India’s flashpoint temple, off limits to women

SABARIMALA, India: The stage is set for a fresh showdown in India with traditionalists aiming to prevent women from gaining entry to the Sabarimala temple, one of Hinduism’s holiest sites.

In September India’s top court ruled that women of all ages could enter. But when it re-opened in October, hardliners stopped women from getting to the site.

Some 700 women are among the hundreds of thousands of devotees who have registered online to pray at the temple in a two-month holy period that began on Saturday.

The gold-plated Sabarimala Sree Dharma Sastha Temple complex sits atop a 3,000-foot hill in a forested tiger reserve in the southern state of Kerala.

It contains a shrine to Lord Ayyappa, believed to have been the Earth-born son of two of Hinduism’s three main gods, Vishnu (in his female avatar) and Shiva.

Legend has it that Ayyappa was found abandoned as a baby. A king of the Pandalam dynasty, which is still active in temple operations, found and raised him.

At 12 Ayyappa showed his divinity when he emerged from the forest rode a tigress. The boy fired an arrow which landed at the site where the temple now is.

Those wishing to visit undergo a 41-day period of introspection and detachment -- vratha -- abstaining from sex, meat, intoxicants and even shaving.

After this period many devotees, wearing ritual bead necklaces, walk barefoot for dozens of kilometres including, and especially, the final steep climb.

The pilgrims now mostly take one of two routes -- one steep and short and the other easier but longer -- through dense forest to the top.

Only those who have observed the vratha and carry the irrumude, a symbolic offering, can enter the main courtyard up 18 divine golden steps.

The sacred offerings, tied in a cloth usually carried on the head or shoulders, include coconuts, rose water, rice and pepper.

Offerings are made by smashing the coconut at designated stops along the trek, chanting the mantra "Swamy Sharanam Ayyappa" ("God, I come to your feet").

Legend says that the goddess Malikapurathamma asked Ayyappa to marry her. He said he would only do so once no first-time pilgrim visits him -- which has never happened.

Believers celebrate a festival each year when a procession of the goddess is taken to a spot close to the temple three times -- and she is forced to wait.