JAIMALA CONTROVERSY

'Jaimala' is a kannada actress who is now living in India. She was the centre of the cyclone when she claimed that she touched the Lord 'Ayyappa' idol in' Sabarimala.' Women from the age 10-50 are banned from entering sabarimala. It created a furore in India and led to ideological warfare in Indian media and courts.
The crux of the controversy lies in her claim that she had touched and prayed for her late husband's health at the famous Indian hill shrine of Lord 'Ayyappa' at Sabarimala in 'Kerala' state in April 1987. Women who are fertile are barred from the temple because of the legend that Lord Ayyappa, to whom the temple is dedicated, was a celibate and confirmed bachelor.
Shaken by the actress's statement, temple officials have decided to launch an investigation into the incident. "We cannot just ignore it. It is unthinkable that such a thing could happen. We have to find out the truth," senior official G Raman Nair said. A minister in the Communist state government has also taken a serious view of the actress's statement. "She is liable for prosecution if what she said is true," said G Sudhakaran. Jayamala has said she regretted her action, but clarified that she was pushed into the shrine by a crowd of devotees.
"I fell flat on the floor, touching the feet of the Lord. It was a moment of ecstasy. I didn't know then that I wasn't supposed to touch the idol," she told reporters. "When I got up, a priest standing nearby gave presented me a rose. As I came out, devotees touched me in veneration because I had felt the Lord."
The Supreme Priest of Sabarimala 'Kantararu Maheshwararu' had dismissed the actress's statement as a figment of her imagination. "How could Jayamala, then 27 years old, slip through several rungs of security and reach the innermost precincts of the Lord where women between puberty and menopause are strictly barred from entering?," he said.
The grandson of the supreme priest and their spokesperson Rahul Easwar said "The distance between the temple doors and the idol is at least 15 ft and to reach there one has to climb five steps. How can she claim she was shoved all the way up and thrown 15 ft towards the temple."
Why did Jayamala make her 'disclosure' after nearly two decades? The actress said she read a newspaper report a fortnight back saying that a group of astrologers had found that the "temple had been defiled by the presence of a woman artiste in the past two decades".
The team of astrologers was led by Parappanangadi Unnikrishna Panicker, whose celebrity clientele includes former Tamil Nadu chief minister J 'Jayalalitha'.
This is not the first time that an actress has found herself in the middle of a controversy involving the temple.
Sudha Chandran and co-stars on the cast of a Tamil film were accused of defiling the temple when they danced on its steps a few years ago.
A devotee took them to court. Chandran and her fellow actors were fined and set free. The controversy has sparked off a debate on the discrimination towards women in a literate nation like India. Women devotees of Lord Ayyappa are very disappointed that they should be discriminated against in the name of temple sanctity. "It would be primitive to keep women of fertile age off the temple citing decadent myths," lamented many women on Indian media.
The controversy is not going to die down since Hindu activists have demanded a proper atonement by those defiled the temple, especially by Jayamala. And the case whether women should be allowed in Sabarimala is considered by 'Supreme Court. ' Some four to five crore devotees worship at the temple every year. The shrine earns revenues worth ten thousand crores of rupees from pilgrims from all over the country.

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External links

External links

★ Sabarimala Controversy on BBC

★ Sabarimala Controversy,CNN-IBN

★ Jaimala controversy in Yahoo

★ Sabarimala Controversy on Deccan Herald