Anti-Conversion Law - what and why?
Anti-Conversion Law – what and why?
There has been a furore in the current sessions of the Parliament regarding the anti-conversion law, and religious conversion has always been an issue of great social, political as well as profound individual significance. Let us have a brief overview of this issue.
Our Constitution and Religious Conversion
Written under the Fundamental Rights of our Constitution, in Article 25, are these following words:
“Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion.”
Thus, any Indian citizen is entitled to freely choose his or her religion. This freedom forms the fundamental freedom of any human being. In the light of this fact the current talks of anti-conversion law may seem baffling, but they, too, have a point, as we will see later.
Let us look at an important part of the above clause that states that everyone must have “freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion” which means if a person is choosing his or her religion, it is a prerequisite that he or she should do so by his or her own volition, without any coercion or force. If this prerequisite is not considered then that conversion will be deemed illegal because it happened against the will and wish of the person.
Use and Misuse of Religious Conversion
As stated above, religious conversion has massive social and political impacts along with deeply affecting one on the individual level. So, the tool of religious conversion can be used for emancipation and also misused for subjugation. Let us look at two examples where religious conversion was used positively to bring about the emancipation of oppressed people.
1. Blacks were, and still largely are, a severely oppressed and discriminated community in white-dominated regions, especially in the USA. Here the movement of 'Nation of Islam' took root where Blacks were converting to Islam to seek solidarity and dignity that was disallowed to them by the orthodox Christian community. More than religious, these conversions had social and political purposes. Malcolm X, the movement's most popular figure, explained why these conversions were necessary for the emancipation of the Black people in his famous autobiography.
2. In India the conversion of Dalits (former 'untouchables') from Hinduism to Buddhism was led by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. Dr. Ambedkar foresaw that as long as Dalits would remain chained to the lowest hierarchies of the rigid caste system their advancement would be most difficult. To overcome this, Dr. Ambedkar, along with 6,00,000 of his followers present there converted to Buddhism at Nagpur in 1956.
However, conversion can also be used as a tool for oppression, conquest of new lands and as a method to achieve one's social, religious, and political agendas. For example, as per a report released by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP), the Taliban movement in Pakistan is accused of forcibly converting Christians and Hindus to Islam. A recent controversy in India erupted after a Hindu right-wing organization was accused of converting some Muslims to Hinduism by allegedly misguiding them.
Forced religious conversions have a history that dates back to the dawn of religion and their occurrence has been alarmingly frequent.
Anti-Conversion Law
With the above issues in our perspective, we can see that religion affects one deeply on personal, political, and social levels. Solely because of this it becomes extremely necessary to allow an individual the freedom to choose his or her own religion. In the same line of thought, it becomes even more necessary to protect an individual from being forced into converting to some other religion.
It would be against our Constitution to enforce a total ban on all religious conversions because that flies directly in the face of the Fundamental Rights enshrined in our Constitution. Thus, any demand to bring about a total ban on all religious conversions is unconstitutional and it encroaches upon the basic rights of a person to choose his or her religion and, therefore, this idea should be completely discarded.
Simultaneously, it is necessary to put a leash on the forced conversions around the globe. Thus the need of the hour is to implement laws that will define “forced conversion” more clearly. Hence, the debate should rather be centered around “anti forced-conversion” alone.
