On Sabarimala...

“The right to enter a temple is not dependent on legislation. It is the constitutional right,” justice Chandrachud continued. He added: “If the age restriction is based on menstruation, then it is arbitrary. If it is linked to age, it is per se arbitrary...if the age is linked to menarche, then also it is arbitrary.” Menarche is the first occurrence of menstruation.

The court found it strange that the Kerala government had kept changing its stand in the case. “You are changing with the changing times,” the bench remarked

Senior advocate Jaideep Gupta told the bench that the state agreed with the petitioners. On February 4, 2016, the then United Democratic Front (UDF) government had declared that the restriction had been in place from “time immemorial” and was a part of the temple’s “unique idol concept.” The state’s February 2016 stand contradicted a November 2007 position it took when the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government was in power. In November 2016, the new LDF government junked UDF’S stand to back the petitioners.

The court said it would examine whether the present customs adopted by the temple were an integral and essential part of the religion that is protected under Article 25 (freedom of religion) of the constitution. It wondered whether exclusion of women because they were menstruating amounted to untouchability, a social evil under the law.

Senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for an intervenor in the case, said the 800-year-old practise was discriminatory. “They argue it is not based on sex. They say it is based on menarche, the age when women menstruate,’’ she said.

“The discrimination based on physiology applies only to women and hence it is a discrimination based on sex,” she added. Classification must also be legitimate and constitutional, the lawyer asserted. Jaising said states had enacted temple entry laws to abolish untouchability. Such