MY BLOG

My BLOG……………. BY (by M.H.Azaad Social Activist & Journalist)

“Conversion issue raised by opposition”

The religion of a person in India has or bears a greater significance than any other aspects of the social realm. This significance can be understood as; a person is most commonly identified by his religion. The society in the present scenario is divided on the basis of religion. Religion of a person is the first thing which determines whether or not a person can be a member of the particular group. What would be his status in that group is determined on the basis of what position he holds in that religion, i.e. caste. Unlike a club, the membership of a caste is not open to all and sundry. The law of Caste confines its membership to persons born in the caste. Castes are autonomous, and there is no authority anywhere to compel a caste to admit a newcomer to its social life. Hindu Society being a collection of castes, and each caste being a closed corporation, there is no place for a convert. Thus it is the caste which has prevented the Hindus from expanding and from absorbing other religious communities. There is one set which finds nothing neither peculiar nor odious in the Caste System of the Hindus. Such Hindus cite the case of Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians, and find comfort in the fact that they too have castes amongst them. Caste among Non-Hindus is fundamentally different from caste among Hindus.

The recent conversion is highly debated in LOK Saba pursuing communal agenda against the backdrop of conversion in Agra, the government today asserted in Lok Sabha that it was committed to maintain communal harmony and suggested that all states as well as the Centre should have anti-conversion laws. Replying to a debate on conversions even as several opposition parties staged a walkout, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu rejected allegations against "mother" organization RSS and accused the opposition parties of spreading "misinformation" to "tar" the image of the Sangh as well as that of the Modi government. At the same time, Naidu said the freedom of faith cannot be a license for sustained proselytisation with the help of foreign funds, which specifically targets tribal’s and the poor. He said the Centre was committed to maintain communal harmony and was ready to offer any help to states for this. He rejected the opposition contention that communal incidents had gone up since the Modi government came, saying these incidents have shown a decline as per the data collected from all the states. These comments triggered an uproar after which members of opposition parties including Congress, Left, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and AIMIM staged a walkout. Saugata Roy (TMC) took potshots at BJP, accusing it of causing "religious polarization" and referred to a ruling party MP's comment that Nathuram Godse was a patriot like Mahatma Gandhi, whom he had killed.  SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav,  cited the case of promoting Sanskrit in education and said a proposal in this regard had been mooted by the previous UPA government but current HRD Minister Smriti Irani was targeted for it.  while the Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah said political parties, which are creating uproar over conversions, should in fact approach the government to enact stringent anti-conversion laws.  "Let these political parties, which are trying to stall Parliament on conversion issue, make their stand clear. If they are against religious conversions, they must come forward to favour enacting anti-conversion laws at the Centre and in all states", he said, while talking to media persons in the state capital.  Shah said parliamentary affairs ministers M Venkaiah Naidu has already maintained that the government was committed to maintain communal harmony and also favoured formulation of anti-conversion laws. 

2.4 Propagation

Another important issue with which these laws deal while dealing with conversion is Propagation of ones religion. The Constitution has guaranteed every individual to propagate ones religion. Propagation or to propagate ones religion means to cause (something) to increase in number or amount or to spread and promote (an idea, theory, knowledge, etc.) widely. It is being dealt with conversion, as for some people propagation is closely associated with the issue of forced conversion. Propagation in itself does not deal with conversion of religion, but it certainly guarantees the freedom of choice of religion. As there will be no freedom of choice unless a person is aware what options he has. The concept of propagating ones religion is most commonly conceived as proselytizing. Proselytizing on the other hand means to convert or attempt to convert someone from one religion, belief or opinion to another. Proselytizing can be very easily associated with the Anti-Conversion Laws that in force in various States, as they have a misconception that all Acts relating to propagation of ones religion end up in proselytizing others, i.e., forcing them to convert. Another misconceived notion of propagation is that, propagating ones religion means causing disgrace to another religion, which these authorities fail to ponder.

