Karnataka High Court directs rehabilitation of displaced slum dwellers near Mandya temple

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has directed the Mandya district administration to rehabilitate the displaced slum dwellers from the periphery of Kalikamba temple in Mandya city.

“It becomes necessary to observe that, if India has to endure as a nation of the first order, it cannot consign any of its citizens to a second-class existence. The dignity of slum dwellers is no less sacred than that of the devout. The rights of one cannot be secured by the suppression of the other. The Constitution of India knows no hierarchy of human worth; all are equal before its gaze,” Justice M Nagaprasanna said while dismissing the petition filed by certain devotees and the review petition filed by the Kalikamba Temple Committee.

On May 11, 1979, a notification was issued declaring slum dwellers in Mandya city to be rehabilitated. One of the survey numbers was the area surrounding Sri Kalikamba Temple, then known as Kalikamba slum.

In 2003, the temple committee requested the relocation of 23 slum dwellers to houses constructed at a tank bed under the Ashraya Scheme. In a petition before the High Court, a settlement was entered into in 2013.

In 2018, a final notification was issued declaring 20 guntas of land in the area as a slum. At this stage, certain devotees moved the High Court. Subsequently, the temple committee filed a review petition seeking to revisit the 2013 settlement, arguing that the slum’s proximity to the temple would affect the sanctity, serenity, and religious feelings of devotees, and violate Article 29 of the Constitution.

Justice Nagaprasanna noted that the temple committee, having consciously entered into a settlement, cannot now disavow the solemn statement.

“The contention proclaims that slum dwellers are lesser beings, bereft of the right to devotion, the right to shelter, and the right to dwell beside a place of worship. Such an assertion, in this enlightened age, is appalling. The notion that the divine aura of a temple could be diminished by the proximity of humble homes or sullied by the entry of a slum dweller bespeaks a mindset steeped in prejudice and exclusion. This court cannot but observe that such a stance is an attempt to rend society asunder along the lines of caste, class, or creed (sic),” he said.

The court further said, “Equality does not admit gradations of worth; it encompasses the entirety of our citizenry. The sanctity of a temple is not so fragile as to be endangered by the presence of the creator’s children who, by accident of circumstance, live modestly beside it. To suggest otherwise is to deny the very universality that our Constitution professes.”