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Arunachal may lift anti-conversion law
Why it is in news?
- Arunachal Pradesh may lift a 40-year-old anti-conversion law to uphold secularism.
- The government could repeal the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, an anti-conversion law, which the frontier State’s Assembly passed in 1978.
Rise of Christianity
- Today, Christians account for more than half the population in Arunachal Pradesh.
- Census data say there were no Christians in the North East Frontier Province, as the State was called then, in 1951.
- By 2001, Christians were the third largest religious group accounting for 18.7% of the State’s population, behind Hindus (34.6%) and ‘others’, mostly Donyi-Polo (30.7%).
- According to the 2011 census, Christianity has overtaken Hinduism as the State’s largest religion.
- Christians — most of them Roman Catholics — account for 30.26% of the State’s 1.3 million people while Hindus are now 29.04%.
- Though Arunachal Pradesh had 5.56% fewer Hindus in 2011 than in 2001, traditionalists were more worried by the 4.5% drop in the number of followers of Donyi-Polo and other indigenous faiths.
- The anti-conversion law could undermine secularism and is probably targeted towards Christians.
- The law could be misused by irresponsible officials.
Other states
- Arunachal Pradesh was one of the first States to pass such a law primarily to check proselytization.
- Arunachal was the third State after Odisha (1967) and Madhya Pradesh (1968) to enact an anti-conversion law.
- Chhattisgarh in 2000, Gujarat in 2003, Himachal Pradesh in 2007 and Rajasthan in 2008 also passed anti-conversion laws, prohibiting forced or money-induced conversions.
- Uttarakhand enacted a similar law in May this year.
Source
The Hindu