You may have heard the rumor that has been circulating that Justice Joymalya Bagchi recently told lawyers not to refer to WhatsApp University when the mega hearings of Sabarimala were going on. Being an editor who wastes way too much time following Supreme Court live feeds, I fully understand how such courtroom interactions become jumbled. It is quite comprehensible. With nine of the best judges asking the senior lawyers questions at a speed dating, quotes will be attached to the wrong lawyer on social media. To get the facts straight, we shall consider the real transcripts of the April 2026 hearings. Justice Bagchi is, by all means, a key voice on this Constitution Bench. All week he has been posing some of the most penetrating questions of religious freedom. But he did not say the viral joke. The given moment was literally that of Justice B.V. Nagarathna. It occurred in the context of an interesting discussion of the sources of knowledge which the courts should use in addressing highly sensitive religious conflicts.
The Heart of the nine-judge hearing.
You need to see how huge this case is in order to know why tensions and humor are both high at the moment. The Supreme Court is no longer just considering the Sabarimala temple. The wider scope of religious liberty in the country is being scrutinized by a huge nine-judge Constitution Bench. The bench is headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant. He is seated with Justices B. V. Nagarathna, M.M. Sundesh, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Aravind Kumar, Augustine George Masih, Prasanna B. Varale, R. Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi. They are attempting to determine just how much the government can intervene in the religious affairs to advance social reforms. In September 2018, a five-judge bench gave a majority decision of 4:1 that rescinded the ban on women between the ages of ten and fifty to enter the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple. Their historic ruling brought about endless controversies regarding the necessary religious practices and constitutional equality. This increased bench is now charged with the titanic responsibility of establishing the rules of the road in various faiths in the country.
A Controversy of Knowledge and Sources.
The viral moment occurred on Thursday afternoon. The lawyers before the judges were senior advocate, Neeraj Kishan Kaul. He was representing the leader of the Dawoodi Bohra community. Kaul wished to draw a very firm line on judicial restraint when it concerns issues of faith. In support of his point, he referred to an article authored by a Congress leader, Shashi Tharoor. Chief Justice Surya Kant slammed on the brakes. The Chief Justice graciously pointed out that even though the court admires great thinkers and politicians, publication of a personal opinion in an article is nothing but a personal opinion. Kaul pushed back. According to him, wisdom should be embraced in the courts by any source that is literally wise. He made it clear that the country is too rich as a civilization to keep information blindly simply due to the source of information. Knowledge must be of any university, he argued, or it should be accepted by the court. This is precisely when Justice Nagarathna tipped her hat and lobbed her immediate counter-salvo. She joked that the court would know anything, but definitely not WhatsApp University. The courtroom broke out in laughter. Kaul was soon ready to accept that he was not attempting to authenticate internet rumors, and moved on.
Justice Bagchi and the dilemma of the Non-Believer.
As he remained not a part of the WhatsApp gossip, Justice Joymalya Bagchi has been busily crafting the legal arguments of this hearing. He is still fixated on the constitutional incompatibility of the rules of a religious institution with the personal rights of an individual. In another section of the hearings, counsel who defended devotees maintained that the freedom of conscience of an individual cannot override the rights of a religious denomination to run its own business under Article 26 of the Constitution. This is a brilliant idea that Justice Bagchi dissects. He raised the idea of a non-believer in the holy place. When an atheist enters a temple, then his or her right to freely express his or her non-belief is briefly overshadowed by the regulations in the temple. They must observe the physical code of conduct of that particular place. The right of the institution to uphold order overrides the individual desire to protest as long as he is within the physical confines of the shrine.
The Interim Darkness of the Person.
Justice Bagchi touched the intriguing implication of this provisional submission. He pointed out that adherence to physical rules of a temple does not imply that one abandons his or her internal liberty of conscience. One may even follow the strict dress code to visit a shrine just because that is the order of things and respect. They yield physically to ritualistic limits of the management. They however do not embrace the faith through the doors by walking. The judge observed that one may even be required to come into a physical contact with a religious setting before they can later contradict it with their intellect. His questioning also shows how the court is clinging to the air in an attempt to strike a balance between the public order and the privately held beliefs that it is desperately struggling to protect. The management will get to impose the house rules. The person in question, on the other hand, has the unrestricted constitutional right to disagree in his or her mind. The border between action and thought is a weak line.
The difficulty of outlining Core practices.
The general issue that is plaguing this whole hearing is the notion of vital religious practices. The court already noted that it is very hard to establish hard boundaries that establish whether a religious exercise is fundamental or non-fundamental. Each religion works with various intralogics. What would seem to the mind of a modern jurist as an obsolete social practice, may be viewed as the unquestioned foundation of a given community. The lawyers are arguing whether the State can rectify the social problems under Article 25 without destroying the religion itself. Even the Chief Justice has admitted frankly that it is unlikely to be possible to lay down blanket rules to guide in the future. The court understands that it cannot give a mere formula of the law. New state intervention in the pretext of social reform will always have to be evaluated through a rigid case-by-case basis.
