The poll-bound State of Kerala, home to the famed Sabarimala temple, delicately moderated an earlier cast iron stance in the Supreme Court of India in favour of the entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine.
The State government, in written submissions filed before the Supreme Court on Saturday (March 14, 2026), said a judicial review of whether the age-old restriction on entry for women between menarche and menopause was an essential religious practice must not be guided by either reason or sentiment alone.
The State said the court must instead carry out a studied assessment if the belief held that women of that age group should not appear before the temple deity, Lord Ayyappa in the celibate or Naishtika Brahmachari form, was a “genuine and conscientiously” held one.
The State said it would be “expedient in the interests of justice” for the court to widely consult social reformers and religious scholars before reviewing a religious practice followed for “so many years”.
“Any judicial review into any religious practice followed for so many years connected with the belief and values accepted by the people must be after wide consultation with and after soliciting views of eminent religious scholars and reputed social reformers of that religion. A decision in this regard should be rendered by the court after assessing the opinions of social reformers and religious scholars as an impartial authority,” the State, represented by senior advocate Jaideep Gupta and advocate Nishe Rajen Shonker, submitted.
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In a rather cryptic one-liner, the State ventured to remind the Supreme Court that “previous experience in the matter of Sabarimala shrine” and the “response of devotees, including women devotees”, would support the government’s current stand.
The one-liner may be an attempt by the State to jog the judicial memory about the public furore that followed when a Constitution Bench, on September 28, 2018 declared that the ban on entry amounted to discrimination based upon a biological factor exclusive to the female gender. The court had held that the exclusionary practice at the Sabarimala temple violated the right of Hindu women to freely practice the religion under Article 25 of the Constitution.
The history of the Sabarimala case in the Supreme Court has seen the State shift stances on multiple occasions over the years, triggering a Bench to once comment that the Kerala government “changed with the times”.
In 2007, the then Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s affidavit said it was “not fair to deny a section of women from entering Sabarimala temple and making worship”. The government had questioned the rituals, customs and observances followed in the temple.
However, in February 2016, the State run by the United Democratic Front (UDF) dispensation, had supported the restriction on women as a part of the “unique idol concept of the temple”.
A few months later, in November 2016, as power changed hands back to the LDF, the State did a reversal by again declaring that the temple’s doors “should” be thrown open to women of all ages. Even the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages the temple, was caught unawares at the time. The State had remained committed to its stand of opening up the temple to women of all ages in the run-up to the September 2018 judgment.
Even the TDB, which had earlier supported the restriction on women of menstruating age, describing the Sabarimala deity as a “hyper masculine God born out of the union of two male Gods, Shiva and Mohini, where Mohini is Vishnu in a female form”, had come out in staunch support of the September 2018 judgment. It had described the “spirit” of the 2018 Sabarimala verdict as “equal entitlement for man and woman in society”.
The written submissions filed by the State government on Saturday have come days before a nine-judge Bench is scheduled, from April 7, 2026, to start hearing review petitions against the 2018 judgment. Over 60 review and writ petitions challenged the Sabarimala judgment of 2018.
In November 2019, a majority judgment by a five-judge Constitution Bench led by the then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had referred the Sabarimala review and writ petitions to a seven-judge Bench. The 2019 judgment had not expressly stayed the September 2018 verdict.
A nine-judge Bench had briefly heard the review petitions, but could not continue due to the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
One of the primary questions before the proposed nine-judge Bench would be whether practices considered essential should be given Constitutional protection, and the extent to which the judiciary could intervene in an essential religious practice. The new Bench would have to take itself 72 years back in legal history to find an answer, which may either conform with or revoke the seven-judge Shirur Mutt judgment of 1954. The 1954 verdict had held that “what constitutes the essential part of a religion is primarily to be ascertained with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself”.
Published – March 14, 2026 07:55 pm IST
