Rajasthan Anti-Conversion Bill: Politics Of Polarisation

NEW DELHI, MAR. 24, 2008 (The Hindu):

The Rajasthan government’s decision to push through the so-called Freedom of Religion Bill 2008 is a desperately cynical election ploy, aimed at polarising the electorate on communal lines.

Considering that an almost identical Bill, adopted in 2006, is awaiting the assent of President Pratibha Patil, the BJP government’s move to go for another is a brazen attempt to play the religious card just before the Assembly elections, due in November 2008.

At one level, the decision raises a legal issue: can a bill be passed when another virtually indistinguishable one is awaiting presidential assent? Ironically, the 2006 bill was returned with objections to certain clauses by Ms Patil, then Governor of Rajasthan. After Vasundhara Raje’s Cabinet re-submitted the bill for approval, Governor Patil reserved it for the consideration of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The Mark II version does the opposite of eliminating the objections to the Mark I version. It increases the quantum of punishment for conversions that contravene its provisions; empowers authorities to cancel registrations and trusts in which funds are used or “contemplated to be used” for conversion; and introduces a 30-day notice period for anyone wanting to change religion. Interestingly, Section 5(1) states that “no notice is required if a person reverts back to his original religion,” thus making it quite plain that ‘converts’ will be treated differently from ‘reconverts’ [to Hinduism].

The ostensible objective of this and other Orwellian ‘freedom of religion’ laws is to prohibit conversions by “force, fraud or allurement.” Political research has shown that as a social phenomenon religious conversion, especially to Christianity (the main target of Hindutva militancy), has declined since Independence; that anti-conversion campaigns emerge in States, such as Gujarat, that do not have strong minority populations and do not take off in States, such as Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, where minority votes are crucial to doing well in elections; and that the real purpose of such campaigns is to pander to Hindutva sentiment and place restrictions on personal religious freedom.

Anti-conversion laws are currently in force in seven States — a situation that was, unfortunately, enabled by the Supreme Court’s judgment on the Madhya Pradesh Act (Stanislaus v/s Madhya Pradesh, AIR 1977). In testing the law constitutionally against the Article 25(1) guarantee of the fundamental right “freely to profess, practise and propagate religions,” the court made an over-fine distinction between the right to “transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets” and “conversion” — concluding that Article 25(1) actually “postulates that there is no fundamental right to convert another person to one’s own religion because if a person purposely undertakes the conversion of another person to his religion, as distinguished from his effort to transmit or spread the tenets of his religion, that would impinge on the ‘freedom of conscience’ guaranteed to all the citizens of the country alike.” Nobody can dispute the reasonableness of prohibiting and penalising the use of “force, fraud or allurement” in any kind of religious mission; or of subjecting the freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religions to considerations of “public order, morality and health.” But laws that require notice and registration of conversions or otherwise intimidate and pull against the fabric of secularism and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms have no place in progressive 21st century India.

Courtesy: http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/24/stories/2008032455151000.htm