Why anti-conversion laws are chicanery

Exceptions do not prove the rule. What they do is test a rule's existence and conditions by highlighting its boundaries. So, when states enact anti-religious conversion laws citing coercion or force, they are using a doorknob to define the door. While there are, indeed, instances of coercion to convert a person without her or his consent, in most cases, conversions occur willingly - such as in consensual marriages between different faiths or religions. To use the bogey of forced conversions - 'love jihad' being the most dramatised one - has been politically expedient in many states, but is legally dodgy. Which is why the Supreme Court has sought state governments to respond in four weeks to a clutch of pleas challenging the constitutionality of existing anti-conversion laws. A counter-view from the executive (read: states that don't find the need to have an anti-conversion law) makes sense.

Religions are like any other product-service in the market. And the freedom to profess, practise and propagate one's faith is part of this larger free market that's protected by Article 25 of the Constitution. Inherently, this would include changing one's religious 'brand' to another if one chooses to. The rub lies in some states invoking the rider in the constitutional guarantee: 'subject to public order, morality, and health'. Instead of seeing to it that 'public order' is maintained, states with anti-conversion laws view conversions themselves as liable causes for public disorder. This is political chicanery.

In the real world, there is coercion. For this, existing laws, like Section 351 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (criminalising intimidation), must suffice. Not communally charged injunctions that add to, not reduce, inter-community enmity.