wednesday that women cannot be barred from entering the temple. The temple has been in the news after the Bhumata Brigade started a campaign seeking entry into the temple.

WATCH: Women enter the inner sanctorum of #ShaniShingnapur temple in Maharashtrahttps://t.co/W3JX7MDYnU

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Welcoming the decision, Desai said, “It’s a victory of women power. We are very happy that finally our efforts have paid.”

However, village sarpanch Balasaheb Bankar said they would not allow Desai to break the tradition. He announced a Shingnapur bandh, saying the villagers would prevent Desai from entering the inner sanctum.

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Around 50-odd men from the village also entered the inner sanctum of the Shani Shingnapur temple and conducted ritual bath of the rock idol of Shani. The men climbed the sacred platform defying the ban imposed by the Devasthan Trust. They conducted milk and oil baths of the Shani idol, a ritual performed thrice a year including on Gudi Padwa day, which is the Maharashtra New Year.

Rubbishing the reports that hundreds of men barged into the temple ‘forcefully’, sarpanch Bankar said, “We didn’t enter forcefully; we follow the same ritual every year and the temple trust is aware about it. It was a smooth entry wherein every man offered gangajal turn-by-turn.”

Every year, on the day of Gudi Padwa, several men from Shani Shingnapur offer ‘Gangajal’ (the sacred water of Ganga) at the core shrine area of the temple.

In November, Desai’s Bhumata Ranragini Brigade (BRB) started a movement that demanded an entry to the core shrine area of the temple, which has not been visited by women for 400 years.

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The movement was triggered by the trust’s move to perform ‘purification’ of the temple after a woman entered the inner sanctum. The temple trust later denied the charge and, in January, for the first time in its history, appointed a woman – Anita Shete – as the temple trust chief.

In the past, the women’s group has been detained more than once when they forcefully tried entering the village. On January 26, when BRB announced that they will storm the Shani temple with nearly 1,000 women, the temple trust was promised strong support by right-wing outfits. Besides, the villagers, mainly women gathered to stop the BRB from entering the temple. The BRB plan never materialised as they were detained by the police at Supa village itself.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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