Orthodoxy Redux: Religious Authority and a Woman's Right to Be in Public

The Lift Line

A community may regulate its worship. The question is whether that authority reaches past the ritual and settles where a woman may stand.

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

This is one of the most reliably examined intersections in the syllabus, and it is where weak answers go wrong in a predictable way: they take a side on the faith. The examiner is not asking that. The examiner is asking whether a candidate can hold two propositions at once, that religious freedom is a real constitutional right and that it is a bounded one, and then apply the text that draws the boundary. This editorial models the move, conceding the community’s right to regulate practice and then locating the limit.

GS Paper 1: Role of women and women’s organisations; social empowerment; secularism; effects of social reform movements on society.

GS Paper 2: Fundamental Rights; mechanisms, laws and institutions constituted for the protection and betterment of vulnerable sections.

Background and Context

What was said, and by whom. A directive from the Kanthapuram-led faction of Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, a body of Sunni scholars, advised organisers of public Milad programmes against presenting women on public stages and in road-based religious events alongside unrelated men. Its best-known figure is Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliar, general secretary of that faction and Grand Mufti of India since February 2019. He has said that he is reminding followers of established religious norms and that criticism will not make him withdraw the view.

The argument offered in its defence. Supporters say Milad observance, which this year marked what celebrations across the State described as the Prophet Muhammad’s 1,501st birth anniversary, has moved out of mosques and madrasas into very large public events, and that a scholar has a duty to caution the community when observance departs from what the tradition prescribes. Reported later, the position was also framed as a scholarly opinion offered to believers rather than a binding order.

Why Samastha has factions. Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama was formed in 1926 and split into two bodies in 1989 after organisational disagreements. One is led by Kanthapuram, generally called the AP faction; the other is the EK faction. Both trace themselves to the 1926 foundation. The distinction matters politically because the two factions have had different relationships with different parties.

The political background. Kerala voted in May 2026. The Congress-led United Democratic Front won 102 of 140 seats, and V.D. Satheesan became Chief Minister on 18 May 2026, ending two consecutive terms of the Left Democratic Front. The CPI(M), now the principal Opposition, responded sharply. The Congress, leading the government, was guarded before the Chief Minister dismissed the directive. The Indian Union Muslim League, which won 22 seats and is a partner in the governing front, drew the editorial’s criticism for not speaking plainly, given that it has an active women’s wing and that Fathima Thahiliya, elected from Perambra, is the first woman to enter the Kerala Assembly on an IUML ticket. The editorial suggests the reticence may reflect pressures over Waqf, Vande Mataram and PM-SHRI, or an effort to improve ties with one Samastha faction while relations with the other are strained.

The Onam counterpoint, in context. Thiruvonam fell on 26 August 2026, in the same week as the Milad observances, and videos of young Muslim girls joining the harvest festival circulated widely. That coincidence is what gives the editorial its closing line about a State that cannot claim to be progressive while making exceptions.

One nomenclature note. The editorial uses Keralam. Background: the Union Cabinet approved the alteration on 24 February 2026, and Parliament passed the Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026 in August 2026, altering the name in the First Schedule under Article 3.

The Analysis

1. The editorial does not dispute the community’s right; it disputes its reach. The sentence that carries the argument concedes that communities have the right to preserve traditions and regulate religious practice, and then adds that this right is exercised within constitutional values. This is the correct doctrinal sequence and the one a strong answer reproduces. A candidate who begins by attacking the belief has already lost the constitutional argument; a candidate who begins by conceding the right and then asks where it stops is doing law.

2. The stated reason is what makes it justiciable. A direction framed as ritual discipline is one thing. A direction resting on the proposition that women’s presence in public produces disorder is another, because it makes a woman’s access to public space contingent on an assumption about her effect on others. That reasoning has a long history in law, and Indian courts have rejected it in other settings, holding that the answer to a risk of disorder is to police the disorder, not to remove the woman. Article 19(1)(d) protects the freedom to move freely, and restrictions on it must be reasonable and proportionate under Article 19(5).

