Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala (Sabarimala)

Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala is a 2018 judgment of a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India that invalidated the long-standing prohibition on the entry of women of menstruating age (10 to 50 years) into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, dedicated to the deity Lord Ayyappa. The petition, filed in 2006 as a public interest litigation, challenged Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, framed under the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Act, 1965. Rule 3(b) permitted the exclusion of women "at such time during which they are not by custom and usage allowed to enter a place of public worship." The constitutional anchors of the dispute were Article 25 (freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion), Article 26 (freedom to manage religious affairs), Article 14 (equality before law), Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex) and Article 17 (abolition of untouchability).

The Court delivered its verdict on 28 September 2018 by a 4:1 majority, authored across separate concurring opinions by Chief Justice Dipak Misra (for himself and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar), Justice R.F. Nariman and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, with Justice Indu Malhotra dissenting. The majority held that the devotees of Lord Ayyappa do not constitute a separate religious denomination under Article 26, because they lacked a common faith, distinct organisation and a distinctive name separating them from the broader Hindu community. Having denied denominational status, the bench reasoned that the temple could not claim the autonomy that Article 26(b) grants to denominations to manage their own religious affairs, and that the exclusionary practice therefore had to be tested against the broader equality and individual-worship guarantees.

The majority found that the exclusion of women violated the right of Hindu women to practise religion under Article 25(1), which is available to "all persons" equally, and that the bar amounted to discrimination on the prohibited ground of sex under Article 15. Crucially, the Court held that the practice was not an essential religious practice protected from state interference, since excluding women was neither integral to the Ayyappa faith nor of immemorial, uniform observance. Justice Chandrachud went further, characterising the exclusion premised on menstruation as a form of untouchability barred by Article 17. Justice Indu Malhotra dissented, holding that judicial review of religious practices must be restrained, that the petitioners (not themselves devotees) lacked standing, and that constitutional notions of rationality should not be imposed upon matters of faith.

The aftermath unfolded principally in Thiruvananthapuram and New Delhi. The Travancore Devaswom Board, which administers Sabarimala, and the Kerala government under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan moved to implement the order, prompting widespread protests across Kerala in late 2018. On 1 January 2019 two women, Bindu Ammini and Kanaka Durga, entered the shrine under police protection, an event the temple followed with a purification ritual. More than fifty review petitions were filed. On 14 November 2019, in Kantaru Rajeevaru v. Indian Young Lawyers Association, a 3:2 bench led by CJI Ranjan Gogoi kept the review petitions pending and referred broader questions—concerning the interface of faith, the essential-practices doctrine, and entry of Muslim and Parsi women and female genital cutting among the Dawoodi Bohra—to a larger nine-judge bench.

The judgment must be distinguished from adjacent doctrines and precedents. It is not a temple-entry case in the mould of the anti-untouchability reform statutes that opened temples to Dalits; it concerns sex-based exclusion of upper-caste and all women. It is conceptually distinct from the essential religious practices test first articulated in the Shirur Mutt case (1954), which it applied rather than created. It also differs from the contemporaneous Triple Talaq judgment (Shayara Bano, 2017) and the Hadiya case, even though all reflect the Court's expanding scrutiny of personal and religious law against constitutional morality. The phrase constitutional morality, deployed prominently by the majority, signals a willingness to subordinate popular or customary morality to the values embedded in the Constitution.

The case remains legally unsettled and politically contested. The nine-judge reference framed seven questions, including the permissible scope of judicial review of religious practices and whether the "essential practices" inquiry should be reformulated, but those questions await hearing, leaving the operative effect of the 2018 declaration in a state of practical suspension. Critics argue the majority intruded into theology; defenders contend the Court vindicated individual dignity over discriminatory custom. The controversy fed into electoral politics in Kerala and nationally, and exposed tensions between gender justice, group religious autonomy and judicial competence to adjudicate faith.

For the practitioner—particularly the civil services aspirant preparing General Studies Paper I and Paper II, the policy researcher, or the desk officer tracking Indian constitutional developments—the Sabarimala judgment is a touchstone for understanding the relationship between fundamental rights, religious freedom and gender equality. It illustrates how Articles 14, 15, 17, 25 and 26 interact, how the essential-practices and denomination tests operate, and how constitutional morality is invoked. Its unresolved reference to a nine-judge bench also makes it a live example of how Indian constitutional law evolves through layered litigation rather than single decisive verdicts.