[ad_1]
NEW DELHI – While India is wondering how much government institutions should be involved in religious affairs, a violent war of wills aimed at preventing women from gaining access to one of the most important Temples of Hinduism led to the arrest of more than 2,000 people this week, police said Friday.
After India's Supreme Court overturned a 1991 ban prohibiting women of childbearing age from praying at Sabarimala Temple, a hundred-year-old sanctuary located on a hillside in the state of Kerala, in the south protesters in the country did not take long to set vehicles on fire. police and assaulted women who tried to climb a three-mile trail to reach the temple.
Thousands of furious devotees, including many women, vowed to resist the court's verdict, claiming that it would erase years of tradition.
In recent days, leaders of the ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata party, and another powerful party, the Indian National Congress, which has traditionally extended minority rights, have sided with supporters prohibition.
Since Mr. Modi's national election in 2014, whose party has ties to Hindu nationalist groups, a wave of religious conservatism has swept through many parts of India.
When the Sabarimala Temple first opened last week for the first time since the court ruling, hundreds of policemen armed with batons prepared for a confrontation near the shrine, promising to abide by the law and protect any woman wishing to go to the temple. .
Before the temple closed Monday night for two weeks, at least 12 women had attempted the trip. All were harassed. None of them did it. A woman was so shaken that she fainted.
Last Thursday, when a New York Times reporter began walking to the temple, she was met a howling crowd of hundreds of people, continued the hill and received a pebble on the shoulder. She was not seriously injured.
Krishna Kumar, senior Kerala police chief, said Friday that 2,061 people were arrested this week for preventing officials from enforcing the court's verdict and for "intentionally creating trouble."
Mr. Krishna said he was worried about the reopening of the temple in November, which marks the start of the peak season. In the coming weeks, the pilgrimage to the Sabarimala temple attracts millions of worshipers and is often compared locally to the Hajj of Mecca.
This week, officials from Kerala published photographs of more than 200 people suspected of violently preventing women from accessing the temple. Some were members of Hindu sects of the far right.
Next month, 5,000 more police will be deployed in the region. "It will be a huge task," he said.
In India, a multi-ethnic country of 1.3 billion people, court mandates are often poorly executed, particularly in rural areas. But police in Kerala, a highly literate state run by a coalition of communist parties, encouraged women to visit the Sabarimala Temple, despite the security risks.
But proponents of the ban say that women of childbearing age, defined by temple guardians like those between the ages of 10 and 50, should not be allowed to visit, because the goddess of the shrine, Lord Ayyappa, is single. Some Hindus consider that women who have their period are impure.
The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would hear 19 applications for reconsideration next month challenging the ruling, although the lawyers said it was unlikely the decision would be overturned.
