Menstrual “impurity”, women’s access to public worship and the law: a feminist re-writing of the Sabarimala judgement S. Mahendran v The Secretary, Travancore Devaswom Board AIR 1993 Ker 42

Abstract

ABSTRACT The central concern of the case was the constitutional validity of a long-enforced prohibition on women aged 10–50 from entering the Hindu temple at Sabarimala, Kerala, with the intersection of freedom of religion and equality rights of women as its backdrop. The Kerala High Court’s judgement of 1991, which upheld its validity, was followed by a complex web of litigation and protests, culminating in the Supreme Court judgement of 2018 in Indian Young Lawyers’ Association v. State of Kerala. The 2018 judgement, with a majority of 4:1, held that the prohibition was unconstitutional and discriminatory against women. However, by adopting a feminist analysis, I demonstrate not only that the Kerala High Court judgement overlooked women’s right to freedom of religion, but that the tools to deliver a more gender-equal judgement were fully available to the High Court in 1991, and had the potential to be applied to the issue.