Sabarimala entry: Rehana Fathima says her fight will go on

KOCHI: Her attempt to visit the Sree Dharmasastha Temple at Sabarimala triggered immense backlash from all sides. But Rehana Fathima, 31, is unperturbed. On Wednesday, Fathima, a BSNL employee was transferred to the Palarivattom telephone exchange in the city “where public contact is not required”, sources said. This has come after miscreants vandalised her quarters at Panampilly Nagar last week, on the same day she had trekked up 500 metres from the hill shrine, accompanied by a posse of 80 policemen.

Another woman, Kavitha Jakkala, a television reporter from Hyderabad, too, was with her. Ever since her attempted temple visit, she has been taking flak from both Hindus and Muslims. While Hindus accused her of “betraying the trust and faith” of thousands, the Kerala Muslim Jama’ath Council expelled her from the community for hurting religious sentiments. Not to be left behind, Facebook too joined the anti-Fathima bandwagon and suspended her account based on a complaint.

Fathima, however, is not new to controversies. She is firm on breaking stereotypes and traditions of a deeply religious and patriarchal society. “There are lots of rumours being circulated with all kinds of stories including one that I carried a sanitary napkin in my irumudikettu (a cloth bag with two compartments containing puja articles). I don’t know its origin but one TV reporter asked me whether I came as a devotee and was a believer. I said, define a believer, and then I will tell you if I am one. Later, they asked me what was in the irumudikettu and I told them it contained all the items that are to be carried by a Sabarimala pilgrim.”

A BSNL technician, Rehana is now under police protection at her home because of the threats she has been receiving after her trek took a communal colour, though non-Hindus too visit Sabarimala. “I have been fascinated by Hinduism and in 2003-04 I used to go by the name of Surya Gayatri. Of course, it has not been recorded anywhere,” she said. Her house was ransacked and her kids’ school uniforms were smeared with cow-dung paste and their toys destroyed. “My children were very upset when they saw what had happened. But they are recovering.” Photographs she had posted on Facebook, too, have been widely circulated.

One of the circulated photographs was a halfnaked Fathima covering her chest with two watermelons, an act she did to “make a point.” ‘Bare the chest’ was a protest campaign against the statements of assistant professor Jauhar Munnavir T of Farook Training College, Kozhikode, who made derogatory comments about Muslim women for not properly covering their heads and bodies properly.

She painted her body as a tiger to be the first women to participate in the ‘puli kali’, a street dance, till recently only by men,

She and her live-in partner Manoj Sreedharan, with whom she has two children, were in the forefront of the Kiss of Love campaign against moral policing. Nobody, though, expected her to be at Pamba on October 18 till the police team escorting journalist Kavita Jakkala revealed her presence as a pilgrim and all hell broke loose. Soda bottles were thrown at Kavita and in that melee Fathima’s presence became known.