Call this divinity?

To speak with even an iota of conviction that Lord Ayyappa’s temple, Sabarimala, has lost some of its divinity because a woman entered its premises and touched the feet of the idol is reflective either of the speaker’s religious arrogance or his self-delusion. In the former case, he has to be shown the earthly, undivine slime he stands in; in the latter, with compassion, he needs to be introduced to a psychiatrist. For, if indeed this man is able to distinguish divinity from non-divinity, he is himself worthy of being worshipped — only a person who has undergone the great transformation from man to God can dare to comment and tell us lesser beings what is divine and what’s not. Which, again, is granting far too many concessions.

To believe this as Truth is granting temple managers a spiritual status that’s beyond their limited religious vision. They are nothing but self-declared intermediaries imposed on the rest of us through a complex socio-politico-religious nexus. It has nothing to do with spirit or God. In the spiritual evolutionary scheme of things, from the spirit came desire, from desire came matter, into matter came life, into life came mind and that’s where we stand today. Underlying all these, of course, is the Timeless, Spaceless Spirit, a part of which sits in us as our Psychic — as much in the woman as in the man, as much in Valmiki as in Vyasa, in the butcher as in the brahmin, in the bathed businessman or government functionary who gets to go closer to the same defiled god as in his unshaven driver who, perhaps with a deeper devotion, has to stand longer, farther.

To assume that this evolution has stopped is a conceit, a deception, a falsehood that man has created to control, to exert power over others. Not too different from politics but with far less accountability and risk — you don’t vote temple managers; they are selected from a narrow cosy club, as much, if not more dynastic as politics, business and films. Such retrograde and sexist policies should be banned; reflections from backward classes being allowed into temples are social evolutionary precedents worth benchmarking. If forcing a woman to apologise for seeking God is a sin, giving it any legal sanctity would be Asuric.