WHAT IS ESSENTIAL PRACTICE TEST?

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL PRACTICE TEST?

TOPIC: Polity

Context- The action of some pre-university colleges in Karnataka refusing entry to Muslim girl students wearing hijabs, or head-scarves, has now become a national controversy.

• The Karnataka High Court, by an interim order, has directed that students should not wear attire linked to any religion until it resolves the legal questions arising from the issue.

Concept-

What is the constitutional position?

• Bijoe Emmanuel vs. State of Kerala (1986) pertained to three children belonging to the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect refusing to sing the national anthem during the morning assembly.
  • The Supreme Court ruled in the students’ favour, holding that their expulsion violated their freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) as well as their right to freely practise and profess their faith under Article 25(1).
• The freedom of conscience and to profess, practise and propagate religion is guaranteed by Article 25.
  • This freedom is subject to ‘public order, morality and health’.
  • It also makes it clear that there can be a law regulating any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice or to provide for social welfare and reform, including throwing open Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus.
• Kerala High Court Judgement judgment in 2016 allowed two Muslim students to take the All India Pre-medical Test while wearing a hijab, after holding that it was an essential part of Islam.
• In a different case, the Kerala High Court declined to intervene in favour of a Muslim student who was not allowed to wear a head-scarf by a school.

Essential Practice test to identify matters of religion and matters other than religion.

• The ‘essential practice’ doctrine emerged in 1954 in the ‘Shirur Mutt’ case. This litigation involved action sought to be taken by the Madras government against a mutt over some disputes over the handling of financial affairs. It was in this context that the Supreme Court said: “In the first place, what constitutes the essential part of a religion is primarily to be ascertained with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself.”
• Hence, some acts obtained constitutional protection by being declared “essential” to the practice of that religion and some were denied protection on the ground that they were not essential to it.
• In 1983, the Supreme Court upheld the police decision to disallow ‘Tandava’, a ritual dance performed with a skull and a knife, in public places as part of a procession by Ananda Margis, holding that the ‘Tandava’ was not an essential religious practice among those in the sect.
• In the Sabarimala case (2018), the majority ruled that the bar on entry of women in the age-group of 10 to 50 was not an essential or integral part of the religion, and also denied the status of a separate religious denomination of devotees of Lord Ayyappa.