ON NOVEMBER 25, the Supreme Court dismissed the Special Leave Petition in Samuel Kamalesan v. Union of India (2025). It declined to interfere with a decision of the Delhi High Court which had upheld the dismissal of a Christian army officer for refusing to enter the sanctum of a temple during a regimental religious parade. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed a familiar judicial posture. In matters of military discipline, courts will defer.
Yet, beneath this surface continuity lies a deeper constitutional unease. The case exposes not merely the limits of religious freedom in uniform, but the increasingly unexamined manner in which Article 33 operates.
“Wilful disobedience of a lawful command”
The petitioner, Samuel Kamalesan, a former lieutenant of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, argued that while he accompanied his troops to all parades and celebrations, he sought exemption only from crossing into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, an act he viewed as inconsistent with his faith protected under Article 25. The Army, on the other hand, saw this as disobedience of legitimate command, undermining morale and regimental unity. The constitutional issue, therefore, was not merely about religion, but about the permissible limits of individual conscience within an institution structured around obedience, cohesion, and command.
Earlier in May, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court comprising Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur had upheld the officer’s dismissal under Section 19 of the Army Act, 1950 (‘Army Act’), read with Rule 14 of the Army Rules, 1954. The High Court held that the petitioner’s conduct amounted to “wilful disobedience of a lawful command” under Section 41 rather than the assertion of a constitutional right. This framing proved decisive. Once the act was treated as disobedience, the Court effectively foreclosed any substantive enquiry into religious freedom.
The judgment expressly declined to treat the dispute as one implicating the relationship between religion and secularism. According to the High Court, the case did not concern the petitioner’s right to practise his faith, but his refusal, despite repeated counselling and directions, to comply with a command issued by his superiors in the interest of regimental discipline. It reasoned that the ethos of the armed forces places nation before self; and certainly, nation before religion. As a result, religious parades and war cries become instruments of discipline and cohesion, where participation reflects professional obligation rather than personal belief.
The judgment expressly declined to treat the dispute as one implicating the relationship between religion and secularism.
The High Court grounded this conclusion in Article 33 of the Constitution, which empowers the Parliament to modify or restrict the fundamental rights of armed forces personnel “so as to ensure the proper discharge of their duties and the maintenance of discipline.” Flexibility in imposing restrictions, the High Court noted, was inherent to provision’s design. It reiterated that the demands of discipline justified certain restriction of rights that would be impermissible in the civilian context and that the “standard of discipline required for the Armed Forces is different.” What may appear “harsh” in civilian life, it noted, may be essential for military morale.
The need for specific parliamentary calibration under Article 33
While the Delhi High Court grounded its reasoning in the constitutional text of Article 33, it did not engage with a foundational structural gap. The Parliament has not, so far, legislated any specific limitation on the right to freedom of religion for members of the armed forces. Article 33 has often been misread as a mere exception clause. However, it must be seen as a constitutional accommodation, a recognition that certain institutions essential to sovereignty cannot function without special norms of obedience and unity.
The Army Act governs discipline, command, and conduct, but it does not explicitly restrict Article 25 rights. Its provisions, including Sections 19 and 41, concern “obedience to lawful command” and “termination for misconduct”, but they do not articulate what degree of participation in religious activity may justifiably be required of an officer of a particular faith.
In R. Viswan v. Union of India (1983), the Supreme Court had held that the Army Act operated as the legislative expression of Article 33, allowing subordinate authorities to outline restrictions necessary for discipline. Relying upon this decision, the Delhi High Court had noted that institutional discipline was a constitutionally valid limitation.
The broader constitutional question underlying this is whether Article 33 envisages such delegated restraint, or whether it anticipates direct parliamentary enunciation of specific limits on fundamental rights.
However, the absence of a clear legislative direction on whether and how Article 25 may be curtailed in the military context, means that such limitations currently derive from practice rather than statute.
