Published On: June 25, 2026
Authored By: Akanksha Kumari
ILS Law College
Introduction
The Sabarimala Temple, situated in the Western Ghats of Kerala, stands at an elevation of 914 metres.[1] The temple is dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, who, according to tradition, was born of the union between Shiva and Mohini, the female form taken by Vishnu. The site’s origins are traced to tribal communities in the surrounding forests who worshipped hill goddesses through Vedic customs; these groups eventually came together to form what is known as the Ayyappa cult. The princes of the Pandalam dynasty, themselves regarded as incarnations of Ayyappa, are said to have meditated at the site. The route to the temple was discovered by the Tamil ruler Rajasekhara Pandian in the twelfth century, and by 1821 the Pandalam region had merged with the princely state of Travancore, bringing the temple under Travancore’s administrative control.
Although the temple now draws thousands of devotees each year, it remained relatively obscure in earlier centuries. In 1950, an arson attack destroyed the original idol, and the temple was rebuilt with a new idol made of Panchaloha installed in its place. Today, Sabarimala is regarded as one of the largest annual pilgrimage centres in the world.
The Sabarimala review proceedings remain pending before the Supreme Court. In 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench ruled by majority that the exclusion of women from the temple was unconstitutional, in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala.
Facts and Background
The Indian Young Lawyers Association,[2] along with several individual women activists, filed a writ petition directly before the Supreme Court in 2006, invoking the Court’s original jurisdiction. They contended that Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, which excluded women of a certain age group from the temple, directly violated their constitutional rights.[3]
In 2018, the matter was placed before a five-judge Constitution Bench, and on 28 September 2018, the bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra declared the exclusion unconstitutional by a 4:1 majority.[4]
Justice Indu Malhotra was the lone dissenter, holding that courts should not interfere in matters of religious belief, while Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, concurring with the majority, observed that patriarchal practices cannot be justified in the name of religion.[5]
The judgment, however, was not effectively implemented. In 2019, large-scale protests broke out, and women who attempted to enter the temple following the ruling were reportedly subjected to social boycott. Amid 56 review petitions, the Supreme Court referred the matter to a nine-judge bench.[6] The reference remains pending and raises questions concerning Article 26, the future of the Essential Religious Practices (ERP) test, and the scope of constitutional morality.
Issues Before the Court
1. Whether the ban on women’s entry violated the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, 17, and 25.
2. Whether restrictions based on biological characteristics, such as menstruation, could be justified under Article 25’s protection of religious freedom.
3. Whether Article 26 entitled the temple to be treated as a religious denomination with independent control over its own practices.
Majority Opinion
The Supreme Court ruled 4:1 against the temple’s custom of excluding women between the ages of ten and fifty. The majority held that devotion cannot be conditioned on physiological characteristics,[7] reaffirming that constitutional morality must prevail over social or popular morality.[8] The Court further held that the right to worship is available equally to all persons, irrespective of gender.
The majority reasoned that allowing religious sentiment to override constitutional morality on the ground that a practice is “unique” would set a dangerous precedent: any place of worship could then claim similar “special status” to justify unequal treatment, rendering the constitutional guarantee of equality meaningless.
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud went further, holding that the exclusion amounted to a form of untouchability rooted in notions of purity, thereby also engaging Article 17 of the Constitution.
On the essential religious practices test, the Court found that the respondents had not produced any scriptural evidence to establish that excluding women was an essential part of the Ayyappa faith, “essential” being understood as a practice without which the religion itself could not survive. The Court accordingly held that the exclusion violated Articles 14, 15, 17, and 25 of the Constitution.
Dissent of Justice Indu Malhotra
Justice Indu Malhotra, the only woman on the five-judge bench, was the sole dissenting voice in the 4:1 decision. Her dissent rested on four core grounds:
On essential religious practices: Justice Malhotra held that determining what counts as an “essential religious practice” is a matter for the religious community itself, not the courts. In her view, courts should not decide which practices a religion ought to discard, except where a practice is genuinely harmful or oppressive, such as the practice of Sati.[9]
On denominational status: Justice Malhotra found that the Sabarimala Temple satisfied the requirements of a separate religious denomination, and argued that in a secular polity such as India’s, competing fundamental rights claims must be carefully balanced against one another.[10]
On judicial review of religious practice: Justice Malhotra held that courts should be cautious about reviewing religious practices, since doing so risks imposing the judiciary’s own view of what is moral or rational in matters of worship, amounting to “judicial overreach.”[11]
On public interest litigation in religious matters: Justice Malhotra cautioned that allowing petitions from individuals who neither follow a faith nor worship at a particular temple risks opening the “floodgates” to litigation, burdening both the public and the judiciary. In her view, those outside a religious tradition should be slow to challenge its practices.[12]
Post-Judgment Developments
In Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association,[13] decided in 2020, the Supreme Court referred the matter to a larger bench to consider wider questions of religious freedom and gender equality going beyond Sabarimala alone. A nine-judge Constitution Bench was eventually constituted to examine this reference, which asks the Court to revisit the meaning of constitutional morality, the future of the essential religious practices test, and the relationship between individual fundamental rights and group religious autonomy. The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, heard arguments over sixteen days between April and May 2026 and has reserved judgment; a final ruling is still awaited.