3. Article 25 and Article 26 are not drafted alike, and the difference is the whole case. Article 25(1) is subject to public order, morality, health and to the other provisions of Part III. Article 26 is subject only to public order, morality and health. A claim routed through Article 26, as a denominational right to manage religious affairs, therefore appears to escape the equality guarantees that Article 25 must answer to. Against that background, whether it truly does is the central question referred to a nine-judge Bench, which reserved judgment on 14 May 2026. Until that judgment is delivered, the doctrinal position is genuinely unsettled, and an answer that states it as settled is overclaiming.

4. The horizontal-application problem is the strongest thing the other side has. Fundamental rights ordinarily bind the State. A scholar advising voluntary participants in a religious festival is not the State. The routes that reach private conduct are narrow and specific: Article 15(2) on access to places of public resort, Article 17 on untouchability, Article 23 on trafficking and forced labour, and the Fundamental Duty in Article 51A(e) to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women, which is not directly enforceable but has been used interpretively. A candidate who names this problem, rather than assuming it away, will read as significantly better trained.

5. The party-political criticism is about consistency, not about faith. The editorial’s point against the League is that a party which has built a women’s wing and has just seen its first woman elected to the Assembly cannot be neutral on whether women may appear in public. The same test applies across the political spectrum, and the honest version of this argument is that every party in the State has at some point defended a community’s orthodoxy when the votes required it. That symmetry is worth writing into an answer, because it converts a partisan observation into an analytical one.

6. The community is being argued with from inside. The editorial records criticism of the remarks by Muslim women themselves. This matters for GS1, where the examinable proposition is that durable social reform in India has generally been led from within communities and then secured by law, from the nineteenth-century reform movements through to the litigation brought by Muslim women in the triple talaq case. Reform framed as external correction hardens the position it means to change.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

The constitutional text:

• Article 25(1) is subject to public order, morality, health and to the other provisions of Part III.
• Article 26 is subject only to public order, morality and health, not to the rest of Part III.
• Article 15(2) bars disability or restriction in access to places of public resort on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
• Article 19(1)(d) guarantees the freedom to move freely throughout the territory of India; Article 19(5) allows reasonable restrictions.
• Article 51A(e) makes it a Fundamental Duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.

The case law:

• Essential religious practices doctrine traces to the Shirur Mutt case, 1954.
• Shayara Bano v. Union of India, 2017: five-judge Bench, 3:2, set aside talaq-e-biddat as not an essential practice.
• Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, 2018: five-judge Bench, 4:1, decided 28 September 2018; Justice Indu Malhotra dissented.
• Kantaru Rajeevaru: a five-judge Bench referred larger questions to nine judges on 14 November 2019, by 3:2.
• Background to the reference: the nine-judge Bench, led by CJI Surya Kant, reserved judgment on 14 May 2026.
• No verdict in that reference had been delivered as of early September 2026.

The reference’s scope:

• It covers the interplay of Articles 25 and 26 and the limits of judicial review of religious practice.
• Its outcome bears on pending petitions on the entry of Muslim women into mosques and dargahs.
• It also bears on Parsi women married outside the community and on a practice challenged in the Dawoodi Bohra community.

The institutions and the setting:

• Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama was formed in 1926 and split into the AP and EK factions in 1989.
• Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliar has been Grand Mufti of India since February 2019.
• Political background: the UDF won 102 of 140 seats in the Kerala election; V.D. Satheesan took office as Chief Minister on 18 May 2026.
• The Indian Union Muslim League won 22 seats; Fathima Thahiliya of Perambra is its first woman MLA in Kerala.
• Festival context: Thiruvonam fell on 26 August 2026, the same week as the Milad observances.

