Necessary Safeguard

For a state that prides itself on both pluralism and pragmatism, Maharashtra’s passage of the Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026 is less a rupture than a correction. By targeting conversions secured through coercion, fraud, inducement or the pretext of marriage, the law seeks not to police belief, but to protect consent. And in doing so, it shores up a constitutional principle too often invoked in abstraction and too rarely defended in practice.

Predictably, critics have been quick to cry foul. A familiar cohort of purportedly ‘left-liberal’ voices, particularly within the opposition Congress ecosystem, have framed the bill as an assault on individual liberty, a creeping majoritarian intrusion into private faith. Such objections, while theatrically indignant, are intellectually thin. They conflate the freedom to believe with the licence to manipulate, and mistake regulatory scrutiny for ideological repression.

Article 25 of India’s Constitution guarantees the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion. It does not, however, sanctify deceit. Nor does it extend to conversions secured through intimidation, misrepresentation or material inducement. The Supreme Court has affirmed as much over decades. To insist otherwise is to stretch liberalism into caricature that privileges abstract rights over lived vulnerabilities.

Testimonies of women drawn into relationships under false pretences, only to face coercion or abandonment, have accumulated quietly over the years. So too have accounts of conversions facilitated through financial enticements or social pressure, particularly among marginalised communities. Left unaddressed, such practices corrode both social trust and the legitimacy of genuine religious choice. A law that seeks to deter them is not draconian but long overdue.

The bill’s provisions are undeniably stringent. Prison terms of up to seven years for unlawful conversions, steeper penalties for offences involving minors or vulnerable groups, and harsher consequences for repeat offenders signal a clear legislative intent.

Much of the controversy has centred on the requirement of prior notice to authorities before a conversion. Opponents have seized upon this as evidence of bureaucratic overreach. In a society as complex and stratified as India’s, such procedural safeguards are hardly unreasonable.

The alternative is far more troubling. Without legal oversight, the line between voluntary conversion and exploitative practice blurs dangerously. The absence of deterrent penalties emboldens bad actors, turning faith into a transactional instrument and eroding the moral authority of religious institutions themselves.

None of this is to suggest that the law is beyond scrutiny. Its implementation will demand vigilance. Safeguards must not become tools of harassment and procedural requirements must not degenerate into administrative arbitrariness.  The burden lies with the state to ensure that enforcement is even-handed, proportionate and insulated from partisan misuse.

But to oppose the bill in principle is to ignore the realities it seeks to address. Freedom of religion, like all freedoms, is meaningful only when exercised without fear, fraud or coercion. In a polity often paralysed by timidity, that alone makes it a step worth taking.