An Indian activist who made a failed attempt to become the first woman to enter a prominent Hindu temple this month has been arrested for “exposing her thigh” in a Facebook photo.
Rehana Fathima, 32, has been suspended from her job and was remanded in custody over the picture, which showed her dressed as a pilgrim to the Sabarimala shrine in the south-western Indian state of Kerala.
The hilltop temple has been the subject of weeks of protests after the Indian supreme court lifted a ban on women of menstruating age worshipping at the site. Bands of male and female demonstrators have formed cordons and hurled rocks at the women who have tried to reach the inner sanctum. None of the women have succeeded so far.
Fathima, a model and telecommunications technician, was among those who tried, managing to reach the main complex escorted by more than 100 officers, before protesters turned her back.
Soon after, she posted a selfie on Facebook showing her dressed in black, with white sandalwood paste across her forehead and striking a pose associated with Ayyappa, the deity who is worshipped at the shrine.
A case registered by police in October claimed the photograph was “sexually explicit” and “wounded the religious feelings of Lord Ayyappa’s devotees”. Her attempts to prevent her arrest failed this week and she was remanded in custody on Tuesday.
The controversy over the temple has tested the limits of the power of the judiciary to intervene in religious affairs, as well as its ability to enforce the decision: both the BJP and Congress party in Kerala have declined to support the state’s Communist government in enforcing the law.
Those who want to ban women from the temple say Ayyappa was known for his celibacy, and that the presence of menstruating women is a profane incursion on a holy site.
Fathima’s husband told the Times of India: “We don’t understand how a woman’s photo showing her knee would be anti-religious in a country where naked saints are worshipped.” They are applying for bail.