Nestled deep inside the Periyar forest reserve in Kerala, Sabarimalai is the seat of a 11th century temple dedicated to a celibate male deity, Lord Ayyappa. The heterogenous identity of the deity and the devotees typifies the shrine, inviting a footfall of almost 40-50 million annually, making it one of the largest pilgrimage sites in the world.1It is more well-known, however, for a certain peculiarity that may have at least a few parallels in South India but is not very common elsewhere. Traditionally, menstruating women are barred from breaching the threshold of the temple. The rationale for this perplexing convention presumably lies shrouded in ideas of spiritual chastity and piety, and ancient beliefs about the preservation of sacred and religious space. In 2016, as a response to multiple pleas filed by several independent parties, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India questioned the practise of banning women at the temple, citing concerns about gender justice. In 2018, a five-judge bench ruled in a 4:1 verdict that women were to be allowed inside the temple, deeming the temple a secular space and placing fundamental rights as a cornerstone of “constitutional ethos”. The decision sparked pan-India outrage, giving rise to riotous demonstration and conflict and escalating into controversy that resonated throughout the country. Local outfits, enraged pilgrims and religious leaders lobbied against blasphemy and the misappropriation of religious space. The controversy grew even stronger on the digital realm, as the latter part of 2018 and early 2019 saw strong online campaigns against female disenfranchisement and exclusion. In spite of the glaring polarity in opinions, the inherent nature of the site and its religious connotations made it difficult to arrive at a conclusive decision. In late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic became rampant in India and the temple was sealed off for a few months, reopening only recently in 2021. It still retains the initial age restriction it did before the Supreme court ruling - that no women of menstruating age are allowed to enter. 

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Nestled deep inside the Periyar forest reserve in Kerala, Sabarimalai is the seat of a 11th century temple dedicated to a celibate male deity, Lord Ayyappa. The heterogenous identity of the deity and the devotees typifies the shrine, inviting a footfall of almost 40-50 million annually, making it one of the largest pilgrimage sites in the world.[1] It is more well-known, however, for a certain peculiarity that may have at least a few parallels in South India but is not very common elsewhere. Traditionally, menstruating women are barred from breaching the threshold of the temple. The rationale for this perplexing convention presumably lies shrouded in ideas of spiritual chastity and piety, and ancient beliefs about the preservation of sacred and religious space. In 2016, as a response to multiple pleas filed by several independent parties, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India questioned the practise of banning women at the temple, citing concerns about gender justice. In 2018, a five-judge bench ruled in a 4:1 verdict that women were to be allowed inside the temple, deeming the temple a secular space and placing fundamental rights as a cornerstone of “constitutional ethos”. The decision sparked pan-India outrage, giving rise to riotous demonstration and conflict and escalating into controversy that resonated throughout the country. Local outfits, enraged pilgrims and religious leaders lobbied against blasphemy and the misappropriation of religious space. The controversy grew even stronger on the digital realm, as the latter part of 2018 and early 2019 saw strong online campaigns against female disenfranchisement and exclusion. In spite of the glaring polarity in opinions, the inherent nature of the site and its religious connotations made it difficult to arrive at a conclusive decision. In late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic became rampant in India and the temple was sealed off for a few months, reopening only recently in 2021. It still retains the initial age restriction it did before the Supreme court ruling - that no women of menstruating age are allowed to enter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The attempt to define and attest claim to space was a critical point of debate in the Sabarimalai issue. When the right-wing conservative party in India, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), came to the helm in 2014, it capitalised on the Hindu majority in the country and aggressively asserted its “Hindutva” ideology, or a policy of “cultural nationalism” as the rightful identity of the nation. Since then, Hindutva - the imagination of India as a majoritarian Hindu nation – has permeated deeply India’s secular, multi-religious, multi-ethnic social fabric. In rhetoric and in practise, it points to the utopian ideal of a singular homogenous cultural belief, or to the indivisibility of space. It has also resulted in the evolution of the ‘nation-space’, or the demarcation of a very specific sacred geography - a demarcation encompassing, but hardly limited to, the physical boundaries of India.[2]
 
The paradigm is somewhat reminiscent of contemporary studies on spatial theory that illuminate the dimension of the ‘abstract’ or the ‘metaphorical’.[3] At the face of it, Hindutva’s characteristic emphasis on homogeneity is in stark contrast with these theories, which indicate that space may be fragmented yet related through intangible links.[4] However, the two concepts markedly concur in their departure from geometrical definitions of space, propounding the production of a sphere through social practices, processes and interactions. The resultant space, in this case, the nation space, which has been recast as sacred space, is a material entity that can be, owned, appropriated, controlled, regulated and even disputed. 
 
The narrative of Hindutva anoints sacred space as the space of the nation. However, at Sabarimalai, this notion is challenged, and, to an extent, overturned. Embedded deeply in India’s geo-political space and yet diametrically distinct from its counterparts, the temple is also an instance which uses religion as a driver for the creation of a meta-space, albeit through a logic very different from that of the right-wing nationalists. Given the multiplicity of its devotees, stringent ritualistic associations and a complex political context, Sabarimalai offers a unique opportunity to study numerable permutations of interaction and contestation. In this paper, I attempt to delve into the dynamics of this ecosystem, addressing the specific processes that constitute its unique identity. Using spatial theory as method, I investigate the locus of space through time, illuminating how it metamorphoses into the agent, the medium and the product at various stages. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traversing sequentially from narratives of tradition to contemporary events, the research begins with localised encounters of religion and space. Using the concept of meta-space, or the idea of an extended intangible realm onto which the material world projects itself, the discourse is then taken beyond the immediate context of the site. Employing concepts of bio-politics and heterotopia to address structures of gendering, religious hegemony, activism and conflict, the research explores the role of politico-religious ideologies in re-organizing existing systems of belief, ritual, and social interactions to understand how space mobilises a politics of faith. 

 

This is done by dividing the research into three parts, each of which unpack a specific moment of significance: first, deciphering the identity of the temple before the ruling; second, inspecting the events leading up to the ruling and its interpretation; third, analysing the semantics of the activism, demonstration and discord in the aftermath of the ruling. Within each of these domains, I determine the nature of ecological interactions that are engendered as a result of location, time, function and space. I use theories such as post-structuralism[5] and social constructivism[6] as starting points to relate spatial theory and religion. I also extensively draw upon Mircea Eliade, and his theory of ‘axis mundi’,[7] or the interaction between divine and the human realms at certain sites.  In religion, these standpoints offer a bottom-up approach, urging a closer look at the elaborate liturgy and attached meanings intrinsic to a particular faith. Throughout the paper, there is a consistent effort to construct a narrative that begins at Sabarimalai, treated as Ground Zero, which then oscillates between individual to community to nation, all the while consuming and feeding into cross-disciplinary discourses on the subject at hand.

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