EduLaw Sunday Long Read | 17 May 2026
EduLaw EditorialDaily Legal UpdatesEduLaw Sunday Long Read | 17 May 2026 :root { --parchment: #f6efe1; --parchment-deep: #efe5d0; --parchment-soft: #fbf7ec; --ink: #2b2418; --ink-soft: #4a3f2c; --gold: #b08a3e; --gold-deep: #8a6a26; --navy: #1f3a5f; --oxblood: #6b2737; --oxblood-soft: #8a3a4a; --rule: #c9b88a; --rule-soft: #ddd0a8; } * { box-sizing: border-box; } html { scroll-behavior: smooth; } body { margin: 0; padding: 0; background: var(--parchment); color: var(--ink); font-family: "Iowan Old Style", "Palatino Linotype", Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.72; font-size: 17px; } .wrapper { max-width: 880px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 48px 32px 64px; } .masthead { border-top: 4px double var(--oxblood); border-bottom: 4px double var(--oxblood); padding: 26px 0; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 40px; } .masthead .kicker { font-family: "Trajan Pro", "Cinzel", Georgia, serif; letter-spacing: 0.38em; font-size: 11px; color: var(--oxblood); text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 10px; } .masthead h1 { font-family: "Trajan Pro", "Cinzel", Georgia, serif; 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"; font-weight: 600; color: var(--oxblood); font-style: italic; } /* Coda */ .coda { text-align: center; margin: 50px 0 30px; padding: 30px 20px; border-top: 2px solid var(--oxblood); border-bottom: 2px solid var(--oxblood); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; color: var(--ink-soft); font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.7; } .coda .source { margin-top: 14px; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.18em; color: var(--oxblood); font-style: normal; text-transform: uppercase; } /* Profile card */ .profile-frame { background: var(--parchment-soft); border: 1px solid var(--rule); padding: 24px 28px; margin: 22px 0; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 100px 1fr; gap: 22px; align-items: start; } .profile-avatar { width: 90px; height: 90px; background: linear-gradient(135deg, var(--oxblood), var(--gold-deep)); border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; color: var(--parchment); font-family: "Trajan Pro", Georgia, serif; font-size: 28px; letter-spacing: 0.04em; } .profile-info .name { font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 19px; color: var(--navy); font-weight: 600; margin-bottom: 4px; } .profile-info .role { font-size: 13px; color: var(--gold-deep); letter-spacing: 0.08em; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 8px; } .profile-info .facts { font-size: 13px; color: var(--ink-soft); line-height: 1.55; } a { color: var(--navy); text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px dotted var(--gold); } a:hover { color: var(--oxblood); border-bottom-style: solid; } .footer { margin-top: 56px; padding-top: 26px; border-top: 4px double var(--oxblood); text-align: center; font-size: 12px; color: var(--ink-soft); letter-spacing: 0.06em; line-height: 1.7; } @media (max-width: 640px) { .wrapper { padding: 28px 18px; } .masthead h1 { font-size: 26px; } .nav-index ol { columns: 1; } .country-grid { grid-template-columns: 1fr; } .tree-branch { grid-template-columns: 1fr; } .profile-frame { grid-template-columns: 1fr; text-align: center; } .profile-avatar { margin: 0 auto; } } EduLaw · Sunday Long Read The Week Beneath the Week Where the news settles into doctrine Sunday, the seventeenth of May, two thousand and twenty six By Aditya Kuwad, Editor READ IN 30 SECONDS This Sunday's edition opens with an essay on the Sabarimala reserved verdict and the four decades of doctrine the nine judge bench will have to reconcile. It profiles Chief Justice Surya Kant, whose first months on the chair have set a recognisable institutional tone. It reads the United States Supreme Court's birthright citizenship cases alongside the Indian Court's institutional independence project, and finds the two courts walking in opposite directions. It revisits Justice H R Khanna's dissent in ADM Jabalpur. It returns to a cause list from May nineteen seventy three and finds Kesavananda Bharati's last day of hearing. And it asks what the Constitution says about religious autonomy that the Court has not yet answered. In This Edition Editor's Note The Sunday Essay: Sabarimala and the Limits of the Court The Profile: Surya Kant CJ The Long Read from Abroad The Book and the Bench The Dissenting Tradition From the Cause Lists of the Past The Constitutional Question Letters and Responses The Sunday Calendar The Sunday Coda Dear reader, The Saturday edition that landed in your inbox yesterday closed with a thought, which I want to begin this Sunday by returning to. The thought was that the present Supreme Court has set itself a project of judicial housekeeping, an attempt to tighten the disciplines that bind the offices the Constitution has already established rather than to invent fresh ones. That reading was offered