Critical Analysis of the Judgment
First, the judgment affirms that constitutional morality takes precedence over popular or social morality, allowing the Constitution to serve as a transformative instrument capable of reshaping regressive social practices. This reasoning sits comfortably within the trajectory set by Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India and Joseph Shine v. Union of India.[14]
Second, the Court’s treatment of the essential religious practices test is significant: it placed the burden on the denomination to show that the contested practice was genuinely integral to the faith, rather than simply traditional or longstanding. The respondents’ failure to produce scriptural support for the exclusion proved fatal to their case.[15]
Third, Justice Malhotra’s dissent raises legitimate concerns about judicial restraint and the limits of the judiciary’s role in matters of faith. Her position, that courts may not be the appropriate forum to resolve theological questions, finds support in the long-standing criticism of the essential practices test itself, which inevitably draws courts into interpreting religious doctrine.
Finally, the reference to a nine-judge bench signals that the underlying constitutional questions, the scope of Articles 25 and 26, the meaning of denominational autonomy, and the balance between equality and religious freedom, remain unresolved, making this one of the most significant ongoing constitutional debates in Indian law.
The Sabarimala dispute embodies a genuine constitutional tension between two fundamental pillars of Indian democracy. On one side, it is argued that Ayyappa devotees constitute a separate religious denomination under Article 26, centred on the deity’s forty-one-day brahmacharya vrata (celibate observance), and that the exclusion of women in a defined age group is not gender discrimination under Article 15(1) at all , since the restriction permits both pre-menarche girls and post-menopausal women to enter, it tracks menstrual status rather than womanhood as such, which is what Article 15(1) is meant to protect. On this view, the devotees’ right to preserve the deity’s celibate character is an independent facet of religious liberty under Article 25, distinct from questions of denominational autonomy, and courts should be wary of intervening in such deeply personal religious matters, a position Justice Malhotra articulated powerfully in her dissent.
On the other side, it is argued that Ayyappa devotees fail to meet the criteria for a separate denomination laid down in Shirur Mutt: they lack a distinct name, do not operate independently of the state-appointed Travancore Devaswom Board, and do not follow a theology distinct from mainstream Hinduism, meaning Article 26 does not apply. The internal consistency of the brahmacharya rationale is also questioned, since men and young girls are permitted considerable freedom in this regard, while Article 25, expressly made “subject to the other provisions of this Part”, places women’s rights under Articles 14, 15, and 21 above any conflicting religious claim. Because the Devaswom Board is a statutory state body, its exclusionary policy also amounts to state action directly amenable to fundamental rights scrutiny. Both positions carry real force, and the reference to a nine-judge bench reflects precisely how unsettled this question remains.
Conclusion
The Sabarimala case stands as a landmark in Indian constitutional law, touching on gender justice, religious freedom, and fundamental rights alike. While the majority articulated a vision of transformative constitutionalism, the dissent raised enduring questions about religious pluralism and judicial restraint. The matter remains open: with the nine-judge bench’s verdict still awaited, the final word on the relationship between religion and equality within India’s constitutional structure is yet to be written.
References
[1] Sabarimala Sree Dharma Sastha Temple, Kerala Tourism, https://www.keralatourism.org/sabarimala (last visited 30 May 2026).
[2] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1 (India).
[3] Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, r. 3(b) (India).
[4] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1, ¶ 1 (India).
[5] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1, ¶ 169 (Chandrachud, J., concurring) (India).
[6] Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n, (2020) 2 SCC 1 (India).
[7] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1, ¶ 152 (Misra, C.J.) (India).
[8] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1, ¶ 96 (Misra, C.J.) (India); compare Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1, ¶ 136 (India).
[9] Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n v. State of Kerala, (2019) 11 SCC 1, ¶ 14 (Malhotra, J., dissenting) (India).
[10] Id. ¶ 18.
[11] Id. ¶ 22.
[12] Id. ¶ 9.
[13] Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Ass’n, (2020) 2 SCC 1 (India).
[14] Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1 (India); Joseph Shine v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39 (India).
[15] Commr., Hindu Religious Endowments v. Shri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Shri Shirur Mutt, AIR 1954 SC 282 (India) [Shirur Mutt – origin of the essential religious practices test].
