New Delhi: The Supreme Court agreed to hear the plea of two women who entered the Sabarimala temple and sought protection from the court. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said the matter would be heard on Friday.
Entry into the temple by the two women, both in their 40’s, Kanaka Durga and Bindu Ammini, on 2 January led to widespread protests in the state where Hindus, making up almost half of the state’s 3.3 million population, are split on breaking the ban.
The move, while perfectly legal, added fuel to the heated debate across the nation on the right to pray and equality of women, at a time when the country’s highest court has overturned the ban on women’s entry into the Kerala temple.
The two who entered the shrine are both working-class women and pro-Left activists. They were escorted to the temple by the administration in total secrecy at around dawn. They were assisted by the police and taken through a staff entrance instead of the usual route that involves climbing 18 steps leading to the temple.
On 28 September, the Supreme Court granted women of all ages the right to enter the Sabarimala temple, reversing the Kerala shrine’s tradition of barring girls and women of menstruating age — 10-50 years.
The verdict was passed by a 4:1 majority by a bench comprising the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra and judges D.Y. Chandrachud, A.M. Khanwilkar, R.F. Nariman and Indu Malhotra, the sole woman on the bench and the author of a dissenting opinion.
Recognizing that banning women from entering the temple was derogatory to them, Khanwilkar on behalf of himself and Misra said: “Morality cannot be viewed with a narrow lens so as to confine the sphere of definition of morality to what an individual, a section or religious sect may perceive the term to mean.”
Chandrachud, in his separate but concurring judgment, said religion could not become a cover to exclude and deny the basic right to find fulfilment in worship. He added that physiological factors associated with women could not provide a rationale to deny them the right to worship.
