State Control over Hindu Temples

State Control over Hindu Temples

Subject: Polity

Powers of state in managing religious affairs

• Article 25(2) grants power to the State to enact law on two distinct aspects.
• Article 25(2)(a) empowers the state to regulate “economic, financial, political or other secular activities which may be associated with religious practice”.
• Article 25(2)(b) enables the state to enact law to prohibit the exclusion of ‘classes and sections’ of Hindu society to enter into Hindu temples of a public character and also make law for social welfare and reform.
• Thus, the control of secular aspects associated with religion and the power to throw open Hindu temples to all classes and sections of society are distinct.
• The Constitution does not permit the state to assume ownership of properties belonging to religious institutions.

State interference in religion

• The most fundamental criticism against the release of Hindu temples from government control to the society is:
  • To whom will the temples be handed over to?
  • Will it not perpetuate class hierarchies?
• Sovereign control of temples is justified on the grounds that Hindu temples were supervised and managed by kings.
• On the contrary there are inscriptions, cast in stone, that attest that temples were managed wholly and entirely by local communities.
• Unbridled corruption; theft and destruction are the reasons behind the objections over state taking over the temple.
• There are allegations of gross mismanagement of financial resources and indisputable corruption by the state along with the loss and destruction of temple antiquities.
• Last year, the government of Tamil Nadu submitted a report to the Madras High Court stating that in 11,999 temples in the state, there is no pooja or ritual taking place as there is no revenue.
• The state has assumed the role of religious functionaries to determine who will be heads of Mutts and the authority to conduct poojas.
• Also, the establishment of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department is not a cause for social justice.
• In the Shirur Mutt case, the supreme court struck down a major portion of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments 1951 Act. The court ruled that the provisions are a “disastrous invasion” of religious liberty.
• For example, The Shri Jagannath Temple Act, 1954 entrusted the committee appointed by the state with the task of ensuring the performance of seva pooja.
• The Waqf Act reveals that it applies to charities and specifically excludes places of worship such as mosques. The scheme of the Waqf Act supports the argument that the government should not regulate places of worship.

Judicial balancing of the various rights by the Supreme Court

• In Indian Young Lawyers’ Association v. State of Kerala (the Sabarimala case) and Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court reiterated the need to eliminate “historical discrimination which has pervaded certain identities”’, “systemic discrimination against disadvantaged groups”.
• In these cases the Supreme Court rejected stereotypical notions used to justify such discrimination.
• In all these cases, the Court prioritised judicial balancing of various constitutional rights.
• The constitutional order of priority: In the Sabarimala case, it held that “in the constitutional order of priorities, the individual right to the freedom of religion was not intended to prevail over but was subject to the overriding constitutional postulates of equality, liberty and personal freedoms recognised in the other provisions of Part III”.