ON TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2026, as the Sabarimala Reference hearings by a nine-judge Constitution Bench hit the fortnight mark with respect to the elongated nature of its hearings, Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta, representing the Kerala government, continued with his submissions. Alongside him, Senior Advocates Vijay Hansaria, Sajnay Hegde, Meneka Guruswamy and Shadan Farasat also appeared to make their respective submissions.
‘In case of conflict, English text of Constitution prevails over translation’: Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta
He resumed his submissions by referring to the case of the Ananda Margis, which dealt with the practice of carrying out processions comprising a Tandav dance. In 1979, in Kolkata TT, a notice under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was served to the practitioners on the apprehension of breach of peace. The Supreme Court in that case had recognised the performance dance as an intrinsic religious practice to the exclusion of the mandate to perform the same in public. Further on, he submitted that the parameter for ascertaining the religious practices must be through the lens of doctrines of such a religion instead of viewing it from a lens of judicial reasoning. Gupta also pressed unequivocally on the significance of restraint to be exercised by the courts in cases pertaining to religious practises as such cases are starkly different from a tax case or any other category of cases.
Gupta, then, referred to the decision in Seshammal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1972), which dealt with the hereditary appointment to the post of Archakas, wherein the Supreme Court abolished the practice which confined itself to only ‘hereditary transmissions’. He submitted that Seshammal does not deal with the law in an incorrect manner but instead the ‘legal proposition’ applicable in the same stands to be precise. On this Justice B.V. Nagarathna observed that although “the process of appointment of Archakas is non-religious however, the qualification for the same is strictly religious’.
