Freedom of Religious Practice: Discourses of Limitation

The work focuses on meaning of limitation on religious practice in India. It deals to examine the meaning of essential religious practice and the practices which falls under the ambit of essential religious practice. The standard changed throughout time as the courts exercised their discretion to decide what constitutes an inherent component of religion and what is not, deviating from the test’s initial intent, which was to separate fundamentally secular from fundamentally religious. The study demonstrates how the cases that this test was applied to may have been resolved by delving further into the constitutional text. The paper also tries to offer a different test to the one that emphasises the requirement to deliver the constitutional using a deferential but vigilant application of Article 25, the language is given a literal reading. The latter part pf the paper also deals with the subjects which are the reasons of limitation on such religious practice named as public order, morality and public health.