There is no Constitutional right to convert

[DIWAN AHMED]

The law of the land vs their singular focus

By Arun Shourie

Click on the Arun Shourie link at
http://www.mantra.com/newsplus

March 10, 1999 (Note date)

Now that they have moved out of the headlines, events
relating to missionaries can be considered without
histrionics.

There were seven sets of incidents. The first -- the one
that most blackened the name of the country -- was the
rape of four nuns in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. The Madhya
Pradesh Government has completed investigations, and
arrested the suspects. It turns out that there are as
many Christians in the wretched lot as non-Christians,
and that the rapes were committed not in furtherance of
any religious cause, but because of local animosities --
two groups were contending with each other, one side
concluded that the local church people were siding with
the other group, and decided to teach them a lesson.

"Jhabua re-enacted in Jhajjar," proclaimed a four-column
headline of The Hindustan Times in regard to the second
incident. It reported -- on the authority of one of the
chief propagandists of Christian organizations, he also
doubles up as an Editor -- that nuns in Jhajjar, Haryana
had been set upon and molested. The Observer of Business
and Politics sent its correspondents to follow up the
story. They found that the story was a complete
fabrication. The nuns had arrived in Jhajjar some two-
three years earlier. They had started teaching sewing to
the local girls -- we will hear more of setting up such
services as we proceed. There was an election for the
local mahila mandal. Two groups were locked in a spirited
contest as through the mandal they could get control over
the profitable tailoring business. The nuns began to
espouse the candidate of one group. Members of the other
group came, shouted at them, remonstrated with them, and
asked them to stay out of local rivalries. No one was
molested. The entire conversation with the nuns was taped
by the reporters. The paper published the facts. Neither
the propagandist-Editor nor The Hindustan Times returned
to the story they had played up so much.

The third incident originated in a story put out by the
Associated Press. An American doctor, Dr. John Sylvester,
working in Allahabad attacked by Hindu fundamentalists,
the agency reported, has had to seek shelter in a Baptist
Church, his clinic broken up.... Sylvester is not a
medical doctor, he has a Ph. D. in Economics. He is not
an American, his wife is. He has no clinic, instead he
runs two schools. Neither he nor his wife, nor their
schools had ever been attacked. But the assault was the
talk in atrocity-circles : in the papers, on Internet.

In the fourth incident, a nun was said to have been raped
in Baripada, Orissa. Again, in less than a flash the
incident was all over -- in the papers, on Internet. The
local missionary was in the forefront in giving it
currency : he declared that "local communal outfits" were
the ones who had raped the lady. Everyone ran with this,
and the rape was projected as a continuation of the
attacks by Bajrang Dal types on helpless Christians. The
medical examination disclosed no signs of rape, not even
of struggle : the marks were reported to be "superficial
and self-inflicted". Police were also struck by a telling
detail. The lady was asked for the garments she had been
wearing -- these were the items that were most likely to
have had the decisive evidence to nail the culprits :
semen and all -- the investigators were told that all the
clothes had been burnt immediately after the assault.
Police and district officials were said to be non-plussed
about how to handle the matter -- lest the state
government take umbrage.

In the fifth incident, a young girl and boy were found
murdered in Kandhamal, also in Orissa. Although the
murders had taken place in a remote forest, one TV
channel had pictures by the evening bulletin -- not just
of the bodies but of policemen hacking their way through
the forest to them. The local officials said that there
seemed to be no communal angle to the murders, but they
were portrayed in our papers and those abroad as part of
continuing attacks on Christians by militant Hindus. The
incident got redoubled prominence : it became a butt in
the factional war within Congress - -- local Congressmen
found in it the ultimate weapon in their efforts to
replace J. B. Patnaik, the Chief Minister. Soon, the
murderer was arrested - -- he turned out to be from the
same community, and the same religion as the victims. And
the killings seemed to have been triggered by the usual,
not just local but personal jealousies. I would sincerely
request you to scour the back-issues of your papers, and
compare the prominence that was given to news of the
murders originally with the way news of the suspect
having been found, and of his having confessed to the
crime was treated.

The sixth incident was in fact not one but a set of
attacks on Churches in Dangs. Reports in our so-called
"national", that is English papers portrayed the attacks
as the handiwork of militant Hindu organizations
affiliated to the RSS. Reports in the papers of Gujarat
pointed in an entirely different direction. The local
Sarvodaya leaders who have been working in the area for
over forty years put the responsibility at the door of
the missionaries and their aggressive proselytizing
activities. In the English press, an organization styling
itself as the Hindu Jagran Manch was held to have
executed the attacks. The VHP said that the organization
had nothing to do with it. The Indian Express showed that
this organization had been listed in an RSS-brochure as
one of its affiliates. The suspects have all been
arrested.

