Reframing Religious Freedom

(The article was originally published in Indian Express on June 14, 2025 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)

In an interesting report titled “Changing the conversation about religious freedom: An integral human development approach”, published in June last year, the Atlantic Council, a US-based think tank, claimed that it was seeking for “a new approach to religious freedom that integrates it with integral human development (IHD).” In a welcome departure from the earlier practise of demonising countries in the name of religious freedom, this report argued that religious freedom should not be treated only as a human right but also as “a crucial component of overall human flourishing and sustainable development.”

Religious freedom became a bogey to defame countries ever since the US Congress passed International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) in 1998 and created the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to “monitor, analyse and report on violations of religious freedom worldwide.” Over the years, the Commission’s annual reports acquired notoriety for persistent misrepresentation of facts, often with an alleged political bias, branding several countries as “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPCs). Naturally, many countries started questioning the locus standii of the Commission in interfering in their sovereign affairs. India took an aggressive stand refusing to recognise the Commission and denying visas to its officials. Earlier this year, the Ministry of External Affairs not only rejected Commission’s 2025 report that included India also as one of the CPCs but went further to brand the Commission itself as an “entity of concern”.

Frankly speaking, reports of the Commission have no sanctity outside the four walls of the US Congress. Yet, they helped create what was described as the “religious freedom industry”. A new breed of “religious freedom ambassadors” emerged in over 30 countries.

Religious freedom, per se, is not contentious. Several democracies, including India, hold it as sacrosanct. Articles 25 to 30 in Indian constitution offer various freedoms to religions including freedom of conscience, right to freely profess, practice, and propagate, and freedom to manage their own affairs without any state intervention. Minority religions enjoy a positive discrimination by way of special rights to run educational and cultural institutions. Same rights are not available to the majority Hindu religion.

In fact, India is the only country in the world where people of all religions, including more than a hundred different Christian denominations, and dozens of Muslim sects, coexist in harmony. Not that there are no religious tensions in the country, but such tensions must be seen in the context of its vast population of a billion plus Hindus, almost 200 million Muslims and 40 million Christians. Also, in its long history, the mainstream Hindu society had endured enormous religious persecution at the hands of the invading Mughal armies as well as the violent religious inquisitions by certain Christian rulers like the Portuguese in Goa. Ultimately, the country was partitioned in 1947 on the religious grounds through a brutal and violent campaign led by the Muslim League.

That history has made the leaders of modern India to recognise the need for strengthening the bond of national unity based not only on the political and constitutional foundations but also the age-old cultural and civilisational ethos. All forms of religious bigotry and fundamentalism – majority or minority – were rejected and emphasis was laid on creating one national mainstream. For a vast and diverse country with such a long history of religious strife, it is not an easy task. Yet, occasional outbursts notwithstanding, India achieved commendable success in demonstrating that unity and harmony.

Still, it always remained in the crosshairs of the USCIRF. There are two important reasons for that bias. One is that the framework in which the Commission places its religious freedom discourse is Eurocentric. It refuses to take into account country-specific sensitivities in arriving at conclusions. Secondly, it depends on those scholars in various countries who are themselves highly biased and willing to sing the Commission’s tune.

I was at a conference in Rome recently where the Atlantic Council’s initiative to view religious freedom from the prism of Integral Human Development was the central theme. Propounded first by Jacquis Maritaine, a French Catholic priest in 1936, and followed three decades later by Deen Dayal Upadhyay, the ideological father figure of the BJP, Integral Humanism emphasises the need for raising above religions to secure not only the material but ethical, moral and spiritual well-being of individuals, and advocates for a pluralistic approach to achieving integral development of man.

It is imperative that the religious freedom discourse be situated in the national context in order to achieve proper understanding of the role of religions in integral growth of humans. Indian Constitution imposes reasonable restrictions of public order, morality and health on all the fundamental rights, including freedom of religion. That calls for religions that came from outside to internalise the cultural experience of India like those of the Indian origin, in which pluralism and respect for all religions is an important basic principle. No religion can claim universality or superiority. Hence, in the Indian context, the religious narrative should shift from “one god” to “only god” – everything is divine, and “one truth” to “only truth”.

Religious conversions are an important challenge in this context. In a landmark judgement in Rev. Stainislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh (1977), the Supreme Court of India had held that right to “propagate” does not include right to proselytise and hence there is no fundamental right to convert another person. The court clarified that it does not impinge on the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the constitution, but, rather, protects it. It may be worthwhile to recall that Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis had both denounced proselytism albeit in the limited context of Catholics being won over by other denominations, calling such activities as “sheep stealing”.

Proper understanding about cultural and civilisational experiences of various nations helps in reframing religious freedom discourse in the right perspective. Else, Atlantic Council’s efforts also will be seen as “a form of ‘cultural imperialism’ or a ‘Western’ endeavour with a hidden agenda”, to borrow words from its own report.