The Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act 2021, which was passed in the recently concluded budget session of Gujarat Vidhan Sabha, will be implemented in the state from June 15, 2021. The announcement was made by the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani after the Governor of Gujarat Acharya Devvrat gave his approval. The bill amended the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, which deals with religious conversion “through allurement, force or by misrepresentation or by any other fraudulent means”. The amended bill aims to prohibit forcible conversion by marriage or by getting a person married or by aiding a person to get married. The bill has provisions for 3-10 years in jail and a fine of up to ₹5 lakh if the accused is found guilty.
Pradipsinh Jadeja, Minister of State for Home, Gujarat government, while presenting the bill in the legislative assembly said “the amendment was required to stop people from luring Hindu girls into marriage with the intention of religious conversion”. He further added that “there is international finance being channelised to lure Hindu girls into marriage and then their conversion.” There have been multiple cases of alleged Love Jihad reported in the state of Gujarat. In July 2019, two female members of Hindu Jagran Manch were attacked and injured in Vadodara, when they were returning from the police station after counselling a Hindu girl who had eloped to Delhi.
The amendment bill has come on the target of Christian evangelical organisations of the state too. Cedric Prakash, a radical Christian activist of Gujarat has termed the new law draconian and has alleged that it will persecute a Christian merely on the basis of a false allegation of religious conversion. Prakash along with his associates of the international funded human rights NGOs, has been at the forefront of the international campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, since when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He campaigned at the international level to get him blacklisted “as a mass murderer” and denied visa to America and European countries. Along with Islamist groups, Prakash had lobbied with the US Commission for Religious Freedom to get India blacklisted as a country that crushes religious minorities — notably Christians and Muslims.
Far-Left in India is known for its alliance with Christian & Islamist extremists in their Breaking India agenda. The tribal belt of Gujarat bordering Maharashtra, which has been witnessing conflicts between the tribal Hindus and Christian missionaries since decades, has been declared as 'golden corridor' by the Maoist insurgents, to spread their ideology and lure people to their organisation. On 16th April, 2020, two Hindu monks Kalpvriksh Giri Maharaj and Sushil Giri Maharaj, along with their driver Nilesh Telgade, were lynched to death by a 200-strong mob in Palghar district bordering Vapi district of Gujarat. The revered Hindu seer of Kandhamal, Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, who had worked tirelessly to protect the native Hindu culture against the missionary onslaught in the tribal belt of Odisha, was brutally gunned down by a heavily armed Maoist mob at his ashram in the year 2008.
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