Sabarimala

Religion and Law in Democratic Polities

Abstract

In the recent parliamentary elections in India, the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party obtained a stunning victory. While it was expected, it was a surprise that the party obtained no seats at all in Kerala where the Left Front, the actual government in power, also lost, winning only one out of twenty seats. What links them both is the Supreme Court Verdict (SCV) revoking the ban of women’s entry in Sabarimala. This very popular pilgrimage was/is exclusive only for men; women of the
age group 10-50 was traditionally forbidden for they would infringe the perpetual celibacy of the consecrated divinity there: Ayyappa.
This ban defended on the physiological inability of women in observing the vow of celibacy for the prescribed 41 days was challenged by a group female lawyers who argued that it violates the constitutional rights of women, namely justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. For the ban excluded them from a place of public religious worship, discriminated them on biological grounds, infringed their dignity and thus is unjust. The petition was accepted by the SC and it revoked the ban arguing that the exclusion does not constitute the essential practice of pilgrimage or of the Hindu religion. The defenders of the ban resorted to tradition, organizing protests against the SCV and the state government which left no stone unturned in implementing the verdict.
Although it was forbidden to talk of the SCV during the 2019 parliamentary elections, the topic constituted the implicit rationale in voting for or against a candidate fielded by the three main coalitions, namely NDA led by BJP, UDF led by INC and the LDF led by CPI(M). Whereas the NDA alliance opposed the SCV, the LDF coalition supported it, even by promoting a renaissance of values (navothana), the UDF showing deference to the believer took an ambivalent stance: the ban of entry is legitimate and just on religious grounds, but the fundamental constitutional values have priority.
This essay examines the complexity of these claims around women’s entry, seeking elucidation from the SCV. It agrees with the verdict that only social transformation shall be able to change long-lasting and entrenched injustices against women. But it also takes issue with the use of essential practices in adjudicating matters of religion, for religions (in this case, Hinduism)
may facilitate discriminatory, exclusive and restrictive practices with respect to equality and liberty of persons. Further, analyses of conflicts of this type require harmonization between constitutional, social and religious levels of morality, which was not the case with respect to the SCV.