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SC Asks Advocates Not To Politicise The Serious Legal Issue Of Illegal Conversions

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-01-10 10:15:32

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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.

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