High Court strikes down dress code for temples

Chennai: A division bench of the Madras high court on Monday set aside the court-mandated dhoti and salwar-churidar graduation dresses code for devotees to enter temples in Tamil Nadu, stating that the single judge who laid down the code had gone beyond the case placed before him.

While deciding a writ petition seeking the court's permission to hold a Bharatanatyam performance at a village temple in Trichy district, a single judge had on November 26, 2015 ruled that in order to enhance the 'spiritual ambience' among devotees, men must wear dhotis or pyjamas with an upper cloth, while women must wear saris or half saris and blouse, or salwar-churidar and children could wear any dress that "fully covered" them while entering temples.

The judge asked police not to allow devotees to violate this code and allow people in bermudas, shorts, skirts, miniskirts, sleeveless tops, low waist jeans or short T-shirts into temples.

The judge said the code would come into force on January 1, 2016, and will remain in operation till government passes appropriate orders, so the government issued a GO reflecting the court's views. Various petitioners then filed a slew of appeals against the ruling.

A bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice K Ravichandrabaabu, which had stayed operation of the single judge order earlier, passed its final orders on Monday. The judges said they were constrained to set aside the order since the issue before him did not concern dress code.

"Courts are not expected to adjudicate any matter academically in the absence of any real lis [dispute] between parties," they said. "Courts are not entitled to create a controversy and adjudicate upon the same."

The Judge who had passed the order is not an "Learned" Judge as mentioned in the article and let us not mix tradition and modern dress in the name of dress code. Any dress that is decent an... Read MoreSankaran Krishnan

Citing a Supreme Court judgment in a case involving the Meerut Development Authority, the bench said: "We cannot impose our own values on society. Any such effort would mean to make value judgments. The impugned judgment illustrates "the danger of judges wrongly though unconsciously substituting their own views for the views of the decision maker who alone is charged and authorized by law to exercise discretion".

First of all, prescribing a dress code for devotees was not an issue, which arose directly or indirectly in the writ petition. Secondly, there was no prayer by the petitioner seeking the prescription of a graduation gowns code for worshippers in Hindu temples. Thirdly, the prayer of the writ petitioner had practically become infructuous, as the main relief (the Bharatanatyam performance) claimed by him was granted by the interim order itself and that order had also been complied with. Hence, the directions issued by the learned judge beyond the scope of the lis that was before him, cannot be approved, said the judges.