Judiciary can’t interfere in devotees’ sacrosanct right to manner of worship, says Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: In a significant statement, apparently in conflict with the judgment that quashed the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple’s custom of barring entry of women in the 10-50 age group, the Supreme Court on Thursday prima facie agreed that devotees’ right to decide the mode and manner of worshipping God was non-justiciable.

SC’s remark came following senior advocate J Muth Raj’s argument that in Hinduism, every village had a ‘gram devta’, every family had a ‘kul devta’ and ‘ishta devta’, all of whom were worshipped differently, and it was impossible for the court to scrutinise the essentiality of such practices while tracing it to the umbrella religion.

Conscience and faith private to individuals: SC

The bench hearing the Sabarimala case comprised CJI Surya Kant and Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanulla, Aravind Kumar, A G Masih, P B Varale, R Mahadevan and J Bagchi. CJI Kant and Justices Nagarathna, Sundresh, Kumar and Mahadevan, through their observations, appeared to agree that it would be difficult for the court to put its judicial lens to examine the validity of the mode and manner a devotee chooses to worship God. Raj asked that as no religious text prescribed such worship, what would be the baseline for the judicial scrutiny? The CJI and Justice Nagarathna said conscience and faith were private to an individual.

Justice Sundresh said, “Article 25 rights protect a believer from a non-believer. It gives importance to the conscience of a person to practise, profess and propagate religion. The manner of worship is part of conscience and a space private to the devotee and God. This cannot be given a restrictive meaning.” Justice Mahadevan added, “Faith is faith. Its validity can’t be tested.”

All major religious communities represented by senior advocates N K Kaul, K Radhakrishnan, Krishnan Venugopal, Guru Krishna Kumar, Shyam Divan and Arvind Datar — argued in unison that long-standing customs, as in the Sabarimala temple, were based on faith and were non-justiciable.
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