Terming as unconstitutional any prayer having the effect of perpetuating caste, Madras High Court has dismissed a petition seeking to appoint non-hereditary trustees for a couple of temples from a particular sub-caste, claiming that they belonged to the community.
Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy, while dismissing the plea, observed that entertaining such prayers would frustrate and undermine the constitutional goals besides being opposed to public policy. The Judge also expressed his anguish at the society’s inability to shed the unwanted baggage of caste despite 75 years of the Constitution.
The petitioner, A Rajendran, has submitted that the Varadharaja Perumal temple and Sendraya Perumal Temple, both Vaishnavite shrines, belonged to a particular sub-caste of a community.
As such, he sought a direction to the Joint Commissioner, Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Department, Coimbatore, to frame a scheme of administration of the temples by appointing non-hereditary trustees from the sub-caste.
The Judge said: “Despite seventy-five years of our Constitution, sections of society are yet to shed this unwanted baggage. The very operation of the Constitutional scheme is frustrated, and the caste system leads to the perversions of the goals and values of the society.”
“Thus, any prayer which is in the nature of or which has the effect of perpetuation of caste will not only be unconstitutional but would be opposed to public policy. The time has come for this court to emphatically declare so.”
Further, the court made it clear that caste being a social evil, its perpetuation could not be entertained by the courts. Caste is not decided by what one learns or does in life but by birth, which is against the ethos that all are born equal, it was pointed out adding that entertaining caste-based prayers would be a violence against the Constitution.