The seventh incident -- the one that resounded all over
the world like the rape of the four nuns -- was of course
the brutal killing of Staines and his little sons. The
killers are yet to be caught. The principal suspect has
been widely named -- rival organizations have alleged
that he has been affiliated to the opposing organization
: Hindu organizations have alleged that he has been close
to "progressive" politicians of UP, the latter have
alleged that he has been a member of the Bajrang Dal. The
press in India and the world over has portrayed the
killings as part of the same series of assaults on
Christians.

I think five conclusions are in order.

The first five incidents show that it is wholly wrong to
rush to conclusions, in particular one should not build a
pattern out of one or two incidents, and then see or
portray events as being part of that pattern. There was a
meeting of Parliament's Consultative Committee on Home
Affairs a few days ago. The murders of that young girl
and boy in Kandhamal, Orissa, were much in the air. I
happened to inquire of the Home Ministry officials how
many murders take place in India in a year. They
telephoned to get the figure : thirty one thousand
and...., they said. That being the case, we should pause
before we fit the latest murder taking place in some
remote forest into the theory of the moment.

Second, it is evident that in this instance, a pattern
came to be so swiftly constructed and every incident
projected as being part of that pattern, in part because
there is a very well-knit network for disseminating
information as well as miasmas -- in India and the world
over.

Recall how the shortfall in the onion crop came to be
made into a national "crisis". Because of natural factors
there had been a shortfall. Suddenly, story upon story
began appearing : from Nasik -- disastrous losses in the
crop; from Haryana -- ruinous loss....; traders sensed
the opportunity to make a killing, and held back what
they had; the price climbed another notch; consumers
rushed to shops; the evening TV bulletins showed long
queues; prices shot up again.... Elections over, the
stories just disappeared from the front pages of papers,
the cover pages of magazines. How come?

Third, in the present instance of Christians, it became
that much easier for that network to project the
incidents as being part of a general assault because of
the foolish, incendiary statements of a few who presumed
that they were speaking up for Hindus.

Fourth, as a Commission of Inquiry headed by a sitting
judge of the Supreme Court is in place, at least now,
instead of trading allegations, whoever has information
on the Staines' killings -- including journalists who may
have gathered primary evidence -- should furnish it to
the Judge.

Fifth, in regard to the rapes at Jhabua and the attacks
in Dangs, we should all press for action on proposals
which the Prime Minister and Home Minister have urged. In
his Address on so sacred an occasion as Martyrs' Day, the
Prime Minister said that he was for day-to-day trials in
such cases : as suspects in both sets of instances have
already been rounded up, all should join to ensure that
the trials do in fact take place at this pace. The Home
Minister has said that he is for prescribing death-
penalty for rape : Jhabua is an excellent case from which
to commence this change.

But there is a real problem, and if it is neglected -- as
the growth of Bhindranwale was neglected for three
murderous years, as the Babri mosque matter was neglected
for decades -- grave consequences are bound to follow.
That is not a warning, not a dhamki. It is a forecast --
exactly at par with the forecasts which persons like me
had made in regard to Punjab, the capitulation to
fundamentalists on Shah Bano, the shutting of eyes to the
conversions in Meenakshipuram, and, of course, the Babri
mosque. On each of those occasions, our forecast -- that
the capitulation and neglect would stoke a mighty
reaction -- was dismissed as the hallucination of
communalists. In regard to each matter, those forebodings
turned out to be true. I do hope that that will not be
the sequence again.

The problem is this. The singular objective of all
churchmen in India is conversion, or, to use their term,
the harvesting of souls for Jesus. Their documents and
publications show that in their faith everything they do
is, and should be an instrument for attaining this
singular objective. Moreover, because of severe problems
which the Church is facing in places like Europe, church-
groups have made India a special target for the coming
decades. One point is that this sort of activity flies in
the face of our law. The more serious point is that
conversions on the scale they are aiming at, conversions
by means they claim as warranted in what they insist is a
"divinely ordained" task are bound to invite a grim
reaction.

And this is where the "success" of our secularists in
preventing the State from taking corrective action -- on
this matter as on infiltration from Bangladesh, on the
activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups, on reform of
civil law -- is pushing society into taking the law into
its own hands. And in that lies a fatal difference. In
contending with a problem, a State can act, it usually
acts in an orderly manner. Society is too disorganised
for its action to be orderly. Inundated by infiltrators,
people cannot get to the authorities in Bangladesh, they
will get at their neighbour in the adjoining slum.
Incensed by mounting conversions, they cannot get to the
Pope in Rome, or the evangelist headquarters in the USA,
they will leap at the poor convert next door.

I will get to the documents which tell on the matter in a
moment, but first the elemental point to which my friend
Surya Prakash has drawn attention in The Pioneer --
namely, the law on the matter.

