It's been a month and nearly 35 arrests have been made since the Uttar Pradesh government has passed an Ordinance on Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance 2020 was notified on November 27, amidst the heated media debate that had erupted on "Love Jihad", (a conspiracy theory alleging that Muslim men target women belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by seducing them into marriage). This became a talking point after a graphic video showing a young Muslim man gunning down a 21-year-old Hindu woman in broad daylight outside her college campus went viral and her family echoed the Love Jihad theory as the motivation behind the man's reason to marry her, and upon their refusal, to kill her.
What is the Ordinance? The Ordinance prohibits an individual from converting the religion of another by the means of misrepresentation, allurement, coercion, undue influence, any fraudulent means or marriage. Allurement includes provision or promise of material benefits, education, employment, etc. Coercion entails the use of force or the threat of force. Undue influence is a rather broad category which includes everything that indicates that an individual has influence over another.
The Ordinance requires that the individual wishing to convert to another religion must submit his declaration to the District Magistrate (DM) or Additional District Magistrate (ADM), appointed by the DM sixty days prior to the conversion. The DM or ADM will then conduct an enquiry about the causes of the conversion and if they find the motive of the conversion to be any among those mentioned above, then they may declare the conversion to be illegal and void. If the individual proceeds with the conversion despite this, then they are to be imprisoned for at least a period of six months and the religious convertor (the priest carrying out the conversion) would be imprisoned for at least one year.
The penalties imposed upon the individual apparently unlawfully influencing the individual to convert range from one year to ten years of imprisonment and fines from fifteen thousand rupees to fifty thousand rupees or more. The penalties are harsher if the one being converted is a minor, a woman or an individual belonging to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. The Ordinance further states that if any institutions or organizations are carrying out such unlawful conversions, then any financial aid or grant provided to them by the State government can be permanently stopped and their registration under any competent authority would be cancelled.
Why is it problematic? No competent authority has confirmed the existence of an organized conversion being carried out by individuals belonging to the Islamic religion in India through the means of "Love Jihad". Although a few cases have been identified involving a common mentor, but any such large-scale conversion stands as merely a conspiracy theory.
The Ordinance and the ambiguities in it give new teeth to the police and the State to trouble individuals having an inter-faith marriage. It also gives the regressive families and communities new weapons to restrict inter-religious marriages as the Ordinance gives anybody from the family or the community of the "victim" of the conversion to lodge an FIR regarding the same. It is an attack on the personal liberty and freedom of religion of an individual, as guaranteed by the Articles 21 & 25-28 in the Indian Constitution, as it brings an extremely intimate affair of an individual under the investigative purview of the State.
Not only has this law strengthened the regressive mentality of the Indian society which does not approve of inter-faith marriages, but has also set a precedent for other State governments to follow on the same lines - Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Karnataka being the ones currently mulling over the same.
Such an Ordinance, in my opinion, is likely to inhibit inter-faith marriages and coerce couples genuinely seeking to be together, irrespective of their faith, to face greater hurdles and obstacles from the State and the society.
On 2nd December, the first arrest under this case was made where a Muslim man was arrested on his former partner's father's complaint. The girl's father accused the man, Owais Ahmed, of "coercing, coaxing and alluring" her daughter into converting to Islam. "Despite repeated disapprovals by me and my family, he (the Muslim man) is not listening and is applying pressure on me and my family through abuses and death threats to fulfil his desire," father had said in his complaint. The case was filed at the Deorania police station in Bareilly and the man had been kept in judicial custody for 14 days.
The woman and Ahmed had known each other since class 12 and the woman got married in June, after which Ahmed claimed to have "no link with the woman". The woman's family had filed a kidnapping case against the accused a year ago but the case was closed after she was found and denied the charge.
In another instance that took place in Moradabad, Pinky (22) suffered a miscarriage due to a complaint filed by her mother. She had married Rashid in July 2020, in a court in Dehradun. They went to get their marriage officially registered in UP but were stopped by Bajrang Dal, who reported them to the police after hurling curses and abuse at the woman saying it is their "duty to protect their Hindu sisters from such boys", and when the police refused to take a complaint because they understood the marriage to be legitimate and done out of free will, the Bajrang Dal men got the woman's mother from Bijnor and asked her to file a complaint, which she did.
The police then took Rashid into judicial custody and sent Pinky to Nari Niketan. There she was made to lift heavy articles and do laborious tasks, despite her telling the authorities that she was three months pregnant. She began bleeding from her vagina and was admitted to a hospital on December 11. There the doctors confirmed the presence of the foetus' body but could not detect its heartbeat. Pinky was left with a miscarriage, complex uterine problems and a regret for having returned to UP.
There are many voices coming up against the Love Jihad Ordinance. Former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur feels that the Ordinance puts freedom of choice to choose a life partner on the backseat. Moreover, at this point we can't say that its bad or a good law which needs to be followed by other states too. Though, we are waiting for some good and positive approach towards the society through this Ordinance.