tentatively, in the closing paragraphs of the weekly brief, and it might have been allowed to pass without further examination. The reason it deserves further examination is that the Sabarimala reserved verdict, which the nine judge bench reserved on Thursday after sixteen days of hearing, will be the first major test of whether the housekeeping project can hold under the weight of a genuinely difficult constitutional question. This Sunday edition is structured around that question, not by approaching it head on, which would be premature before the verdict is pronounced, but by approaching it from the side. The essay traces the doctrinal lineage the bench will have to reconcile. The profile of the Chief Justice considers what kind of jurisprudence the housekeeping project tends to produce. The foreign long read offers a counter-example from the United States, where the Court has spent recent terms loosening rather than tightening the disciplines that bind the political branches. The dissenting tradition piece returns to the most consequential dissent in Indian constitutional history, which is also a meditation on what a court owes the institution when the institution is under pressure. The cause list of the past takes us to May nineteen seventy three, to the last day of hearing in Kesavananda Bharati, where the question of what a court can do to itself was settled in a manner whose shadow still falls over every constitutional bench. I have tried, throughout the edition, to write slowly. The Sunday edition is the one that gives itself permission to entertain a counter-argument before resolving it, to use the word perhaps, to acknowledge where the question is open. If that tone is unfamiliar after a week of dockets and briefs, I would ask you to read on anyway. The week's news, in the end, is most useful when it is read against the questions it does not directly address. As always, I welcome your letters. The Letters section in this edition is short, because the publication is young, but I would like to see it grow. Yours, Aditya Kuwad Editor, EduLaw ❦ ❦ ❦ I · The Sunday Essay Sabarimala and the Limits of the Court A nine judge bench has reserved its verdict on seven constitutional questions whose answers will define the doctrine of essential religious practices for the next generation. The questions are not new. What is new is that the Court has, for the first time in over four decades, decided to answer them all together, in a single sitting, before a bench large enough that the answer will be difficult to dislodge. That decision has consequences, and this essay is about them. On Thursday, the fourteenth of May, two thousand and twenty six, a nine judge bench of the Supreme Court of India reserved its verdict on the Sabarimala reference after sixteen days of hearing. The reference, made by a five judge bench in November two thousand and nineteen by a majority of three to two, raises seven questions concerning the scope of religious freedom under Article twenty five, the doctrine of essential religious practices, the relationship between the freedom of religion and the right of every individual to enter a place of public worship, and the question of who may speak for a religious denomination when the denomination itself is internally divided. The questions are large, and the bench reserved the verdict with the registry quietly noting that judgment would be delivered in due course. The phrase in due course is doing work that the registry does not advertise. It usually means months. In this case it may well mean longer. Why this matters The Sabarimala verdict will not simply decide whether women of a particular age range may enter the Sabarimala temple. It will redefine the test the Court uses to decide every future case about religious practice, from cow slaughter to the wearing of religious dress in public spaces to the conduct of religious processions. Whatever the bench holds, it will be cited in every such case for the next twenty years. To understand what is at stake, it is necessary to retrace the doctrinal ground the bench has been walking. The doctrine of essential religious practices is, in its present form, a creation of the Indian Supreme Court. It does not appear in the text of the Constitution. It does not appear in the original drafting debates with anything like the prominence it has since acquired. It emerged in the nineteen fifties, in the early Article twenty five cases, when the Court was confronted with the question of how to distinguish between religious practices that the Constitution protects and practices that merely happen to be associated with religion but can be regulated by the state in the ordinary course. The doctrine, traced from the start The first major articulation came in The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras versus Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt , decided by a seven judge bench in nineteen fifty four. The Court held that the