Even Belief Now Needs Prior Notice In India – OpEd |
(UCA News) — Good Friday is, at its core, a story about state power deciding it has the right to supervise faith.
A Roman governor, satisfied that a man’s beliefs posed a threat to public order, acted without waiting for harm to occur. He did not need a victim. He needed suspicion, a procedural framework, and officials willing to use it.
That story is 2,000 years old. Some version of it, it turns out, is still being written.
Within the same week this March, two BJP-governed Indian states passed laws that together reveal something more than coincidence.
Maharashtra’s Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam (Freedom of Religion Act) cleared both houses on March 16. Chhattisgarh’s Freedom of Religion Bill followed three days later. Both claim the same modest, defensible goal: stopping forced or fraudulent religious conversion.
Nobody seriously disputes that goal. What deserves scrutiny is the machinery built in its name.
Maharashtra’s most striking innovation is what lawyers call suo motu cognisance. A police officer who is merely “satisfied” that a conversion is taking place or is about to take place can investigate, summon, and act — no complaint required, no victim necessary, no relative filing a grievance.
Add to this the mandatory 60-day prior notice that anyone intending to convert must submit to the district magistrate, during which objections can be filed, and enquiries quietly initiated, and the picture becomes complete. Your intention to change your faith is the state’s business before it is even yours.
Chhattisgarh arrives at the same destination by a different road. It replaces a 1968 law with penalties........