Madras High Court news: Characterising the act of throwing footwear at devotees as a “vulgar disruption” and a calculated insult to “constitutional morality,” the Madras High Court has directed strict preventive action against the same during the Chithirai festival in Madurai, observing that the state cannot remain a “passive spectator” and the nation’s secular spirit does not require “indifference to religion”. Justice L Victoria Gowri , while hearing the plea filed by one P Sundaravadivel, pointed out that the preservation of a centuries-old civilisational festival is itself a “constitutional value”. The petitioner claimed that miscreants threw footwear at devotees participating in the Lord Kallazhagar Temple procession. Justice L Victoria Gowri said the Chithirai festival represents the confluence of the Meenakshi Amman Temple traditions and the Kallazhagar Temple traditions, uniting Shaivite and Vaishnavite streams. “The acts complained of cannot be trivialised as stray hooliganism.…