Why the Sabarimala verdict allowing women’s entry is not against mass opinion

The Supreme Court has set aside the custom of preventing women in menstruating age from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.

Updated on: Sep 29, 2018, 11:22:56 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Roshan Kishore

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The Supreme Court has set aside a long practiced custom of preventing women in menstruating age from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. Describing the practice as exclusionary, the court ruled it “neither essential, nor an integral part of religion”. Statistics from the 2012 (the latest available data) of World Value Surveys (WVS) for India suggest that the judgment might be in keeping with public opinion in India, although there is a school of thought that believes people have become more rigid in their religious beliefs over the past few years. WVS data shows that a majority of Indians places a high importance on religion in their lives (Chart 1), and also reports a high degree of confidence in religious organisations (Chart 2). These trends hold across gender and age. This high religiosity however does not make majority of Indians supporters of a theocratic state, where religious authorities interpreting laws is seen as being essential for democracy. Almost one-third of Indians said that religious authorities interpreting laws was not an essential feature of democracy at all, while the share of those who believed the opposite was less than 10% (Chart 3). These statistics are yet another proof that the struggle against retrograde and discriminatory practices being continued in the name of religion has the support of a huge silent majority.

Devotees wait at Lord Ayyappa temple, in Sabarimala. The Supreme Court said women have the constitutional right to enter Sabarimala temple in Kerala. (PTI File Photo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roshan Kishore
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More

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