2.6 Why Conversion?

For ages together in India there was only one religion prevalent or professed, it was Hinduism. With the invasion of foreign rulers a new religion was brought in and among them one was Christianity. When there was only one religion known to the people conversion to any other religion / belief was never brought into picture, but with introduction to a new religion or a new way of reaching to God became known to people, the people who were at the lower / lowest level in the religion were attracted to this foreign religion as they found there was no caste divide in this religion; so they will no longer be in the lowest level of the caste. This attraction towards a new religion or belief has led many of Dalits to convert their religion to this new belief and thus letting forego their earlier belief. The conversion from Hinduism was not only limited to the Christianity, much before conversion to Christianity many Hindu Dalits converted to Buddhism also. The Church of South India (CSI) is primarily a Dalit church. It spearheads the campaign to convert Dalits in south India, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Though they are called Dalit Church they are actually funded and aided by the Church authorities. These church or the members of these church though not given a status of equality but are recognized as Church as they have been brought into existence for the sole purpose of conversion. Credible evidence of the intention to convert followed by definite overt acts to give effect to that intention is necessary. The subsequent conduct of the convertee is also important in reaching the conclusion that a conversion in its true sense had taken place and there was genuine conversion. The evidentiary facts which establish conversion have been time and again stated by the Supreme Court, while observing that no specific ritual or ceremony is required. Satisfactory evidence of conversion which has always been insisted upon by the Courts is necessary especially when we hear plethora of complaints of manipulated conversions for extraneous reasons or as a result of undue pressures. It is seems that the government is bent upon dividing the country again on communal grounds like the British rulers before independence.

Court Admits Petition against Anti-Conversion Law in India  -

SHIMLA (Himachal Pradesh): The High Court of the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh today admitted a petition filed by the New Delhi-based Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) challenging the constitutional validity of that state’s Freedom of Religion Act, commonly known as the "anti-conversion law." Admitting the petition, the Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh High Court, Justice Kurian Joseph, and Justice Sanjay Karol scheduled the first hearing for June 14. The EFI, headed by Rev. Dr. Richard Howell, and co-petitioner Anhad (Act Now for Harmony And Democracy), led by Ms. Shabnam Hashmi, argued in the petition that the Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 2006 violated the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, the right to free practise of religion under Article 25, and the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19.

Filed by Advocate Aman Sood, the petition was drafted by Advocates Robin David, Pramod Singh and Loreign Ovung, members of the Christian Legal Association of India; Advocates Tehmina Arora and Shruti Agrawal from the EFI, and Advocate Munawwar Naseem. Law students Dhiraj Philip, Febin Mathew and Abhishek Jebaraj helped in the research. Since the Supreme Court of India upheld the anti-conversion legislation in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Orissa in 1977 – during the time of the Emergency Rule under then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – it is the second petition against the legislation a court has admitted. In 2009, the Gujarat High Court admitted a similar petition by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India challenging the Gujarat state’s anti-conversion law – a hearing is yet to be scheduled. The 1977 judgment in the Rev Stanislaus vs. Madhya Pradesh case (AIR 1977 SC 908) looked into whether the right to practice and propagate also included the right to convert. Section 4(1) of the Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 2006 requires any person wishing to convert to another religion to give a prior notice of at least 30 days to district authorities, while exempting those "converting back" to their "own religion," which can be read as Hinduism. Section 3 of the Act prohibits conversion "by the use of force or by inducement or by any other fraudulent means" and states that a person who is converted by unfair means shall not be considered converted. Thus, it excludes from its ambit "reconversion" ceremonies, which are routinely conducted among Christian converts by Rightwing Hindu groups. According to Section 5, an offence under Section 3 is punishable with imprisonment up to two years and/or a fine up to 25,000 rupees. In case of conversion of a minor, woman, Dalit or tribal, the imprisonment can extend to three years and the fine up to 50,000 rupees. The rules under the Act were published on August 29 in the official government journal, bringing the law into force.

The Himachal Pradesh legislation is the first anti-conversion law enacted by the Congress Party – though it otherwise claims to promote religious pluralism in the country – in recent years. Most of the anti-conversion bills and bills to amend existing anti-conversion laws were passed by Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party governments. The Himachal Pradesh state assembly House introduced the bill, led by then Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, on December 30, 2006. The anti-conversion laws are currently in force in five Indian states: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. Although some of these laws have been in force for over four decades, no court is known to have convicted any person of "forced" or "fraudulent" conversions until today. (February 22, 2011)