As a public figure Mrs Sabarimala is involved in community service since 2002. She is fighting for equal opportunities for all in the field of education and the protection of girls’ and women’s rights.
Syed Ali Mujtaba | Clarion India
Mrs. Sabarimala Jayakanthan, Tamil motivational speaker and teacher, announced her conversion to Islam holding the cloth of Kaaba. The new name she has chosen for herself after embracing Islam is Fatima. Henceforth, she will be known as Fatima Sabarimala.
Mrs. Fatima, on her first visit to the holy city of Makkah, said, “I asked myself why there is so much hatred against Muslims in the world. I started reading the Quran as a neutral person. Then I came to know the truth. Now, I love Islam more than myself.”
“It’s a great privilege and honour to be a Muslim,” said the Hindu convert, requesting Muslims to introduce Quran to everyone.
“You people have a wonderful amazing ‘Book’, why are you hiding it in your homes. The world must read this,” she reportedly said in Makkah.
Mrs Sabarimala was born on December 26, 1982 in Madurai to Alagharsamy and Kalaiyarasi. She married to Jayakanthan and has a son named Jayacholan.
Mrs. Sabarimala did her education at Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, and joined Elleri School near Kattumannargudi in Cuddalore district as a school teacher in 2002. She quit her job as a government school teacher saying the nation is more important than her job.
She is in the forefront of the campaign for a single education system across India. She says there is no need for the NEET exam and argues, “How NEET could be equitable for all when there is no common education system in India. She even went on a hunger strike against the ‘NEET exam insisting that it should be suspended till a common education system is implemented in India.
As a public figure Mrs Sabarimala is involved in community service since 2002. She is fighting for equal opportunities for all in the field of education and the protection of girls’ and women’s rights. She started an organisation called “Vision 2040” in 2017 in Tamil Nadu to achieve the aforementioned goals.
As a feminist Mrs Sabarimala she is fighting against violence against girls and women in the society. She has met about six lakh girls in rural areas across Tamil Nadu to raise awareness about the protection of girl children. She has written a book on protection of girl child and has distributed it among 5000 schoolgirls. She arranged one lakh rupees for the family of Rithanyasree, a girl who died in a sexual abuse case in Coimbatore.
As a motivational speaker, Mrs. Sabarimala has been on more than two thousand stages. She has been a panel speaker on more than 200 platforms and moderated several TV programmes on Vander TV, News7 TV, Jaya TV, etc. She says her speeches are not for business but for social change.
Her current mission is to turn government school students into public speakers. She has prepared thousands of students for public speaking. She continues to turn students into speakers and conduct workshops across Tamil Nadu at schools, festivals, and literary venues where she makes students speak on stage.
Mrs. Sabarimala has started a campaign with the slogan “No Return to Home”. She promises to send the women standing in the kitchen to the assembly. She has also formed a political party the “Women’s Liberation Party” (WLP) with feminist motives.
Women are seen as child-bearing toys, and kitchen machines, and the Women’s Liberation Party would break these stereotypes and change the status of women in Tamil Nadu, says Fatima Sabarimala a.k.a Mrs. Sabarimala.
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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at [email protected]
