The Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar is said to be one of the many places of worship across the country barred to women.

Two emotive facets are inherent here — the practice of a vigorous faith but only by men and in parallel institutionalised gender inequality.

The latter, however preposterous and almost incredible in the second decade of the 21st century, continues to be accorded precedence over the Bombay high court’s landmark order.

More the pity therefore that barely 24 hours after the court reversed an antediluvian tradition in matters religious, women were stopped at the entrance to the temple on Saturday with the police standing by as helpless witnesses to the travesty of a judicial order.

The bench was explicit on the point that women shall no longer be barred from entering places of worship in Maharashtra.

The tradition has been embedded for centuries in superstition and ignorance, even a bizarre sense of patriarchy.

That it was nurtured for as long as it has is testament to the mediaeval rules still being followed in several places of worship.

The bench conveyed a robust message, underlining that women have the “fundamental right to visit temples and worship” and no less crucially that it was the government’s duty to protect them.

There do exist shrines with separate queues for women; it is the bar on entry that has been underlined by the high court as a violation of a fundamental right.

The incompetence of the Maharashtra government appears to have provoked a certain women’s group called the Bhumata Ranragini Brigade to file an FIR against Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis as well as the police deployed near the temple to uphold the temple authorities’ terms of engagement ... and not, as it turns out, the court order.

Clearly, the controversy has gone beyond the mere entry of women; it is the almost wilful violation of the high court order that has now made the waters murkier.

Saturday’s tense face-off despite judicial intervention has lent an impetus to the campaign for gender justice.

Was it really necessary to engage a local resistance group against the women, even put in place a “protective ring” to keep the believers at a distance?

The calculated mockery of the court order came even as Mr Fadnavis mounted a robust and provocative defence of the “Bharat Mata ki Jai” cry.

Maharashtra’s mothers (and sisters and wives) should ask Mr Fadnavis to explain the irony of being so peremptorily excluded from the embrace of Mother India’s constitution.

The Statesman / India

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2016