Comrades in Retreat

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THE HAND OF KK SHAILAJA, Kerala’s minister of health and welfare at the time, enveloped the fingers of a woman in a white sari standing beside her. That woman held another woman’s hand, who held another’s. The chain of women stretched over six hundred kilometres from Kasargod district to the state’s southernmost point, bookended by Brinda Karat, the first ever woman politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Between the two communist leaders were almost 5 million nurses, students, nuns, writers, farmers, sportspersons, actors, homemakers—women from every walk of life. This was the Vanitha Mathil, or women’s wall, supported by a coalition of 178 sociopolitical organisations on the first day of 2019. At places, the crowds thickened into two or three lines, becoming the single largest chain of women in human history.

The Vanitha Mathil then read a pledge: “Kerala was once called a lunatic asylum. Today, it’s known as god’s own country thanks to social-reform movements. Orthodoxy had always stood against our surge towards a progressive society … Equality for women is part of this social reformation.” The pledge ended by thanking its primary mover, the communist-led state government.

The wall came at a critical moment in Kerala’s political theatre. Three months earlier, the Supreme Court had issued a landmark verdict allowing women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple. The shrine, one of the largest pilgrimage sites in the state—drawing an estimated 50 million devotees every year—has had a historic ban on women of menstruating age, codified as law in the state. While orthodox groups have claimed this is because the deity, Ayyappa, is celibate, many among the state’s progressive circles have always associated the ban with the Hindu taboo on menstruation that casts it as “impure,” in much the same way as oppressed-caste people or meat-eaters are considered polluting.