India's Majority Will Turn Into a Minority if Conversions in Congregations Continue: Allahabad HC

New Delhi: While hearing the bail application of a man accused of dubiously converting someone to Christianity at a religious congregation, the Allahabad high court said that if such congregations were allowed to continue, “the majority population of this country would be in minority one day”.

Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal added that congregations where conversions were taking place ought to be “immediately stopped” and that Article 25 of the constitution “does not provide for religious conversion”.

In his order dated Monday (July 1), Justice Agarwal cited the prosecution's account of the case as alleging that Kailash, the bail applicant, told an informant her mentally ill brother would be treated and then brought back to his village within a week.

Kailash is said to have taken the man from Uttar Pradesh's Hamirpur district to Delhi so he could attend a “social gathering and ceremony for … well-being”.

But the man did not return a week later, Justice Agarwal cited the prosecution as saying.

The FIR in the case also alleges that many people from the said village attended the gathering and were converted to Christianity, and witnesses in the case were recalled as having said that Kailash was being paid for transporting people for conversion.

Counsel for Kailash, against whom the police invoked an abduction charge and provisions of Uttar Pradesh's anti-unlawful conversion law, said that while the informant's brother attended a Christian gathering, he was not converted to Christianity.

However, Justice Agarwal said that statements recorded by the investigating officer “clearly reveals, at this stage, that … Kailash had been taking away people to attend the religious congregation in New Delhi, where they are being converted into Christianity [sic]”.

He also said that while Article 25 provides for the freedom of conscience and the free profession, practice and propagation of religion, it did not provide for conversion.

Justice Agarwal added that it had come to the high court's notice that Dalits, Adivasis and poor people throughout Uttar Pradesh were being “unlawfully” converted to Christianity at a “rampant pace”. He concluded that Kailash was, on the face of it, ineligible for bail.

The state's Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act makes it illegal to convert someone by way of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or “any other fraudulent means”.

Today (July 3), Justice Agarwal was to hear a plea challenging a 2022 order by the Varanasi district judge declining to direct the Archaeological Survey of India to survey the wuzukhana area inside the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, LiveLaw had reported.

Earlier this year, the Survey claimed that a “large Hindu temple” existed at the site prior to the mosque's construction, and a district judge allowed Hindus to conduct puja inside the mosque's cellar.

Hindu plaintiffs in the case seek religious rights within the mosque as well as its ultimate possession from Muslims.

Other notable cases Justice Agarwal heard include one from earlier this year, where he said it was ‘painful’ that temples and trusts had to move the courts to have their dues released by the state government.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.