Women have right to pray at Shani temple: Fadnavis
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said his government believed in freedom of worship for women, hours after the state police stopped women activists from entering a Shani temple to challenge tradition.
Ahmednagar/Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said his government believed in freedom of worship for women, hours after the state police stopped women activists from entering a Shani temple to challenge tradition.
"Women have always been given freedom to worship in Indian traditions and Hindu region.Discrimination in worship of God not our culture. Admin should take initiative to resolve issue," Fadnavis tweeted. Later on Wednesday, Fadnavis met women activists who were stopped from entering the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra.
"The Chief Minister has said he will support us. He has supported our movement. I request the government to act as soon as possible. Similar rules across the country should be done away with," Trupti Desai, who had led the 500-strong women protesters, said after her meeting of a few seconds with Fadnavis in Pune.
"We had called him on phone and he said he would meet us," said Desai, apparently pleased with the outcome. Desai's Bhumata Brigade is demanding an end to a centuries-old ban on women's entry into the inner-most part of the temple, where the idol of Lord Shani is placed on an open-air platform.
The women activists were trying to force their way into the temple on Tuesday, when they were physically blocked by nearly 1,000 villagers and the local police. Fadnavis’ tweet opened the doors for talks, with members of the board that runs the temple saying they were ready "for a dialogue". But they were conspicuously silent on Fadnavis' support for women's right to pray at the temple.
The Chief Minister's stand also makes for some complicated politics. Some members of women's wing of the Shiv Sena, the BJP's ally in the state, had blocked the women activists from proceeding to the temple, though the Sena has not yet officially taken a stand.
On Tuesday, huge crowds and the police blocked the women about 40 km from the temple. Some of the activists lay on the ground protesting. They were detained and later released and sent back to Pune.
