The real pleasure of driving to Leh begins after Jammu. As nature starts unfolding its beauty of many hues, one enters Srinagar.

There is a debate as to who — 13th century poet Amir Khusro or Mughal emperor Jehangir — uttered the words “if there is paradise on earth, it is here” on the mesmerising beauty of Kashmir .

In Srinagar, there is the holy shrine of Hazratbal, surrounded by rows of chinar trees. Built in white marble, it oozes serenity in a reverential ambience. But if you are accompanied by your wife, daughter or female friends or relatives, they can’t enter the shrine. They will only be allowed a peep into the shrine to catch a glimpse of the place where the holy relic is kept.

There are hundreds of such religious places in India which bar women’s entry. The Supreme Court has got an opportunity, in the shape of PILs questioning Sabarimala temple barring entry of women in the 10-50 age group, to give a secular ruling to throw open doors of all religious places to women.

If the Sabarimalas and Hazratbals discriminate against women, then it is a common practice among Catholic Christians to bar women from entering the church altar. Women priests are alien to Catholics and their churches, which have two main divisions — worship ministry and service ministry.

The worship ministry, assigned to perform rituals and conduct mass, is a men’s only department. The service ministry has nuns, who stay in a convent. A male priest has to visit the convent to conduct Sunday mass as the nuns, despite dedicating their lives for service and charity, are barred from taking part in worship ministry affairs.

During the hearing on a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Sabarimala temple’s custom barring entry of women of a certain age group, a five-judge bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra had observed that a temple could not deny entry to anyone who believed in and was devoted towards the deity.

This secular observation must translate into an omnibus declaration that the fundamental right to equality and non-discrimination on the ground of gender, caste or class will always prevail over the right to practice and profess religion and its customs.

The five judge bench’s common refrain — we are viewing the Sabarimala issue purely from the constitutional perspective and principles — is easier said than done. More than 70 years ago, all judges of the SC sat together (there were a total of seven SC judges at the time) to decide a tricky religious issue with constitutional overtones in what is popularly known as Shirur Math case [1954 AIR 282].

CJI M C Mahajan and Justices B K Mukherjea, S R Das, Vivian Bose, Ghulam Hasan, N H Bhagwati and T L V Aiyyar made an important ruling, “A religion may not only lay down a code of ethical rules for its followers to accept, it might prescribe rituals and observances, ceremonies and modes of worship which are regarded as integral part of religion, and these forms and observances might extend even to matter of food and dress.”

It laid down the golden rule “what constitutes the essential part of a religion is primarily to be ascertained with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself”, which is now being used by senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for Muslim parties in the Ayodhya dispute, to question a bald statement in a 1994 judgment by a five-judge bench in Ismail Faruqui case saying “mosque is not essential to offering of namaz”.

The seven-judge bench had said, “If the tenets of a religious sect of the Hindus prescribe that offerings of food should be given to the idol at particular hours of the day, that periodical ceremonies should be performed in a certain way at a certain period of the year or that there should be a daily recital of sacred texts or ablations to the sacred fire, all these would be regarded as part of religion and the mere fact that they involve expenditure of money or employment of priests or servants or the use of marketable commodities would not make them secular activities partaking of a commercial or economic character, all of them are religious practices and should be regarded as matters of religion within the meaning of Article 26(b).”

How far this finding of the seven-judge bench in 1954 supports the Sabarimala custom of barring entry of women into the temple will be examined by the five-judge bench.

But it surely will be a gigantic task if the SC intends to take a holistic secular view of the complex issue instead of examining the validity of rituals and practices, which bar women from participating in religious ceremonies, be it temple, mosque or church, from a narrow constitutional microscope.

What if a PIL is filed in the SC seeking equality for goddesses in the Hindu scheme of worship? In the trinity of Brahma , Vishnu and Mahesh, there are no goddesses. Does it violate right to gender equality among idols for worship? Does the bar on women’s entry to church altar violate right to equality? Among Muslims, a woman imam is extremely rare.

It will be worth waiting for the SC verdict in the Sabarimala case, as it promises to narrow down gender inequality in religious practices. Will the SC go the whole hog or concentrate only on Sabarimala?

