In a significant development before a nine-judge Constitution Bench, the Union Government on Tuesday argued that the landmark 2018 Sabarimala judgment—which opened the doors of the Kerala temple to women of all ages—was “wrongly decided” and necessitates a complete reconsideration.
The Centre’s submission, delivered by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, centered on a strong objection to the previous court’s classification of the exclusion of women aged 10–50 as a form of “untouchability.”
Appearing before the bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Mehta contended that the 2018 majority opinion had incorrectly imported Western concepts of patriarchy into Indian religious traditions.
He specifically took aim at observations made by Justice DY Chandrachud in the original case, where the exclusion of women based on menstrual status was termed a “subordinate” positioning that perpetuated “patriarchy” and was “derogatory to their dignity.”
“India is not that patriarchal or gender stereotyped in the way that the West understands,” Mehta told the court. He argued that Indian society has historically placed women on a “higher pedestal,” noting that from the President and Prime Minister to the judges of the Supreme Court, “we bow before our female deities.”
A pivotal part of the Centre’s argument involved the “doctrine of essential religious practices.” Mehta questioned how secular courts could effectively determine what is or isn’t essential to a faith without deep spiritual immersion.
“It is a matter of faith. It is a matter of belief,” the Solicitor General submitted. “To determine whether something is essential or not, one would first have to undertake a judicial review of religious scripture… that is not possible unless one attains that level of spiritual understanding.”
While the hearing is rooted in the Sabarimala controversy, Mehta urged the court to look beyond the specifics of a single temple. He described the Sabarimala case as sui generis (unique) and suggested that the court’s eventual ruling on questions of law and judicial policy would have wider ramifications for discrimination at various religious places.
“It is in my case that it is wrongly decided and deserves to be declared a wrong law, for more than one reason,” Mehta stated, while clarifying he would deal with the specific merits of the Sabarimala case separately.
The nine-judge bench—which includes Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, Augustine George Masih, Prasanna B Varale, R Mahadevan, and Joymalya Bagchi—clarified that it will not re-examine the specific merits of the 2018 Sabarimala judgment at this stage. Instead, the bench is focusing on seven broad questions of law related to freedom of religion and gender discrimination.
The issue reached this larger bench following a November 2019 reference by a five-judge bench led by then-CJI Ranjan Gogoi. That bench had decided, by a 3:2 majority, that the questions regarding discrimination against women at various places of worship required a more authoritative pronouncement.
The original September 2018 verdict had seen a 4:1 majority lift the centuries-old ban, declaring it illegal and unconstitutional.
