Temple and state

The contours of the Constitutional wall which separates the State from the Church have undergone a continuous process of drawing and re-drawing. Recently, in the landmark cases of Shayara Bano  2017 and Indian Young Lawyers 2018, which dealt with Triple Talaq and Women Entry into Sabarimala respectively, the Supreme Court has looked at the balance between religious freedoms and fundamental rights. Through these cases, any many other preceding them, the Supreme Court has established itself as an arbiter of prickly religious issues. 

Nevertheless, in recent times, social conservatives have not stopped demanding that the State stay away completely from any interference with the “Temple”. Subramanian Swamy filed a Writ Petition before the Supreme Court of India to quash all “State HR & CE [Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments] temple laws as unconstitutional” and BJP’s National Secretary, H. Raja has endorsed the liberation of temples from “the clutches of government”. 

The issue portends serious social repercussions in Tamil Nadu. The State control and administration of Hindu temples is seen as an integral reform of the century-old Dravidian Movement. It was under the Justice Party’s rule that the first set of temple reforms took shape. The Act 1 of 1925, the Government constituted the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments  Board for the very first time. The Board was vested with the power to control and supervise the administration of temples including the power to appoint officials for proper administration. Around the same time, Periyar’s Vaikom Movement sparked a revolution with regard to temple entry and worship by the backward castes. 

In 1970, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government led by Kalaignar Karunanidhi amended the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments Act to allow appointments of priests. This, for the first time, challenged hereditary priesthood. Though this law ran into legal hurdles, it provided belief to men from all castes that they too could enter the sanctum sanctorum. Ultimately, the 2006 law passed by a subsequent DMK Government completed the reform process and subsequently, the first backward caste priest was appointed by the Government of Tamil Nadu in July 2018.

The support among Hindu conservatives toward “liberating temples” goes against social justice ethos of the Dravidian Movement as well as law laid down by the Supreme Court. In the case of N Adityan 2002, the Supreme Court held that “the vision of the founding fathers of Constitution to liberate the society from blind and ritualistic adherence to mere traditional superstitious beliefs sans reason or rational basis has found expression in the form of Article 17”. Therefore, the institution of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board only serves to reiterate the Constitutional guarantee of equality before law of all citizen.

Therefore, it is now upto the Supreme Court to reiterate the core Constitutional principles and ensure that any right to “disseminate and propagate religious beliefs” can only be subject to “public order, health and morality and other provisions of Part-III”, as held by Justice Doraisamy Raju in N Adityan 2002. 

Manuraj Shunmugasundaram

Advocate and Spokesperson – DMK

Link to the Article: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/temple-and-state/article62110040.ece

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