Statutory and demographic anchors:

• The National Commission for Women is a statutory body under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990.
• Kerala recorded the highest sex ratio among States in Census 2011 at 1,084 females per 1,000 males.
• Kerala’s female literacy rate in Census 2011 was 92.07 per cent, the highest among States.
• Parliament passed the Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026 in August 2026 to rename the State Keralam in the First Schedule under Article 3.

⚠️ Watch the trap: Article 25 and Article 26 do not carry the same limitations. Only Article 25 is subject to the other provisions of Part III. Examiners set statements that swap the two, and a candidate who has memorised “public order, morality and health” as a single formula for both will get it wrong. The whole nine-judge reference exists because of this asymmetry.

The Debate

FOR (the directive must yield to constitutional guarantees): The right to regulate religious practice is not a right to regulate a citizen’s presence in public. A restriction premised on the disorder a woman’s presence is said to cause makes her liberty conditional on the conduct of others, which inverts Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21. Where an observance has itself moved into public streets and stages, the rules governing it have entered a space the Constitution already occupies.

AGAINST (this is internal religious autonomy): Articles 25 and 26 exist to let communities determine their own observance without state supervision. Guidance from a scholar to voluntary participants is not law, carries no sanction, and binds no one; treating it as a rights violation invites the State and the courts to adjudicate theology. Justice Indu Malhotra’s 2018 dissent is the considered form of this objection, and it warns that constitutional morality applied to matters of faith can become the morality of whoever is sitting in judgment.

Balanced verdict: The dissent is right that courts are poorly placed to rule on what a faith requires, and the majority position is right that the Constitution does not suspend itself at the edge of a religious event. The workable line is not between religion and reform but between counsel and exclusion. Advice a believer may decline sits inside religious autonomy. A rule that operates to keep women off a public stage in a public place does not, and it must then be justified against Part III rather than asserted against it. That line is exactly what the nine-judge Bench has been asked to draw, and its judgment is awaited.

How to Think About This

When a religious practice and a right collide, run four questions in order and refuse to skip any. Who is acting? State, statutory body, or private religious authority, because the answer decides whether Part III applies directly or only through Articles 15(2), 17, 23 and the interpretive use of 51A(e). Under which article is the claim made? Article 25 must answer to the rest of Part III; Article 26 on its face need not, which is why the routing of a claim is often the whole argument. Is the practice essential? The Shirur Mutt test asks whether the faith itself would change without it, and both Shayara Bano and the 2018 Sabarimala majority turned on it. What is actually restricted? A ritual detail and a person’s access to public space are not the same object, and conflating them is how answers on this topic lose marks in both directions. Applied here, the first question is the hardest, the second is where the pending reference sits, and the fourth is where this editorial plants its argument.

Diagram-in-Words

Takeaway Box

Lift line: A community may regulate its worship. The question is whether that authority reaches past the ritual and settles where a woman may stand.

Prelims hooks: Article 25 subject to Part III, Article 26 not; Article 15(2) places of public resort; Article 19(1)(d); Article 51A(e); Shirur Mutt 1954; Shayara Bano 2017, 3:2; Indian Young Lawyers Association 2018, 4:1, 28 September 2018, Malhotra J dissenting; reference to nine judges 14 November 2019; judgment reserved 14 May 2026; Samastha formed 1926, split 1989; Grand Mufti of India since February 2019; Kerala 2026, UDF 102 of 140, Satheesan CM from 18 May 2026.

Mains keywords: constitutional morality, essential religious practices, horizontal application of rights, denominational rights, freedom of movement, social empowerment, reform from within.

Ethics and interview angle: When a person freely accepts a restriction their faith places on them, at what point does the State have standing to say that the acceptance is not free? Answer through autonomy and the conditions that make consent meaningful, not through a judgement about the belief.

PYQ linkage: Connects to past UPSC Mains questions on the tension between religious freedom and gender justice, on secularism as practised in India, and on the role of women’s organisations in social reform.

Sources: The Hindu

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