Beyond Entry into a Temple: The Constitutional Legacy of the Sabarimala Judgment

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Author: Adeline Balan

College: Lords Universal College

ABSTRACT

The Sabarimala judgment of 2018 is frequently reduced to a case about women’s right to enter a temple, something all of us are well aware of. That reading is constitutionally inadequate. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion opened questions that cut to the core of India’s constitutional architecture: the legitimacy of the Essential Religious Practices doctrine, the distinction between constitutional morality and popular morality, the institutional capacity of courts to adjudicate theological disputes, and the boundaries of State power over religious life. This article argues that Sabarimala’s true constitutional legacy lies not in the entry of women into a shrine but in the unresolved tensions it exposed between transformative constitutionalism and the right of religious communities to govern themselves.

TO THE POINT

When the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down the exclusion of women aged ten to fifty from the Sabarimala temple, commentators instinctively framed the decision as a gender rights victory. That framing, while not incorrect, is incomplete to the point of distortion. Sabarimala was never simply about temple access. It was about whether the Constitution permits courts to enter the sacred and adjudicate what is essential to a faith. The principal issue before the Court was whether a menstruation-based exclusionary practice offended the guarantees of equality and non-discrimination under Part III, or whether it remained insulated by the rights of religious freedom and denominational autonomy. It was about whose morality the Constitution embodies. And it was, ultimately, about the limits of judicial power in a constitutional democracy where religion and culture remain deeply entangled with daily life.

The broader constitutional questions were: Can exclusionary religious practices survive scrutiny under the anti-exclusion principle embedded in the Constitution? Does constitutional morality trump the morality of religious communities? Who possesses the authority to represent and define a religion before a constitutional court?

USE OF LEGAL JARGON

Constitutional Morality, as Justice Chandrachud elaborated, is not the morality of the majority but the morality that the Constitution itself commands, rooted in dignity, equality, and non-discrimination. The Essential Religious Practices Doctrine, originating in Shirur Mutt case (The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar, 1954), courts undertake the task of identifying whether a challenged practice forms an intrinsic component of a religion or merely an associated custom, a distinction that significantly influences the scope of constitutional scrutiny. A Religious Denomination is a group with a common faith, organization, and name, possessing the Article 26 right to manage its own religious affairs. The Anti-Exclusion Principle, articulated by Justice Chandrachud, holds that the Constitution cannot permit practices that exclude individuals from public religious life on grounds that touch constitutional values. Substantive Equality, as opposed to formal equality, demands that courts look at the real impact of a rule on historically disadvantaged groups rather than its neutral appearance. Transformative Constitutionalism treats the Constitution as an instrument of social transformation, mandating that courts use it to dismantle inherited hierarchies including those embedded in religious practice.

THE PROOF

A. Historical Background

The restriction on women of menstruating age at Sabarimala is attributed to the celibate nature of the presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, described as a Naishtika Brahmachari. The practice, while of uncertain historical vintage, was given statutory expression through Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, framed under the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Act, 1965. Rule 3(b) permitted the exclusion of women at such times as they were not by custom and usage allowed entry. The litigation originated in a 1991 Kerala High Court ruling that upheld the ban. The matter reached the Supreme Court in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, where a five-judge Constitution Bench delivered its ruling on 28 September 2018, in a four-to-one majority, with Justice Indu Malhotra as the sole dissenter.

B. Constitutional Conflict

The articles in collision were Articles 14, 15, 17, 25, and 26. The majority held that the exclusion violated Articles 14 and 15 as it discriminated against women on the ground of sex and physiological characteristics. Justice Chandrachud went further, treating menstruation-based exclusion as a form of untouchability under Article 17, a characterization that remains the most contested element of the judgment. Articles 25 and 26 protected religious freedom and the autonomy of denominations, but the majority held that Ayyappa devotees did not constitute a separate religious denomination, thereby removing the Article 26 shield. The equality-versus-religious-autonomy tension is not resolvable by formula. Both values are constitutionally guaranteed. What the majority effectively decided is that when a religious practice excludes on grounds that mirror prohibited constitutional classifications, equality prevails. The dissent disagreed not on gender equality as a principle but on whether courts should be the forum for that determination at all.

C. The Overlooked Issues

The first overlooked issue is whether courts should decide theological questions. By examining whether the exclusion of women constituted an essential religious practice at Sabarimala, the Supreme Court inevitably found itself adjudicating questions of theology. The Essential Religious Practices test requires judges to determine what is integral to a religion, a question for which courts have no special institutional competence. Critics across ideological lines have pointed out that the test, whatever its merits, converts judicial chambers into arbiters of religious truth.

The dangers of the ERP doctrine are significant and underappreciated. The doctrine remains controversial due to its judge-made nature, the lack of a definitive evaluative framework, and inconsistent judicial application. Courts have in different contexts held that the same practice is essential in one religion and non-essential in another. The doctrine provides neither predictability nor principled guidance. In Sabarimala, the doctrine proved decisive; once the Court determined that the exclusion lacked the status of an essential religious practice, the constitutional emphasis shifted in favour of equality and non-discrimination.

The relationship between constitutional morality and popular morality is where the judgment is at its most philosophically ambitious and most vulnerable. Chief Justice Misra’s majority opinion drew heavily on the idea that constitutional morality must override popular morality. This is intellectually defensible but creates a real institutional problem: it positions unelected judges as custodians of a superior morality, insulated from democratic challenge. The dissent of Justice Malhotra did not reject constitutional morality; it questioned whether the court should impose it on practices whose constitutional harm remained contested.

