Swami Vivekananda in his famous address in 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions had said, “The Christian is not to become Hindu or a Buddhist, nor is the Hindu or Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must integrate the spirit of others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.” A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice MR Shah and Justice Hima Kohli probably had Vivekanand’s statement in mind when it observed that forced conversions may “ultimately affect the security of nation and freedom of religion and conscience of citizen.”
It directed the central government to clarify what steps it intends to take to curb deceitful or compulsory religious conversions. The solicitor general, too, indicated support of the PIL by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who has been filing several petitions of this kind with mixed success. Interestingly, in 2021, a three-judge bench of Justices RF Nariman, BR Gavai and Hrishikesh Roy had dismissed a similar petition by Upadhyay himself and had even threatened to impose heavy costs if he persisted with the petition. This bench had opined that religious conversion law would be violative of the constitution as the constitution allows joining of any religion of choice and that’s why the word “propagate” in the Constitution.
Religious conversion has been on the BJP’s agenda and a law against it has been in its manifesto. In 2006, LK Advani had said that “we strongly condemn the campaign of proselytisation which poses a grave threat to Hindu society and to the national integration as well… it is bad enough that religious conversions are conducted in a systematic manner through inducements and coercions.” RSS-linked weekly, Organiser, has carried a story titled “Amazing cross connection” alleging Amazon’s involvement and financing Christian conversion in the Northeast.
Justice Shah’s concerns look genuine, as, not just in the Northeast or tribal areas, even in the plains of Punjab, people are getting attracted towards Christianity in huge numbers. Ramjit Singh, after superannuation from the navy, has become part of the First Baptist Church and is drawing huge crowds. Similar is the popularity of Ankur Yoseph Narula of The Church of Signs and Wonders and Harpreet Deol of The Open Door Church & Jesus Healing Ministry. Many are making a bee line to these turbaned pastors. Jesus da langar is becoming popular. But, nationally speaking, there is no significant increase in the number of Christians, though in some villages/tribal areas, their numbers have gone up. Christians are just 2.3 per cent of our population but they are in a majority in Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya. As per PEW findings, only 0.4 per cent Hindu adults are Christian converts.
The Niyogi Commission (1956) and Wadhwa Commission (2000), after the gruesome killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, had highlighted the problem of conversion. It is a different story that the Wadhwa Commission instead of focusing on the motive of the assassin, looked more concerned about the motives of converts in Odisha. Strangely, the report reproduced in detail Pastor Timothy Murmu’s testimony in which he asserted that “no force or allurement was used on anybody for conversion.” Murmu said that the economic conditions of converts did not improve and he himself converted after a serious ailment was cured. A member of the SC group who converts does pay the price of losing the benefit of reservation.
Conversion is an emotive issue for the Hindu right just like Babri Masjid, Article 370, UCC. But the question arises: Will a conversion law really succeed in preventing people from changing their faith? Many of us are not aware that anti-conversion laws had been there in several Hindu princely states even prior to independence, such as Raigarh, Bikaner, Kota, Jodhpur, Surguja, Patna, Udaipur and Kalahandi. The states of Orissa (1967), Madhya Pradesh (1968), Arunachal Pradesh (1978), too, passed similar laws in the 1960s. The Arunachal Pradesh law was never implemented. How come these laws were not able to contain forced conversions?
Those who favour national anti-conversion laws often take the support of the Supreme Court judgment of 1977 in Rev Stanislaus v State of Madhya Pradesh, in which it was held that the MP Freedom of Religion Act, 1968 and Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1968, were constitutional even though both these Acts were hindrances in the propagation of religion. It was held that the “right to propagate” does not mean the “right to convert”. HM Seervai, constitutional law expert, called this judgment “productive of great public mischief”. Where propagation ends and conversion begins, is difficult to say.
As a result of the above decision, in the last 20 years or so, over a dozen states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, UP, Uttarakhand passed stringent conversion or “love jihad” laws. Even the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh had enacted such a law. The chief minister had told the assembly that nearly 500 conversions have taken place in four years. No one knows how many of them were voluntary and how many were indeed forced conversions? But is this such a big number?
Where is the hard data on cases filed under these laws and convictions made by courts of law and upheld by higher courts? If the state laws have not succeeded, what is the guarantee that a central law would put an end to forced conversions. In January 2021, Madhya Pradesh came up with a stringent ordinance and within the first 23 days, as many as 23 cases were filed alleging forced conversions. None of them have resulted in conviction. There has been just one conviction by the lower court out of 16 cases under the UP law. In Chhattisgarh, a Raigarh court in 2002 had convicted two priests and a nun on the charge of forcible conversion of 22 people. But the court had attached no importance to the written testimony of converts to the district authorities that they had changed their faith out of their own free will. Similarly, there have also been incidents of conversion to Hinduism. In 2014, 57 Muslim families with more than 200 members converted to Hinduism in Agra. In 2021, 300 Muslims in Haryana converted to Hinduism. But all these laws strangely do not consider re-conversion as conversion. They are rather called “ghar wapsi”, that is, homecoming.
The other problem with these laws, interestingly called Freedom of Religion laws, is that they provide for the prior permission of public authorities for conversion which is a private act with which the state should have no concern. These laws are also problematic because all of them had been enacted on the dated premise that women, SCs and STs are vulnerable, need protection and cannot take vital decisions in their life on their own. Thus, these laws perpetuate social hierarchies of a casteist and patriarchal society.
The rhetoric of forced conversions has another big problem — it wrongly assumes that there are no material reasons why a person would want to remain or become a Hindu.
International human rights instruments like UDHR and ICCPR, to which India is a party, specifically include the right to conversion within the freedom of religion provided in Article 18.
Indian Muslims need not oppose the banning of forced conversion as the Quran itself prohibits it. The general principle is that there is no compulsion in religion (Q2:256) Allah has explicitly commanded: “Will thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe?” (Q.10.99). The Supreme Court’s observation of the limits of “propagate” is indeed consistent with the Quranic injunction “And so, (O Prophet!) exhort them your task is only to exhort; you cannot compel them to believe”. (Q.12.88:21, 22).
One has to concede that most of the time the needs of the heart trump those of the mind. Let us therefore debate poverty as well.
The writer is a constitutional law expert
