Maharashtra's anti-conversion law prompts churches to document voluntary worship

In late August, as Maharashtra's new anti-conversion law took effect, churches across Mumbai and its suburbs began asking visitors to sign a simple declaration: "I came here to pray of my own free will." The forms, which the BBC obtained and reviewed, ask worshippers to write their names, sometimes an ID number, and confirm that no one forced or enticed them to attend. The churches keep these documents as a shield—evidence to produce if a prayer meeting is ever challenged and its organizers accused of attempting to convert those inside.

The law itself prohibits religious conversions achieved through force, fraud, coercion, or inducement. It also requires anyone choosing to convert voluntarily to notify authorities beforehand. Violations carry sentences of up to seven years in prison, or ten years for repeat offenses. Maharashtra's government frames the measure as protection for vulnerable populations—the poor, the socially marginalized—from being deceived or pressured into abandoning their faith. But the law's language is expansive enough to trouble even those who support its stated intent.

Devdan Tribhuvan, a fourth-generation Christian in Vasai, a suburb of Mumbai, works with an organization providing legal aid to Christians in the region. In recent months, his phone has filled with calls not about court cases but about fear. People describe strangers entering churches and interrogating worshippers: "What is your name? Why are you here? Has anyone offered you something?" For those with non-Christian names, the questions sharpen: "Has anyone forced you to come? Has anyone offered you an inducement?" Most callers are not seeking to sue anyone. They want to know if simply gathering to pray could expose them to accusations of conversion. "Is gathering for prayer itself conversion?" Tribhuvan asks. The question is not rhetorical.

Between April and July, The Indian Express documented five disruptions of Christian prayer meetings around Mumbai. Nine police cases followed—seven against worshippers or organizers, two against members of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist group. Police did not respond to detailed questions about the cases or what action was taken. The disruptions and the legal machinery they triggered have created a chilling effect. Tribhuvan describes prayer groups of fifty or sometimes one hundred people, occasionally including someone who is not Christian. "If someone else wishes to come and pray, we cannot stop them," he said. "That is what we call the right to choose." Now that choice feels dangerous.

The law's definition of "allurement"—the mechanism by which conversions are deemed unlawful—stretches across nearly every form of human benefit. Employment, free education at a religious institution, a promise of marriage, a "better lifestyle," even "divine healing" all fall within it. Abhay Thipsay, a retired Bombay High Court judge, observed that the definition is so vague "almost any benefit accruing to a person can be considered or argued to be an allurement." He posed a question that cuts to the heart of the matter: "If a person receives some benefit and consciously chooses to convert for that reason, why should it be considered wrong?" The law also permits parents, siblings, and relatives to file complaints with police about an allegedly unlawful conversion, shifting the burden of proof onto the accused.

For interfaith couples, this provision opens a new vulnerability. Indian law allows people of different faiths to marry without converting, but requires a month's notice. Lara Jesani, a lawyer who has helped interfaith couples obtain court protection, has seen details of planned weddings leak to relatives and Hindu nationalist groups within that notice period. In cases she has handled, families have physically removed women from marriage registrar's offices. Now, she fears the new law gives those same families and organizations a tool they did not have before. "Even when neither intend to convert," she said, "couples fear a relative could accuse one partner of trying to convert the other." The law thus transforms a private decision—whom to marry, what to believe—into something the state and the police can scrutinize.

Maharashtra is not alone. More than a dozen Indian states have enacted anti-conversion laws, and their reach has expanded in recent years, particularly in states governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Several are being challenged before the Supreme Court. The laws are justified by claims long circulated by Hindu nationalist groups: that Christians use money, schooling, and medical care to draw poor and tribal communities away from Hinduism, and that Muslim men court Hindu women to convert them—a conspiracy labeled "love jihad." Critics say these accusations have fueled harassment of prayer meetings and interfaith couples, and that the laws weaponize the police against questions of prayer, marriage, and belief. Samsuddin Tamboli, president of the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, a reformist organization, said his group does not support forced conversions. But he questioned what the law counts as inducement. "The definition has been kept so vague that almost any benefit accruing to a person can be considered or argued to be an allurement," he said.

Mumbai itself is a city built on religious plurality. It grew by drawing people from across India and beyond, each bringing their gods and rituals. A church bell sounds within earshot of a mosque's call to prayer. Hindus light candles at Mount Mary, a Catholic basilica overlooking the harbor. Muslims visit the shrine of Haji Ali. During Ganesh Chaturthi, crowds fill streets around Lalbaug; throughout the year, worshippers stream to Siddhivinayak temple. This texture of coexistence is now under pressure. Maharashtra's government did not respond to the BBC's repeated requests for comment on these concerns. When the law passed, state minister Pankaj Bhoyar said it did not infringe on the right to change religion, and that the notification requirement was meant to establish whether a conversion was voluntary while allowing the state to act against those obtained by fraud or coercion. But Tribhuvan remains anxious, an anxiety that reaches even small prayer gatherings held in homes when a church is too far away. The written declarations churches now collect are a symptom of that anxiety—a desperate attempt to prove what should require no proof: that people gathered to pray because they chose to.