It is a sign of the Left’s stranglehold over the mainstream discourse that the reportage and debate around a very significant judgement by the Allahabad High Court has been muted. The high court was hearing a case brought against an individual who was intent on converting masses of Hindus to Christianity. The accused is from Andhra Pradesh but propagated his faith in Uttar Pradesh. In Maharajganj, UP, he convinced Hindus that converting to Christianity would “aid progress.” Although no money purportedly changed hands and there was no obvious sign of coercion, the HC ruled that his actions fell foul of the state’s anti-conversion law.
Here’s the HC in its own words – “The Constitution confers on everyone the fundamental right to profess, practice and propagate their religion. However, the individual right to freedom of conscience and religion cannot be extended to construe a collective right to proselytise; the right to religious freedom belongs equally to the person converting and the individual sought to be converted.”
This verdict comes amid rising fears among some Hindus that their faith is losing ground to organised religions like Islam and Christianity.
This anxiety is not without basis. India is seeing unchecked cross-border migration that has led to a massive influx of unaccounted non-Hindus. There is now district-level data available that underscores how, in many border and coastal areas, Hindus are no longer in the majority. It is expected that the decennial population census (long-delayed) will confirm this demographic distortion.
There are, of course, some who believe that in the longer term, Hinduism will be locked in an existential battle with Abrahamic faiths in India. The playing field, they insist, isn’t level. As is well known, barring the odd sect, the adherents of the Hindu faith essentially do not proselytise or convert. There is just no concept of “kafir” or “infidel” in Hindu dharmic tradition. Just as there wasn’t in unorganised belief systems and pagan traditions in pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Europe, South and Latin America or even West Asia.
But each of these unorganised indigenous traditions collapsed under the weight of organised proselytisation undertaken by book-based monotheistic faiths. Leaving these Abrahamic organised traditions, as the Indian Constitution does, to propagate their message is an invitation to conversion. Especially when the adherents of Abrahamic faiths are ordained by religious injunction to add to the “flock”.
Thus, in India, the letter of Article 25 of the Constitution has been creatively interpreted by non-Hindu religious leaders and adherents to not just spread the “word” but also add to the “flock”. Article 25 says, “All persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health”.
Somewhere along the way, non-Hindu religious plenipotentiaries have blurred the thin line between the “freedom to propagate” one’s faith and the right to proselytise. These are not one and the same things.
The right to propagate is restricted to sharing beliefs, ideas, and core values with others, without coercing or inducing them to convert. The right to proselytise is to actively seek to convert others to one’s own religion, often with persuasion, inducement, or coercion.
While on paper, it is easy to distinguish between the two, in practical terms, it is almost impossible to tell the difference. How for example, can an officer of the law know when “sharing a belief” isn’t bleeding into “persuasion”? How much “sharing” is “persuasion”? After all, telling someone that accepting Christianity is beneficial because this would “aid progress” could sound like persuasion (even inducement) but could just as easily pass off as propagation. This practical inability to distinguish between persuasion and propagation renders superfluous even the Supreme Court’s attempt to draw a distinction.
In the Rev Stanislaus V State of Madhya Pradesh (1977) matter, the top court ruled, “the right to propagate one’s religion is a fundamental right under Article 25 of the Indian Constitution. However, this right does not include the right to convert others by force, fraud, or allurement.”
The SC ruling, as is clear from the Maharajganj case cited above, has had no impact on dissuading proselytisers from undermining the top court. Some anxious Hindus have been urging a re-look at Article 25 with a view to closing the loophole in the Constitution by entirely scrapping the right to propagate. Many legal experts are of the view that this would fall foul of the Basic Structure doctrine. But till the idea is not seriously debated, we will never really know.
If Hindus have an obligation to address non-Hindu anxieties about “majoritarian imposition”, non-Hindus are equally obligated to appreciate Hindu anxieties about conversion, whether forced, or through mass conversion ceremonies, or even induced through marriage. Perhaps forging an inter-faith consensus is the best way forward.
If adherents of all non-Hindu faiths claim to be committed to living in harmony with pluralistic Hinduism, shouldn’t they walk the talk by unilaterally renouncing their right to propagate?
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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