Bill of bias

The Vasundhara Raje government has pushed through a Bill to prevent religious conversions, with the Assembly elections in mind.

in Jaipur

WALTER MASIH, a Christian preacher in Jaipur, is a worried man. Only last year, on April 29, he was beaten up by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists in broad daylight, in front of television cameras. A shocked nation watched the repeated broadcast of Masihs beating. Predictably, public outrage spread across the country over the incident. Mounting criticism of the attack forced the State police to register cases against more than 20 people including 14 VHP activists. The cases were registered at the Sodala police station and the accused were booked under as many as eight sections of the Indian Penal Code. But now the charges against them have been dropped.

In August, the police, through the District Collector, had sent a request to the State government seeking sanction to charge-sheet the accused under Section 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs; punishment for this extends to three years or fine or both), Section 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc. and doing acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony) and Section 505 (statements conducting to public mischief) as these were sections requiring government sanction under Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

But the government declined, in its order of December, to give permission to prosecute the accused under these sections. However, Masihs lawyer Ajay Kumar Jain did not hear about the order until recently. They never inform us about such developments, he said. The Sodala police, upon receiving the order, proceeded to drop the sections concerned from its charge-sheet. This happened because the persons involved are VHP people, said Ajay Kumar Jain. He said the government advocate hardly opposed the bail plea of the accused in the Rajasthan High Court. The police examined 44 witnesses; 14 of them were found to be directly involved in the incident, including the district unit general secretary of the VHP, Virendra Singh Ravana.

The governments permission is required to prevent misuse of these sections by the police, but in this case, there was enough evidence, including video footage, said Ajay Kumar Jain. He said that the Supreme Court had in several cases held that the power to sanction prosecution rested with the government so that it could forestall the misuse and unnecessary harassment of individuals. In two judgments delivered in 1955 and 1988, the court had pointed out that the object of sanction under the sub-section is to ensure prosecution only after due consideration, the appropriate sanctioning authority is satisfied that there is a proper case to put the party on trial and also to save the time of the criminal court being wasted by needless prosecution without conviction (AIR 1955, Manipur 9(12): 1955 Cri LJ 184).

In another judgment, the court pointed out that the object of the sub-section is to prevent unauthorised persons from intruding in State affairs by instituting State prosecutions and to secure that such prosecutions shall only be institutionalised under the authority of the government. In a third judgment, the apex court held that the government being an independent party not connected with the dispute between a complainant and the accused is expected to act fairly and to take an objective decision in the matter whenever it is called upon to grant sanction under Section 196 (1).

Kavita Srivastava of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) wanted to know why the Collector proceeded to take permission from the government when he himself was empowered to give sanction for prosecution under Section 505 of the IPC. The Collector, Akhil Arora, was non-committal on the issue. He told Frontline that the matter was with the State Home Ministry and that his office had little to do with the case now.

After news spread that the police had dropped religion-related charges against the accused, civil rights organisations in Jaipur took to the streets in protest. Representatives of as many as 10 organisations sat on a protest in front of the Collectors office demanding the restoration of the sections that had been dropped from the charge-sheet. The police do a good job here and the government reverses it, said Ashq Ali Tak, vice-president of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC).

The organisations that sat on protest accused the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the State of being biased as the accused involved VHP activists. In a memorandum submitted to Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria and Collector Akhil Arora, they said that the government had acted in a partisan manner in several other cases and sanctioned prosecution where religious minorities were the accused. In 2006, the Raje government gave permission to prosecute the Emmanuel Mission International (EMI) in Kota.

Do we understand that the government gave permission in this case only because it involved Christian minorities? the memorandum asked. The same year, the government moved a court in Ajmer to withdraw the cases against Praveen Togadia, the all-India general secretary of the VHP. These cases had been registered during the tenure of the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government, in 2003.

The memorandum listed other cases as well where the government had selectively withdrawn sanction to prosecute accused persons, especially those who had an ideological affinity with the ruling party. For instance, the Home Ministry put in a plea in court for the withdrawal of prosecution of people accused of killing Muslims in Kalinjara, Banswara district in southern Rajasthan, which saw violence at the time of the Gujarat riots in 2002. While cases filed against members of the minority community in Kalinjara continued to stay, more than 250 cases against accused persons of the majority community had been withdrawn, the memorandum said.

In January 2004, after a lower court rejected all charges against prominent persons which included a former Minister of the BJP, the president of the Rajput Sabha, the nephew of former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for glorifying Sati, the government refused to appeal against the order. Since 2004, womens organisations have repeatedly requested the government to appeal against the order.

