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,”
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