Today, On 9th April, The Centre told the Supreme Court it supports keeping the ban on women of menstruating age entering Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, arguing the 2018 ruling relied on a premise that places men above women and treats them as inferior.
The Centre supported maintaining the ban on women of menstruating age entering Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, arguing that the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling rested on the premise that men are superior and women occupy an inferior position.
A nine-judge Constitution Bench is hearing petitions about discrimination against women at places of worship including Sabarimala and examining the scope of religious freedom as practised across faiths.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre before the Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, said he had filed written submissions and pointed to examples where men are barred from entering certain temples.
The Bench also includes Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, Augustine George Masih, Prasanna B Varale, R Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi.
Mehta told the Bench,
“It is a Devi Bhagwati temple, there are certain faiths and beliefs attached. There is one temple in Kerala, I read it, where men will go dressed as women. They go to beauty parlour and female family members help them dress in saree.”
He also added,
“So it is not a question of male-centric or female-centric religious beliefs. In the present case, it happens to be woman-centric,”
At Kerala’s Kottankulangara Sree Devi Temple, men traditionally dress as women each year for the Chamayavilakku festival to honour the goddess a practice with centuries-old origins.
Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj argued that public morality should be the guiding norm rather than the concept of constitutional morality applied in earlier rulings.
In September 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench, by a 4:1 majority, had overturned the prohibition that barred women aged roughly 10 to 50 from entering Sabarimala, finding the age-old practice unconstitutional.
Subsequently, on November 14, 2019, another five-judge Bench led by then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, by a 3:2 majority, referred broader questions about discrimination against women at various places of worship to a larger Bench, noting that such issues could not be resolved without case-specific facts