DISSERTATION – ARTICLE – PUBLICATION
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ANTI-CONVERSION LAWS IN INDIA AND THEIR INTERPLAY WITH THE CONTEMPORARY HUMAN RIGHTS REGIME
AUTHOR – SUSAI ROSHAN A, LLM STUDENT AT AMITY INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED LEGAL STUDIES, AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH
UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF
DR. SETU GUPTA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR II, AMITY INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED LEGAL STUDIES, AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH
BEST CITATION – SUSAI ROSHAN A, A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ANTI-CONVERSION LAWS IN INDIA AND THEIR INTERPLAY WITH THE CONTEMPORARY HUMAN RIGHTS REGIME, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 4 (1) OF 2024, PG. 849-897, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
ABSTRACT
People all over the world has their own opinion and conscientious believes. The history of religion is the oldest history in this entire world, even in tribes who have not yet developed have their own way of worship and their own God. There are lot of religions in this planet, it is diversified which seems to be staggering. When people think commonly about origin of religion, people think the name of some central figures of their religion and the credit goes to them. Some of those central figures were Kings, Reformers and Moralistic Philosophers. And every religion in the world when it is observed keenly, the way of worship and understandings defers time to time, so, different era had different directions of worship within the same religion.
Within the same religion people classified into many sects and people have different ideas and understandings about their own religion. During 19th century because of all those scientific innovations people and different disciplines of research, many people began to believe that there is no existence of God.
In almost every religion, the priest would profess or teach the knowledge of faith to the devotees as well as to other people who might be having different faith. The thousands of years old Tamil literatures, for example epic literature like ‘Mani Megalai’ depicts religious conversion of the main character. Another example is epic literature named ‘Soolamani’ which was written about 2,500 years ago by Tholamozhi Dhevar, which was written to teach about a particular new religious faith named ‘samanam’ to every people whoever followed (1) ‘Saivam’ (Lord Siva Worshipers) and (2) ‘Vainavam’ (Lord Vishnu Worshipers) religions these two combines a major part of Hinduism, and other parts of Hinduism was classified by Adhi Shankarar during 8th Century C.E. that includes (3) ‘Koumaram’ (Worshipers of Lord Murugan), (4) ‘Ganapathiyam’ (Worshipers of Lord Ganapathy, (5) ‘Souram’ (Sooriya Namashkaram) (Worshipers of Sun) and (6) ‘Saktham’ (Worshipers of Shakti deity).
When these religions were already in existence ‘Soolamani’ an epic literature was written before 2,500 circa years ago to teach another new religious faith, shows propagation of religion existed in olden Bharath. During modern 1st century C.E. it became an essential religious practice of disciples of Jesus Christ to teach the principles taught by him, during that time there was no religion named Christianity existed. And later many religions or religious sects started to convert people to their religion forcefully, which makes no sense at all. This forceful conversion infringes human rights of people. Since, this forceful conversion problem is in our Modern India which is a democratic nation, this has to be curtailed, hence we require good ‘Freedom of Religion Laws’ which does not violate any rights of any sect and also to protect the right of all against forceful conversion.
This present research would bring up those laws to prevent forceful conversions and would analyse whether it protects the fundamental and human rights of all citizens with equal preference.
Keywords: Religion, Proselytization, Anti-Conversion Laws, Freedom of Religion.