Few reasonable objections can be raised against a law which genuinely seeks to protect a citizen from being forced, deceived, threatened or fraudulently induced into abandoning his religion. Freedom of religion must necessarily include freedom from religious coercion.
The reasoning was founded upon an important symmetry: freedom of conscience belongs equally to the person propagating a religion and the person listening to him.
The Goa Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2026 deserves to be stated fairly before the proposed is criticised.
The harder question is whether the means reportedly chosen remain confined to that legitimate objective.
What Goa is being asked to accept
The official Bill had not been tabled before the Assembly when this column was written. Transparency therefore requires caution. Conclusions cannot responsibly be drawn about provisions whose final statutory language remains unavailable for examination.
Nevertheless, the Cabinet-approved proposal has been described in considerable detail publicly. It reportedly prohibits conversion through force, coercion, undue influence, allurement, fraudulent means or marriage. An intending convert would have to make a declaration to the District Magistrate at least 60 days beforehand, while the person conducting the ceremony would give one month's advance notice.
Serious punishments are proposed. Certain offences may attract imprisonment between three and ten years, while conversions involving specified protected categories reportedly attract between five and fourteen years. In particularly aggravated circumstances, imprisonment extending to the remainder of natural life has been reported. Compensation reaching Rs 5 lakh may additionally be ordered.
Perhaps most significantly, information concerning an alleged violation may reportedly be furnished by any person.
These are not insignificant regulatory details. They deserve careful legislative scrutiny.
The other side of Article 25
Article 25 would accord protection notwithstanding, if a Hindu is being coerced into becoming Christian, the Constitution protects the Hindu. If a Christian is being coerced into becoming Hindu, precisely the same protection follows. Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, atheists and every other citizen stand on equal Constitutional ground.
But what happens when a competent adult voluntarily decides to change faith?
That question has become increasingly important.
In a 2025 judgment concerning proceedings under the Uttar Pradesh anti-conversion legislation, the Supreme Court described the liberty to embrace a faith as lying within the protected domain of conscience and decisional autonomy. It also expressed concern about onerous procedures surrounding conversion.
Consequently, preventing coercion and supervising voluntary conscience cannot simply be treated as interchangeable governmental functions.
The State may legitimately ask whether somebody else forced the decision. Whether the State should ordinarily require an adult to announce his intended religious decision to the administration before acting upon it presents a considerably different constitutional question.
Borrowed law, different society
Goa would hardly be the first State to legislate in this field. Odisha and Madhya Pradesh enacted earlier freedom-of-religion laws, while a newer generation has emerged in States including Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and others.
Nor is legislative borrowing itself objectionable. Goa's statute book contains numerous examples of laws developed from models and legislative experiences elsewhere in India.
But legislation can be borrowed more easily than the social conditions which justify it.
The reported 60-day declaration, advance notice by the person performing the conversion, treatment of marriage, “allurement” and other features bear obvious comparison with this newer family of State anti-conversion laws.
Goa's Legislature should therefore ask a simple question before adopting such machinery:
What is the demonstrated Goan problem requiring it?
Recent reporting based upon Assembly answers indicates that only four alleged religious-conversion cases were registered in Goa since 2012. If other evidence demonstrates a larger concealed problem, the Government should place it before legislators and the public.
Transparency strengthens legislation. It does not weaken it.
History cannot belong to one community
Goa cannot discuss religious conversion without acknowledging its history.
Portuguese colonial rule included periods of religious repression. Hindu temples and religious practices suffered restrictions, missionary activity became intertwined with colonial power, and the Goa Inquisition remains a painful chapter of the territory's past.
That history should neither be sanitised nor monopolised.
The Inquisition also pursued people who had already become Christians and were suspected of retaining prohibited ancestral practices. Goa's religious history is consequently more complicated than a convenient modern division between Hindu victim and Catholic offender.
Present-day Goan Catholics cannot inherit criminal or moral responsibility for acts committed centuries ago by Portuguese colonial authorities. Neither should Hindu memories of historical persecution be dismissed merely because that history can be politically exploited.
Both propositions can coexist.
Conscience belongs to the citizen
Articles 25 to 28 reveal a Constitution deeply conscious of the relationship between religion and governmental power. Article 25 protects conscience and religious profession, practice and propagation. Article 26 protects denominational autonomy. Articles 27 and 28 establish further boundaries concerning State involvement with religion, taxation and religious instruction.
These freedoms are not absolute. Public order, morality and health matter. Fraud is not faith. Coercion is not propagation. Exploitation should not acquire constitutional protection merely because religion is invoked.
