At this dargah, Indira Gandhi had to pray from outside

In the serpentine alleys that lead to the Nizamuddin Dargah, the activity has heightened with minutes to go for the late afternoon azaan. The flower-sellers are calling out to the devotees, trying to sell a last-minute shawl or some rose petals. As the devotees make a bee-line to the shrine, it is only the men among the faithful that will be let into the inner sanctum sanctorum.

Just like the Sabarimala Temple, abode of the Ayyappa, the Nizamuddin Dargah which is the shrine dedicated to Sufi saint Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya, the women must pay their respects from outside. Azhar Nizami, who belongs to the Nizami family that looks after the saint's shrine, says the tradition has been carried for the last 700 years.

"We have never changed the rules for VIPs; former PM Indira Gandhi always offered her respects from outside. Even when the authorities wanted us to allow former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who was visiting India during his tenure, to open the shrine earlier than usual for him, we refused," says Nizami, adding that women from the family, too, have never entered.

Nizamuddin Dargah is not the only religious place in the Capital where women are not allowed. Situated in the same compound is the shrine dedicated to Auliya's protégé, Amir Khusro. Here, too, women must pay their respects by tying threads at the jaali in the entrance.

Exactly two years ago, in August 2016, in a similar ruling, the apex court ruled that women, who were banned from entering the famed Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai, will be allowed. In the Sabarimala case, what found mention was Assam's revered Kamakhya temple, which bars men from entering the inner facility during the annual Ambubachi Mela, when the presiding deity, Goddess Kamakhya, is believed to be menstruating.

A few kilometres from Guwahati, where the Kamakhya Temple is situated, is the Patbusi Satra, where women are not allowed. In the satra, which one of the main religious sites of the Vaishnavite cult of Sankardev, the belief that women will be in impurity betrays the reformist ethic of the cult.

Interestingly, in the Capital situated close to the shrine of Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, the Sufi saint after whom the Qutub Minar is named, where women are not allowed, lies the mazar of Bibi Hambel, his wife. In this shrine, men are not allowed. Alongside Bibi Hambel's grave in the modest shrine, lies the grave of her mother-in-law, both covered with a green shawl.