Truth is one, but the wise men know it as many, god is one, but we can approach him in many ways teaches the rig veda. Lord ayyappa in the hymns of his believers tells us that those who come to his pilgrimage without any austerities are like those who go to a bazaar without money. There was a time when religious codes, ways of life were the laws of old. In islam, there's sharia. Jewish folk and christians had the commandments. Even hindu, buddhist and sikh faiths have codes of life, hindutva is meant to be one such code. The laws of god were written by men in the name of god. Later men would define laws in the name of humanity. The nation state is today defined by constitutions and laws. From morality comes ethics, from ethics the laws and the laws are the basis, as the romans put it, that differentiate civilisation from barbarian customs. In the 7th century, athens gave us the laws of draco. The crimes were many, the punishment just one, death. The romans had their twelve tables and gave us the concept of tribunale, magistratus and precedents. I had thought you were my subjects, but today i realise you're scarce half my subjects cried henry the viii when he realised that while his write was the law of his kingdom, his subjects could appeal to the justice of the pope in rome. Church courts were common in medieval europe. Henry shut them down, made himself the boss of everything. Today we're debating law & faith again. The supreme court of india has ruled women of all ages who choose to go, must be allowed into the sabrimala sanctum. Believers are unmoved, they've begun a 125 hour peaceful protest, they say in the defence of their faith from interference from non-believers. The politicians have elbowed in, the bjp and the congress have a found a hindu polarisation issue. The left govt in kerala, stuck between it's inability to defy the court and it's aetheist groundings, is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Some are making this a communal issue, why hindu temples, not mosques. It's so incredibly complex that it's probably left to god. But since the verdict of heaven is only available to us in the after-life, we have to talk this out. What we don't want is the authority and respect of the supreme court undermined, we don't want to see policing action needed to enforce it, we want faith and belief to flourish unrestricted in a plural secular republic and we want the freedom given to women, where misgoyny in belief and priesthood in the past have kept them out. How do we do it is a question of belief and logic.