Ahmednagar: Scores of women across the state started assembling outside the Shani Shingnapur Temple in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra on Tuesday, as a symbolic gesture to break the gender barrier at the shrine's sanctum sanctorum.
Around 1000 women, led by women activist Trupti Desai of the Bhumata Rangranai Brigade, are planning to enter the Shani Shingnapur Temple on the occasion of Republic Day in an attempt to break the centuries-old tradition, which bans women from entering the shrine.
To prevent a law and order issue, the police and temple authorities have put up three levels of barricades, deployed women constables and village volunteers to guard the temple and Section 144 has been invoked in Ahmednagar, which prohibits people to assemble in large numbers in an area.
A women's organisation on Monday had said its members will climb down ladders from a helicopter to offer prayers at the 'chauthara' of Lord Shani temple in Ahmednagar district if they are not allowed access in its premises to protest against the tradition prohibiting women to enter the platform. "We have already booked a helicopter and if we are not permitted to enter from the open ground, we shall drop ladders from the chopper and climb down," said Trupti Desai, president of 'Bhumata Ranragini Brigade'.
The temple is dedicated to Lord Shani, the personification of planet Saturn, and women devotees are not permitted at the platform. Shani, the personification of planet Saturn, and women devotees are not permitted at the platform.
The open temple has no walls or roof. A self-emerged (svayambhu) five-foot-high black stone stands on a platform and is worshipped as Lord Shani.
Let's look at what other prominent women had to say on the incident.
1) If women can give birth to a man, then why should we discriminate and not allow them to worship a particular god. Everybody should have equal right. I want to ask why the women are denied entry into the temple. God hasn't made these rituals, it has been made by few people to debar women's entry from temples: Barkha Shukla, Former Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson.
2) It is very strange that the women are being stopped from worshipping gods, because gods are for everyone. There seems no reason as to why these women should be refrained from worshipping god when they want to: Shamina Shafiq, a women activist.
3) Today is Republic Day and the father of the Indian Constitution Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar had said that the Constitution gives equal rights to all of us, but those powers get curtailed by society in the name of rituals and traditions. The society and the people need to understand that men and women are on the same platform in this country: Former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Shazia Ilmi.
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