Listen to this article:

On July 31, the Archdiocese of Bombay issued a press note. It records deep concern at the President’s assent to the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, 2026, and it notes what that assent means: Maharashtra is now the 13th state in India with a stringent law policing religious conversion.

Here is what the archdiocese objects to:

Terms like allurement, undue influence and misrepresentation, if left undefined and elastic, can swallow a village school, a clinic, a hostel.

A provision letting a blood relative file a police complaint about an adult’s change of faith without that adult’s knowledge or consent.

Powers permitting police to act on their own initiative before any affected person has complained of anything.

A reversed burden of proof paired with non-bailable offences.

Declaration procedures that expose a couple to public scrutiny for the crime of marrying across a line someone else drew for them.

The archdiocese was scrupulous about one point, and so am I. The Catholic Church has always condemned conversion by force, fraud, coercion or inducement. No person of faith can defend such practices. The objection is not to the stated purpose of these laws. It is to what happens after they are passed.

Whatever spin the government now applies, the pattern........

© The Wire