No place for Conversion in India

On 21 January 2011, upholding life penalty for Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembram in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons on the night of Jan. 22nd/23rd 1999, the Supreme Court declared there was no justification for religious conversion in a “secular” nation as it amounted to interference in the religious beliefs of others through force, allurement or false premise that one religion is better than the other. The court released the remaining 11 accused of the charge of conspiracy mooted by the CBI. In a boost to the Hindu community, beleaguered by foreign-funded evangelists and human rights hounds, a Bench comprising Mr Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan noted that “conversion” violated the constitutional spirit of non-discrimination on grounds of religion and the co-existence of religions on the basis of “equal respect for all religions”. It is pertinent that though the burning alive of Staines and his two sons is spectacular and gruesome, the judges refused to classify it as “rarest of rare” cases, and observed, “…The intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.” The judgment thus upheld that there was a powerful non-personal motive behind the murder of the Staines, and hence there was no convincing case for awarding the death penalty to Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembram. Then, following an orchestrated campaign of outrage by church organisations and Christian activists, as early as 25 Jan. itself, without notice to other parties in the dispute, the Supreme Court judges deleted critical paragraphs in their judgment, namely, - “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other”