VILLUPURAM: A day after the Shri Dharmaraja Draupadi Amman temple at Melpathi was opened for the public, no one from the village turned up at the temple for worship on Friday when it was opened for rituals in the morning and evening.

The Vanniyar community of Melpathi, who are higher in number - their resistance to Dalits entering the temple resulted in its closure in June 2023 - stayed away despite Friday being an auspicious day. Many from the community said they would rather boycott than worship together with the Dalits.

A few men from the community chatting at a tea shop near the temple on Friday told TNIE, on condition of anonymity, they felt the temple has been “polluted” after Dalits entered on Thursday, adding purification rituals needs to be performed to cleanse the temple.

One of them said, “Certain matters related to faith cannot be resolved by the law or the court. Draupadi Amman is our community’s deity. We cannot give up the tradition all of a sudden because of a legal intervention.”

The temple, managed by the HR & CE department, was opened for the first time for public worship since June 2023 with huge presence of police on Thursday, following Madras HC order in February.

The police personnel were deployed at the temple on Friday as well. Though around 80 people from Dalit community worshipped separately at the temple on Thursday morning, they too stayed away on Friday, citing the hostility faced from the caste Hindu community the day before as the primary reason.

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