SC: Courts must be cautious in review of rituals | India News
New Delhi: Nine Judges Supreme Court The bench on Wednesday appeared on the same page with the government on the narrow scope of judicial review of religious practices and said constitutional courts should be extremely cautious in questioning the collective religious beliefs of a community.The comments came from a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices BV Nagarathna, MM Sundaresh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Arvind Kumar, AG Masih, PB Varale, R Mahadevan and J Bagchi while Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that there are many sects and sub-sects though they were part of religious practices, sects.Every community, community and sub-community was entitled to its peculiar rituals and even if some secular activities were mixed with these religious practices, to test the validity of a law restricting the secular part of those religious activities, the court would have to lean towards protecting the religious practices to preserve the community’s identity, Mehta said.Giving an illustration of his argument, the SG said, “The right to light a ‘diya’ is undoubtedly a matter of religion. However, if it is compulsory to light 100 diyas per day in a particular community, the question would be whether there can be a restriction by the state to limit the amount of ghee purchased per day, the secular purchase. Intrinsically connected with something that is a matter of religion and therefore cannot be interfered with by the state.”Justices Nagarathna and Sundresh said they felt that constitutional courts should not question the collective religious beliefs of followers of a community. Mehta said that the reforms through legislation by a state must be on constitutional basis – public order, morality and health.Responding to the position advanced by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde that the right to freedom of conscience and the right to freedom of religion allow a person to “wake up as a Hindu, eat lunch as a Muslim and sleep at night as a Christian”, Mehta said that if a person has such thoughts, he “needs psychological treatment”.The bench reserved its judgment on the reference regarding conflict of faith vs. fundamental rights.
