In the World Happiness Report released this past month, India stands at 139th position among 149 countries. The report, which should make us hang our heads in shame, has given better ranks for neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. The situation seems irredeemable going by the focus of the governments. An ignominious and dangerous example has come from Gujarat where recent legislation, the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act 2021, makes offering of a “better lifestyle” leading to religious conversion a crime punishable up to seven years in jail. The original Freedom of Religion Act prohibited forcible conversion by use of force or by allurement or by fraudulent means a crime. But the amendment by the BJP government, with the addition of many draconian provisions, makes it more regressive. 

Any progressive government will have the ‘betterment of citizens’ as its focus area. A democratic government will go all-out to achieve this goal. It will not gather up the courage to make a law that goes against the betterment of people. But here is an insensitive government that has formulated a law that makes the promise of a better life to its people a crime. The amendment to the Act, if implemented in letter and spirit, will make it impossible even to offer God’s blessings to people of other religions as it is construed as luring them for conversion. If religious leaders cannot preach better life and offer God’s blessings, what else are they supposed to do? If one cannot sermonize on what would bring happiness, better life, and God’s blessings, the Constitutional provisions permitting practice and propagation of religion will remain a meaningless Article in the pages of the Statute book.

The notoriety of the amended Act becomes clear from its ambit and scope. Anyone who aids, abets, counsels, or convinces a person for religious conversion is liable to be arrested and tried under the harsh provisions of the law. This is an outright violation of the Constitutional provision of freedom of speech and expression; it also contravenes freedom of conscience and free profession, practice, and propagation of religion. Giving the Act more teeth, anyone who is even distantly related to the person who opted for conversion can file an FIR for an offence believed to have been committed under the Act. 

The amendments are an out-and-out challenge to the fundamental rights of citizens. The Act is based on the premise that people who opt for conversion are lured and trapped in the process. This makes it impossible for a person to follow a religion of one’s choice as his conversion can be interpreted as ‘luring’ one to lead a better life. For example, if a person, who is frustrated by the inhumane and appalling treatment being faced in his religion, decides to convert to a different religion, where he is convinced of leading a better life, he may find himself cooling his heels in a prison. Adding insult to injury, those who help him in the process too will be charged with a crime that is non-bailable. Doesn’t this development ring alarm bells for religious leaders of minority communities, including the Church leaders? If this ‘Gujarat model’ is replicated across the country, it will pave the path to Hindu Rastra sooner than later.