India and Hinduism are in the news again for all the wrong reasons. Long gone are any images of gentle, vegetarian peaceniks - India under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi is a scary place of vitriol, persecution and violence.
In September of 2017, the Indian Supreme Court bravely ruled that it was against the country's laws on gender discrimination for temples to disallow women "of menstruation age" (which is usually taken as 10 to 60 years old, regardless of whether or not they are having a period). Even more bravely, three women have since run the testosterone-laden gauntlet of the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, south India, which is supposedly dedicated to a celibate Hindu deity, in a bid to exercise their legal (and, I suppose, religious) rights.
Since the court ruling, rabid crowds of male protestors - encouraged, it should be noted, by the BJP - have blocked women from entering the temple, and even blocked roads leading to the temple, looking for women who might want to sneak in to their precious male bastion. To the credit of the state government and police, all three women who have entered the temple have done so under police protection, ridiculous though that may sound, and the police force says it will extend this service to any woman wanting to enter the temple (although, arguably, why would they want to?).
Meanwhile, the whole state of Kerala is effectively paralyzed because of the ongoing protests, with schools and public transportation closed down. Do these people have nothing better to do? In what way do they think they are serving their religion?
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