NEW DELHI: The SC agreed to hear on Friday a petition challenging the invitation extended to author and Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq as chief guest for the inauguration of the Mysuru Dasara festival on the ground that a non-Hindu cannot perform the ‘agamic puja’ in Chamundeshwari temple’s sanctum sanctorum to mark commencement of festivities.Advocate Sughosh Subramanyam requested a bench led by CJI B R Gavai for urgent hearing on the appeal against an order of the Karnataka HC, which had dismissed the petition against a Muslim carrying out the rituals inside the temple on Sept 22 to mark the beginning of Dasara festivities. He said it would be against Hindu rituals and would hurt religious sentiments. Petitioner H S Gaurav said the inauguration of Dasara inside the Chamundeshwari temple is not a mere ceremonial opening, but a sacred ritual that begins with the ‘agamic puja’ of Goddess Chamundeshwari, performed by the inaugurating dignitary. Performance of this puja by a Muslim would hurt sentiments of millions of Hindus in Karnataka and across the world, he said.Before the HC, the state through its advocate general K Shashikiran Shetty, had referred to a 2016 circular of state govt declaring that all temples coming under the jurisdiction of the department of religious endowments of the state, as well as private temples, were required to grant free entry to all for ‘darshan’ of the deity, without distinction of caste, community, religion or gender. Shetty said the Dasara festival at the temple is a state-sponsored function and is not a religious function of the temple or religious institution, and hence, invitation to a personality cannot be objected to on the ground of religion.Dismissing the plea, Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru, said: “The petitioner’s right to practise and propagate religion is not curtailed in any manner by extending invitation to Banu Mushtaq to inaugurate the Dasara festivities.”
