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Madras High Court upholds ruling allowing lighting of deepam on Madurai hilltop
The court pulled up the TN govt for invoking an “imaginary ghost” of disturbance to law and order to resist a long-standing Tamil tradition
The Madras high court on Tuesday allowed the lighting of the Karthigai Deepam lamp on the Thiruparankundram Hills in Madurai, and pulled up the Tamil Nadu government for invoking an “imaginary ghost” of disturbance to law and order to resist a long-standing Tamil tradition for “its own convenience.”
A bench of Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan upheld a December 1 order of Justice GR Swaminathan of the Madurai bench of the court, who directed that a lamp be lit atop the hill as part of the Tamil Karthigai Deepam festival.
The Court held that the State failed to place any concrete material to show that lighting the Karthigai Deepam lamp would disturb public order, and said the government had relied only on assumptions and apprehensions, which cannot justify restricting a religious practice.
“We find that the apprehension expressed by the district administration regarding probability of disturbance to the public peace is nothing but an imaginary ghost created by them for their convenience sake and to put one community against another community under suspicion and constant mistrust,” the high court said.
It added that instead of treating the festival as an opportunity to foster peace and harmony, the State had attempted to draw political mileage by pitting one community against another.
“It is ridiculous and hard to believe the fear of the mighty State that by allowing representatives of devasthanam to light a lamp at the stone pillar on a particular day in a year will cause disturbance to public peace. Ofcourse, it may happen only if such a disturbance is sponsored by the State itself. We pray that no State should stoop to that level to achieve their political agenda,” the Court said.
While permitting the lighting of the lamp, the bench noted that the Thiruparankundram Hills is a protected site. It directed that any activity there, including the lighting of the lamp and the number of persons permitted to attend, must be fixed through consultation between the temple administration, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the local police.
The verdict came on a batch of appeals challenging the single judge’s order of December 1, 2025, permitting the lighting of Karthigai Deepam at a stone pillar atop the Thiruparankundram Hills, near a dargah.
The dispute on the ownership of the land where the stone pillar stands, goes back to at least a century ago. As per the state’s submissions and the court’s order, between 1915 and 1931, the temple authorities and the hukdars of the Sikandar Badusha Dargah fought over ownership of the hill, ending with a Privy Council decree that protected the mosque, its flagstaff and access steps, while vesting the rest in the temple.
For decades, multiple faiths coexisted without contest, with Karthigai Deepam lit at Uchippillaiyar mandapam alongside the dargah and Jain remnants. Tensions surfaced in the 1990s as petitions and political mobilisation sought to reframe hilltop practices, prompting an order in 2017 by another division bench of the court warning against introducing new rituals without proof of custom.
The present bench clarified that its judgment does not discard that caution, but narrows it by holding that allowing an additional lamp on temple land does not by itself amount to inventing tradition.
The division bench had reserved its verdict on December 18 last year after a detailed hearing, during which it heard the State, temple authorities, HR&CE officials, district and police authorities, devotees, and representatives of the adjoining mosque.
The State, through Advocate General PS Raman, had argued that there was no empirical data or historical proof to establish that the stone pillar was a “deepathoon” meant for lighting lamps. It contended that the origin and nature of the pillar could be determined only through a detailed statutory enquiry and not in writ proceedings. The Advocate General had also maintained that the dispute involved questions of established custom, which could not be decided in an appeal, and argued that the appropriate remedy lay under Section 63 of the HR&CE Act, a self-contained code for adjudicating religious usage and customs.
The State had further argued that the single judge had erred by converting a claim of customary right into one of property right, and by permitting a “usual festival in an unusual manner.” According to the government, any decision on customs ought to have been taken by competent temple authorities, not the Court.
The representatives of the dargah had argued that their rights under a 1920 order were being impacted.
The devotees, however, had maintained that they were seeking revival of an old usage and that lighting the lamp on the hilltop was an essential religious practice, not the creation of a new custom.
Rejecting the State’s arguments, the division bench held that the Court had not created a new religious custom. It said the single judge had not invented a tradition but merely enabled worshippers to follow a practice they had long asserted.
The Court also clarified that its order dealt only with the right to perform a religious act and did not adjudicate competing property claims, which parties were free to raise before a civil court.
The bench further held that the stone lamp pillar stands on a separate rocky plateau below the hilltop where the dargah is located, and that lighting the lamp neither obstructs access to the mosque nor affects worship there.
Dismissing the appeals, the Court emphasised that the law must protect the right of all communities to worship, and made it clear that the exercise of one religious practice cannot be curtailed merely because “another place of worship exists nearby,” particularly when both practices can coexist without friction.
