After several other BJP-ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, the BJP government in Haryana is set to enact legislation to prevent unlawful religious conversions.
The Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Bill, 2022 will be tabled in the Assembly’s budget session in March 2022. It is likely to be passed, considering the BJP-JJP coalition has a comfortable majority in the 90-member House.
Why is the government bringing this Bill?
According to the government and officials, many incidents of alleged “love jihad” have been reported in Haryana over the past few months, especially in the southern parts of the state.
“Love jihad” is an expression used by the BJP and its allies to refer to alleged attempts by Muslim men to force Hindu women to change their faith, frequently through allurement, promise of marriage or coercion.
The government has told Parliament that “the term ‘love jihad’ is not defined under the extant laws”, and the anti-conversion legislation in the states do not use the expression. But it is still used freely in political conversations and speeches.
Announcing that a law was in the works, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had said in August last year that in view of increasing incidents of forced religious conversions, a deterrent was needed.
“A law is enacted to create a deterrent for people when they start doing something wrong. Such incidents [of ‘love jihad’] have started taking place in a few places of Haryana. Till the time these were not happening, or when there were only one or two such incidents, there was no need for such a law,” Khattar had said.
“But now several incidents of forced religious conversion by way of coercion and allurements have come to light. To prevent such incidents from happening, such laws are required. By way of example, I can say this is the reason we passed the anti-copying Bill. Laws are required to prevent any of these incidents from increasing in number.”
What is the progress on the proposed law so far, and what happens now?
As a first step, a draft of the proposed Bill was approved by the Haryana Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Khattar on 3 February 2022. The Bill will be tabled in the Vidhan Sabha when it meets in the Budget Session that commences on 2 March 2022.
The BJP-JJP coalition has a strength of 50 in the 90-member House, and the Bill can be expected to go through comfortably. Once the Bill is passed and receives the assent of the Governor, it will be notified in the gazette and will become law.
What does the draft Bill cleared by the Cabinet propose?
The draft Bill seeks to “prohibit religious conversions which are effected through misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means or by marriage or for marriage by making it an offence”.
And what reasoning does it give?
The statement of objectives and reasons in the draft bill says: “The individual right to freedom of conscience and religion cannot be extended to construe a collective right to proselytize; for the right to religious freedom belongs equally to the person converting and the individual sought to be converted. Still, there have been umpteen cases of religious conversions, both mass and individual.
“Obviously, such incidents have been hotly debated, more so in a multi-religious society, such as ours. The presence of pseudo-social organizations with a hidden agenda to convert the vulnerable sections of other religions. There have been instances when gullible people have been converted by offering allurement or under undue influence. Some have been forced to convert to other religions,” the draft Bill says.
The draft Bill also suggests that incidents of so-called “love jihad” are increasing. “In recent past several instances came to the notice that with an agenda to increase strength of their own religion by getting people from other religions converted, people marry persons of other religion by either misrepresentation or concealment of their own religion and after getting married they force such other person to convert to their own religion,” it says.
“Such incidents not only infringe the freedom of religion of the persons so converted but also militate against the secular fabric of our society… The Bill, therefore, seeks to prevent religious conversions which are effected through use of force, under threat, misrepresentation, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means or by marriage or for marriage by making it an offence.”
The draft Bill proposes “greater punishment for such conversion in respect of the Minor, Women, Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes”.
How will it be established that a conversion is unlawful under the proposed law?
According to the draft Bill, the burden of proof — as to whether a conversion was not effected through misrepresentation, use of force, under threat, undue influence, coercion, allurement, or by any fraudulent means, or by marriage, or for marriage for the purpose of carrying out conversion — shall be on the accused.
Every individual converting from one religion to another shall submit to the prescribed authority a declaration that the conversion not effected through any of the unlawful means mentioned above. The designated authority shall make an inquiry in all such cases.
The proposed Bill will also have a provision for declaring null and void any marriage that is found to have been solemnised by concealment of religion.