The Sabarimala debate evoked mixed responses on whether excluding women aged 10-50 from temple entry can survive the test of “reasonable classification with rational nexus to the object to be achieved” under Article 14, read with Articles 15 and 25 of the Constitution. Supporters, predominantly male devotees, defend the exclusion as inseparable from Lord Ayyappa’s status as a Naishtika Brahmachari, or eternal celibate, whereas critics see it as a discriminatory, gender-inflected custom that cannot claim protection. Both positions deserve to be tested against the record and rational nexus, not sentiment.
The Kerala High Court, in S Mahendran (1991), held the exclusion a longstanding practice tied to Ayyappa’s celibacy. The Supreme Court took the opposite view in Indian Young Lawyers Association vs Kerala (2018), striking down Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965 fixing the age band of 10-50, which the temple relied on. The court then referred the review questions to a larger Bench in Kantaru Rajeevaru vs Indian Young Lawyers Association (2020), presently reserved for judgement since May 26.
Two claims for the exclusion do not hold up. It is neither ancient nor immemorial: no Puranic text mentions the Ayyappa cult. Scholar Radhika Sekar calls the rites a regional accretion and the age bar came from Rule 3(b) of 1965—barely six decades old, not through ancient custom.
An early-19th-century British era survey recorded the restriction keyed to puberty, not a fixed age band. A 1991 Kerala High Court hearing recorded that women—including Maharani Sethu Parvathi Bayi in 1940, in her forties at the time—had visited the shrine, though they were denied by the Travancore Palace much later. In January 2019, Sasikala, a 46-year-old who had undergone hysterectomy, was stopped at the gate—showing that the rule tracks age, not biology.
Article 14 forbids classification without an intelligible differentia and a rational, not hypothetical, nexus to the object sought (Ram Krishna Dalmia vs Justice S R Tendolkar, 1958; E P Royappa vs Tamil Nadu, 1974). If the object is to guard celibacy from menstruating women, does the 10-50 age band accurately track menstrual status? Barely.
Data from flagship national health and family surveys show that Indian girls reach menarche at a mean age of 13.5 years (Meher and Sahoo, Scientific Reports, 2024); so most girls at the lower end of the age band would not have started menstruating. At the upper end, natural menopause averages 46 nationally (47.6 in Kerala, by one estimate; many earlier by surgery or illness) (Ghosh and Syamala, GeoJournal, 2024), which reflects a large demographic still below 50. A band that admits girls who have not yet started and women who have stopped is a guess dressed as a proxy—the hypothetical connection that Ram Krishna Dalmia and E P Royappa reject. No court is equipped to fix an age limit on a biological function it has not examined.
Barring every woman between 10 and 50 because her presence alone threatens a deity’s celibacy insults her modesty more than any menstrual taboo. It insults the deity too: if celibacy earned over ages of devotion collapses at a woman’s presence, not conduct, that is not a claim about sanctity. It is a claim about women.
Menarche has no logical link to celibacy. Male desire is not confined to menstruating women, and menstruation marks reproductive capacity, not desirability—celibacy concerns the latter. A classification keyed to fertility cannot even serve as an irrational proxy for a vow against desire, let alone a rational one; it forms no intelligible differentia at all. Nor is there a fix: the court can rule neither for the age band, which fails rational nexus, nor for policing menstrual status, since forced disclosure of menstrual status violates the right to privacy under Article 21 (K S Puttaswamy, 2017). Women proving their menstrual status to officials at the temple gate is a sheer intrusion on bodily privacy that no order governed by the rule of law or by basic morality can countenance.
Custom draws authority from the legal order, not above it and that custom cannot override equality by default as held in N Adithayan (2002) and Shayara Bano (2017) confirmed tradition does not shield a practice from scrutiny merely for being old. Article 15 asks only whether an exclusion discriminates, not whether it carries religious sanction.
Political philosopher Ronald Dworkin argued that rights function as ‘trumps’ against collective preference. John Stuart Mill’s “tyranny of the majority” applies with particular force here, since unchallenged custom can look like consent, though the individuals it burdens never had an equal voice in shaping it. Sabarimala’s defenders lean on exactly that assumed consent.
None of this asks the court to rule on theology. It need not decide whether Ayyappa is celibate. It must, however, decide whether that belief can justify excluding a whole class of citizens from worship. A rule with no scriptural basis, a claim to unbroken observance the record contradicts, and a classification that fails rational nexus on biology and celibacy alike has little left to stand on except age, which is not a constitutional argument.
Treating a 1965 fiat as custom gives licence to every future exclusion to be dressed up as one that never existed. Unless custom is held to the same standard as every other exercise of State authority, equality will stay conditional on which deity—and whose devotion—is asking for the exception.
Puhazh Gandhi P | Advocate based in Chennai
(Views are personal)
(On X @puhazh_gandhi)
