The Supreme Court judgment last week quashing five first information reports against a set of people for alleged mass conversions under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, comes as a welcome relief. The right-minded people in the country who fear for the survival of several values, including secularism, that guide its governance have reason to feel comforted as the ruling has sought to address several issues worrying them.
While quashing the FIRs against several persons including Rajendra Bihari Lal, vice-chancellor of Uttar Pradesh’s Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS), the court observed that “criminal law cannot be a tool to harass innocent citizens” and even questioned the constitutionality of several sections of the law. It issued a stern warning against the misuse of the law, saying “the criminal law cannot be allowed to be made a tool of harassment of innocent persons, allowing prosecuting agencies to initiate prosecution at their whims and fancy on the basis of completely incredulous material”. The court has also brought to the attention of the country how legal processes can, after all, be abused by vested interests when it pointed out that the FIRs were vitiated by procedural lapses, lack of credible material and legal infirmities. Prosecuting people with such documents will amount to a travesty of justice, it has said.
The court’s order and the accompanying comments point to a pattern where laws are being brought to undermine the Constitution and the principles it espouses, misused to take on people who are on the wrong side of the establishment, and finally cited to invoke the legal processes in order to harass them. This is a disquieting phenomenon and the Supreme Court has rightly intervened to stop it.
It is no secret that the Hindu conservatives in India have serious differences of opinion with the values enshrined in the Constitution of India, every article of which has been passed by the Constituent Assembly after exhaustive debates. Their objections start with Article 1 which defines “India that is Bharat” as a “union of states” as it sets the tone for the nation-building process based on diversity and other democratic ideals. Right from day one, there have been concerted efforts to undermine the Constitution through devious means, and several of them have taken the legislative route.
Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees the fundamental right to freedom of religion, ensuring that all individuals have the freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate their religion. This right is fundamental to all modern democracies as it respects citizen as the foundational block of the country and ensures that nothing comes in their way as a thinking individual. However, religious bigots do not like it one bit and would by legal or other means try to make life hell for those that do not subscribe to their murky views. They have even won in some countries, which have dropped secularism as a value to follow and made themselves into monotheistic fiefdoms. India has till now resisted it, successfully, on the strength of the Constitution, the institutions that are built on it and the people who swear by it. The Supreme Court’s judgment will strengthen their resolve to run the country as the Constitution-makers wanted it to be.
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