Mumbai: As a response to the Apex Court’s question as to why women cannot enter Sabarimala temple, the government authorities and temple officials have replied stating that since the presiding deity of the hilltop temple is a celibate, allowing women to enter the temple would be a sin!

The hilltop temple is one of a few temples in India which bars women of reproductive age from entering the temple. Girls under age of 10 and women above age of 50 are permitted into the temple.
This 1500-year-old tradition came under legal scrutiny on Monday this week after the Young Lawyers’ Association filed a petition seeking entry for all women but government officials on Tuesday defended the ban.

“This practice is going on for centuries,” Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram. “The chief deity in the temple is a celibate. So allowing women to worship in the shrine is a sin,” said the temple’s chief priest Thazhamon Madom Kandararu Rajeevaru.

Temple Affairs Minister VS Sivakumar said the government “will protect the faith and custom” and file an affidavit in the Supreme Court on January 18 in consultation with all stakeholders.

Meanwhile Prayar Gopalkrishnan, President of the Temple Board said that the Board will implead in the case to protect the interests of the devotees.

“The divinity of the shrine comes from this custom. That will be protected at any cost,” he said

The temple had stoked a controversy last November when the head of the temple said he would consider installing machines to test menstruating women in the temple premises.

Scores of women took to social media, joining a campaign launched as #happytobleed.

An estimated one million Hindu pilgrims flock every year to the Sabarimala temple in the Western Ghats hills to pray to the deity Lord Ayyappan who meditated at that spot, according to Hindu mythology.