Women must be allowed to enter mandir, masjid or dargah: Activist

Mumbai: After valiantly battling the Shani Shingnapur temple trust in Ahmednagar district, activist Trupti Desai has decided to join hands with those opposing the Haji Ali Dargah trust’s decision to restrict women access to the sanctum sanctorum.
“I’ve never protested against any religion or deity, I’ve simply fought for a woman’s constitutional right to be treated at par with men,” Desai said at a press conference called by the joint forum, Haji Ali Sab Ke Liye on Wednesday.“These constitutional rights don’t belong only to women of a certain caste or religion. Whether it’s a mandir, masjid or dargah, women must be allowed to enter,” she added.
Desai, who is president of the Maharashtra-based NGO Bhumata Ranragini Brigade, attended the conference along with Muslims for Secular Democracy’s Javed Anand, Bharat Bachao Andolan’s Feroze Mithiborwala, Vaghini’s Jyoti Badekar, CPI’s Prakash Reddy, lyricist Hasan Kamaal and playwright Javed Siddiqi.
Javed Anand explained that on April 16, representatives of secular, progressive organizations discussed the situation at the Haji Ali Dargah. The conclusion was that women have an equal right to access sacred spaces and that our country’s constitutional principles are superior to customs and traditions, which undermine gender equality.
It was also decided at that meeting to create the Haji Ali Sab Ke Liye forum and urge the Haji Ali dargah trustees to “pro-actively withdraw the restrictions” it recently imposed on women without waiting for the Bombay high court’s decision.
A PIL challenging the ban was filed in 2014 by activists Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan. “Such a gesture on the part of the trustees,” said the press release, “will pre-empt any attempt at communalization of this issue.” Since the matter is sub judice, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan was not represented at the press conference.
Forum members emphasized that women entering the inner sanctum is not a religious issue as there were no restrictions imposed until 2011. Additionally, some dargah trustees are also trustees of Mahim’s Makhdoom Baba Dargah, which, even today, gives women devotees full access.
But there were dissenting voices which tried to derail the press conference. Javed Lodhia from the Human Rights and Social Justice Mission, who claimed that he was “friends” with Haji Ali Dargah’s trustees, insisted on giving a speech defending their decision and was told to leave by the organizers of the press conference. “We aren’t against women but there are certain Shariat laws which disallow women from entering the inner sanctum. There are also issues involving purity,” he said. “Even today, women are allowed in a small balcony but they can’t go right up to the Baba’s tomb.”