Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: May 20, 2006
URL: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1539521.cms
The Vatican's stand that the fundamental right
to practice and propagate religion includes the right to convert was an issue
considered and rejected by the Supreme Court.
In a 1977 judgement in the Rev Stanislaus
versus the State of Madhya Pradesh, the court had upheld the constitutional
validity of conversion-prohibiting laws enacted by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.
The two states, which were then controlled
by the Congress, had passed anti-conversion laws in 1967 and 1968, respectively.
"What the Constitution grants is not the right to convert another person
to one's own religion, but to transmit or spread one's religion by an exposition
of its tenets," the court had ruled.
According to the SC, organised conversion,
whether by force or fraud or by providing help or allurement to persons, taking
undue advantage of their poverty and ignorance, is anti- secular.
