Once upon a time when the redoubtable Dilip Singh Judev ruled over the postage sized former principality, Jashpur, of his cousins in what is now Chhattisgarh, and no one had heard of gau rakshaks, there was a little drama in the sal tree-covered hills of that region. 
Judev was a tall hulk of a man who often dressed in semi-military dresses and was  given to grand gestures. His most famous gesture was to accept a bundle of high value currency notes from a bribe-giver in what he thought was a private meeting. Unknown to him, someone had a secret camera which caught in pitiless detail the semi-drunk politician plays with the bundles of currency and exult in Hindi, “Money is not god, but by god, it is not less than god”. 

It sounds more impressive and lyrical in the Hindi original. It was to be one of several embarrassments his party, the Bharatiya Janata party, had to suffer. It was just a little less than the shame the party faced when its president, Bangaru Lakshman, was caught accepting another bundle of currency notes. But this is not about corruption in the BJP, of which there are all too many stories to tell.

One of Judev’s politically most daring moves was to say he would convert to Hinduism every Adivasi tribal in his area who had accepted Christianity as his or her religion. The Adivasis were never Hindus, and followed myriad modes of nature worship, each subgroup expressing its piety in its own way.

Judev’s exercise was impressive. He collected villagers he said were Christians. His men, armed with bows and arrows, and guns, both legal and made in small workshops in Uttar Pradesh, stood in a circle on the hillside around them, menacing and threatening, as they pointed their weapons at the small bunch of men and women in the centre. 

Judev organised a purification ceremony for the group, and then initiated them into the Hindu faith with the help of some local priests. The secret camera captured it all.  This writer came to know of it when the cameraman confided the secret. Judev had thought that the strapping young man to be a fellow Hindu. And given him full access to the ceremony which was out of bounds to all others.

The point of what the camera captured was not the hapless small group of people “purified”, and “converted” by Judev. It was his private army that had guarded the entire ceremony and that had, initially, brought the targeted men to the spot. 

Forcible conversions can be carried out by the dominant and the powerful, aided and abetted by those who can enforce their will by a show of force on weaker and lesser human beings. The weak have no agency.

Mr Judev was not arrested by the state government nor was any case filed against him for conversion by force and fraud under the Freedom of Religion law which was even then prevalent in the state. The cameraman was never summoned by a court to give evidence that he was witness to an act of mass conversion by force. Recent laws, in fact, make conversions to Christianity and Islam by force as a crime, but any conversion to Hinduism is not a crime.

In Uttar Pradesh in recent times, and in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Christian clergymen and even common people have been arrested on charges of forcible conversion. Those arrested number in their hundreds, many forced to stay in jail for weeks before lawyers finally get them released on bail through the district or high courts. Each case has been meticulously documented by Persecution Relief, the Evangelical Fellowship of India, or the Alliance Defending Freedom which seeks to bring legal aid to the victims. 

In most, if not all, cases, the Christians were at prayer in a designated church, a prayer hall, or just a large hut at the edge of a grove when the mob came in and surrounded them. The mob was almost always accompanied by a posse of policemen. And in many cases, by a group of local news and social media persons. The news was always of missionaries arrested for ‘forcibly and fraudulently converting innocent Hindus.’

In a perverse way, the hypocrisy has finally been seen in the bright glare of sunlight, and the hearings in the Supreme Court in a slew of writs filed by a BJP-RSS acolyte and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhaya who wants the Supreme Court to order the Law Commission of India to bring about a national-wide law which will put an end to conversions of Hindus to Christianity, and by association, to Islam.

The suit has invited a spate of writs by Christian and other groups seeking to intervene in the matter and present their side of the picture. One point is to show that Mr Upadhaya is a habitual presenter of writs and has in fact filed similar writs in the Supreme Court and various high courts. Other points are more serious. They include how any law that curbs freedom of religion of a citizen in effect violates the secular nature of the Indian state as shaped by its Constitution, which in turn is the product of its long freedom struggle to bring justice to all people irrespective of their identity, caste and class.

