India’s Supreme Court is examining the far-reaching implications of its landmark 2018 Sabarimala ruling, a case that struck at the heart of how courts approach religious autonomy, gender equality, and the state’s role in regulating temple practices. As a fresh bench hears arguments on whether the earlier judgment’s reasoning holds constitutional weight, the case has reopened a fundamental debate: whether the Kerala temple’s exclusion of menstruating women and girls constitutes an essential religious practice protected by Article 25 of the Constitution, or whether it represents discriminatory custom incompatible with modern constitutional values. The revisit underscores the judiciary’s ongoing struggle to balance competing constitutional principles—religious freedom against the right to equality—in a pluralistic democracy where temple entry norms trigger both devotional conviction and fierce rights-based contestation.
The 2018 judgment by a five-judge bench voted 4-1 to permit women of all ages to enter Sabarimala temple in Kerala, overturning centuries of exclusionary practice. The majority held that the menstrual restrictions were not an essential part of Ayyappa worship but rather a custom that violated constitutional guarantees of equality. The dissenting opinion argued that such restrictions fell within the protected sphere of religious autonomy under Article 25(1), which guarantees the right to freely profess, practise, and propagate religion. Since then, the ruling has remained contentious—implementation has been patchy, social resistance from Ayyappa devotees has been robust, and legal challenges have continued. Now, as a larger constitutional bench reconsiders the essential religious practice doctrine itself, the case threatens to unsettle settled understandings of how courts should weigh religious tradition against constitutional equality.
The essential religious practice doctrine, evolved through decades of case law, permits courts to distinguish between practices truly integral to a religion’s core beliefs and peripheral customs that may be reformed without violating religious liberty. In Sabarimala, the majority reasoned that Ayyappa worship does not inherently require gender segregation—that the practice was historical custom layered onto faith rather than foundational doctrine. Yet critics of the 2018 judgment argue the court overreached, arrogating to judges the power to determine which practices are “essential” to faith traditions. If courts can deconstruct religious practice through this lens, some argue, religious autonomy becomes illusory. The current revisit signals the bench’s concern that the doctrine, as applied, may have granted excessive latitude to judicial intervention in matters historically left to religious communities themselves.
At the center of this dispute lies a deceptively simple question: who counts as the authority on essential religious practice? The Ayyappa devotee community insists that followers of Ayyappa constitute a distinct religious denomination with their own doctrinal understanding of the deity’s celibacy and the corresponding purity requirements for entry. If Ayyappa worshippers qualify as a separate religious denomination under Article 25(2)(b)—which exempts denominations from certain equality provisions—then the temple’s exclusionary norms would receive stronger constitutional protection. The 2018 judgment largely sidestepped this denomination question, treating Ayyappa worship as a subset of Hinduism and thus subject to general equality principles. The current bench’s reconsideration of this denominational status could pivot the entire analysis. Advocates for temple access argue that denomination claims are tools to resist equality; supporters of religious autonomy counter that recognizing genuine faith communities respects pluralism within Hinduism itself.
The state’s role in religious reform emerges as another contentious dimension. India’s Constitution permits the state to regulate religious affairs in the name of public order, morality, and health under Article 25(2)(a), and to reform religious practice in pursuit of social welfare under Article 25(2)(b). The 2018 judgment leaned on this state authority to justify the entry order. Yet the revisit raises a structural question: how much religious change can the state—and by extension, courts as state organs—legitimately impose on religious communities before breaching the wall separating secular governance from faith domains? This tension reflects a broader global challenge: how do secular constitutions navigate religious pluralism without either lapsing into indifference to rights abuses within religious communities or overstepping into cultural imperialism. South Asian democracies, with their deep religious diversity and contested histories of communal identity, face this tension more acutely than most.
The implications ripple across Indian constitutional law. If the current bench narrows the essential religious practice doctrine, it could embolden other religious communities—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Sikh—to resist court-ordered reforms by invoking doctrine-based claims. Hindu Dalit movements, meanwhile, fear that such a shift could entrench upper-caste control over temple access norms. Women’s rights advocates worry that greater deference to religious autonomy may insulate patriarchal practices from judicial scrutiny. Conversely, if the bench reaffirms and clarifies the doctrine, it may strengthen courts’ capacity to protect individual rights within religious spaces while signaling limits to that power. The outcome will shape how courts approach similar cases: restrictions on women’s participation in other temple rituals, entry disputes at mosques and gurudwaras, and inheritance or succession norms within religious communities. Few constitutional questions are more consequential for a plural society.
The hearing itself will likely expose the bench’s internal disagreements on fundamentals. Will the majority view the doctrine as a tool for rights protection, or as an invitation to excessive judicial activism? Will the bench emphasize the autonomous rights of religious communities, or the non-negotiable nature of constitutional equality? The court’s willingness to revisit 2018 suggests at least some members harbor reservations about that judgment’s reasoning, if not its outcome. Whether the bench reaffirms, modifies, or overturns Sabarimala will signal the Supreme Court’s comfort level with judicial intervention in religious matters—a comfort level that will resonate far beyond Kerala’s temples into the constitutional architecture of religious freedom itself.
