Indian bishops challenge latest ‘anti-conversion’ law in top court

India’s top court has admitted a petition lodged by Catholic bishops challenging the constitutional validity of a draconian anti-conversion law passed by the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

“We are happy that the Supreme Court of India has accepted our petition,” said Sister Sayujya Bindhu, secretary of the legal cell of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI).

Rajasthan became the 12th Indian state to introduce a stringent law against conversion when its assembly passed the Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2025, on Sept. 9.

The law stipulates 20 years in prison and a fine of one million Indian rupees (US$11,000) for those convicted of converting minors, women, disabled people, or members of lower castes and tribal communities.

If convicted of illegal mass conversions, offenders can face life imprisonment and a fine of 2.5 million rupees. Repeat offenders can be sentenced to life imprisonment and fined up to five million Indian rupees under the law.

It further prescribes a jail term of up to 14 years for marriage being used to convert a person.

“The provisions of the law go against the tenets of India’s Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to choose and propagate a religion of their choice,” Bindhu, who is a lawyer, told UCA News on Dec. 9

A Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih admitted the CBCI’s petition on Dec. 8 and ordered the state government to file its reply.

The petition has been tagged with similar petitions seeking to suspend the Rajasthan anti-conversion law, Bindu said.

The nun said 10 other Indian states have such laws, which are misleadingly titled “freedom of religion” laws. They were “a gross violation of one’s privacy and religious freedom guaranteed in the Constitution.”

“Many terms in the latest law passed in Rajasthan, such as allurement and coercion, are unclear and may be weaponized against Christians and their institutions,” she noted.

Bindu explained that even admitting a child from a poor background in a school or providing medical care to sick people in a hospital can be misinterpreted as a case of allurement aimed at religious conversion.

“Our charitable work on compassionate grounds could be misrepresented as an attempt to convert people,” she added..

The nun lawyer further said that one major flaw in the law was that “it puts the burden of proof on the accused person, rather than on the person who makes the accusation,” which goes against the set principles in the Indian legal system.  

CBCI spokesperson Robinson Rodrigues said many provisions in the law were an affront to religious freedom and personal liberty.

“The new law has become a tool to target minority communities, especially Christians, through false allegations of religious conversion,” he said.

Rodrigues said the CBCI had urged the top court to delay the implementation of the law during the pendency of its petition, but the judges said they would decide after the state government files its reply.

India’s Supreme Court is hearing multiple petitions challenging the constitutional validity of anti-conversion laws enacted by other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Karnataka. Odisha became the first to have such a law in 1969.

The enforcement of these laws has led to a series of criminal cases against minority Christians and Muslims in these states, alleging conversion. 

Christians make up 2.3 percent of India’s more than 1.4 billion people, and 80 percent of them are Hindus.