Centre for Contemporary Issues
Shimla apples are world-famous. They are grown in the north Indian hill state of Himachal Pradesh whose capital, Shimla, also was the summer capital of British India. The famous red delicious apples, though, owe their fame to Samuel Evans Stokes, who brought the special apple strains from the United States.
Stokes, inspired by an American missionary’s work among leprosy patients in the Shimla hills, decided to fight poverty by transforming the economy of the region by helping create hundreds of apple orchards in the 1920s.
As apple orchards bloomed and the economy boomed Stokes married a local girl, became the only American to fight alongside Mahatma Gandhi in India’s freedom struggle and converted to Hinduism.
Stokes made his decision to become Hindu freely, of his own will. Of course, in India, it’s never been unpopular to convert to Hinduism. Now it seems India is testing whether it can tolerate less popular, yet equally freely chosen, conversions away from Hinduism.
A two-judge bench in Himachal Pradesh believes it must. On Aug. 30 it struck down provisions of the state’s 2006 Freedom of Religion Act that required a 30-day notice period for those who intended to convert from one religion to another. To the Evangelical Fellowship of India, which brought the lawsuit, and other minority religion leaders closely monitoring the ramifications of the judges’ order, the concept of free will — choice, and the freedom to choose — will be the most important legal principle to emerge from the ruling.
The judges basically noted that red flags would go up if conversion was the result of force, fraud or inducement, and if it threatened the secular fabric of India.
H.T. Sangliana, vice chairman of India’s National Commission for Minorities, said this development could have “some cascading effect across the country.”
India’s constitution, adopted in 1950, was drafted by B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit who later converted to Buddhism. The charter provides guarantees and protections including freedom of religion and its propagation.
Just six years later the government formed a commission whose first job was to investigate Christian missions activities, but its report also recommended statutory restrictions against conversion.
If widely adopted, some of the commission’s recommendations would leave Christians occupying the slimmest of legal territory within India. One example: “[R]ules relating to registration of doctors, nurses and other personnel employed in hospitals should be suitably amended to provide a condition against evangelistic activities during professional service.”
In other words: Mother Teresa is welcome, a silent servant whose actions spoke louder than any preacher’s words. Anyone who wants to actually speak up about Jesus would have much less room to maneuver. This narrow lifeline in the law, upheld and confirmed by the Himachal Pradesh court last month, is what anyone who is not Hindu must rely upon for protection.
Shimla high court judges have gone beyond the usual fusillade of anti-Christian charges against Hindutva ideologues. Political leaders of so-called secular parties such as the Congress Party have been equally responsible in fanning the anti-conversion flame over the years.
“All those involved in the work of the gospel must bear in mind the sensitivity of the situation when sharing their message,” Sangliana said. “Free will is the key, not force or inducement.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Steven David was selected by the U.S. State Department for its 2005 International Leadership Program, in which he lectured on contemporary issues across the United States. He was a political journalist in India for more than 20 years.
(CDN)
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