As it is, many laws severely restrict the freedom of religion of a person, especially if or she happens to be a Dalit. Article 371 (iii) for instance demands that a person be a Hindu if he wants to seek the protection of the law against untouchability, or for  being eligible for scholarships, jobs and even seats in Parliament and state legislatures. Conversion to Islam or Christianity can make an employee lose his job. This law has also been challenged in the Supreme court. The government has also appointed a committee under former Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan to examine if caste prejudices and infirmities carry over if one converts from Hinduism to some other religion. Earlier, Ranganath Misra Commission, in its report, had sated that caste indeed crosses the barriers of religion.

[Though these are cases of freedom of religious choices as an integral part of freedom of life and freedom of privacy, it is in no way linked with another case of freedom of choice and privacy before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court which relates to a demand that the LGBTQO community be allowed to marry under the Special Marriages Act.]

The court has not taken kindly to the BJP lawyer’s habit of filing writs of this nature. The Bench has, however, issued notices to state governments to tell it how many cases of forcible or fraudulent conversions (to Christianity) they have documented and therefore acted upon complaints.

Most state governments have sought more time to file their submissions. But Christian lawyers say there is no case in any state where a man or woman has been converted to Christianity under duress. This is an oxymoron and is impossible in the Indian situation where Hinduism is an overwhelming majority religion in most States in the country.

The Tamil Nadu government, now ruled by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam,  is the first and so far only one to file a detailed affidavit in the Supreme Court recording that the state has not come across any case of forcible or fraudulent conversion. The state government has also painstakingly documented the various writs filed by the BJP lawyer to expose his motives.

The state has sought dismissal of Mr Upadhyay’s PIL as the BJP leader has attempted to convert the court proceeding into a political fight.

The state also traces the history of anti-conversion laws in the country. It admits that Tamil Nadu had once enacted such a law, but had withdrawn it under public protest. In 2002, the state, then ruled by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Dr J Jayalalitha, had passed the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Act but it was repealed in 2006 “due to popular opposition”. 

The state said that there is “nothing illegal” about missionaries – it uses this term -- spreading Christianity unless they employ unlawful means to do so, as the Constitution of India gives people a right to “spread their religion peacefully” and “change their beliefs”.

Tamil Nadu says citizens should be allowed freely to choose their religion and it would not be appropriate for the government to put a spoke in the wheel of their personal belief and privacy.

The government was emphatic that no incident of forceful conversion has been reported in its territory. 

“The Anti-conversion laws are prone to misuse against minorities and there is no data on convictions under the various anti-conversion laws of the states. It is most respectfully submitted that the citizens are at liberty to choose the religion they want to follow,”  the Tamil Nadu affidavit said. Mr Upadhyay, it said, was trying to target Christian missionaries by filing a “religiously motivated petition”.

“Article 25 of the Constitution of India guarantees every citizen the right to propagate his religion. Therefore, the acts of missionaries spreading Christianity by itself cannot be seen as something against law. But if their act of spreading their religion is against public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of Part III of the Constitution (relating to fundamental rights), it has to be viewed seriously. As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, there has been no incidents of forceful conversion reported in the past many years,” the state affidavit said.

It is no one’s point that the Constitution gives anyone a fundamental right to force another man or woman to one’s own religion. “But it gives a right to any person to propagate his religion. Likewise, the Constitution does not prevent any person from getting converted to the religion of his choice. The citizens of the country should be allowed freely to choose their religion and it would not be appropriate for the Government to put a spoke in their wheel of personal belief and privacy,”  the affidavit says.

Tamil Nadu cites Articles 21 and 25 that “every citizen has the opportunity to practice and spread his religion peacefully.” The right to have faith in a particular religion is an inviolable right that the state is obligated to protect.

“Without intimidation, threatening, deception, luring through gifts and without using any superstitious methods, any person has the right to propagate and preach his belief system to other persons.” The task of the state is to maintain a balance between the right to propagate religion and public order.

Tamil Nadu has also denied Upadhyay’s allegations that a minor girl committed suicide when forced to convert by the Christian institution where she was studying. “The Central Bureau of Investigation is still investigating the cause of death of Lavanya and as per the investigation done by the state police, there is no concrete proof or clinching evidence to say that she committed suicide because of compulsion to convert to Christianity,” it said.