Ananya Gunjan

On the thirteenth day of hearings, Respondents pressed that the practice of excommunication in the Dawoodi Bohra community led to suffering across generations, and that ‘morality’ in Article 25 must be construed as the Constitution’s ‘internal morality’.

While the Indian Young Lawyers' Association struggled to justify its standing before the Court, Senior Advocate Darius Khambata, appearing for a Parsi Zoroastrian woman denied entry into the agiary after marrying a Hindu man, argued that no religion can strip a believing woman of her faith simply because she married outside her community.

While Senior Advocate Khambata cautioned the Bench against conflating religious autonomy with denominational dominance and urged it to read constitutional silences not as vacuums, Senior Advocate Ramachandran brought before the Court the lived consequences of excommunication within the Dawoodi Bohra community.

As the Sabarimala Reference hearings completed a fortnight, senior advocates Jaideep Gupta, Sanjay Hegde, Vijay Hansaria, Meneka Guruswamy and Shadan Farasat for the respondents argued on the intent of the Constitution drafters to open temples to ‘all classes’ and the perils of acceding to public morality.