freedom of religion under Article twenty five extends not only to belief but to those practices that are an integral part of religion, and that what constitutes an integral part is to be determined with reference to the doctrines of the religion itself. The Shirur Mutt formulation, often paraphrased as the essential practices test, was an attempt to draw a workable line between the doctrinal autonomy of religious communities and the legitimate regulatory authority of the modern state. Article 25 of the Constitution of India Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice, or providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus. The doctrine was developed further across a long line of cases. In Sardar Syedna Taher Saifuddin versus State of Bombay , decided in nineteen sixty two, the Court held that excommunication by a religious head was a protected religious practice. In Tilkayat Shri Govindlalji Maharaj versus State of Rajasthan , decided in nineteen sixty three, the Court held that the management of temple property could be regulated by the state without infringing the freedom of religion. In Sri Adi Visheshwara of Kashi Vishwanath Temple versus State of Uttar Pradesh , decided in nineteen ninety seven, the Court held that the manner in which a temple is administered is a secular matter and not a religious one. Through each of these cases, the Court was, in effect, deciding which practices counted as essential and which did not, and in doing so, it was making theology of a particular kind, deciding what a religion's core requires. 1954 Shirur Mutt Seven judge bench. Religious freedom extends to practices integral to the religion, to be determined with reference to the doctrines of the religion itself. 1962 Saifuddin v State of Bombay Excommunication by religious head held to be a protected religious practice. Strong dissent by Sinha CJ. 1963 Tilkayat Shri Govindlalji Management of temple property is secular activity, regulable by the state. 1995 Bramchari Sidheswar Shai v State of West Bengal Court rules Ramakrishna Mission is not a separate religion, but a part of Hindu religion. Tests denominational status. 2004 Commissioner of Police v Acharya Jagadishwarananda Avadhuta Tandava dance held not essential to Ananda Margi practice. Court openly assesses religious doctrine. 2018 Indian Young Lawyers Association v State of Kerala (Sabarimala) Four to one majority allows entry of women of all ages. Justice Indu Malhotra dissents on the locus question. 2019 Kantaru Rajeevaru (review) Three to two majority refers seven questions to a larger bench. The reference itself disputed in the two judge dissent. 2026 Sabarimala Reference (nine judge bench) Verdict reserved on 14 May after sixteen days. Outcome will define the essential practices doctrine for the next generation. The Sabarimala moment, recapitulated The two thousand and eighteen Sabarimala judgment, Indian Young Lawyers Association versus State of Kerala , was decided by a five judge bench of the Supreme Court by a majority of four to one. The majority, comprising the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A M Khanwilkar, Justice R F Nariman, and Justice D Y Chandrachud, held that the practice of excluding women of menstruating age from the Sabarimala temple was not an essential religious practice and was, in any event, inconsistent with the right of women to enter places of public worship under Article twenty five and the equality guarantee under Article fourteen. Justice Indu Malhotra dissented, on the principal ground that the question of essential religious practice should be left to the religious denomination itself, and that the petitioners, who were not devotees of the deity, did not have the locus to bring the challenge. The judgment was greeted with both jubilation and protest. The review petitions that followed presented the Court with seven questions of constitutional law that, the majority of the review bench felt, deserved to be settled by a larger bench. The reference of November two thousand and nineteen was thus made by a three to two majority, with two judges dissenting from the reference itself on the ground that the questions referred had not been raised in the review petitions. The reference, in other words, was contested at the moment of its making. The nine judge bench has heard the matter on that contested foundation. Nine judges. The largest bench to sit on a religious freedom question since the eight judge bench in S P Mittal versus Union of India in 1983. The seven questions The seven questions referred, in the form they have been argued before the larger bench, can be grouped into three clusters. The first cluster concerns the scope of judicial review of religious practices. Can the Court decide what is essential to a religion, or must it defer to the religion's own self understanding? If the Court is to decide, what evidentiary basis is appropriate, and what is the standard of proof? Is the inquiry