WHY COURTS CAN RULE ON ESSENTIAL RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

THE Madras High Court's May 2024 judgement in P Naveen Kumar vs District Collector, Karur & Others has revived the debate on what in India is called the essential religious practices test.

- A FAIZUR RAHMAN

The single-judge ruling allowed angapradakshinam, the practice in which devotees roll over banana leaves on which other devotees have partaken food.

Some legal scholars argue judges should not assume the role of clergy to determine theological issues to either permit or curtail the freedom to "irrational" beliefs.

Without going into the merits of the case above, it may be pointed out courts in India adjudicate on contentious religious practices only when their intervention is sought under Articles 32 or 226 of the Constitution. If courts in the past subjected certain religious practices to the essentiality test, it was only because those traditions, apart from not being essential to their faith, were violating the Constitution.

For instance, in the triple talaq case, Justices Nariman and U U Lalit-two of the three judges who delivered the majority judgement showed us how it is possible to harmonise the concepts of constitutional justice and Islamic egalitarianism without undermining the religious freedom guaranteed in Article 25(1).

On the one hand, they pronounced talaqe-biddat to be "manifestly arbitrary” and violative of Article 14 because it allowed a Muslim man to break his marriage "capriciously and whimsically" without attempting to save it through reconciliation. On the other, the judges endorsed the comprehensive Quranic procedure of divorcealready upheld by the Supreme Court in the Shamim Ara case (2002), which gives a Muslim husband no room to arbitrarily exercise his right to divorce.