Minutes after the Supreme Court ruled 4:1 in favour of allowing women’s entry into Kerala’s Sabarimala Temple, social activist Rahul Easwar, who belongs to the Thantri family of the temple, has stated that he will be filing a review petition in the Supreme Court.
Rahul Easwar, addressing a press conference, claimed that the SC’s verdict will ‘destabilise the soul’ of the deity inside the temple, Lord Ayyappa. "Our core argument is that deity is a celibate. The deity is the core of the temple. The deity has a right and a soul, and if you are going to destabilise the soul, it will affect every temple. We will move the court in the first week of October," he told the media.
Rahul Easwar, the President of the Ayyappa Dharma Sena, was one of the main activists who backed the ban on the entry of women between the ages of 10 to 50 inside the temple.
“We will go for a review petition after getting support from other religious heads,” said A Padmakumar, the president of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), according to news agency ANI.
The Supreme Court on Friday lifted the ban on the entry of women into the famous Sabarimala temple. The court observed that physiological and biological factors can't be given legitimacy if they don't pass the muster of conditionality, meaning women and men are equal.
Sabarimala is a temple dedicated to Lord Ayyappa located in the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala. Managed by the Travancore Devaswom Board, there are restrictions for the entry of women between 10 and 50 years of age in the temple since it is believed that Lord Ayyappa, who is the presiding deity, is a celibate and menstruating women cannot be allowed inside the temple premises on account of ‘purity’.