Major Hindu Temple Can't Ban Menstruating Women, India's Supreme Court Rules

Major Hindu Temple Can’t Ban Menstruating Women, India’s Supreme Court Rules
Kerala’s Sabarimala Temple will be open to all women, regardless of whether they might be on their period.
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India’s Supreme Court has lifted a centuries-old ban on women who could potentially be on their periods from entering a popular Hindu pilgrimage site.

Chief Justice Dipak Misra said in the 4-1 ruling Friday that Sabarimala Temple’s restrictions on women could not be considered an essential religious practice.

“All devotees are equal, and there cannot be any discrimination on the basis of gender,” Misra said, according to NDTV.

D.Y. Chandrachud, a Supreme Court justice who concurred with Misra, said that religion can’t be “the cover to deny women the right to worship.”

“To treat women as children of a lesser God is to blink at constitutional morality,” Chandrachud said.

The ruling was the latest in a series of landmark progressive decisions from India’s top court. On Thursday, the court struck down a colonial-era law about adultery. Last month, the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prominent-hindu-temple-cant-ban-menstruating-women-indian-supreme-court-rules_us_5bb28495e4b027da00d67d10

In the meantime, Kerala’s government will be attempting to make the temple more accommodating for female devotees, according to NDTV ― installing separate washrooms and baths and increasing the number of female police officers at the site.

Other Indian religious sites have also been opened up to women through recent court cases. In 2016, the Hindu temple Shani Shingnapur and the Muslim Haji Ali shrine in the state of Maharashtra were both independently ordered to lift their gender-based bans, according to the BBC.

Sadhana, an American coalition of progressive Hindus, called the Supreme Court’s decision an “important and progressive step in removing the stigma around menstruation in Hindu communities.”

“No human is pure or impure in the eyes of god,” the coalition wrote on Facebook. “We are all divine.”