While Article 25 grants the freedom to practise and profess religion, it doesn’t give the right to practise religious conversions. In the Stainislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh case, while upholding the validity of anti-conversion laws of Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, the Supreme Court said, “Article 25 does not grant the right to convert other people to one’s own religion, but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets.”
This has created room for state governments to make anti-conversion laws that tend to criminalise such acts under sections 295A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code. Such laws are often driven by political interests and come as indirect attacks on the fundamental rights to equality, liberty, and gender justice of those professing minority religions. Colloquial terms such as ‘anti-Love Jihad law’ used to describe the recently promulgated “Freedom of Religion” ordinances in BJP-ruled states expose the actual motivation behind such…