What is the background of the issue?

• The question of the entry of women, between the ages of 10 and 50 years, into Sabarimala temple in Kerala, is as old as the formation of the state itself.
• The resultant differences of opinion have widened the political fault lines following SC’s verdict lifting the existing ban on women’s entry into the temple during their menstruating years.

What are the concerns?

• Arguments against the verdict primarily centre on fears of increased state intervention in religious affairs.
• While these fears are valid in a multireligious country like India, the case of Sabarimala temple and other public temples in Kerala is unlike many other pilgrimage sites in the country.
• The state intervention in Sabarimala goes back to the Travancore–Cochin Hindu Religious Institutions Act, 1950, when the temple’s governance was transferred from the Travancore Royal Devaswom Commission to the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), a statutory body
• The Kerala state legislature has passed the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965 endorsing the ban of entry of “mature” women, traditionally barred only from the sanctum sanctorum of Sabarimala, into the temple premises altogether.
• This legislation, above all else, is in violation of constitutional morality brought to attention by the Court.

How religious issues are politicized?

• While the Indian model of secularism has entailed distance of the state from all religions, the principal political contradiction in India has come to be centred on religion.
• This has been engendered and fuelled largely by political parties and their associates.
• This can be traced back to the Shah Bano case and, more recently, the triple talaq petition.
• Once again, the dichotomy and opportunism of present-day political parties stands exposed for their entirely contrary stands vis-à-vis the triple talaq and Sabarimala cases.

What lies ahead?

• Temple entry forms one of the grounds to articulate the concerns of justice.
• The state has, and will be, an important stakeholder in this agenda.
• However gender justice, as a value, seems to have become vulnerable to pragmatic politics.
• It most commonly takes a back seat in the quagmire of vote bank politics and larger demands for religious communitarian reform