How the practice of removing shirts in Kerala temples began

“There is no need to compel anyone,” the Chief Minister said. “Many practices have changed in tune with the times. Temples associated with the Sree Narayana movement have adopted that change. I hope other places of worship will also follow that change,” he said.

While the Kerala BJP and Nair Service Society decried the CM’s statement, Vellapally Natesan, chairperson of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, urged Hindus to stay united. The NSS represents the dominant Nair caste, while the SNDP Yogam is an organisation of the Ezhava community.

The Travancore Devaswom Board and Guruvayur Devaswom Board, two of the five official bodies that administer the temples of the state, said they would deliberate on the issue.

Dress codes in Kerala temples

Not all temples in the state ask men to remove their shirts before entering the sanctum sanctorum.

However, the practice is strictly enforced in some major temples such as the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, the Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple in Thrissur, and the Ettumanoor Mahadeva Temple in Kottayam.

Women at the Padmanabhaswamy Temple must wear a sari or a skirt, or wrap the lower half of their bodies in a dhoti. The same rule was enforced at the Guruvayur Temple until 2013.

The attire to visit the Sabarimala temple, which permits entry only to men, girls younger than 10 and women older than 50, is all black – a black shirt and mundu (dhoti), and the irumudikettu, a holy bundle comprising offerings to the deity, Lord Ayyappa.

Pilgrims undertake a series of rituals, including a 41-day period of pious austerity, and abstention from alcohol and non-vegetarian food.

Challenge to the dress code

The argument for removing restrictions on dress is not new. The Kerala government had made an attempt to abolish temple dress codes in the 1970s, but abandoned the effort after it had limited impact.

In 2014, a two-judge Bench of the Kerala High Court dismissed a petition to remove restrictions on clothing inside the sanctum sanctorum (‘Moorkoth Prakash vs State Of Kerala’). The court relied on the principles of the Agamas, a branch of Tantric literature, discussed in the Supreme Court’s judgment in ‘Sri Venkataramana Devaru and others v. The State of Mysore and others’ (1957).

The court described the Agamas as treatises addressing the “ceremonial law relating to the construction of temples, installation of idols therein and conduct of worship of the deity”.

It also observed that temples in Kerala laid down specific rules on worship and conduct of devotees, and held that deviating from these practices could lead to “pollution” or “defilement”.

The court concluded that the “observances” did not inherently restrict “the fundamental right of any devotee to offer worship”. It also observed that a devotee did not have “an absolute right to use the premises of a temple according to his will and pleasure”.

Origins of the practice of removing shirts

Sanskrit scholar Dr T S Syamkumar told The Indian Express that the practice of removing the shirt inside the sanctum sanctorum has no scriptural basis. “There is no documentation…of…the idea of removing the shirt in temples, simply because shirts did not exist for a very long time,” he said.

Dr Syamkumar pointed to the possible origins of the practice in caste.

“Between the 10th and 19th centuries, Kerala’s scriptures have explicitly detailed barring entry to people from marginalised communities such as the Ezhavas and Adivasis,” he said. Communities like the Ezhavas — recognised among the Other Backward Classes (OBC) — were historically relegated to the margins in erstwhile Travancore, the southernmost of the three princely states that form today’s Kerala.

Dr Syamkumar recalled that “Until the Middle Ages, Shudras were not allowed to cover their upper body while entering the Padmanabhaswamy Temple”.

“There is an anecdote about the Attukal queen ripping open a Shudra woman’s blouse for daring to cover her upper body. In the modern era, this has somehow extended to men being asked to remove their shirts,” he said.

Dr Syamkumar said it is “absolutely wrong” to attribute the practice of removing the shirt to “tradition”. “The practice is rooted in caste,” he said. “There is record of even the affluent Nairs – a dominant caste – being asked to remove their upper garment to show respect to the Brahmin before them.”