UP Govt's Anti-Conversion Law and Love Jihad

Today Uttar Pradesh Governor promulgates UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance 2020. Most media outlets have referred to it as an ordinance against 'love jihad,' but the UP government maintains that it is tackling the forceful conversion and not just the alleged phenomenon of 'love jihad.'

On this point, the State Government has to say that “The way in which religious conversions take place by means of deceit, lies, force and dishonesty is heart wrenching, and it was necessary to have a law in this regard." Therefore we have adopted an effective law to check conversion with some specific punitive provisions against individuals and organizations if found to have committed conversion, by demonstrating the use of force deception by luring marriage or some other improper way.

What does the law say?

According to the law, 

• The Unlawful conversion for getting married by force, deceit, undue pressure or by way of alluring into marriage will now be a non-bailable offence.

• Such marriages would lead to imprisonment of a maximum of 10 years and penalty of 50 thousand rupees.

• The ordinance further recommends 1 year to 5 years of imprisonment if the accused fails to prove that the conversion of the woman was not unlawful.

• The jail sentence for the offence against the woman from the Scheduled cast, Scheduled Tribe community would be of 3-10 years.

• It the case is of mass conversion, similar provision of 3-10 year imprisonment has been prescribed. Also, the registration of the organisation involving into mass conversion would be cancelled.

• The ordinance would declare the unlawful marriages null and void.

• Further, if any couple wants to marry after converting into any other religion, they need to take permission from the relevant district magistrate two months prior to the marriage.

Is Uttar Pradesh the first state to enact an anti-conversion law?

No, In 1967-68, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh enacted local laws called the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 and the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya Adhiniyam 1968. Chattisgarh inherited the law when it was carved out of Madhya Pradesh.

The Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 1978 was enacted to prohibit the conversion from one religious faith to any other by use of force or inducement. As the state has not formulated rules, the law is yet to be implemented in the State.

The Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance was promulgated by the Governor on October 5, 2002 and subsequently adopted by the State Assembly. However, this law was repealed in 2004.

The Rajasthan Assembly passed an Act in 2006, however, the Presidential assent is still awaited.

A new generation of anti-conversion laws started in 2018 under the Narendra Modi government, Both Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh added the word ‘marriage’ to their acts — Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act and Himachal Freedom of Religion Act — and said that even if conversion is done for marriage, it has to be notified.

In Uttarakhand, the law empowered the parents and siblings of the individual being converted with the right to go and complain to the district magistrate if they feel a conversion is taking place without following the regular process.

Recently Allahabad high court said in a verdict (Salamat Ansari-Priyanka Kharwar case) that the right to choose a partner or live with a person of choice was part of a citizen’s fundamental right to life and liberty.

The verdict also said earlier court rulings that ‘religious conversion for marriage was unacceptable’ was not good in law.

History of “Love Jihad”

Allegations of Love Jihad first rose to national awareness in September 2009. Love Jihad was initially alleged to be conducted in Kerala and Mangalore in the coastal Karnataka region. According to the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, by October 2009 up to 4,500 girls in Kerala had been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls had been converted in Karnataka alone.

The then Congress CM in Kerala, Oommen Chandy, admitted in the assembly that between 2006-2012, 2,667 women from other faiths had been converted to Islam because they married Muslim men.

“The Global Council of Indian Christians came up with the insinuation that a global Islamist project was being implemented in Kerala,” This caught spark after a Christian girl who had converted to Islam was arrested for supplying SIM cards to Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives.

“In Kerala some of this movement against a kind of love-jihad also came up from the Left — V.S. Achuthanandan (former chief minister of Kerala) said that Muslims were converting girls of other religions,”

The Protectors of Fundamental Rights themselves are violating the Fundamental Rights

Yesterday the Supreme Court has not only granted bail to Arnab Goswami but has also declared that the Mumbai High Court erred in denying him bail and thus it violated individual liberty. What action is being taken against the HC judge? Does he get to violate liberty yet continue to resume work as usual? At the minimum, he must be suspended from work for a period of one year and demoted. How else can we hold the judges accountable? How do we stop them from becoming rottweilers of corrupt local politicians?

 

The main problem is that the judiciary will take no action against the judiciary.  And the executive has no power to take any action on the judiciary for wrong judgments.  Even most politicians employ the system to do their dirty work. Ultimately it is a common man and the whistle blower and the honest man who suffers at the hands of the system.

 

Nobody wants to utter a single word against the judiciary not because they have trust upon them, but because of the fear of contempt proceedings. Sorry to say colonial laws are still prevailing in our society which are making us feel so helpless.

“The Protectors of Fundamental Rights themselves are violating the Fundamental rights of citizens”.

 

The judiciary is the only institution in the country which remains totally unaccountable. There is no institution with disciplinary powers over the judiciary. In order to provide for their independence, the Constitution made judges of the superior courts immune from removal except by impeachment. The Ramaswami case and subsequent attempts to impeach judges have demonstrated the total impracticality of that instrument to discipline judges. There has thereafter been persistent talk of setting up an independent National Judicial Commission, but it has been a non starter with the judiciary firmly opposing any outside body with disciplinary powers over them. However, the self disciplining mechanism suggested by the judiciary itself by way of an "In house committee" of judges to enforce a code of conduct nominally adopted by the judiciary in 1999, has also been a non starter in the face of a reluctance on the part of judges to inquire into the conduct of their own brethren. That is one of the reasons why the Parliamentary Standing Committee has rejected the government’s draft of the Judicial Inquiry amendment bill which proposes an "in house Judicial Council" of sitting judges to inquire into judicial misconduct. The bill would in fact make the removal of judges even more difficult than at present.

Compounding the problem further is the Supreme Court’s decree that no judge can be investigated for even criminal offences without the written consent of the Chief Justice of India. In the last 16 years since that judgement, no sitting judge in India has been subjected to a criminal investigation. And not because people have not tried. In a case, former Chief Justice of India refused to accord permission to register an FIR against the senior judge of Lucknow who had purchased land worth 7 Crores for 5 lacs from well known members of a land mafia in the name of his wife.

 

Independence of judiciary is "sacrosanct", and unless there are clear-cut allegations of misconduct, the gratification of any kind and extraneous influences, disciplinary proceedings should not be initiated merely on the ground that a wrong order has been passed by a judicial officer.