A sweeping new law regulating religious conversion took effect in Maharashtra last week, threatening to turn catechism classes, charity work and even prayer meetings into grounds for a police investigation, Christian leaders said.
The Archdiocese of Bombay was the first to respond publicly, saying in a statement that it holds “deep concern” over a law it fears could penalize the ordinary work of the Catholic Church in the state.
Christian leaders from other traditions raised similar alarm.
“Maharashtra has now joined 12 other states where the government has decided it understands a citizen’s conscience better than the citizen does,” Dr. John Dayal, spokesperson for the All India Catholic Union, told Christian Daily International. “[Religious] coercion is already a crime in India, but this law was never really about that. It was drafted to make catechesis, charity and evangelization suspect in the eyes of the police, with the burden of proof placed on the accused rather than the accuser.”
President of India Droupadi Murmu gave the law final approval, and the state gazetted it on July 30. Lawmakers had passed the bill in the state legislature in March.
The Rev. Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), said the danger lies less in any single new provision than in how many intrusive measures the law combines.
“The danger is not one entirely new provision, but the accumulation of the most intrusive provisions in one law,” Lal told Christian Daily International. “Maharashtra turns a personal decision of conscience into a public administrative proceeding, with 60 days’ notice, public objections, possible police inquiry, non-bailable offenses and the burden of proof placed upon the accused. When ‘allurement’ includes divine healing and glorifying one’s faith, and unlawful conversion includes ‘brainwashing through education,’ ordinary Christian witness, prayer and service can themselves be placed under suspicion.”
Dayal said the Supreme Court could have intervened after such laws multiplied following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power in 2014. He called the court’s inaction a tacit signal to a campaign by Hindu nationalist groups to weaken religious minorities.
Six of the 13 states’ laws predate 2014, including Odisha’s original 1967 statute; the other seven, including Maharashtra’s, have followed since.
“With other constitutional wings such as parliament and the election commission all but reduced to rubber stamps, each state that passes such a law strikes one more blow for reducing India to a Hindutva [Hindu nationalist] dictatorship,” Dayal said.
Lal said the EFI has not confirmed a pattern of vigilante activity connected to the new law but cautioned that the legal process itself could function as intimidation.
“It is too early to claim a verified pattern under the new Maharashtra law,” he said. “But the danger begins before the first conviction. A public objection process, vague offenses and mandatory police action can give pressure groups a legal vocabulary with which to disrupt worship and intimidate believers. Under such laws, the process can become the punishment.”
The Rev. Asir Ebenezer, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in India, an umbrella body for the country’s Protestant and Orthodox churches, said the council is hearing early concern in Maharashtra about the provision letting police investigate alleged conversion without a complaint.
Ebenezer said Christian institutions should stay ahead of compliance through documentation, continue their charitable work and contest false accusations politically, legally and diplomatically. He added that communities should “befriend and not antagonize the secularist forces within the dominant communities” rather than treat the wider public as adversaries.
Catholic Church Alarmed
The Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay asserted that the church “has always unequivocally condemned conversion through force, fraud, coercion or inducement” but noted that comparable laws in other states have been “used more often to intimidate religious minorities than to address genuine instances of wrongdoing.”
“Experience in other states raises serious concerns that such legislation can place a disproportionate burden on Christian communities, inter-faith couples and others exercising the constitutionally protected freedom to profess, practice and propagate their faith,” asserted an archdiocese press statement.
The archdiocese pointed to what it called “vague and overbroad terminology” in the new law, along with the provision allowing a blood relative to file a police First Information Report, which initiates criminal investigation, regarding a conversion. That provision, it said, “raises concerns about an adult’s right to make an independent decision of conscience.”
The statement also warned that the law lets police officers act on their own initiative, without waiting for a complaint from an affected person, a feature it said, “creates scope for undue scrutiny or surveillance of prayer meetings, schools, hospitals and social-service centres run by minority institutions.”
In March, while the bill was before the legislature, the Western Region Bishops’ Council warned it could expose religious educators to prosecution. It pointed to the months-long process known as RCIA (OCIA in the United States) by which non-Catholics formally join the Church, which is designed to confirm the decision is made freely. If a family member objects during that process, the bishops warned, program leaders could face accusations of coercion or “brainwashing,” a term the Act itself uses in its definition of unlawful conversion.