Because of the severe tensions which had been caused by
conversion activities of the Church and Islamic
organizations like the Tabligh, several members argued in
the Constituent Assembly that, while guaranteeing the
freedom to profess, practise and propagate one's
religion, the Constitution should explicitly prohibit
conversions brought about by force, fraud or allurement.
Christian members objected. The point got mixed up with
an amendment prohibiting conversions -- of all manner and
kind -- of minors. Eventually, the matter was deferred.
Two observations -- "soporifics" would be the more
appropriate word -- proved vital. Sardar Patel said that,
in any case, anything done by force, fraud or allurement
was illegal, hence in a sense it was not necessary to
incorporate an explicit provision of the kind which was
being proposed. Second, Dr. Ambedkar observed that the
fact that the provision was not being incorporated in the
Constitution did not prevent the legislatures from
enacting laws on the question.

Hence, Article 25(1) provides, "Subject to public order,
morality and health and to the other provisions of this
part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of
conscience and the right to freely profess, practise and
propagate religion."

Two points are evident even without any complicated
analysis. The right is not an absolute one : it is given
"subject to public order, morality and health and to the
other provisions of this part." Therefore, to take one
instance, even if the right to convert is said to follow
from this Article, if the scale of conversions is such,
if the means that are being used to obtain them are such
that they endanger public order, the State has not just
the right but the duty to scotch them. The proviso "and
to other provisions of this part" is even more far-
reaching. For not just that part of the Constitution, the
very Article provides that "Nothing in this Article shall
affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the
State from making any law (a) regulating or restricting
any economic, financial, political or other secular
activity which may be associated with religious practise;
(b) providing for social welfare and reform...." The
receiving of money from abroad for conversions, the overt
and covert political role of churchmen and church bodies
in politics in the Northeastern states, in the Jharkhand
area - -- such activities obviously fall within the scope
of the proviso.

Second, as the Article explicitly states, this is a right
to which "all persons are equally entitled". That means,
for instance, that if one set claims that it has the
right under this Article to convert people, the other set
has an equal right to reconvert them.

Missionaries have been claiming that they have the
fundamental right to carry on their conversion work
because this Article guarantees to each person, not just
the right to "profess and practise" the religion of his
choice, but also the right to "propagate" it. Surya
Prakash has drawn attention to a decisive point in this
regard.

It turns out that this assertion has been conclusively
nailed by the Supreme Court. The sequence is as follows.

Both Orissa and Madhya Pradesh passed Acts -- as Dr.
Ambedkar had envisaged - -- prohibiting conversions by
force, fraud and allurement. The Acts were challenged. In
Yulitha Hyde's case the Cuttack High Court struck down
the Orissa Act. The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld the
Madhya Pradesh Act. The matter came to the Supreme Court.

The judgment -- Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya
Pradesh, AIR 1977 SC 908 - -- was delivered not by some
one judge of the Supreme Court. Not by what is known as a
Division Bench --of two judges. Not even by what is known
as a Full Bench -- of three judges. It was delivered by a
Bench of five judges.

And the judges happened to be ones whom no secularist,
and certainly no Congressman would fault! The bench was
headed by none other than Chief Justice A. N. Ray -- the
very judge to make whom the Chief Justice, Mrs. Indira
Gandhi superseded three distinguished judges, and who was
of such service throughout the Emergency. The second
judge was Justice M. H. Beg --who followed A. N. Ray in
the Chief Justice's chair. The others were Justice R. S.
Sarkaria, Justice P. N. Shingal and Justice Jaswant Singh
-- all persons of impeccable secular credentials. And the
judgment was delivered not at some time when "communal
forces" held sway. It was delivered when Mrs. Gandhi held
the country in her fist -- during the Emergency, in
January, 1977.

After delineating the dictionary meaning of the word
"propagate", and considering the arguments which had been
urged, the Supreme Court held that "what the Article
grants is not the right to convert another person to
one's own religion, but to transmit or spread one's
religion by an exposition of its tenets. It has to
remembered that Article 25(1) guarantees 'freedom of
conscience' to every citizen, not just the followers of
one particular religion, and that, in turn, postulates
that there is no fundamental right to convert another
person to one's own religion because if a person
purposely undertakes the conversion of another person to
his religion, as distinguished from his effort to
transmit or spread the tenets of his religion, that would
impinge on the 'freedom of conscience' guaranteed to all
the citizens of the country alike."

In their unanimous judgment the five judges held that "we
find no justification for the view that it [Article
25(1)] grants a fundamental right to convert persons to
one's own religion. It has to be appreciated that the
freedom of religion enshrined in the Article is not
guaranteed in respect of one religion only, but covers
all religions alike, and it can be properly enjoyed by a
person if he exercises his right in a manner commensurate
with the like freedom of persons following the other
religions. What is freedom to one, is freedom for the
other, in equal measure, and there can, therefore, be no
such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person
to one's own religion."

As will be evident, the judgment of the Supreme Court is
unambiguous, nor has it been altered by any subsequent
pronouncement. Hence, this is the law.

How does the singular, exclusive, over-riding objective
of the missionaries -- to convert all they can to their
religion -- stand in the light of the law?