After a controversial ban on women of all ages entering the Sabarimala temple was lifted, CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has questioned why Sunni mosques continue to restrict women, instead of allowing them inside.
“There should be no discrimination against women in any place, is the stance that [the party] are taking,” Kodiyeri said, speaking to mediapersons in the state on Saturday.
“There are women going to some mosques, right? There is entry for women in the Beemapally mosque in Thiruvananthapuram. So many mosques allow entry to women. Women are even going on Hajj. If that’s the case Mecca should not allow women, right? Be it a Sunni or anybody else, our stance is the same for everyone,” Kodiyeri said.
Reacting to these statements, Muslim League State General Secretary KPA Majeed said, “[Kodiyeri] is first of all not a believer. So it doesn’t make sense when a non-believer talks about how things should be.”
He went on to say that Kodiyeri’s criticism of Sunni mosques only serves to hide the CPI(M)’s two-facedness that has come out during the Sabarimala issue.
According to reports, for most Sunni mosques in India, a separate prayer room is assigned for women to pray. In many cases, women are not allowed into the inner sanctum of the mosques to touch the shrines of male saints.
In a report in the Quint, an Imam from a mosque in Mumbai said that there is no restriction of women entering a mosque to pray. However, since it’s also not obligatory for women to offer the congregational prayers of Friday for Eid, as is the case with men, mosques may not have designated praying spaces for women.
The imam also says that as per the religious book, women are even encouraged to offer individual prayers at home. But if they wished to come to the mosque and pray, they had every right to do so. Several Sunni mosques in India however have a unsaid restriction on women entering the sanctum and in some cases, may not even have designated praying spaces for them.
With the Supreme Court lifting on the ban of women entering Sabarimala, the LDF-led Kerala government has been supportive of the verdict, even as several outfits, including the Nair Service Society and RSS, have staged protests and decided to file review petitions to revoke the lifting of the ban.
"In the case of Sabarimala Devasthanam, it is an issue of a local temple’s tradition and faith, to which sentiments of millions of devotees, including women, are attached. These sentiments of the devotees cannot be ignored while considering the judgement," RSS General Secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi said in a statement.
Referring to the state government’s and Travancore Devaswom Board’s stand on not filing a review petition on the verdict, Nair Service Society General Secretary G Sukumaran Nair said it was “unfortunate.”
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said that the state government would not file a review petition on the Supreme Court order allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple. “Being a law-abiding state, we have to go by the SC verdict and take the steps necessary to implement the same,” he said.
Prior to the Sabarimala verdict, the Supreme Court passed a verdict in 2016 allowing entry of women to Haji Ali, a mosque dedicated to Sufi saints in Mumbai, giving them equal rights to pray.