Forced religious conversion dangerous, may affect nation’s security: Supreme Court

“The issue regard­ing the alleged reli­gious con­ver­sion, if it turns out to be cor­rect and true, is a very seri­ous issue that may ulti­mate­ly affect the secu­ri­ty of the nation and the free­dom of reli­gion and con­science of its cit­i­zens… There­fore , it is bet­ter if the Union gov­ern­ment makes its posi­tion clear and coun­ter­mea­sures what steps can be tak­en by the Union and/or oth­ers to curb such forced con­ver­sion, per­haps through force, entice­ment or fraud­u­lent means,” said a Bench of Jus­tices MR Shah and Hima Kohli.

The bank heard a peti­tion filed by attor­ney Ash­wi­ni Upad­hyay for direc­tions to the cen­ter and says it is tak­ing strict steps to screen such conversions.

When asked the cen­ter why it had­n’t filed its response to the peti­tion, the Bench said: “Why did­n’t you file an oppo­si­tion? Very dan­ger­ous thing. Every­one has the free­dom to choose their reli­gion, but not by coer­cion or coer­cion”. The court on Sep­tem­ber 23 request­ed a response from the Cen­ter and oth­ers to the plea.

The Bench told Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the cen­ter, that “a very seri­ous and sin­cere effort must be made” to review such conversions.

“There may be free­dom of reli­gion, but no free­dom of forced con­ver­sion. What steps have been tak­en by the UoI (Union of India)? … Make your point very clear­ly. What mea­sures do you pro­pose? Con­ver­sion is con­sti­tu­tion­al, but not forced con­ver­sion,” the bank said.

Mehta said the issue had also been debat­ed in the Con­stituent Assem­bly, with pros­e­ly­tiz­ing referred to as “prop­a­gate.” He said some states have enact­ed laws against forced con­ver­sions and the Supreme Court upheld them.

He referred to instances where peo­ple were giv­en rice etc. to induce con­ver­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in trib­al areas.

“So you must inter­vene now,” the bank replied.

The court asked the cen­ter to sub­mit its response by Novem­ber 22 and released the mat­ter for hear­ing on Novem­ber 28.

The peti­tion called for a find­ing that fraud­u­lent reli­gious con­ver­sion through “intim­i­da­tion, threats, fraud­u­lent entice­ment by gifts and mon­e­tary rewards” vio­lates Arti­cles 14, 21, 25 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. It also sought orders from the Cen­ter and states to take strict steps to con­trol such con­ver­sions and to direct the Judi­cia­ry Com­mis­sion to pre­pare a report and a bill to con­trol reli­gious con­ver­sions through intim­i­da­tion and finan­cial benefits.

“The harm done to the cit­i­zens is extreme­ly great because there is not even one dis­trict that is free from reli­gious con­ver­sion by ‘back and forth and car­rot and stick,’ ” Upad­hyay said in his pleading.

The peti­tion said that inci­dents are report­ed each week across the coun­try “in which con­ver­sion is accom­plished through intim­i­da­tion, threats, decep­tion, lur­ing by gifts and finan­cial gain, and also through the use of black mag­ic, super­sti­tion and mir­a­cles, but that Cen­ter has not tak­en any rig­or­ous steps to stop this threat.”

The plea point­ed out that in the 1977 judg­ment in Rev. Stain­is­laus v. the State of Mad­hya Pradesh the Supreme Court had said: “It must be remem­bered that Arti­cle 25(1) guar­an­tees every cit­i­zen ‘free­dom of con­science’ and not only to the adher­ents of a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, which in turn posits that there is no fun­da­men­tal right to con­vert anoth­er per­son to one’s reli­gion. For if a per­son inten­tion­al­ly under­takes the con­ver­sion of anoth­er per­son to his reli­gion, as dis­tinct from his efforts to trans­mit or prop­a­gate the teach­ings of his reli­gion, this would inter­fere with the free­dom of con­science which is equal­ly guar­an­teed to all cit­i­zens of the country.” .
The SC had upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al valid­i­ty of the 1968 Mad­hya Pradesh Dhar­ma Swatantrya Adhiniyam and the Oris­sa Free­dom of Reli­gion Act 1967.