Despite a lot of reservations from various quarters, the Ayodhya verdict stays intact as all the review petitions challenging the decisions have been rejected. The Ayodhya verdict has, in fact, created a new template in determining matters of faith and law, which has now been applied to the Sabarimala issue.

The decision by the five-member constitutional bench, headed by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, balanced what appeared to be irreconcilable interests intertwined by matters of faith, evidence, history, religion and politics. The landmark verdict had concluded that the Ayodhya land dispute was not only about property, it was also about “mind, heart and healing”.

What it meant was an interpretation of the law beyond the scope of narrow meaning of legalese. It involved consideration of the context, without which any law becomes mechanical and arbitrary.

This is precisely what Chief Justice S A Bobde did when he described Sabarimala as an ‘emotive issue’ and exercised the court’s discretion not to grant the prayer of the women activists even while observing that there was no stay on the September 2018 verdict that allowed the entry of women of all ages to the hill shrine. At the same time, he reminded the petitioners that the 2018 verdict was ‘not the last word’.

"It is a practice that has been going on for thousands of years. The balance of convenience requires that no orders should be passed in your favour now. If the matter, which has been referred, is found in your favour, we will certainly pass orders that you seek" CJI told the counsels representing petitioners Rehna Fathima and Bindu Ammini.

The remarks show that the CJI has got certain insight into the exclusion of women of restricted category. This restriction has been misunderstood and misinterpreted to suit the views of those who do not subscribe to the concept of Sabarimala.

The original verdict itself suffers from a grave error in determining the nature of the temple on the basis of the character of the body that manages it than the nature of the temple itself. The Sabarimala temple is steeped in antiquity and to give it an identity on the basis of a statutory board that came into being only in 1950 is simply preposterous, but unfortunately this is one of the considerations that went into denying Sabarimala its distinctive denomination status.

Unlike other temples in Kerala, Sabarimala gives access to all those who believe in Lord Ayyappa and the practices followed in the temple. Sabarimala is the only temple which allows entry to non-Hindus and secularism is basic to its doctrine.

In Sabarimala, Ayyappa is an eternal bachelor who does not wish to be in the company of women of reproductive age. That is his choice or, the choice ascribed to him by his worshippers over centuries. Ayyappa belongs to all worshippers who accept him to be so and not to those who do not believe in his ways.

If any woman or a group of women do not like the idea of Lord Ayyappa preferring to meet only devotees taking a certain type of obeisance and in certain physical condition, the best that they can do is to ignore him and declare that they do not need his blessings. They cannot ask Ayyappa to change his attitude so that they can get the gender equality granted under the Constitution enforced at Sabarimala. They should rather worship a deity who likes to receive them on their own terms.

The exclusion in Sabarimala is not because of perceived impurity of women. If that was the case they would have been allowed when they are out of their periods, like any other temple. The exclusion in Sabarimala is for women of marriageable age, because that is linked to the concept of the temple itself.

The best that Bindu Ammini and Rehma Fathima should do is to boycott the Sabarimala deity who does not seem to care to receive them. And indeed if they are true believers in Lord Ayyappa, they can visit any of the large number of Ayyappa temples in the state and outside, where there are no restrictions on women visitors. The restriction applies only to Sabarimala because the concept of the deity there is different.

In deferring a decision on the petitions, the court has also considered the serious strife that the Sabarimala issue caused to the Kerala society, with its impact on the Sabarimala pilgrimage itself. The traffic flow to the hill shrine resumed only after the state government went back on its stand that the 2018 Supreme Court verdict had mandated the government to forcibly take women of the restricted ages to take to the temple. Now things are almost back to normal and obviously the court did not want to do anything that would have disturbed peace. (IPA Service)