They are there, the yuva and yuvati. In colleges and schools, institutes of higher-learning, young progressives, who take their cue from the liberal west. Not the Rehana Fatima sort, nor the Bindu Kalyani variety; but the non-activist kind, the ones who cannot be slurred and dismissed as “feminichis” on the basis of their Facebook posts. If you noticed they don’t appear in pictures and videos of the ‘Nama Japa’ marches.

Pinarayi Vijayan banks on them to decimate religion. The BJP-RSS hold them high to bring in a uniform civil code. The Ayyappa Temple and Ram Mandir movements are organically different. The generational shift happening in Kerala is unlike the generational transition taking place in the Hindi-heartland. One is transformative, largely under wraps. The other is present continuous, loud – unchanging in content.

The 18-year-old Kerala girl resents the downsides that come with ‘arthavam’ or menstruation. “Why cannot I enter from the front door when menstruating,” she asks. “Why do I have to sleep on the floor when I’m bleeding?” She waits for release and escape to the “college hostel” where she can be herself and not be excluded.

In the long-term, Swami Ayyappa will have to live the challenge of looking the fertile age woman in the eye. It is kind of weird; this clipping of the wings of a deity whose locus standi is rooted in his celibacy but will have to fend for himself in the company of the nubile. Ayyappa confronted by Hamlet! To be or not to be. In the long run, it is emasculation! Unless, ‘Ayyappan’ becomes a religion. If Tom Cruise’s Scientology can, why not ‘Ayyappan’?

But the odds are stacked. Activists Bindu Tangam Kalyani and Rehana Fatima were the tip of the sword. Both made a dash to Sabarimala. Both had to retreat. Trouble followed them home and to workplace. Fatima’s employer BSNL “took action”. Government school teacher and Dalit activist Bindu was hounded out of Kozhikode to Attapady but the environment stuck with her. Bindu is now waiting for November 13 to double down on the September 28 verdict.

Like any sophomore will attest, life moves from date to date. And November 13, the Supreme Court will take up for hearing as many as 43 review petitions. Status-quoist and Thantri-family outcast Rahul Easwar says there is a 60% chance the top court will smile on the ‘Yatartha Bhaktagal’. That will, however, depend on whether the 43 have anything new to add.

Easwar had a problem when Travancore Devaswom Board hired advocate Aryaman Sundaram, CP Ramaswamy Iyer’s grandson, to oppose the review petitions. But Sundaram has since declined the job. Easwar has vowed to dry the board’s finances. “Your hundi at Sabarimala will not get a paisa from the devotees,” he spoke aloud at the Ernakulam Press Club. “You cannot fight us with money you got from us.”

The legacy media is not giving him much attention. There is a splinter group of Ayyappa bhaktas in the Kerala Union of Working Journalists but it is the “new media” which is pushing the devotees’ cause – YouTube and Facebook and Instagram, mostly. Twitter is kind of not partial with the Ayyappa Malayali, he has more than 140 letters to spew!

That said, everybody agrees expectations from the Supreme Court are almost nil. Easwar continues to live in a castle. Arrested twice and bailed out twice, he’s still “Jallikattu moment” and an ordinance to bandage the wound to the bhakta’s heart. Solitary fellow! No government can override the fundamental ‘Right to Equality’ germane to the Constitution. It’s not child’s play. It doesn’t matter if the “deity is a minor”, at the end of the day, it’s an adult’s world!

Anticipating just such an outcome, the state government is preparing for war. The Travancore Devaswom Board is no longer in the driver’s seat. It’s police mandate that runs in Sabarimala. The temple opens for the Mandala Puja later this month and only those who have booked on the police website will trudge to the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple. That means vetting and authorizations, entry passes. A culling!

The police paint Armageddon: Communal forces will infiltrate devotees and incite violence at the temple Sannidanam. Come with IEDs hidden in their head-kits, irumuddikettu. “Navy and Air Force aircraft will keep an eye from the sky” and a massive deployment of forces will be made on the ground. A total of “569 yuvatis” had booked on the police website till Sunday, and this time the police don’t want to fail them.

The opposition is no less determined. The BJP and the RSS are not hiding among the devotees. They are the devotees! This is their “suvarna avasaram” – golden chance. By Sunday evening, more than six lakh men had applied on the police website. Devotees from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are a big chunk. Police in these states are not cooperative. Atheists don’t rule them.

The Modi government will at best be lukewarm. Whether Navy and IAF aircraft will fly is a question. The battle-lines are drawn. And there’s no walking back. Everybody is counting on the vote and there’s this huge, silent mass of ‘yuvati and yuva voters’, progressives waiting to knock down one more temple bound by tradition to the ground. Left to themselves, they will sink the backwaters! As everybody else, too, will. Chief Thantri Rajeever says he will lock the temple door and walk off with the key at first sight of a yuvati. God’s Own Country will never be the same again! (IPA Service)