Anti-Conversion Laws Are Coming For Political Reasons Than Actual Reasons: Ex-Judge Justice Deepak Gupta | Transcript Of Interview

This is the full transcript of the interview of former Supreme Court judge Justice Deepak Gupta with Manu Sebastian, Managing Editor of LiveLaw, on the topic of anti-conversion laws.State has no business to know if a person has changed religionMr. Manu Sebastian : "An important news of this week is the Supreme Court hearing a PIL which seeks to regulate forceful conversion. The Supreme Court has observed that it is a very serious issue and has directed the central government to collect information from the states regarding laws made for regulating religious conversions. Several states in India have made laws to regulate religious conversion and a common feature of most of these laws is that they have a section which mandates that a person who wants to convert should give prior information to the district magistrate. It is only with the approval of the district magistrate that the person can convert. This provision is applicable even for persons who are converting for an Interfaith marriage. The Gujarat High Court last year and the Madhya Pradesh High Court last month had stayed these provisions, saying that they are violating a person's right to privacy. The Gujarat state has approached the Supreme Court, and in the PIL proceedings, the Gujarat government told the Supreme Court that this provision regarding prior sanction of the district magistrate is a precautionary provision seeking to protect women and people belonging to backward classes. Is there a legitimate State interest in knowing if a person has changed his or her religion?"Justice Deepak Gupta: "My views are very clear. Many years ago, as a judge of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, I dealt with a similar provision and held it to be violative of the Constitution and said that it invades the right of privacy of a person. In fact, with this privacy judgment in the Puttaswamy case, I think my judgment becomes strengthened. What business does the government have to know what is your or my religion? Are we, in a country like India, bound to disclose what are our religious beliefs? We may not have any religious beliefs, we may be agnostics, atheists, believers, we may not be ritualistic but spiritual. In Hinduism, you have so many different ways of life. How does it concern the government what religion you belong to? Many years back, about 2-3 decades ago, the Supreme Court clearly held that Article 25 which gives the right to propagate your religion does not include the right to convert. So conversion, I understand that being made illegal if it is by allurement, by fraud, by coercion. But how can you tell a person that if I want to change my religious beliefs, why should I have to take the permission of anybody, if I am an adult? Least of all the government. I don't need to take permission from my parents. Suppose I am born in religion 'A' but after growing up I believe that I want to follow religion 'B' or religion 'C', if a notice is to be given, you are inviting trouble. If the whole purpose and the stand of the government is that we have to protect the people, they're doing a nuisance because it is going to cause more harm. There are those who want to change their faith for very personal reasons such as love, personal choice or any other reason. How on earth does the State have the right? I wonder why the State should even know my caste, leave aside my religion. They should be totally unbiased of that. If somebody breaks the law, then natural consequence should follow. But what they're trying to do here is that if you give a notice, then obviously your family members will oppose you, your neighbours will oppose you, sometimes even the family may not oppose you but others who have no concern who are opposing and they create a scene. Are we to be ruled by a majority or by the rule of law?"Concept of "allurement" in anti-conversion laws are kept vagueMr. Sebastian: "The other aspect of the debate is the concept of allurement. There is no quarrel that there should be no forceful conversion, that no one should be converted by force or coercion. But most of the states have this provision regarding inducement or allurement. The definition seems to be quite broad and vague. A person may change his religion for whatever reason, and if a person is changing his religion for monetary gains, that may be an ethically debatable issue, that could be an opportunistic act which may not meet society's or even ethical approval, but should there be a crime for that? Should a person be penalised for doing that? Is there a State interest in that field?"Justice Gupta: "The word allurement has been left delightfully vague in most of the enactments. There are three words used normally in all the enactments- coercion, no quarrel with that, fraud, no quarrel with that, if somebody is converted by coercion or fraud, there is no quarrel, it has to be an offence, but allurement can go to very different levels. Suppose one mission of a religion is running a hospital or a school...

Anti-Conversion Laws Are Coming For Political Reasons Than Actual Reasons: Ex-Judge Justice Deepak Gupta | Transcript Of Interview

Manu Sebastian

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