SC Asks Advocates Not To Politicise The Serious Legal Issue Of Illegal Conversions
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-01-10 10:15:32
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
Stating
that religious conversion is a serious legal issue and it should not be
politicised, the Supreme Court sought Attorney General R Venkatramani's
help in framing measures to curb conversions through deception, fraud, force or
allurement. The Supreme Court has previously clearly stated that the right to
freely practice, profess or propagate one's faith as guaranteed by Article 25
of the Indian Constitution does not include the right to convert people through
such deception, fraud, force or allurement. Since the court has now taken a
serious note of the ways of conversion existing in India, it is clear that it
considers all is not well with the way people are being led to convert their
faith.
The court
took senior advocate P Wilson, representing Tamil Nadu, to task for saying that the petitioner Ashwini
Upadhyay had filed the PIL in abuse of the process of law just to further the
ideology of his party (the BJP). He questioned the maintainability of the PIL. The
court asked him to leave politics outside the court and since this was a purely
legal issue, let the court examine it accordingly. The judges requested "every
counsel to maintain the purity of the court proceedings".
It should
be no one's case to argue that conversion does not happen in India through
unfair and illegal means. Statistics and reported incidents and the work of
certain organizations in some areas, especially tribal areas, prove otherwise. Hence,
saying that the petitioner had filed the PIL just to further the ideology of
his party is wrong. It is an issue of national importance, as Solicitor General
Tushar Mehta rightly called it. The right to
propagate a particular faith cannot be said to include the right to convert
others to that faith except when such others wish to convert out of their own
free will without any deception, fraud, force or allurement. Hence, it is right
that the Supreme Court is examining the issue and is firm on framing measures
to curb the menace.
