ABSTRACT
Hindu scriptures depict women prominently in the form of powerful, benevolent, loving, and also aggressive goddesses and give primacy to the feminine principle Prakriti, without which the Purusha or the masculine is incomplete. After the Vedic period (1500 to 500 BCE), when women had an honourable status and were afforded rights and choices, their situation deteriorated over the centuries. Eventually, after Indian independence in 1947, the Committee on the Status of Women in India and several women’s rights organizations, assisted by the judiciary, were successful to procure several human rights denied to women. This case study examines the Sabarimala Temple case in India in 2018, where the judiciary denounced the notion of the “pollution” of menstruating women’s bodies and challenged patriarchal religious ideology. It gave a historic verdict by permitting women to enter the Sabarimala temple, thereby upholding the religious and constitutional rights of all citizens.
