Judicial Responses to Anti-Conversion Laws in India

The team at Ivy Law participated in a webinar on “Judicial Responses to Anti-Conversion Laws in India” organized by the Law Library of the Library of Congress. The key highlights of the webinar were to provide an overview of India’s state-level anti-conversion laws that have been enacted in 8 Indian states to regulate religious conversions, and the judicial responses to them. The webinar emphasized on enforcement of these anti-conversion laws in these states namely Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand and how the varied state laws are in fact similar in their content and structure. Further, the webinar also deliberated upon how the Supreme Court and high courts are considering both the misuse and constitutionality of these recently issued laws and ordinances.