Year-round rituals won’t serve purpose: Sabarimala priest

Tanthri Kantararu Rajeevaru, chief priest of the Lord Ayyappa Shrine at Sabarimala, has said that having daily poojas and darshan at the temple round the year, as suggested by the Kerala High Court, would not serve the desired purpose. The High Court had on last Friday asked the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) to consider allowing daily pooja and darshan throughout the year at the shrine.

On the one hand such an arrangement would not serve the desired purpose of lessening the rush of devotees during the annual two-month pilgrimage season and on the other this was against the concept of the Sabarimala temple, the Tanthri said. Daily poojas were not necessary at the Lord Ayyappa shrine as per the Tanthra prescriptions, he said.

Tanthri Rajeevaru said that the rush of devotees during the two-month Mandalam-Makaravilakku pilgrimage season would not come down even if daily poojas were held at Sabarimala. He indicated that the devotees having darsan at Sabarimala during the annual season would not be satisfied with the darsan at any time of the year.

Poojas were being performed for five days in the beginning of every month of the Malayalam calendar even now, he said, but the temple was not witnessing the same rush on the last three days as on the first two. The Tanthri had earlier opposed a High Court suggestion for widening the Holy 18 Steps (Pathinettampadi) that led to the shrine.

The Devaswom Bench of the High court had last Friday asked the TDB, which was administering the temple, to appoint a committee of experts to examine whether it was possible to have poojas throughout the year. Presently, darshan and pooja at the shrine are limited to the two-month Mandalam-Makaravilakku season (November-January), the brief Vishu and Onam festival periods and the first day of every month of the Malayalam calendar.

The court opined that the darshan and poojas at the temple were limited to the specific seasons in the past perhaps as it was a temple among inaccessible thick jungles. The times had changed and the rush of devotees was increasing year after year, the bench pointed out. In this context, the court felt that year-round poojas need not be against the tradition.

It would be helpful if devotees got the chance to have darshan round the year in the present circumstances, said the court but added that this had to be examined in detail in the required manner. On an average, 35 million devotees from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states have darshan at the Sabarimala temple every year.

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