“If family members, who may naturally oppose such a decision, raise objections, the clergy and others involved in the process risk being accused of coercion or of ‘brainwashing,’” the bishops said at the time.
Fewer than one in 100 people in Maharashtra identify as Christian, according to 2011 census data.
Political and Legal Opposition
Opposition in the legislature was not unanimous: Congress and other lawmakers objected to several provisions, while the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction, also in opposition, voted in support.
Prakash Ambedkar, founder of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, a regional party representing Dalit and other marginalized communities, and grandson of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, principal architect of the Indian Constitution, has said he intends to challenge the law in the Bombay High Court. He argues it violates constitutional principles and targets minorities in states governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
What the Law Requires
The Act bars converting or attempting to convert anyone through allurement, coercion, deceit, force, misrepresentation, threat, undue influence, or fraudulent means, whether done directly or through marriage or a promise of marriage carried out by those same methods. Any conversion carried out this way is void.
“Allurement” is defined broadly to include gifts, employment, free schooling, promises of marriage, a “better lifestyle” or divine healing, and favorably contrasting one religion against another.
Anyone planning to convert must give the district magistrate, a local official, 60 days’ written notice. Officials post the notice publicly and invite objections for 30 days, after which the magistrate can order a police inquiry and, if it finds a violation, must direct police to file charges.
Once a conversion takes place, the convert and organizer must file a declaration within 21 days, or it is void. A convert’s parents, siblings, or anyone related by blood, marriage, or adoption can file a police complaint, which officers must register, and police can also act on their own initiative.
The burden of proving a conversion was voluntary falls on the person who carried it out, not on the state. Offenses are non-bailable, meaning a court, not police, must decide on release, and can only be tried before a Sessions Court, which handles serious criminal cases.
Penalties scale with the circumstances. A general violation carries up to seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 rupees ($1,052). If the convert is a minor, a woman, a person of unsound mind, or a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, groups officially recognized in India as historically disadvantaged, or if the case involves converting two or more people at once, the fine rises to 500,000 rupees ($5,262), with the same seven-year maximum. A repeat offense carries up to 10 years and a fine of 700,000 rupees ($7,366).
Institutions such as churches, schools, or charities found in violation can lose their registration and state funding, and those in charge can face the same seven-year, 500,000-rupee penalty.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has defended the law, saying its purpose is to stop conversions carried out through force, fraud or inducement, and that it applies equally to all religions. The state government maintains the law targets coercive and fraudulent conversions rather than voluntary ones.
Broader Pattern
Maharashtra’s new law fits a long-running pattern. Odisha passed the first such law in 1967. Eleven other states have since followed: Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Arunachal Pradesh, bringing the total to 13.
Chhattisgarh passed its own updated law within days of Maharashtra’s, a timing some advocates have linked to a coordinated push across BJP-governed states.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2026 report found religious freedom conditions in India worsened through 2025, citing harsher anti-conversion penalties, and recommended the U.S. administration designate India a Country of Particular Concern for tolerating or carrying out egregious violations of religious freedom.
Constitutional Test
The Supreme Court of India in February issued notices to the central government and 12 state governments after the National Council of Churches in India petitioned to challenge the constitutionality of anti-conversion laws in those states.
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant referred the matter to a three-judge bench.
The petition builds on a 1977 ruling, Rev. Stanislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, which held that the constitutional right to “propagate” one’s religion does not extend to converting another person, a precedent cited since to justify such laws.
The National Council of Churches in India is now moving to bring Maharashtra’s law into that existing challenge.
“We are amending our petition to include the Maharashtra Act,” Ebenezer told Christian Daily International.
Lal said the two tracks, Maharashtra’s new law and the broader 12-state petition, are procedurally distinct but substantively linked.
“Procedurally, Maharashtra’s law will have to be brought before the Court through an appropriate challenge or tagging application,” he said. “Substantively, however, it is already part of the same constitutional question. It demonstrates that these are no longer isolated state laws but a replicating national architecture.”
He added that the Supreme Court “must decide whether the State can punish genuine coercion without turning every voluntary change of faith into an act requiring advance disclosure, public scrutiny and official suspicion.”
With the Act now in force, Christian institutions in Maharashtra and religious minorities more broadly are watching closely to see how it is enforced. Legal challenges to this law and others like it continue to make their way through India’s courts.
