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Intervention to reform can keep the State neutral

1. The framers designed an engaged secularism, not a wall of separation. Indian secularism was built as equal respect for all faiths together with a power to reform them. A State that enters religion is therefore following the original design rather than breaking neutrality. In the Constituent Assembly, Dr B.R. Ambedkar defended the Article 25(2) reform power precisely so that the State could correct social wrongs carried inside religious practice.
2. The founding text itself licenses this reform. The power to step in is not something the State seized; the Indian Constitution wrote it in. Article 25(2)(b) lets the State open Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus, making reform a constitutional mandate rather than a breach of neutrality.
3. Reform dismantles a hierarchy inside the faith. When a religious practice shuts out a class of believers, the State's intervention removes a hierarchy inside the faith rather than taking sides between faiths. Justice Chandrachud, concurring in the 2018 Sabarimala judgment, read the bar on women aged 10 to 50 as a form of untouchability under Article 17, treating the reform as the enforcement of equality.
4. The reach of reform stays bounded to the secular shell. Intervention has limits that keep it from invading belief itself. In the Shirur Mutt case of 1954 the Supreme Court allowed the State to regulate only the finances and administration of a religious institution while the essential religious core stayed untouched. The State thus controls the secular shell and leaves faith alone.
5. Even-handed reform reaches minority faiths too. The reform power is not aimed at one community, since it has fallen on minority practices as well. In Shayara Bano in 2017 the Supreme Court struck down instant triple talaq. The State corrects a regressive practice wherever it sits and advances equality across faiths rather than targeting any one.

The power to intervene can weaken neutrality

1. Control falls unevenly across faiths. Neutrality demands even-handedness, yet the State's grip is far heavier on some communities than others. State Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments departments run thousands of temples directly through government-appointed officers, while Waqf properties are managed by comparatively autonomous community boards, so one faith is governed and another largely left to itself.
2. The State even funds one faith's institutions. A duty to bankroll only one religion's funds entangles the State with that faith and dents the even-handedness neutrality requires. Article 290A charges the Consolidated Funds of Kerala and Tamil Nadu with annual payments to the Devaswom funds that maintain Hindu temples, a standing financial tie to a single religion.
3. Reforming one community while sparing others looks partisan. When the State reforms one faith and leaves another alone, intervention starts to look like favour rather than even-handed correction. The Hindu Code Bills codified and reformed Hindu personal law in the 1950s, while Muslim personal law was left largely untouched, so reform advanced for one community while another waited.
4. Deep control can over-reach a faith's own autonomy. Intervention crosses the line when it invades a community's right to manage its own internal affairs. In the Sardar Syedna case of 1962 the Supreme Court struck down a State law banning the Dawoodi Bohra sect's power to expel members, holding that the State had reached past the secular shell into the community's protected core under Article 26.