Maharashtra’s new anti-conversion law raises a question considerably larger than whether the State should prevent people from being coerced into changing their religion. No democratic society should permit conversion through force, fraud or intimidation. The more difficult question is what happens when legislation designed to prevent such abuse begins to make legitimate religious activity itself appear legally hazardous. The most revealing sign is not a prosecution but a precaution.

Some churches around Mumbai have begun asking worshippers to sign declarations that they attended voluntarily and were neither forced nor induced to come. Such declarations have no official legal standing. Yet their emergence tells us something important about the atmosphere created by the new law: religious institutions are beginning to prepare evidence of innocence before an accusation has even been made. That is not a trivial administrative adjustment. It represents a shift in the relationship between the citizen and the State. Prayer is ordinarily a private exercise of conscience.

A voluntary gathering for worship should not require participants to establish, on paper, that they exercised........

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