Judiciary seems to be loading the dice in favour of crypto conversions

Is the Indian judiciary inadvertently supporting crypto-Christianity, where a convert to Christianity remains Hindu on paper in order to benefit from the various affirmative action programmes of the government?

A recent judgment of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, comprising Justices Mukulika Jawalkar and Nandesh Deshpande, ruled that the mere presence of a Jesus statue or the symbol of the cross at someone’s home cannot be seen as proof of conversion to Christianity.

In a sense this is true, since Hindus often have no objection to venerating the sacred symbols of other religions. But if the burden of proof of conversion to Christianity is going to be set higher, it implies that the authorities need to be more intrusive in their investigations. Since this is not possible in every instance of suspected conversion, crypto Christians can get a free ride and the best of both worlds: the benefits offered by their new faith, and the compensations offered by the faith they claim to have been oppressed by.

On the one hand, they are free to abuse Hinduism for the caste system, on the other they can claim to be victims of the caste system and benefit from reservations in jobs and educational institutions by claiming to be Hindus on paper.

The High Court bench said more proof is required on conversion, including baptism records or certificates indicating the same. Quite apart from the point that not all Christian denominations require a believer to undergo baptism (the quakers and the Salvation Army have no such requirement), which church is going to cooperate with the caste issuing authority by disclosing who has been baptised and who has not?

In the case that came up before the Bombay High Court, an Akola-based student challenged the rejection of his scheduled caste certificate by the Akola Caste Scrutiny Committee, which noted that the student’s forefathers had converted to Christianity. The student argued that no formal conversion happened and he remained a Hindu.

In an earlier judgment in a Tamil Nadu case, the Madras High Court went as far as to suggest that even someone’s involvement in everyday Christian activities and practices cannot be deemed to be conversion to Christianity.

A member of the Hindu Pallan community, P Muneeswari, lost her Scheduled Caste (SC) certificate after she married a Christian. Once married, she agreed to raise her children as Christian, attended church and prominently displayed the cross in her clinic.

According to a Times of India report on the Madras High Court judgment, delivered by a two-judge bench comprising Justices Sanjib Banerjee and M Duraiswamy, the bench said: “There is no suggestion in the affidavit (filed by the district authorities who cancelled her SC certificate) that she has abandoned her faith or that she has embraced Christianity. It is equally possible that she, as a part of a family, may accompany her husband and children for Sunday matins, but the mere fact that a person goes to church does not mean that such person has altogether abandoned the original faith to which such person was born.”

Did anyone actually check if she had retained her Hindu practices despite going to church? We don’t know this, for this implies more intrusive investigations of a person’s personal life. No state can delve so deep into the private aspects of so many people’s lives

In another case, the Supreme Court quashed multiple FIRs filed against a missionary organisation based on a citizen’s claims of conversion through inducements in Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur district (UP has an anti-conversion law). The court raised precisely this issue of privacy. The bench, comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, indicated that the law’s “statutory requirement of making public the personal details of each person who has converted to a different religion may require a deeper examination to ascertain if such a requirement fits well with the privacy regime pervading the constitution....”. (Quoted from an SCC Online blog by Sucheta)

The judgments of various high courts and the Supreme Court’s observations in the UP case effectively facilitate conversions. While the two high court judgments raise the burden of proof for the authorities to prove that someone has converted, the Supreme Court, by seeking to view intrusive investigations into conversions as an assault on privacy, is effectively saying that the state must not probe a person’s faith too deeply since articles 25-30 promise freedom of conscience.

The law seems to be tilting against Hindu interests.