Essential Religious Practice News Today

An excerpt from ‘Unsealed Covers: A Decade of the Constitution, the Courts and the State’, by Gautam Bhatia.

The Kerala High Court recently observed that all unhealthy, unscientific and deleterious practices are to be prevented, even if the same has been done in the name of religion. The Court made the...

A bench of justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia pronounced a split judgement on the Hijab issue, as one upheld the Karnataka HC judgement, while the other set it aside.

Quashing the government order, the judge noted that the question before the top court is whether "we are making the life of a girl child any better by denying her education, merely because she wears a hijab!"

The two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday gave divergent views while pronouncing judgement on Hijab issues in educational institutions: Justice Hemant Gupta held that the essential religious practices of the followers of the Sikh faith cannot be made the basis of wearing the headscarf by the believers of Islamic faith while Sudhanshu Dhulia said that it may or may not be a matter of essential religious practice, but is a matter of conscience, belief, and expression.

The controversy over colleges not allowing Muslim students to attend classes wearing the hijab has been raging in India for quite some time. Earlier, the... 22.09.2022, Sputnik International

Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia also observed that the high court relied on a term paper of a student in the judgment.

Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia noted that the High Court relied on an essay by a History student to hold that hijab was at best a cultural practice.

Several petitions have been filed in the SC against the HC verdict holding that wearing hijab is not a part of essential religious practice

The court is hearing an appeal against the Karnataka High Court judgment effectively upholding the ban on wearing hijab in government schools and colleges.