Article is an excerpt from the judgment of Justice Rohinton F. Nariman in Sabrimala Case
The guarantee against social exclusion based on notions of “purity and pollution” is an acknowledgment of the inalienable dignity of every individual. Dignity as a facet of Article 21 is firmly entrenched after the decision of nine Judges in K S Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017).
The caste system has been powered by specific forms of subjugation of women. The notion of “purity and pollution” stigmatizes the menstruation of. In his 1916 paper, “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development”, Dr Ambedkar speaks about the practice of subjugating and humiliating women for the purpose of reinforcement of the caste system. He advances that women have been used as a medium to perpetuate caste system by citing the specific examples of Sati (the practice of burning of the widow on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband), enforced widowhood by women in Indian society.
In the ancient religious texts and customs, menstruating women have been considered as polluting the surroundings. Irrespective of the status of a woman, menstruation has been equated with impurity, and the idea of impurity is then used to justify their exclusion from key social activities.
Our society is governed by the Constitution. The values of constitutional morality are a non-derogable entitlement. Notions of “purity and pollution”, which stigmatize individuals, can have no place in a constitutional regime. Regarding menstruation as polluting or impure, and worse still, imposing exclusionary disabilities on the basis of menstrual status, is against the dignity of women which is guaranteed by the Constitution. Practices which legitimise menstrual taboos, due to notions of “purity and pollution”, limit the ability of menstruating women to attain the freedom of movement, the right to education and the right of entry to places of worship and, eventually, their access to the public sphere.
Women have a right to control their own bodies. The menstrual status of a woman is an attribute of her privacy and person. Women have a constitutional entitlement that their biological processes must be free from social and religious practices, which enforce segregation and exclusion. These practices result in humiliation and a violation of dignity.
Article 17 prohibits the practice of which a widow is not allowed to remarry, and pre-pubertal marriage of girls. He believed that the caste-gender nexus was the main culprit behind the oppression of the lower castes and women and that it had to be uprooted. Article 17 certainly applies to untouchability practices in relation to lower castes, but it will also apply to the systemic humiliation, exclusion and subjugation faced by women. Prejudice against women based on notions of impurity and pollution associated with menstruation is a symbol of exclusion. The social exclusion of women, based on menstrual status, is but a form of untouchability which is an anathema to constitutional values. As an expression of the anti-exclusion principle, Article 17 cannot be read to exclude women against whom social exclusion of the worst kind has been practiced and legitimized on notions of purity and pollution. Article 17 cannot be read in a restricted manner.
But even if Article 17 were to be read to reflect a particular form of untouchability, that article will not exhaust the guarantee against other forms of social exclusion. The guarantee against social exclusion would emanate from other provisions of Part III, including Articles 15(2) and 21. Exclusion of women between the age groups of ten and fifty, based on their menstrual status, from entering the temple in Sabarimala can have no place in a constitutional order founded on liberty and dignity.
The issue for entry in a temple is not so much about the right of menstruating women to practice their right to freedom of religion, as about freedom from societal oppression, which comes from a stigmatized understanding of menstruation, resulting in “untouchability”. Article 25, which is subject to Part III provisions, is necessarily therefore subject to Article 17. To use the ideology of “purity and pollution” is a violation of the constitutional right against “untouchability”.
Reference
Indian Young Lawyers Association v. Union of India (2018)