The most ambiguous, misunderstood and misinterpreted word in this century is the word Hindu.

Are we just followers of a certain way of life? Or people who happen to have roots in India.
For lack of a book, a prophet or a single Godhead who speaks from the sky, are we a group who makes up our own rules as we spend our life? What are we pursuing – Heaven, reincarnation, Moksha or just a comfortable, happy life?

The best advantage and its biggest flaw, is this very fluid nature of what we each claim is our religion/spirituality.

The masters of yore, Devi Devta, Acharya, Rishis and Yoginis deliberately enriched and encouraged this chaos. They sent us down various rabbit holes, chasing that elusive scent of knowledge. Jnana, they called it. The elixir that will free us from Maya, they said.

Unlike their western or even Asian counterparts, they had a clear grasp of human psychology and recognized an individual’s cognitive mind, as his/her nemesis. The constant vagaries that it would undergo based on sensory and experiential inputs, its ability to fester darkness, the corrosive thoughts that others can easily pour into it. The atman that rides this chariot would continually be battered by the self harm inflicted on its five sheaths. Every word, shloka, shruti or smriti they expounded was thus addressed to small, yet inclusive groups of “life-minded” people.

But when moh-maya-jaal kept ensnaring the seeker, he was unable to even concentrate or self-correct using these intangible tools given to him.

Enter Tantra, Agama and saguna aradhana. Individual puja instead of collective yajna. Temples and devatas instead of reclusive japa-dhyana. Acharyas found ways to enshrine an element of Parabrahma into a panchabhuta body, using mantras to create the devata shareera. Approachable devatas, whose narrative a devotee can grasp even while being sunk in the vagaries and struggles of his life. His intelligence was not sought to be challenged, his lack of time & energy to sit still and ponder deep was respected. Sadhana was brought within arm’s length.

Targeted at an exclusive audience, this form is worship is unpalatable or even abhorrent to many hindus who think Advaita, Vedanta or just nama japa should be enough. Friction exists, when one path attempts to encroach or belittle the other.

For any tool to be effective, there needs to be a specific way in which it is used. One does not use a nail-clipper to open a coconut. Temples are no different, utterly ineffective when used wrongly. The presence of a devata makes these errors costlier, as tantric forces are not like the biblically moulded all-suffering weakling deities of the west.

Sabarimala temple is a school of rejection. Its headmaster is Ayyappan, a warrior who left all fortunes and worldly pleasures to upkeep the promise to his stepmother, went deep into the forest and picked the toughest vow of Naishtika Brahmacharya.

He is literally the Guru Swamy who takes devotees on the path of austerity, rejection and penance for a period of 41 days, end of which they become one with him. The ghee filled in coconuts, the very essence of the devotee, is poured on Ayyappan to signify this merger. With an ounce of the ghee as prasad, a devotee takes back a bit of Ayyappan with him to anchor him in the worldly life he returns to.

Men commit the most crimes, the most suicides, are more susceptible to opiates and intoxicants and by physiology, designed to compete and test themselves. Socially too, this 41-day exclusive rehabilitation plan for men has proven efficient as shown by liquor sales in Tamizh Nadu and Andhra during the mandala period. Lingering effects of the penance percolate to stabilize families and even villages.

The women devotees of Ayyappa experience this in their brothers, sons and husband and are its first-hand beneficiaries.

By destroying this school and this tool of reform in the name of colonially inculcated myopic, often infantile world-views, what is the real positive impact on society? Will it compensate women for the loss of this remarkable transformation of the men in their life?