Masih was attacked in his home in Sodala, in front of his wife and young daughter, just after he had concluded a prayer meeting. The identity of the attackers became public later as they had brought with them a camera crew to record the proceedings. One of them even bragged in front of the camera that he had done the right thing.

Masih said that he was worried about his family. He said the government order was a setback for them. I am still not able to hold my foot straight after the beating I received last year. I had hoped that a lot of support would pour in on this issue and that we would get justice. But I have no complaints, he said.

T.S. David of the Evangelical Christian Fellowship said the incident was not a surprise. From the very inception, this government has been biased against minorities. Most of these attacks are well organised, he said.

Most Christian organisations in the State stayed away from the protest march of April 25, which was represented by spokespersons of various minority communities, for fear of attracting more controversy and attention. Vasudev, State secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said that their non-participation was an indication of their fear and the fact that none of the major parties, including the Opposition Congress, considered Christians an important political and economic constituency. He said that when the EMI was under siege, the CPI(M) protested and offered it support. A fact-finding team of senior party persons was sent to the EMI. In Masihs case, too, the Left parties had put a lot of pressure on the government.

But this is not the only controversy that the Raje government may have stirred. On March 21, the Rajasthan Assembly passed the controversial Freedom of Religion Bill, which will henceforth be called the Rajasthan Dharma Swatantrata Act, 2008. This Bill, introduced in April 2006, was returned by the then Governor, Pratibha Patil, on the grounds that it needed Presidential assent. The Bill was then put in cold storage. At that time, several organisations and mainstream political parties such as the Congress and those belonging to the Left protested against its passage stating that it was a ploy to harass minorities, especially Christians.

The Bill was slightly altered though there was no change in the statement of objects and reasons: It has been observed by the State government that some religious institutions and individuals are found to be involved in unlawful conversion from one religion to another by allurement or by fraudulent means or forcibly which at times has caused annoyance in the community belonging to other religion. The inter-religion fabric is weakened by such illegal activities and causes law and order problem for the law-enforcing machinery of the state. In order to curb such illegal activities and to maintain harmony amongst persons of various religions, it has been considered expedient to enact a special law for the purpose.

There are stringent provisions for conviction if the offence of conversion is committed in the case of a minor, a woman or a person belonging to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes. The punishment ranges from two to five years of imprisonment and a fine of not less than Rs.50,000. The scope of the Act has been widened to include sections of the people that the government feels are more vulnerable to conversions. The definition of fraudulent is also interesting in that it means and includes misrepresentation or any other fraudulent contrivance. The meaning of fraudulent contrivance is not made clear though it is clear that this will have a wide definition and will imply several things.

Congress members of the Assembly and the lone CPI(M) MLA, Amra Ram, opposed the Bill but the government, which has a more-than-comfortable majority in the House, passed it without any difficulty.

According to Vasudev, communal tensions have become frequent. In particular, Udaipur, Bhilwara, Ajmer, Jaipur, Kota and Pali have become sensitive to communal conflagrations. The CPI(M) leader said that not only Muslims but Christians are also being targeted systematically. The new Act is basically aimed at such organisations, he said.

With Assembly elections less than six months away, the Raje government can perhaps ill-afford to annoy sections within the BJP. Her regime has not been very popular owing to the various anti-people decisions and police actions. The police firing on agitating farmers in Sri Ganganagar, the handling of the Gujjar demand for reservation, and the several attacks on minorities have left different sections of the electorate unhappy.

As for the Congress, the public perception is that the party has shown more alacrity in changing its State unit presidents over the last four years than in entering into any serious confrontation on the ground with the Raje government. In effect, it has not played the role of an active Opposition party throughout the present governments tenure. If anything, it has been the Left parties, particularly the CPI(M), despite its miniscule representation in the Assembly, that has played the role of an Opposition party effectively. It mobilised farmers in Sri Ganganagar district and managed to get the government to agree to the demand for irrigation water. Similarly, it successfully led another farmers agitation in Jaipur demanding a rollback of power tariff. More than 50,000 farmers descended on Jaipur for the agitation and the government had to accede to their demands.

The Raje government came to power with a majority of 120 in the 200-member Assembly. Going by the recent developments, it looks like the government is making an all-out effort to woo a certain section of the electorate. And it could be successful in the deeply polarised situation that prevails in the State and in the absence of an effective, unified Opposition.