Kejriwal: Sufficient provisions in place to stop forced conversions
AMRITSAR: Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said that religious conversions done by allurement or threat are wrong and there are sufficient provisions under existing law in the country to stop such practices.
At the same time, he said choosing one’s religion was a personal matter and no government has the right to interfere.
The Delhi chief minister was speaking in poll-bound Punjab, where the Jathedar of Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhs, Giani Harpreet Singh, had accused Christian missionaries of running programmes for forced conversion of Sikh families in border villages, a charge vehemently denied by the Bishop
of Diocese of Amritsar.
Kejriwal said, “I believe it is a matter of personal choice which religion one wants to practice... and it is entirely one’s personal matter in which no one has a right to interfere... No government has the right to interfere in this, and this is one’s constitutional right.”
“But if anyone’s conversion is done by allurement or threat, that is wrong,” the AAP chief told reporters when queried about his party’s stand on bringing an anti-conversion law.
The BJP has been targeting the AAP over the issue.
The BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh had earlier passed a bill aimed at curbing religious conversions by fraudulent or any other undue means, including through marriage.
Kejriwal said that forcing anyone to convert was wrong and whatever steps need to be taken to stop this should be taken. “It is my opinion and I have been told by some lawyers, but this needs to be examined further, that under the country’s existing law there are sufficient sections and provisions that if anyone forces anyone to convert one can be stopped from doing so.