Summary:
Every person to whatsoever caste he/she belongs has a right to visit/enter the temple and worship and perform religious ceremonies/rituals. NAINITAL: Uttarakhand high court remarking that due to failure of "the system" to accord and protect the dignity, honour and human rights of the persons belonging to lower castes, it has led to large scale conversions directed "the High caste priests throughout the State of Uttarakhand shall not refuse to perform religious ceremonies/puja/rituals on behalf of the members belonging to lower castes in all the religious places/temples". The court also ruled that all the persons, irrespective of their caste, are permitted to enter/visit any temple throughout the State of Uttarakhand without any discrimination in the spirit of the Constitution of India The copy of the order dated June 15, 2018 was released on Thursday. "Quoting the preamble of the Constitution, the bench in the order stated that we should strive for caste-less and class-less society and the creation of caste-less society was the aspiration of the Constitutional makers as is evident from the Preamble. "The court observing that the high caste priests were not accepting the alms offered by the pilgrims belonging to the lower caste and they used to refuse to perform the ceremonies on their behalf due to which this community (SC/ST) still goes to Maha-Brahmins for performing their religious chores which is against the spirit the Constitution of India remarked, "The exclusion of persons from temples open to worship to the Hindu public at large, only on the pretext that they belong to the excluded community, is violative of Article 17 of the Constitution of India..