Senior Advocate and former Orissa High Court Chief Justice Dr S Muralidhar recently termed the anti-conversion laws across the country as "anti-choice" law..While speaking at the ADF India panel discussion on anti-conversion laws held on February 28, he underlined the inherent flaw in such legislation that presumes that any religious conversion is a result of "some kind of intimidation"..Muralidhar highlighted that the laws also shift the burden of proof not on the person who converted, but on whom the charge is levelled against."These anti-conversion laws are not so much a law against forced conversions, but are laws against the freedom of choice. There is a presumption in all these laws that if a person belonging or born into a certain religion decides to embrace another religion, then such a decision must be due to some kind of intimidation. This basic presumption explains why the law shifts the burden of proof onto the person who's charged with converting another against the person's will......So clearly the law is meant to to target any choice, not just a conversion which is made out of volition by a person who says 'I find these values of this religion more appealing to me' and so the target is also the Dalits," he said..Elaborating on how the procedural hurdles created by the law ultimately lead to minorities being targeted and subject to public humiliation, Muralidhar said, "Now, a Dalit seeking to embrace Buddhism will now have to explain to a district magistrate why they are making that choice. They'll have to first of all announce to the whole world: 'listen I'm exercising my choice to embrace a particular religion'. One can reasonably argue that after the Puttaswamy privacy judgement, this kind of a law should not withstand legal scrutiny because it straight away hits at the freedom of choice, freedom of privacy, choice of religion, of course but what goes along with religion......the choice of dress, the choice of food, the choice of prayer, all of that is hit, so personal choice has become a public choice and is forced to become a public choice and you're supposed to defend yourself publicly for the personal choice that you've made and that is what I think is the most pernicious aspect of these conversion laws.".The former judge stated that the problem also lies in the aspect of who can file a complaint under the acts."Who can complain about forced conversion is only a person who's been a victim of a forced conversion. But the law allows anyone...any cousin, any relative...and thus vigilante groups are actually going around looking at notice boards and collector's offices or registrar offices to find who's put up a notice that they want to have an inter-faith marriage and in this case they'll also have ready information on who wants to convert and thus subject the person to public intimidation," said Muralidhar. .He went on to wonder out loud whether we will change as a society even if these laws are are declared unconstitutional."That's the question we have to ask ourselves. All these social practices that this country is host to seem to be impervious...to the constitutional values and provisions of the Constitution. The victory will come when we change, transform ourselves as a society and overcome our innate inherent prejudices and emancipate ourselves as true human beings," said Muralidhar.
