On Saturday (December 25), veteran Congress chief Ghulam Nabi Azad courted controversy after he tried to trivialise the rising menace of forceful non secular conversion. He made the feedback whereas celebrating Christmas with the Christian group within the Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir.
While chatting with information company ANI, Azad claimed, “People convert after getting influenced, as they see this particular religion is serving humanity, taking everyone along and not discriminating.” He additionally recommended that non secular conversions in India had been being carried out via voluntary consent and never the concern of sword. “If anyone is converting people, he is not using a sword. It is good work and character of individuals which are influencing people,” he additional alleged.
If anybody is changing folks, he’s not utilizing a sword. It is nice work & character of people which affect others to transform. People convert after they see a specific faith serving humanity & not discriminating: Senior Congress chief Ghulam Nabi Azad in J&Ok (25.12) pic.twitter.com/bDRimH4u9H— ANI (@ANI) December 25, 2021
His feedback got here on the backdrop of the latest anti-conversion invoice tabled by the BJP authorities in Karnataka. The Bill says, “No person shall convert or attempt to convert either directly or otherwise any other person from one religion to another by use of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means or by marriage, nor shall any person abet or conspire for conversions.”
Despite the try of the veteran Congress chief to downplay the severity of pressured conversions, info present in any other case. People are lured into non secular conversions via deceit and the latest surge in such incidents is an affidavit to it. In one such latest case, the Etah metropolis police in Uttar Pradesh had arrested a youth named Shoaib Irshad for allegedly trapping a Hindu lady by posing as a Hindu boy and later abducting and forcing her to transform to Islam.
The household of the sufferer had filed a lacking criticism on December 7, primarily based on which the Etah police initiated an investigation and arrested the youth in a kidnapping case and despatched him to jail. The lady was recovered and handed over to her members of the family.
Earlier this month, the Makarpura police in Vadodara in Gujarat had registered an FIR in opposition to Missionaries of Charity (a corporation based by Mother Teresa) on the costs of allegedly hurting Hindu non secular sentiments and luring younger women to transform to Christianity.
The group ran a shelter house in Vadodara metropolis. The case was registered primarily based on the criticism filed by Mayank Trivedi, District Social Defence officer. The group was booked beneath Sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts to outrage emotions of any class by insulting its non secular beliefs), 298 (intentionally uttering phrases to wound the non secular sentiments of an individual) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 3 (prohibition of forcible conversion) of the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003. The punishment for forcible conversion beneath the act is as much as three years with/or a nice of as much as Rs. 50,000.
Similar circumstances have been reported from Uttar Pradesh and Bharuch in Gujarat the place there are allegations of overseas funds having been acquired for aiding non secular conversion and in addition distributing cash to those that embrace different religion.