The dispute over the lifting of the temple ban for women in India worsens

New Delhi (APA / AFP) – The dispute over the lifting of the women's temple ban by the Indian Supreme Court continued to intensify on Saturday. Hindu fundamentalists suspected attacked a Hindu meditation center whose founder advocates women's access to the temple in southern India.

The attackers set fire to two cars and a scooter in front of the ashram after police pbaded early in the morning to Thiruvananthapuram in southern India. They also left a hate message to the founder of the Ashram, Swami Sandeepananda Giri.

After several years of litigation, the Supreme Court decided in late September to remove women's access to the Ayyappa Temple in Sabarimala, Kerala. Women of childbearing age – ten to fifty years old – were forbidden to enter and pray in the imposing temple.

The temple was to be accessible to women for the first time in mid-October. Angry Hindu traditionalists, however, resisted the court verdict and forcibly banned women from entering the place of worship. Among other things, they blocked intersections, threw buffaloes on buses to drive women away from the temple and clashed with the police. He arrested more than 2,000 suspected mobsters.

President of the ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata (BJP), Amit Shah, accused the Kerala state authorities of using "brutal force" against party members and their members. right allies in the arrests. At an event that took place Saturday in Kerala, he said: "This is a well planned plot of communists to destroy the sanctity of Kerala temples".