When the apex court comes out with a ruling that reforms traditions in a religion to empower women, we welcome it. The fact that the ban on women was in a single temple and not in all temples, even of the same diety, does not matter probably because it was still a case of gender discrimination for many. Being not-too-religious a person, I have no personal preference in this anyway because I never bothered to give it much of a thought. But my question is this.

Why is it that this empowerment is limited to women of only one religion? If we are a truly secular country, shouldn’t there be rulings to bring about this kind of change and women’s entry to all places of worship, irrespective of religion? For that matter, shouldn’t there be equality in everything? Shouldn’t there be a similar handling of arrests when it comes to crimes by priests and godmen from all religions? Shouldn’t there be equality in calling out the wrongs in every religion, mine or yours???

Now please don’t use the same old arguments of “One injustice can’t be justified using another injustice”, “We should be happy that there is at least some change somewhere” etc. Those arguments don’t hold true here because the very same “wrong” in different religions is treated differently only because of politics and vote bank. And those are arguments we constantly come out with only because we are too scared to act on them.

I will be happy about these kind of rulings or the prevalence of justice, the day they are truly unbiased and genuinely aimed at women empowerment and betterment of the society. That day we will be a truly secular country too.

Also published on Medium.