New Delhi, Nov 28.
The central government has informed the Supreme Court that no one has a fundamental right to convert anyone in this country.
The term “propagate” in the right to religion does not envisage the right to convert a person, the government said in response to a plea to ban conversion through force, fraud or coercion.
Rather is in the nature of the positive right to spread one’s religion by exposition of its tenets, it said.
Article 25(1) guarantees “freedom of conscience” to every citizen, and not merely to the followers of one particular religion”.
This in turn postulates that there is no fundamental right to convert another person to one’s own religion because if a person purposely undertakes this 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, the government said.
Right to freedom of religion does not include a fundamental right to convert other people to a particular religion, an affidavit filed by the Home Ministry said.
The right certainly does not include the right to convert an individual through fraud, deception, coercion, allurement or other such means, it said.
The meaning and purport of the word “propagate” falling under Article 25 of the Constitution was discussed and debated in great detail in the constituent assembly, the government said.
The word was passed to be included only after a clarification that the right under Article 25 would not include the right to convert, it said.
The Home Affairs Ministry said that the right to freedom to religion, and more importantly, the “right to conscience” of all citizens of the country was an extremely cherished and valuable right which ought to be protected by the executive and the legislature.
The top court has also earlier held that fraudulent or induced conversion impinges upon the right to freedom of conscience of an individual apart from hampering public order and, therefore, the state was well within its power to regulate/restrict it, it pointed out.
This court has given the correct meaning of the article, and we find no justification for the view that it grants a fundamental right to convert persons to one’s own religion.
Freedom of religion enshrined in the article is not guaranteed in respect of one religion only, but covers all religions alike, and it can be properly enjoyed by a person if he exercises his right in a manner commensurate with the like freedom of persons following the other religions, it said.
“What is freedom for one, is freedom for the other, in equal measure, and there can therefore be no such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person to one’s own religion.”
At least nine states, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana had enacted laws to curb the menace of organized, sophisticated large-scale illegal conversion, the government pointed out.
These have been upheld by this court.
Such enactments are necessary for protecting cherished rights of vulnerable sections of the society, including women and economically and socially backward classes.
The Union government is cognizant of the gravity and the seriousness of the issue raised in the writ petition.
The present petition would be taken up in all seriousness by the Union and appropriate steps shall be taken as the Central Government is cognizant of the menace, it said.
The petition was filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay seeking a probe into the suicide of a Tamil Nadu student Lavanya over alleged conversion. Notices were issued in this case to the government at the last hearing on Nov 14, 2022, to place its formal legal stand on the issue.
A bench led by Justice M.R. Shah had at the hearing expressed concern over the alleged conversions.
