Legal Method Assignment III
Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister PK Sekar Babu’s remark
that women could be appointed priests in the 35,000-odd temples in the state is long overdue.
Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister PK Sekar Babu’s remark
that women could be appointed priests in the 35,000-odd temples in the state is long overdue.
This transformative idea must be emulated in temples across the country. There are, properly
speaking, no religious obstacles for doing so. What stands in the way is the dead hand of
convention, the power of patriarchy, and politics.
The term “priest” denotes a vast range of social, ritual and redemptory functions: From
purohits to pandas, to being a medium of divine power. Women have performed many of
these. These functions are also embedded differently in different Hindu traditions: Sakta,
Saivism, and Vaishnavism, Smarta etc. There are several examples in Tamil Nadu,
Maharashtra where women perform all rituals. Often, priesthood was an inherited office. In
Raj Kali Kuer vs Ram Rattan Pandey 1955, the Supreme Court held that women have the
right to succeed to religious office. It ruefully noted that standard codifications like Digest of
Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions: With a commentary by Jagannatha
Tercapanchanana, disqualified women from performing certain ritual functions. But it held
that this disqualification was not sufficient grounds to deny them priestly office. This
judgment notes that many priestly offices in Indian temples were hereditary, and “hereditary
is not a principle of competence.” In many temples, priestly office-holders subcontracted
particular ritual functions when needed. So even if women could not participate in particular
rituals, that could not be grounds for denying them priestly authority.
But despite these precedents, participation of women in temple authority structures or ritual
processes is shockingly rare. There are two obstacles: The fear of women coming in contact
with men, and notions of purity and pollution, especially associated with menstruation.
Again, there is a complexity. The social bases of the temples matter. This principle also
operates differently in what are called Agamic or Shastric temples, versus non-Agamic
temples. In temples with Tantric traditions, both Kashmiri and South Indian, women can
perform forms of worship prohibited elsewhere, even though there are some restrictions. But
historically, the Shaligram Shila Puja was the lakshman rekha that could not be crossed; even
non-menstruating women could not touch the Shila. Overcoming this taboo is a tall order, as
we just saw in the<Sabarimala<case. But the taboo must go.
The purpose of opening up ritual functions to women cannot just be social engineering; there
are good religious grounds for opening all ritual functions to women. The textual tradition
always leaves room for ambiguity; whether there were prohibitions in Vedic texts is debated.
Some foreground Bhakti inflected verses, like Srimad Bhagvad, 11.27, 3-4, where Brahma
tells Bhrigu that worshipping in deity form is the most beneficial of all spiritual practices, for
women and Sudras. They argue that this sentiment should override other prohibitions. But the
basic point is this. The authority of men, or of Brahmins, to conduct rituals is not literally
vested in their bodies. This authority is created through a liturgy of signs and symbolic
substitutions. They are not pure or worthy. They are made pure or worthy through ritual.
There is no reason why anyone cannot be made worthy in this sense.