Can religious customs be subjected to constitutional scrutiny? The judgment says yes, at least where the exclusion maps onto constitutionally prohibited grounds. But this raises a further question about State power. If the court’s ruling requires active State enforcement inside a temple, the State has effectively become a regulator of religious practice. The judgment, intended to protect individual rights, may paradoxically have expanded State authority over religion in ways that could be used selectively and harmfully.

Justice Chandrachud’s Article 17 analysis holds that menstruation-based exclusion is a form of untouchability, a social evil the Constitution sought to eradicate unconditionally. This is a radical and important argument. It relocates the Sabarimala dispute from the domain of religious freedom to the domain of constitutional abolition. The problem is that Article 17 was directed at caste-based exclusion from public spaces and social life. Extending it to all forms of ritual exclusion, however discriminatory, requires a constitutional leap that the majority did not fully justify.

Who speaks for a religion in court? The judgment left this question unresolved. The petitioners were not Ayyappa devotees. The Travancore Devaswom Board, which administered the temple, supported the exclusion. The State of Kerala at one point took inconsistent positions. When no authentic religious voice speaks coherently in litigation, courts are left to construct the religion’s doctrinal position themselves, which compounds the institutional competence problem.

D. The Review Reference and Constitutional Uncertainty

The matter did not conclude with the 2018 ruling. Review petitions were filed by those opposing the judgment. In November 2019, a five-judge Constitution Bench in Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association referred the matter to a larger bench of nine judges and simultaneously framed questions that extended beyond Sabarimala to include similar exclusion disputes involving the Durgah Hazrat Syed Salar Masud Ghazi, the entry of Muslim women into mosques, and the Parsi women married outside the faith being denied access to the Tower of Silence. The constitutional uncertainty that followed was significant. The review reference meant that the Sabarimala judgment, though technically operative, remained under judicial reconsideration. The larger bench questions signaled that the Supreme Court was not yet ready to settle the relationship between equality and religious autonomy with finality.

CASE LAWS

Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar (Shirur Mutt, 1954) 1954 AIR 282
The Court, in this case, laid down the Essential Religious Practices doctrine, seeking to delineate the constitutionally protected core of a religious faith. The case gave religion a constitutional shield but left the scope of that shield to judicial determination, embedding a fundamental ambiguity into the law.

Sardar Syedna Taher Saifuddin v. State of Bombay (1962) 1962 AIR 853
The Court upheld denominational autonomy, reinforcing the right of religious groups to manage their internal affairs without State interference. This became a central precedent for those arguing that Sabarimala’s exclusion was protected religious self-governance.

Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala (2018), AIRONLINE 2018 SC 243
In this case, the five-judge majority ruled the exclusion unconstitutional. The judgment produced four separate opinions, reflecting deep disagreement even within the majority on the precise constitutional reasoning.

Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017) AIR 2017 SC 4609
The Court struck down instant triple talaq. More importantly for Sabarimala, the judgment affirmed that constitutional morality can invalidate religious practices that violate fundamental rights, providing the theoretical foundation on which the Sabarimala majority built its reasoning.

Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association (2019) AIRONLINE 2019 SC 1450
The review reference acknowledged that the questions raised by Sabarimala exceeded a single religion or temple and required a more comprehensive constitutional settlement.

CONCLUSION

Sabarimala was not just a case about a temple. More than a dispute over temple entry, Sabarimala raised a fundamental question of constitutional governance: whether claims of faith and tradition must ultimately yield to the Constitution’s commitment to equality, dignity, and individual rights. The deepest question the case posed was not whether women should enter Sabarimala. It was whether the Constitution’s relationship with religion is one of deference, supervision, or transformation, and who within the constitutional system has the final word on that question. That question remains genuinely open, and that openness is Sabarimala’s most consequential constitutional legacy.

FAQs

Q1. What exactly did the Supreme Court decide in the Sabarimala judgment of 2018?
The Supreme Court, by a four-to-one majority, held that the exclusion of women between the ages of ten and fifty from the Sabarimala temple was unconstitutional. The majority ruled that the practice violated Articles 14, 15, and 25 of the Constitution, and that it could not be protected as an essential religious practice under Article 26.

Q2. What is the Essential Religious Practices doctrine and why is it controversial?
The Essential Religious Practices doctrine, developed in the Shirur Mutt case of 1954, allows courts to identify what is truly integral to a religion and protect it from State interference. It is controversial because it requires judges, who have no theological training, to decide what is or is not central to a faith, effectively converting courts into arbiters of religious doctrine.

Q3. Did the Sabarimala judgment settle the law finally?
No. In November 2019, the Supreme Court in Kantaru Rajeevaru referred the matter to a nine-judge bench and expanded the reference to include similar exclusion disputes across other religions. The constitutional questions raised by Sabarimala therefore remain formally unresolved.

Q4. What is constitutional morality and how does it differ from popular morality?
Constitutional morality refers to the values of dignity, equality, and non-discrimination that the Constitution itself mandates, regardless of what the majority of society believes at any given time. Popular morality is the prevailing moral sentiment of a community or society. The Sabarimala majority held that courts must uphold constitutional morality even when it conflicts with popular morality.

Q5. Why did Justice Indu Malhotra dissent and what was her reasoning?
Justice Malhotra did not dispute the principle of gender equality. Her dissent was grounded in judicial restraint and institutional humility. She argued that issues of deep religious faith and practice should not be decided by courts based on petitions filed by non-devotees, and that constitutional courts must be cautious about interfering with sincerely held religious beliefs.

Q6. Does the Sabarimala judgment apply to similar exclusion practices in other religions?
The nine-judge bench reference in Kantaru Rajeevaru directly extended the constitutional questions to exclusion practices in other religions, including restrictions on Muslim women entering mosques and the exclusion of Parsi women married outside the faith from entering the Tower of Silence. The judgment’s principles therefore have implications well beyond Hinduism or the Sabarimala temple.

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