Hypocrisy check: Sabarimala vs Hijab

Judicial inconsistency and the hypocrisy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak SanghBharatiya Janata Party are vividly illustrated in their contradictory responses to the hijab and the Sabarimala temple controversiesUpholding the state governmentrsquos order banning the hijab from classrooms the Karnataka High Court ruled that its wearing did not constitute an essential religious practice under Islam Students walked out of classrooms in protest and Muslim groups organised a bandh BJP leaders said it was wrong to criticise the high court verdict publiclyIn 1991 the Kerala High Court upheld the rules disallowing menstruating women from entering the Sabarimala temple On September 28 2019 the Supreme Court by a 41 majority said these rules violated the right to worship and allowed women of all ages to enter the templeKerala took to the streetsOn October 18 in his Vijayadashami speech RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat said a peaceful society can only be created by framing laws anchored in ldquoits ethical standards derived from the comprehension of the traditional social valuesrdquo He then lit into the Sabarimala verdict ldquoThe nature and premise of the tradition that has beencontinuously followed for years together were not taken into accountrdquo This was why the Sabarimala verdict had ldquogiven rise to unrest turmoil and divisivenesshelliprdquo he saidThe RSSBJP was in fact fanning the unrest The Kerala governmentrsquos attempts to implement the verdict were stalled women wishing to enter the temple were hounded The BJP organised or supported seven hartals Sharing the stage with then BJP state president PS Sreedharan Pillai Malayalam movie actor Kollam Thulasi said women who entered the temple should be ldquotorn into two piecesrdquo On January 2 2019 two women under police protection entered the Sabarimala temple leading to its shutdown for conducting purification ceremoniesNeither the RSS nor the BJP spoke against the impropriety of violating the Supreme Court verdict of resorting to violencePetitions seeking a review of the 2018 Sabarimala judgment were filed in the Supreme Court On November 14 2019 then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi whose tenure symbolised the ills plaguing the judiciary wrote the majority judgment He clubbed the Sabarimala petitions with those pertaining to the entry of Muslim women into dargahsmosques of Parsi women married to a nonParsi into the fire temple and the practice of female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community These four types of petitions were referred to a bench of at least seven members for deciding on their constitutional validityGogoirsquos clubbing of Muslim Parsi and Sabarimala practices for judging their constitutionality together fulfilled Bhagwatrsquos wish for he had cribbed in his 2018 speech ldquoThe questions such as why only the Hindu society experiences such repeated and brazen onslaughts on its symbols of faith obviously arise in the public mindrdquo No wonder Gogoi was nominated to the Rajya SabhaJustice Rohinton Nariman who wrote the dissenting opinion in the Sabarimala review case tore into Gogoirsquos arguments Nariman observed ldquoAn argument was made that there are gender restrictions in other places of worship which being essential religious practices have not been interfered with This is a general argument which needs to be rejected on the grounds of vagueness apart from the fact that this is not an argument which could be made in reviewrdquoNariman also castigated the ldquoextreme argumentrdquo made during the hearing that ldquobelief and faith are not judicially reviewablerdquo This was indeed the position of the RSSBJP during the Sabarimala episode Sangh members today are jubilant that the high court has banished the hijab from classroomsNariman asked Kerala to implement the 2018 Sabarimala verdict which the 2019 review judgment had not stayed but had merely transferred to a larger bench By then the Pinarayi Vijayan government had lost its earlier enthusiasm for implementing the Supreme Court order not least because of the drubbing the Left received in the 2019 Lok Sabha election The government promptly issued a notification prohibiting women from entering the temple until such time a larger bench decided on the entry of women into the Sabarimala temple dargahsmosques the fire temple and the genital mutilation issueA ninemember bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde upheld Gogoirsquos reference in February 2020 and framed seven questions to be considered regarding the entry of women into places of worship That is where the matter restsIn effect women cannot enter the Sabarimala temple In effect Hindutva won by default courtesy the Supreme CourtNariman in his dissenting opinion in the 2019 Sabarimala review judgment narrated the story of Russian monarch Peter the Great 16821725 who banned his people from sporting the beard then a revered symbol of Orthodox Christians The beard Peter thought symbolised Russiarsquos backwardness Officials went around with razors shaving the beards of those wearing them A person could however pay an annual tax to save his beardNariman noted ldquoThe bloody revolutions that took place in France and Russia against absolute monarchs are a sober reminderthat social transformation which took place cataclysmically in rivers of human blood is to be eschewedrdquo Let there be no doubt The BJP governmentrsquos ban on the hijab in Karnataka smacks of Peterrsquos absolutism an absolutism the judiciary has tacitly encouragedThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper