Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Orissa’s Women and Child Development Minister Ms. Pramila Mallik has digested the most obnoxious insult she was subjected to by the caste supremacists in the temple of Akhandalamani at Aredi of Bhadrak district on January 14, 2009. But should the State digest this insult?
The lady minister had gone into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to offer puja in the morning. She belong to the segment of people who has been branded by the Brahmins and their cohorts as “untouchable”.
Discovering the lady in the inner chamber of the deity, the priests declared the temple desecrated and embarrassed the Minister by starting purification rituals after she had come out of the sanctum sanctorum.
Ms. Mallik has accepted the insult silently and has rather admitted that she should not have violated traditions by entering into the temple.
It is more insulting to the peoples of Orissa that the woman Minister has acquiesced into caste apartheid perpetrated on Harijans by the practitioners of Brahminism.
These pages carry details of how the Harijans of Keradagarh, tortured by the caste supremacists for having dared to enter into the Jagannath temple there in 2006 had protested against the insult. The caste supremacists have foiled the High Court of Orissa order passed in their support, which had made it clear that caste should never be a bar in entering into a temple of any Hindu deity.
Sad, a Minister of the State has no guts to go against the mean machinations in use by the scoundrels who feed their bellies only by perpetuating caste apartheid and by cultivating hatred of man against man to keep the society divided and susceptible to their exploitation.
By digesting the insult, Ms. Mallik has contributed to perpetuation of caste apartheid in the State and hence she has forfeited her right to remain a Minister.
The Chief minister, if at all he has the sense of responsibility expected of a Chief Minister, should drop Ms. Mallik from the cabinet for being a passive collaborator of the crime against human dignity and initiate stern action against the priests and their cohorts under whose captivity Akhandalamani has become a farce of a deity.