Bombay High Court: Citizens can 'profess, practice, propagate' their own religion

Every citizen has a right to ‘freely profess, practice, propagate their religion or form religious institutions”, observed the Bombay High Court while quashing a prohibitory order issued by a magistrate against a couple for holding religious activities on their own property.  

HC grants relief to Goa couple

A division bench of Justices MS Sonak and Valmiki Menezes, sitting at the Goa bench of the HC, recently granted relief to a Christian couple accused of carrying out religious conversion activities on their property in Siolim, Goa. 

“… prohibiting the couple from carrying out any religious activities in their property is a direct violation of their fundamental rights … as it seeks to deny them both of their freedom of speech and expression and to their freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, propagate their religion or form religious institutions,” the bench observed. 

The court also noted that Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution of India guarantee all persons the equal entitlement of freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice and propagate religion. Just as citizens have the right to practise and preach their belief, the state and the executive has the responsibility to ensure that every person is allowed to freely practise and preach their belief, the bench added. 

Couple accused of forced religious conversion

The HC was hearing a petition filed by a woman challenging the imposition of Section 144 order by the District Magistrate (DM) in December 2022. It also prohibited the couple from continuing with religious activities on their own property. The DM passed the order following a police report alleging that the couple had been forcibly converting people to Christianity. Also, it contended that it would lead to communal tension. 

However, the high court noted that there was no complaint that the couple forced or coerced others to convert to any religion or Christianity as such. The court termed the allegations against the couple, that they are carrying out religious activities which have raised communal tensions in the village or that they are involved in religious conversion by means of allurement or fraud, as “totally baseless”. 

The couple is within its rights to propagate its own religion and to profess it in any manner that they please within the bounds of law, more so, when it is within their own private property, the Court added.