Sabarimala Temple – Elite Vs The Native

Shailendra Dhar

Sabarimala is not a restaurant or picnic spot. Followers of Ayappa are a group of believers held together by commonly held believes and practices. You don’t like it, don’t be part of it, in fact by definition you are not part of it. Period. You can’t judge or intervene in whatever they believe in as long as they don’t impose their believes on people outside that community of believers i.e. on those who don’t want to follow Ayappa. If I or you are an atheist or don’t belong to that community of believers, we are obviously not part of them. Nothing of what they do or don’t apply to us. How and when their deity is to be worshipped, what is sacred and when can ONLY be decided by the believers of Ayappa.

Stripped of legalese the petition in the SC by a certain Indian Young Lawyers Association headed by one Mr Naushad Ahmad Khan, amounts to the following:

I don’t believe in Ayappa nor do I honour their believes or practices. It, therefore, affects me in no way but I want to defile what they hold as sacred and disrupt their way of prayer.

Why should intolerance of few, aided by arrogance of the westernised elite, insist on ‘prevailing over’ and not respect “little traditions”. Sabarimala verdict is victory of cultural colonizers who insist on creating a flat world devoid of diversity, suppressive of ‘other’ traditions. Sabarimala verdict is war cry against cultural sub-altern, minority traditions, communities and groups- a victory of totalitarian desire to destroy, defile and subdue localised cultural impulses and practices that make a people.

Colonizers, elite and the western liberal order

There are numerous other Ayappa temples where women can go. But it was important for cultural aggressors to deny them one particular manifestation at one particular place, to defile the believes and practices of thousands of believers-practices that don’t hurt anyone.There was nothing terrible happening there. But it was an occasion for the elite to declare and assert its sovereignty over the native. Indian liberals are the foot soldiers of the the global western liberal order which seeks to create a flat world driven by its own cultural prejudices , covenants and assertions, celebrated by the national elite as “universal” and “modern” ; to create a homogenous, soulless, culturally neutered, uprooted workforce for the corporates.
Shani Signapur, a village deity has fallen, so has Ayappa. It is matter of time that kamakhya, Amarnath, various sufi traditions, dargah (not Masjids) will be forced to surrender to the savagery of the elite.
Let’s defend and uphold diversity of cultural existence. People, their anxieties, their believes and practices make and hold together this nation. Let’s resist and reclaim our nation.

This impulse to subsume diversity is essentially fascist in its character, structure and dynamics. And this mindset, this structure of suppression and subjugation of nativity- of particularity, singularity and individuality- must be dismantled.

This construct of a “superior self to colonize inferior other” feeds and directs our state and its institutions and ‘builds’ social and cultural conversations through media, cinema, serials and education: for self approval and validity and for sacrificing your particularity to the ‘universal’ of the elite. It colonizes you. Clones you. Like an auto immune disorder it weakens your defences against attacks on your self.

It must be fought in all its manifestation. That is, if you have to survive as a nation, as a people.