Sabarimala verdict: The reality

It would be an invitation to constitutional complications if the judiciary were to dismiss matters of faith in response to the sentiments of rights activists.

A view of Lord Ayyappa Temple in Sabarimala (File| PTI)

Religion can clash with law, faith need not. It is natural for an old civilisation like India to have old practices revered by the faithful. Justice is best when it recognises that there is no offence in the logic of the faithful being at variance with the logic of the rationalist. In the case of the Sabarimala deity, the faithful have strong arguments in their favour. By choosing not to accept these, the Supreme Court trod a path it need not have. As irony would have it, devotees have already rejected the judgment allowing unrestricted entry of women to the holy steps. Ground level reports suggest that women devotees, as distinct from women activists, will not trek to the hilltop because they believe it would destroy the raison d’etre of the celibate Lord and the rituals thereof.

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That article of faith is the crux of the matter. The debate was wrongly pegged on the taboo attached to menstruality of women. That, of course, needs to be thrown out. The issue before the court was related to Ayyappa’s celibacy. The Sabarimala Ayyappa is a Naishtika Brahmachari practising the severest form of celibacy. In that state, he is restricted from being in the presence of women. There are other Ayyappa temples where he is not in the Brahmachari form and there are no restrictions on women in those temples. The restrictions in Sabarimala are more on Ayyappa than on women and they are self-imposed because he does not want his penance to be disturbed. Those below 10 years are children and those above 50 are motherly, hence the age limitations; they have nothing to do with womanly periods. The majority view as enunciated by Justice Chandrachud got it wrong when it linked the exclusion of women with the menstrual status and called it a form of untouchability. What the court also failed to recognise is that it is not a general exclusion; it is specific to Sabarimala and unrelated to periods.

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Of course, these are matters of faith and modernists are within their right to dismiss them as mumbo jumbo. But it would be an invitation to constitutional complications if the judiciary were to dismiss matters of faith in response to the sentiments of rights activists. Nor can it ignore the counter argument raised by the dissenting judge that “judicial review of religious practices.... would negate the freedom to practice one’s religion according to one’s faith and beliefs”. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court ignored the importance of faith in a 5,000-year-old society and delivered a judgment that toppled a revered tradition based on the very concept of the deity concerned. This issue was not about morality, equal rights or emancipation but about a traditional ritual that wasn’t harmful to society as such. Therefore, it should not be mixed up with repressive practices such as Sati and widow abandonment. Those were social evils which needed to be abolished. Sabarimala is a nuanced story about a God, with freedom to follow or not follow. Why demolish a ritual based on belief?

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There is a danger that this judgment may be the beginning of a new age of faith-denouncing and faith-asserting litigations. Justice Indu Malhotra herself noted that if courts begin to get into an area that is best avoided, they will surely open the floodgates for every belief of every religion to be questioned even by non-believers. Are the courts prepared for such an avalanche? Is the nation? It will be a precarious path that could impact the social order itself. If and when a review petition comes up, the honourable court will have a chance to take these possibilities also into account. India is different from modern democracies of the West. Our society is different. We ignore such realities at our peril.