Our Special Correspondent

Among the biggest failures of the Narendra Modi-led BJP is the inability to bring a strong Anti-Conversion Bill.   This inaction over eight long years keeps conversion factories alive in Punjab, of all the states, AP, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the country. Take the latest instance.

A video of mass conversions in which the Aam Admi Party (AAP) Minister for Social Welfare Rajendra Pal Gautam was seen taking part in oath taking ceremony against Hindu Gods like Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara, has triggered a major controversy. 

The BJP may demand Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to take action against the minister or threaten legal action. Is that all it can do?

Though Rajnath Singh as Union Home Minister in 2015 did propose an Anti-Conversion Bill, no initiative came forth from the BJP-led NDA government, since then.  However, some laws to that effect have been enacted at the state or province level in Odisha in 1967, Madhya Pradesh (1968), Arunachal Pradesh (1978), Gujarat (2003), and Himachal Pradesh (2006). In fact, it is euphemistically titled ‘Freedom of Religion Act’, yet is known commonly as anti-conversions laws:

If in 2002, the Tamil Nadu state assembly has passed the Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Bill, which was repealed in 2004 after the defeat of the BJP-led coalition, and then in 2006, the BJP-led government in Rajasthan passed a similar freedom of religion bill. However, assent of the President of India is still pending ten years after the bill was forwarded to him.  Likewise, the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh also unsuccessfully sought to tighten existing laws the same year.

These laws are very similar in content, and claim to prohibit conversions by force, fraud, and inducement or allurement. The Acts state that no person shall convert or attempt to convert, either directly or otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by the use of force or by inducement or by any fraudulent means, nor shall any person abet any such conversion.

The Acts carry penal provisions and punishments, generally ranging from up to a one-year imprisonment and a fine of up to 5,000 Indian rupees to up to three years imprisonment and a fine of up to 25,000 Indian rupees. The punishment is more stringent if there is evidence of conversion by force, fraud, or inducement among women, minors, and Dalits (formerly ‘untouchables’ as per India’s caste system), or Tribals. Failure to send notice to or seek permission from the district magistrate before converting or participating in a conversion ceremony also renders one liable for a fine under the Acts.

Can there be anything more ridiculous than these lop-sided laws?  Knowing well, mass conversions had been taking in this country from time immemorial and that’s how all those invaders – either Moghuls first and later the colonial British raj – who indulged in large scale forcible conversions as well as destructions of Hindu temples.  Why did the so called rightist party like the BJP, which boasts of custodians of Hindus, fail to bring in national-wide anti-conversion laws?  Who could have prevented them had it been drafted carefully? While retaining the word ‘forcible’ conversions, could it not insist that mass conversions cannot be organized like a public event?

BJP’s duplicity stands exposed as the mass conversion event, titled Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din, in fact a yearly event, was organised to mark Dr BR Ambedkar’s conversion to Lord Buddha’s faith in October 1956 along with lakhs of followers. Well, that might have happened during the Congress regimes as well other Opposition coalition governments at the Centre.  What prevented the BJP-headed NDA government to take a call on the event and pick up the courage to scrap it? 

Now holding veiled threats and shedding crocodile tears will in no way help either the BJP or the majority Hindus in this country, as other cash rich religions continue to lure the poor and gullible, who can fall prey to proselytising activities. In the recent past several videos have gone viral in which proselytisers of a particular religion were chased away by the locals. Mass conversions still continue in several parts of the southern states where Opposition is in power and these minorities are their solid ‘vote banks’.  Such conversions do take place in several other parts of the country, and may be the reason why some of those states have brought in anti-defection law, but they are lacking strong teeth. 

It is high time the Modi government gets its act together on these conversion factories, instead blaming others.