Faith and Freedom
GS Paper: 2- Fundamental Rights, Government policies and interventions
Important for
Prelims exam: Freedom of Religion
Mains exam: Anti-Conversion laws in India
Context
Protracted litigation in the name of combating forcible religious conversion is taking up valuable time of courts.
Recent Developments
- The Supreme Court is hearing a purported Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking action to curb deceitful religious conversion in the country.
- Not wanting to be left behind, the Gujarat government is seeking the removal of a stay on a provision in its anti-conversion law that requires prior permission from the District Magistrate for any conversion done “directly or indirectly”.
Freedom of Religion
- In India, Articles 25 to 28 of the Indian Constitution provide the basic right to freedom of religion.
- Article 25 (Freedom of conscience and free profession, practise and propagation of religion).
- Article 26 (Freedom to manage religious affairs).
- Article 27 (Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any religion).
- Article 28 (Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions).
- Furthermore, the protection of minorities’ interests is covered under Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution.
The freedoms provided above are not absolute but are subject to Public order, health, and mortality.
Religious conversion
Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus “religious conversion” would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliating with another.
Need for Anti-Conversion laws
- Each person has a basic right under the Constitution to declare, practise, and propogate their faith.
- The act of proselytising is attempting to convert someone from the convertee’s faith to the convert’s religion.
- The individual right to freedom of conscience and religion cannot be extended to construe a collective right to proselytize.
- For the right to religious freedom belongs equally to the person converting and the individual sought to be converted.
- The practise of forcing the other person to change to one’s own religion after being married has been observed in several recent cases when people have married members of different religions by concealing or misrepresenting their own religion.
Supreme Court Observations
- The Supreme Court recently took judicial notice of cases where individuals misrepresented or hid their real faith before getting married.
- According to the court, such instances not only violate the converted individuals’ right to freedom of religion but also work to undermine the secular foundation of our society.
Status of Anti-Conversion laws in India
- Article 25 of the Indian Constitution protects the freedom to profess, propagate, and practise religion. It also grants all religious groups the right to regulate their own religious affairs, subject to public morals, health, and order.
- No one, however, should be forced to follow a religion against their will or forced to adhere to their religious views.
Existing laws
- There is Central legislation that prohibits or controls religious conversions.
- To regulate religious conversions, however, Private Member Bills have often been introduced in Parliament since 1954 (although never passed by the body).
- Additionally, the Union Law Ministry stated in 2015 that Parliament lacks the legislative authority to enact legislation prohibiting conversion.
Concerns associated with Anti-Conversion laws
- The Uncertain and ambiguous terms like fraud, coercion, and allurement present a significant opportunity for misuse.
- These concepts are either overly vague or cover a wide range of topics that go well beyond the defence of religious freedom.
- Another problem is that the current anti-conversion laws concentrate more on outlawing conversion in order to gain religious freedom.
- Officials, however, might persecute and discriminate against minorities due to the prohibitive legislation’s vague language.
- The secular fabric of India and the international perception of our society’s fundamental values and legal structure may be threatened by these laws.
Way Forward
- These laws need to strike a balance between liberties and erroneous conversions, and the governments enacting them must make sure that they do not restrict one’s Fundamental Rights or hamper national unity.