Tag Archives: WorldNews

Mass arrests in India amid protests over women entering forbidden Hindu temple

India – get with equality!

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Police have detained 2,000 people in India’s Kerala state as Hindu hardliners tried to shut down businesses in protest over the Sabarimala Temple. Meanwhile, another woman entered the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappa.

Indian women just did a remarkable thing – they formed a wall of protest | Snigdha Poonam

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They were asserting their right to enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala – and have given hope for women’s rights

On 1 January, in one of the biggest movements for women’s rights in India, 5 million women lined up across the length of the southern state of Kerala to “uphold Renaissance values”. What they were demanding was an end to violent agitations against women trying to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site. This followed a ruling by the Indian supreme court in September, which forced the temple’s doors open to women of all ages in a sensational blow to religious tradition.

“Where a man can enter, a woman can also go. What applies to a man, applies to a woman,” the bench said in its judgment. Since 1991, the temple has accepted only men and older women, in their millions every year, to preserve the mythological celibacy of the ruling deity, Ayyappa. In theory, the court order only reinforced Indian women’s constitutional right to enter places of worship as freely as men, but in practice it wreaked mayhem. Between 17 November and 24 December, more than a dozen women of menstrual age, including reporters, tried to enter the temple but were stopped, shoved and stoned by mobs of male devotees. None of the women could make it in, despite police protection and prohibitory orders. Both sides are far from giving in. Protests have since continued, though most women who were sent back by the mobs have vowed to return.

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Kevin Spacey and Louis CK have been out in the wilderness. Please, let’s keep them there

your 15 minutes are up!

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In case anyone has forgotten what makes this twosome so gruesome, up they pop to remind us

Whatever happened to the wilderness? People used to stay there for ages. Did it turn out to be a really inhospitable place or something?

I think we all have to ask as the huge caravan of men returning from exile threatens to overwhelm us. Over the past week, it has been difficult to turn on the internet without seeing reports detailing this alleged crimewave’s progress. “My life is over,” declaimed comedian Louis CK to … hang on, where are my reading glasses? … a sold-out audience in Long Island. He owns a multi-million dollar estate on nearby Shelter Island, so I guess it feels as wastelandy a spot as any to unleash a set shitting all over school shooting survivors and people asking to be referred to by pronouns of their choice. But we’ll come to the courage of this material shortly.

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