The broader constitutional question underlying this is whether Article 33 envisages such delegated restraint, or whether it anticipates direct parliamentary enunciation of specific limits on fundamental rights. In that sense, the absence of a legislative measure that expressly restricts Article 25 is not a mere procedural hurdle. It, in fact, raises a structural question about whether administrative practice can substitute for constitutional adjustment. An alternate constitutional interpretation might suggest that Article 33 anticipates ‘specific parliamentary calibration’, not administrative discretion, of fundamental rights.
Jurisprudential stakes of institutional deference
One of the most significant jurisprudential aspects of the decision lies in its judicial technique. While modern constitutional review often employs a proportionality test weighing individual rights against legitimate state aims, in Samuel Kamalesan, the Delhi High Court declined to apply such balancing. Instead, it adopted a deferential standard, accepting the Army’s assessment that the officer’s conduct undermined regimental ethos.
Indian service law jurisprudence implicitly follows a two-step method. First, the scope of the right (in this case, the freedom of religion under Article 25) is understood as it applies to an ordinary citizen. Only thereafter is its variation assessed under Article 33, which allows restriction to the extent necessary for discipline. The Court relied on the Supreme Court’s judgment in Union of India v. L.D. Balam Singh (2002) to conclude that the “extent of restriction” under Article 33 is proportionate to the needs of discipline, an elastic standard that evolves with functional realities. Yet, instead of undertaking a structured proportionality analysis, the High Court compressed these steps into a single inquiry, treating institutional assessment of discipline as sufficient and thereby bypassing substantive rights review.
When the matter reached the Supreme Court, a Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant dismissed the petition at the admission stage, finding “no ground to interfere” with the Delhi High Court’s decision. This deference was symptomatic of a doctrinal narrowing of rights review, where the presence of uniform became sufficient to mute constitutional adjudication.
The Kamalesan case follows a globally evolving jurisprudence of institutional constitutionalism. It is a jurisprudence that views the military, the police, and other uniformed services as constitutional entities with their own internal logic of rights and obligations. In doing so, the High Court in Kamalesan affirms that the Indian Constitution tolerates differentiated liberties across institutions.
Yet the judgment elides a crucial distinction: Article 33 authorises legislative modification of rights, not their displacement through internal institutional practice.
Seen in a broader constitutional perspective, Kamalesan extends the logic of institutional secularism first articulated by the Supreme Court in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994). There, the Supreme Court had held that the State must maintain a neutral stance toward all religions. The High Court’s reasoning in Kamalesan translates that neutrality into the context of military discipline. Neutrality in the forces is not achieved by religious abstention but by equal participation in the collective rituals of the regiment.
The High Court’s refusal to read the petitioner’s conduct through Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986), where schoolchildren who were Jehovah’s Witnesses were protected for refusing to sing the national anthem, is telling. It signals that while conscience enjoys constitutional protection in civilian life, its reach narrows sharply within institutions that are understood to embody sovereignty. The soldier’s conscience, unlike the citizen’s, is not private. It is institutionally mediated and rooted in constitutional functionality.
When the matter reached the Supreme Court, a Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant dismissed the petition at the admission stage, finding “no ground to interfere” with the Delhi High Court’s decision.
From a theoretical standpoint, the case demonstrates that secularism in the Indian Constitution operates on two planes — individual secularism, guaranteeing freedom of belief and conscience, and institutional secularism, mandating that state organs, especially the armed forces, operate beyond the pull of personal faith.
The Delhi High Court’s emphasis on “uniformity of personal appearance and conduct” echoes this second element. It underscores that discipline itself is a secular value, one that ensures that religious diversity coexists without fragmentation. The difficulty, however, is that when uniformity of appearance and conduct is elevated to a constitutional value, the line between cohesion and coercion becomes perilously thin. A balanced path forward would involve clearer statutory guidance to reconcile conscience with command. Such a framework would not weaken discipline; it would anchor it more firmly in constitutional legitimacy.