Think about the absurdity of the situation. You are the Chief Minister. You announce that you have changed your faith. You would become a political pariah; your political career would be over. If this can happen to a powerful chief minister, imagine the vulnerability of a poor labourer, an uneducated villager, a tribal, a Dalit who decides to change his faith.
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Under Article 25, the Constitution protects freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion. The framers did not say that a citizen must first obtain the State’s permission to decide what to believe.
The Constituent Assembly debates are instructive. Rev. J.J.M. Nichols-Roy, himself a member of the Assembly, strongly defended the freedom of conscience and the right to propagate religion. At the same time, he clearly opposed conversion through fraud, coercion or undue influence. That is the distinction your law risks destroying. Coercion and fraud are crimes; conviction of conscience is not.
You may also recall the example of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, one of the principal architects of the Constitution and a son of Maharashtra. On 14 October 1956, he embraced Buddhism at Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi along with a vast gathering of followers.
What if a law like yours had been applied to Ambedkar’s decision? Would you have wanted the State to question him before allowing him to change his religion? Surely not.
There is another serious problem with this law: it reverses the burden of proof. Instead of the accuser having to establish coercion, fraud or unlawful inducement, the law places an extraordinary burden upon the accused to establish that the conversion was voluntary. Presumption of innocence is a basic principle of criminal jurisprudence.
The provisions relating to marriage are equally troubling. By looking at interfaith marriages through the prism of conversion, the law will reinforce the poisonous narrative of ‘love jihad’. Two consenting adults should not have to prove to vigilantes, police officers or bureaucrats that their relationship is genuine just because they belong to different faiths.
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