Sabarimala is the clearest case in India of a constitutional ruling that remains good law and is not, in practice, followed. It is worth setting out carefully, because it is usually reported as either a victory or a defeat and is neither.
The restriction
Women between roughly ten and fifty, that is, of menstruating age, were barred from the shrine. Two justifications were offered, and they are different from each other:
- The deity's character. Ayyappan is understood as a naishtika brahmachari, a permanent celibate ascetic. The presence of women of childbearing age is held incompatible with that vow.
- Purity. The older and cruder argument, from menstrual impurity, which the temple's defenders in court largely moved away from.
The Kerala High Court upheld the bar in 1991.
It is worth noting what Sabarimala does not restrict. It has long admitted men of every caste, and Muslim and Christian pilgrims make the climb. On caste and religion it is among the more open major temples in India. Its exclusion is specifically of women.
The judgment
On 28 September 2018, in Indian Young Lawyers Association v State of Kerala, the Supreme Court struck the bar down 4-1. The majority held that the exclusion was not an essential religious practice protected by Article 25, and that it stigmatised women and denied them equal access.
Justice Indu Malhotra dissented, the only woman on the bench. Her reasoning was not that the practice was good but that courts should not be in the business of deciding what a religious community treats as essential, and that rationality review of religious practice would not stop at Sabarimala. It is a serious argument and it has been vindicated to the extent that the referral now pending covers other faiths' practices too.
What followed
Not compliance.
- Mass protests blocked the forest paths. There were clashes through October 2018.
- On 2 January 2019 two women in their forties entered under police escort. The head priest closed the temple and performed a purification rite, a public statement that the court's order had polluted the shrine.
- Violence followed across Kerala, with one death.
- On 14 November 2019, the court referred the review petitions to a larger bench by 3-2, on broader questions about judicial review of religious practice. It did not stay the 2018 judgment.
The position now
The 2018 judgment has never been overturned and has never been stayed. It is therefore the law. It is also not observed: women of the excluded ages do not, in practice, complete the pilgrimage.
That gap, between a ruling that stands and a ruling that operates, is the actual state of affairs, and it is not a tidy one.