Those going to church on Sunday in Mumbai will take part in an uneasy new ritual before the service. They will sign a form declaring that they are attending the service voluntarily and are not being forced to go to church or convert to Christianity.
Around 4,000 churches in the Mumbai Metropolitan Area in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have decided to collect such “consent forms” to protect themselves ahead of an upcoming anti-conversion law that criminalises alleged forced conversions.
“These consent forms are the least safety measure we can take to protect us from legal proceedings if anyone attempts to accuse the pastors or churches of forcibly converting people,” Dolphy D’souza, spokesman for the Bombay Catholic Society, told The Straits Times.
“There have been a dozen disruptions of prayers in the past six months, by Hindu right-wing groups under the pretext of exposing forced conversions. So we have also asked churches to install CCTV cameras to identify attackers,” he added.
The defensive actions in Mumbai are the latest response to a range of allegedly discriminatory actions by the Indian government against the Christian community, which is the third-largest religious group in India and comprises 2.3 per cent of the population. These include anti-conversion laws in several states and the tightening of laws governing foreign funding of non-profit organisations, which could result in the seizure of assets such as schools and hospitals built with such donations.