historical, theological, sociological, or some combination? The second cluster concerns the relationship between Article twenty five and the other fundamental rights, particularly Article fourteen and Article seventeen. If a religious practice is essential but discriminatory, does the equality guarantee trump the religious freedom, or must the practice be examined first for its essential character and only then for its consistency with equality? If the practice constitutes a form of untouchability under Article seventeen, is the essential practices question even available as a defence? The third cluster concerns the locus of religious denominations. Who speaks for a religious denomination when the denomination is internally divided on the question of practice? Can a person who is not a member of the denomination challenge its practices? What is the role of the state in mediating internal denominational disputes? These are not new questions, but they have not been answered together, and the nine judge bench has been asked to answer them together. The hearing and its terrain The hearings, which began on the seventh of April, were conducted at a slow pace. Senior counsel for the petitioners and for the religious bodies argued the matter over sixteen full days. Bar and Bench's live coverage captures the granular movement of the argument across each day, and Live Law's day sixteen report sets out the closing observations. Two threads ran through the bench's questioning. The first was the Chief Justice's repeated observation that if a religious practice is thrust upon the people, the Court may strike it down. The second was Justice Nagarathna's repeated questioning of whether the Court can compel a religious denomination to alter a practice the denomination itself considers essential. The two observations are not contradictory. They are, in a sense, the two halves of the same question. The verdict, when it comes, will have to find a position that holds them together. "If a religious practice is thrust upon the people, the Court may strike it down." What the bench is being asked to do The bench has, in effect, three options. The first is to reaffirm the essential practices doctrine in something like its present form, perhaps with refinements at the edges, and to apply it to the Sabarimala question on the merits. This is the path of doctrinal continuity. It has the advantage of preserving the line of cases from Shirur Mutt onwards. It has the disadvantage that the doctrine, as several scholars have noted, requires the Court to make theology, which is a function for which it has neither the training nor the legitimacy in the eyes of religious communities. The second option is to replace the essential practices doctrine with what might be called a constitutional morality test, asking not whether a practice is essential to a religion but whether it is consistent with the values of the Constitution. This is the path Justice Chandrachud's concurrence in the two thousand and eighteen Sabarimala judgment gestured towards. It has the advantage of avoiding the theological inquiry. It has the disadvantage that the term constitutional morality is itself contested, and a doctrine built on it may simply replace one indeterminate test with another. The third option is to draw a sharper line between the public and the internal aspects of religion, holding that the state and the Court can regulate the public face of religious practice, including access to public temples, the conduct of public ceremonies, and the management of denominational property, while leaving the internal doctrinal life of religious communities to the communities themselves. This is the path that some of the senior counsel for the religious bodies argued for. It has the advantage of clarity. It has the disadvantage that the line between public and internal is itself contested. Each of these options has its own jurisprudential history, its own set of advocates, and its own set of consequences. The bench will have to choose, and in choosing, it will have to take a position on questions that the Constitution does not explicitly answer. Know the law: what the Constitution actually says about religion The Constitution of India addresses religion across four provisions in Part III. Article twenty five guarantees the freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health. Article twenty six guarantees every religious denomination the right to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes, to manage its own affairs in matters of religion, and to own and acquire property. Article twenty seven prohibits the state from compelling any person to pay taxes for the promotion of any particular religion. Article twenty eight prohibits religious instruction in wholly state funded educational institutions. The essential practices doctrine has been developed principally under Articles twenty five and twenty six. The Constitution does not, in its text, use