• By Imran Zafar
  • Sat, 16 Sep 2023 05:03 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND

The Tamil Nadu government announced the inclusion of three women in temples as priests on Thursday after they completed their training under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of the state government, which runs six priests' training schools where people of all communities can take the training to become priests. 

The three women, Krishnaveni, S Ramya and N Ranjitha will soon be designated as assistant priests at temples in Tamil Nadu as they have completed their year-long course at the Srirangam temple in Trichy, where they studied Tamil and Sanskrit. They were also the first women who enrolled in this course.  

Chief Minister MK Stalin said that women stepping into the sanctums would bring a new era of equality and inclusivity while stating that this was made possible due to the Dravidian model of governance. He said the Dravidian model government made this possible at a time when women were deemed impure and were not even allowed in the temples of female deities.

One of the women who completed her course to become a priest, S Ramya, has a master’s degree in Mathematics and comes from a tailor’s family in Cuddalore district. She expressed her happiness saying that her lifelong dream was to serve God in temples and thanked the Tamil Nadu government for providing her with this opportunity. 

“We are proud we are the first women temple priests. We hope other women also get this chance. The government is backing us against any opposition. We request the people to support us too,” she said as quoted by NDTV. 

C Krishnaveni, another graduate from the same district, thanked Chief Minister Stalin and Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments minister for making this historic change possible. She appealed to the public to accept and support them. 

Chief Minister MK Stalin, who has been spearheading this initiative to make temple priesthood inclusive and egalitarian, said women have achieved great heights in various fields like aviation and space but were denied the sacred role of temple priests due to discrimination but the change is now here. 

"Despite women's achievements as pilots and astronauts, they were barred from the sacred role of temple priests, deemed impure, even in the temples for female deities. But change is finally here! In Tamil Nadu, as our #DravidianModel Government has removed the thorn from Thanthai Periyar's heart by appointing people of all castes as priests, women are also now stepping into the sanctums, bringing a new era of inclusivity and equality," CM Stalin wrote on microblogging site X, (formerly Twitter).