NEW DELHI // The Bombay High Court ruled on Friday that women should be permitted to enter the inner sanctum of the city’s famous Haji Ali shrine — a ruling that may have vast ramifications for places of worship across India.
Delivering its verdict, the court said that the Haji Ali Dargah Trust’s ban on women violated numerous articles of the Indian constitution.
The shrine, which lies on a small islet half a kilometre off the coast of Mumbai, includes a mosque and a dargah, or tomb, in memory of Sayeed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari, a 15th century merchant-turned-Sufi saint.
Tens of thousands of worshippers stream into the site during low tide, when the causeway leading to the islet becomes accessible.
The shrine, which is the oldest in the locality dedicated to to Haji Ali, was constructed roughly 400 years ago, and the mosque is a century old. The rule forbidding women from entering the shrine, however, was imposed only in 2011, after the trust that looks after the site claimed it would be “a grievous sin” for people of both genders to mix near the saint’s tomb.
Backed by the state government of Maharashtra, a women’s rights organisation called the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) took the trust to court. In its depositions, the trust argued that women wearing wide-necked blouses ran the risk of indecent exposure, and that keeping women out of the shrine altogether would eliminate complaints of sexual harassment.
But the court disagreed with these arguments and asked the trust to treat “women at par with men”.
“The trust has no right to discriminate against the entry of women into a public place of worship under the guise of ‘managing the affairs of religion’,” the court said. “The state will have to ensure protection of rights of all its citizens guaranteed under the constitution.”
In response to Quranic verses submitted by the trust, which it claimed prohibited women from worshipping in such shrines, the court said: “There is nothing in any of the aforesaid verses which shows that Islam does not permit entry of women at all into a dargah or mosque and that their entry is sinful in Islam.”
“We are very happy today that the court has come to our rescue,” Bibi Khatoon, an activist with the BMMA, told reporters. “Sufi saints too were given birth to by women. Then why were we being barred?”
Crucially, however, the court has suspended its verdict for six weeks, to give the trust time to appeal to the Supreme Court. The trust has already announced its intention to appeal against he court verdict. A ruling by the highest court in the land will not only settle the Haji Ali case permanently but will also set an unshakeable rule for shrines and temples all over India.
The Haji Ali case is only one of several to take place in recent years in which women have demanded access to places of worship which were closed to them.
In March, the Bombay High Court instructed the Shani Shingnapur temple in Maharashtra — a Hindu shrine to the deity Shani, or Saturn — to allow women to access every part of the temple.
Most prominently, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a petition to permit women into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. For centuries, the temple has admitted only men, girls younger than 12, and women over 50, because of the legend that tells of the deity Ayappa sitting in meditation within the temple, having taken a vow of celibacy.
The willingness of the courts to take on thorny issues that pit the right to equality against the freedom of religious practice is “a relatively new trend”, said Ananth Padmanabhan, an associate at Carnegie India, a New Delhi-based think tank.
"Earlier, the court, when confronted with antediluvian (out of date) practices, would try to define the very parameters and boundaries of what the religious practice ... truly encompassed," Mr Padmanabhan, a legal scholar, told The National. "Now the court seems to be indicating that even were it to be covered under the freedom of religion, equality would override."
In having to examine both the Sabarimala case and now the Haji Ali case, the Supreme Court will be forced to look at the balance between two constitutional articles — Article 14, which grants equality to all citizens, and Article 25, which grants the freedom of religious practise, Mr Padmanabhan said,
“If the balance is struck in favour of Article 14, then it should apply equally to all religious institutions,” he added.
SSubramanian@thenational.ae
