Blog By: Mahesh Vijapurkar 

Just like October 30, 1947, yesterday, August 1, 2014, was a historic day for the social reform movement in Maharashtra. Sixty-seven years after the Vittal temple in Pandharpur was thrown open to Harijans, as they were then known, the temple's presiding deities Vittal and Rukmini were offered pujas by non-Brahmin priests.

The temple entry for Dalits had not come easy. It took a campaign by Sane Guruji, a reformer-writer with support from Mahatma Gandhi. It also took a plebiscite in which 4.58 lakh persons expressed support. The Badves, the family who controlled the priesthood, were not easy to be persuaded to ease their stranglehold.

This time, the Supreme Court, in an order in January this year, broke the control of orthodoxy and the control of the Badve and Utpal families that appointed the priests. This opened the opportunity for the temple trust to appoint new priests. It chose to pick them from across castes and not just non-Brahmins, two women were also picked.

Yesterday, two of the ten newly appointed priests performed the puja for Rukmini while the others, including the 17th generation descendent of saint Namdeo performed Vittal’s puja. Namdeo belonged to a caste of tailors.

While these big strides have been possible, another issue that plagues the temple town where millions congregate on Ashad Ekadashi every year, walking during the monsoon for over a month, is the lack of toilet facilities and the continued use of outlawed manual scavenging by the civic body. The High Court has had to appoint a panel to ensure changes.

The town has some 900 public toilets, probably sufficient for a temple town but inadequate during the rush months. The civic body adds about 800 temporary toilets for the pilgrims, but these remain grossly inadequate, forcing varkaris, the sect of Vittal worshippers, to defecate in the open. A team of manual scavengers then cleans up the area and the river bank.

Only when this practice is stopped will the temple town and the Bheema River on whose banks the temple is located become unpolluted. The river, like the Ganges, is considered sacred. This may prove time-consuming despite the court prod.

Vittal, also called Vittoba or endearingly addressed as even Mauli, is a benevolent figure to the worshippers. The temple and the deity have been the lynchpin of the bhaktimovement, a cross-caste egalitarian Protestantism against the clutches of the orthodoxy. Sant Tukaram, Namdeo, Chokhamela had all pushed towards this direct connect with God.

Every year, lakhs go to this temple in Maharashtra’s Solapur district on foot, chanting and dancing. This annual pilgrimage is, in Marathi, a vari, or a trip, and those who undertake it are a kari, hence varkari. These lakhs of pious vegetarians are a large denomination across castes.

Their long travel is an event in which participation is craved for, the walks in large groups setting off from Alandi, the place of Tukaram's final resident place, to Pandharpur, to congregate in lakhs for worship. The progress of these varkaris is facilitated by support from villages along the way – food and shelter provided – carrying forward the no-intermediary movement.

Anna Dange, a former BJP legislator from Sangli who is the chairman of the temple trust had even reportedly planned to entertain applications from only non-Brahmins for the priesthoods but later included Brahmins too. Of the 199 applications from Dalits, Malis and Marathas, including 16 women, ten were picked.

The opening of the temple doors to in 1947 led to several others following suit across Maharashtra but the orthodox, according to a research paper by Chandravadan Naik, fought hard. They organised a mahapuja, transferred the ‘lustre’ or divinity of the deities into a pot and 'took it away' for worship elsewhere.

By that, they rendered the temple bereft of the presence of the deities and thus any visit there for worship meaningless. Also they tried to 'save' the deities from pollution by admission of those barred earlier. Naik narrates that the pot of divinity was eventually toppled over by a cat, and legend goes that divinity returned to the temple.

These steps were described as the ‘cunning’ of the orthodoxy hell-bent on retaining their control which over time – in this case, 67 years – has loosened by law. However, in an ironic twist, a petition has been filed against the appointment of multi-caste priests, by none other than a varkari himself.

Mindsets, one imagines, will take longer to change.