the phrase essential religious practice. The deeper question Beneath the doctrinal choice lies a question that the bench has been circling but has not, in the sixteen days of hearing, named directly. The question is what kind of institution the Supreme Court of India is to be in matters of religion. Is it a constitutional court that supervises the boundaries of religious freedom from the outside, leaving the internal doctrinal life of religious communities to those communities? Or is it a constitutional court that takes a position on what religion itself is, deciding which practices count and which do not, which traditions are essential and which are accretions? The first conception is closer to the position of constitutional courts in much of the rest of the democratic world. The European Court of Human Rights, in cases concerning the Islamic veil and the wearing of religious symbols, has generally declined to determine what is essential to a religion, focusing instead on the proportionality of state restrictions. The Supreme Court of the United States, after a long period of doctrinal experimentation, has settled into a position in which the state cannot inquire into the centrality of a religious practice to the practitioner's faith. The South African Constitutional Court, in Christian Education South Africa versus Minister of Education , decided in two thousand, took a similar view. The second conception, the conception in which the Court itself takes a position on what religion is, is, in comparative terms, unusual. It is the position the Indian Supreme Court has occupied since Shirur Mutt, and it is the position that the Sabarimala reference now invites the nine judge bench to examine. Whether the bench will preserve that position, modify it, or move away from it is the question on which the verdict turns. Why this verdict will be difficult to dislodge One feature of the present moment deserves particular attention. The Sabarimala reference is being decided by a nine judge bench. The two thousand and eighteen Sabarimala judgment was a five judge bench decision. Under the present practice of the Court, a five judge bench decision can be reconsidered by a seven judge bench. A nine judge bench decision can, in principle, be reconsidered only by an eleven judge bench, and the Indian Supreme Court has constituted an eleven judge bench only once in its history, in I R Coelho versus State of Tamil Nadu , decided in two thousand and seven. This means that whatever the nine judge bench decides will, as a practical matter, be difficult to dislodge for the foreseeable future. The doctrinal choice the bench makes will set the framework within which the law of religious freedom in India operates, possibly for the next generation. The bench is aware of this. The slow pace of the hearings, the careful elaboration of each argument, and the reserved verdict are all signs that the bench is treating the matter with the gravity it deserves. Key takeaways The Sabarimala reference raises seven questions on the scope of religious freedom under Article twenty five, the essential practices doctrine, the relationship between Article twenty five and the other fundamental rights, and the locus of religious denominations. The nine judge bench has three principal options: reaffirm the essential practices doctrine, replace it with a constitutional morality test, or draw a sharper public versus internal line. The doctrinal lineage runs from Shirur Mutt in nineteen fifty four through Saifuddin, Tilkayat, Bramchari Sidheswar, Acharya Jagadishwarananda, and the two thousand and eighteen Sabarimala judgment. The verdict will be difficult to dislodge for a generation, given the nine judge bench composition. The verdict will define the test for every future case about religious practice, from cow slaughter to religious dress to processions. The verdict is reserved. The hearings are concluded. The doctrinal terrain has been mapped, in some places for the first time. What remains is the writing of the judgment, which will, in the nature of these matters, be done in chambers, in the silence that follows the conclusion of argument. In that silence, the bench will have to choose. The choice will be made, in the end, by nine individuals, each with their own reading of the Constitution, their own sense of the institution, their own conception of what the Court is for. That is how constitutional questions of this magnitude have always been decided in this country, and that is how this one will be decided too. The reader who finishes this essay will, if I have done my work, hold three things together. The first is the doctrinal lineage. The second is the architecture of the seven questions. The third is the sense that whatever the bench decides, the decision will be a constitutional event of the kind that defines a generation of jurisprudence. We will report the verdict when it comes. Until then, this is the ground on which it will be made.