{"id":13559,"date":"2026-04-23T22:35:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/?p=13559"},"modified":"2026-04-23T22:35:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:35:40","slug":"130479367-cms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/?p=13559","title":{"rendered":"Judiciary can\u2019t interfere in devotees\u2019 sacrosanct right to manner of worship, says Supreme Court | India News &#8211; The Times of India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-130480450,imgsize-189248,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/sabrimala-women-entry-case.jpg\" alt=\"Judiciary can\u2019t interfere in devotees\u2019 sacrosanct right to manner of worship, says Supreme Court\" title=\"&lt;p&gt;.&lt;\/p&gt;\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>NEW DELHI: In a significant statement, apparently in conflict with the judgment that quashed the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple\u2019s custom of barring entry of women in the 10-50 age group, the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/supreme-court\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\">Supreme Court<\/a> on Thursday prima facie agreed that devotees\u2019 right to decide the mode and manner of worshipping God was non-justiciable.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"4\"\/>SC\u2019s remark came following senior advocate J Muth Raj\u2019s argument that in Hinduism, every village had a \u2018gram devta\u2019, every family had a \u2018kul devta\u2019 and \u2018ishta devta\u2019, all of whom were worshipped differently, and it was impossible for the court to scrutinise the essentiality of such practices while tracing it to the umbrella religion.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"6\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h2>Conscience and faith private to individuals: SC<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"8\"\/>The bench hearing the Sabarimala case comprised CJI Surya Kant and Justices B V Nagarathna, M M Sundresh, Ahsanuddin Amanulla, Aravind Kumar, A G Masih, P B Varale, R Mahadevan and J Bagchi. <!-- -->CJI Kant and Justices Nagarathna, Sundresh, Kumar and Mahadevan, through their observations, appeared to agree that it would be difficult for the court to put its judicial lens to examine the validity of the mode and manner a devotee chooses to worship God.<!-- --> Raj asked that as no religious text prescribed such worship, what would be the baseline for the judicial scrutiny? The CJI and Justice Nagarathna said conscience and faith were private to an individual.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"15\"\/>Justice Sundresh said, \u201cArticle 25 rights protect a believer from a non-believer. It gives importance to the conscience of a person to practise, profess and propagate religion. The manner of worship is part of conscience and a space private to the devotee and God. This cannot be given a restrictive meaning.\u201d Justice Mahadevan added, \u201cFaith is faith. Its validity can\u2019t be tested.\u201d<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"17\"\/>All major religious communities represented by senior advocates N K Kaul, K Radhakrishnan, Krishnan Venugopal, Guru Krishna Kumar, Shyam Divan and Arvind Datar \u2014 argued in unison that long-standing customs, as in the Sabarimala temple, were based on faith and were non-justiciable.<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/judiciary-cant-interfere-in-devotees-sacrosanct-right-to-manner-of-worship-says-supreme-court\/articleshow\/130479367.cms\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI: In a significant statement, apparently in conflict with the judgment that quashed the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[724,32343,723,719,720,721,32344,30575,30572,1282,722],"class_list":["post-13559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-breaking-news","tag-devotees-right-to-worship","tag-google-news","tag-india","tag-india-news","tag-india-news-today","tag-judicial-scrutiny-religion","tag-religious-customs","tag-sabarimala-ayyappa-temple","tag-supreme-court","tag-today-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}