Ideal worship

In India, leveraging the machinery of state to settle disturbances arising from matters of faith is not unheard of

In the 71st year of the creation of a country that was expected to be a modern one, priests and devotees have taken it upon themselves to flagrantly disobey a Supreme Court order and prevent women of child-bearing age to enter the Sabarimala temple. It took over three months from the time the order was pronounced for two women in their forties to finally enter the sanctum sanctorum, and they did so with the help of the secular apparatus of the state: A police escort.

Despite the statewide violence that broke out in protest, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took credit