How have legal cases seeking to strike down India’s anti-conversion laws fared? https://scroll.in/article/1014042/how-have-legal-challenges-against-indias-anti-conversion-laws-fared
Since 2017, five states, all led by Bharatiya Janata Party governments, have either passed new anti-conversion laws or updated existing ones. The new versions of the laws put in place stricter punishments and newer grounds for restricting conversions, such as conversion “by marriage” – where a person who adopts another faith to enter into a marriage would be deemed to have been forcibly converted.
In addition, two other BJP-ruled states, Harayana and Assam, have announced plans to move similar laws.
the verdict in , Stainislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh, has been criticised by constitutional experts.
Abhinav Chandrachud, a lawyer and academic, has written that how in upholding these laws, the Supreme Court “went too far”. It could just have held that the right to propagate a religion did not extend to forced conversions, he writes. However, the court held that this right does not even include voluntary conversions.
Sanjay Hegde, a senior advocate, has said that if a larger bench re-examined Stainislaus, its logic would not stand in the light of the 2017 judgement in the Puttaswamy case recognising the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
“We now have a nine-judge judgment in the Puttaswamy case which is with regard to privacy,” Hedge said. “I cannot think of anything more private than your relationship with God.” In 2017, the Supreme Court had recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right in the Puttaswamy case.
However, one High Court judgment stands out for striking down provisions in an anti-conversion law. In 2012, the Himachal Pradesh High Court held that some provisions of the state’s 2006 anti-conversion law were unconstitutional. The High Court said that while a person has the right of belief and the right to change their beliefs, they also have a right to keep their belief secret. As a consequence, the court said that the requirement for a person to give notice to the district magistrate 30 days before converting to a different religion would affect her right to privacy. “If a person of his own volition changes his religion, there is no way that one can measure or fix the date on which he has ceased to belong to religion A and converted to religion B,” the court said.
In 2021, both the Gujarat and Allahabad High Courts have watered down the provisions relating to inter-faith marriages in the anti-conversion laws of their states. the Gujarat High Court granted an interim stay to the provisions prohibiting conversion by marriage. It also stayed the provision that put the burden of proof on the parties entering into an inter-faith marriage to prove that the marriage had not been solemnised on account of any fraud, allurement or coercion. However, this is only an interim stay that will be in operation only until the court gives a final decision on the validity of these laws.
In November, the Allahabad High Court allowed the registration of the marriages of 17 interfaith couples even though they had not obtained the district authority’s approval for conversion, as required by the Uttar Pradesh anti-conversion law. the court asked the state authorities and the families of the couples to restrain themselves from “interfering with the life, liberty and privacy” of these individuals.