The Right to Choose: Faith, Conversion, Marriage and Constitutional Liberty

The controversy surrounding religious conversion in India often begins with the wrong constitutional question. The immediate public debate tends to ask whether a conversion is socially desirable, whether an interfaith relationship is acceptable, or whether a family has legitimate reasons to oppose it. Constitutional law, however, asks a more fundamental question: whose choice is it?

This question assumes particular importance in the recent order of the Allahabad High Court in Kunwar Sultan Ali and 2 Others v. State of U.P. and 3 Others. The Court directed the production of two adult women who were alleged to have converted from Hinduism to Islam and chosen Muslim partners. The petitioners alleged that the women had acted voluntarily, while their father had initiated criminal proceedings and was allegedly responsible for their confinement. The Court did not finally determine the truth of those allegations. Instead, it required the women to be produced so that it could ascertain for itself whether they were acting voluntarily and whether their custody was lawful.

The importance of the order therefore lies less in the immediate relief granted and more in the constitutional framework within which the Court approached the dispute. The order brings together three bodies of law that are often discussed separately: freedom of conscience under Article 25, decisional autonomy under Article 21, and statutory restrictions upon unlawful conversion.

The central constitutional proposition is simple but powerful: the State may regulate coercion in religious conversion; it cannot manufacture coercion merely because an adult has exercised an unpopular choice.

The Allahabad High Court’s Order: The Significance of Asking the Right Question

The Court's decision to order the production of the two women is significant because habeas corpus is ultimately concerned with the legality of restraint. The Court must determine whether the alleged detenues are being unlawfully confined or whether they are living where they wish to live.

That makes the woman's own voice constitutionally indispensable.

The Court observed that, prima facie, the women appeared to be majors and therefore legally competent to make independent decisions regarding their faith, marriage, residence and future. Most importantly, it linked these decisions with dignity, privacy, personal liberty and decisional autonomy.

“unwarranted encroachment upon their constitutionally protected rights to dignity, privacy, personal liberty and decisional autonomy.”

This is not merely rhetorical language. It reflects a constitutional doctrine developed over several decades.

The Court's approach also demonstrates why production of the women was necessary. The judiciary could not simply accept the father's allegation that the women had been unlawfully taken away, nor could it automatically accept the petitioners' claim that the women had voluntarily converted and married. Direct interaction allows the Court to distinguish actual coercion from familial disagreement.

That distinction is critical. A court that protects liberty without verifying voluntariness risks ignoring genuine coercion. A court that assumes coercion merely because the family disapproves risks turning habeas corpus into an instrument of paternal control.

The constitutional balance lies in hearing the individual concerned.

From Lata Singh to Shafin Jahan: The Supreme Court Has Already Settled the Autonomy Question

The Allahabad High Court's reasoning cannot be viewed in isolation. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the decision of an adult to choose a partner is protected by constitutional liberty.

In Lata Singh v. State of U.P., the Supreme Court held that once a person becomes a major, he or she is free to marry a person of choice. The Court went further and directed police authorities to protect couples entering inter-caste or inter-religious marriages from threats, harassment and violence.

The importance of Lata Singh lies in its rejection of the proposition that family approval is a legal prerequisite to an adult's personal decision.

The doctrine was substantially deepened in Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M., the case arising from the controversy surrounding Hadiya.

The Supreme Court expressly connected faith, marriage, privacy, dignity and autonomy. It held that matters of belief and faith are at the core of constitutional liberty and that the right of an adult to choose a life partner is integral to Article 21. It also made clear that society has no constitutional role in determining whom an individual should marry.

The judgment's most important doctrinal contribution is that it refuses to treat religious identity and choice of partner as separate compartments. Both are aspects of individual personhood.

The Court stated:

“Choices of faith and belief as indeed choices in matters of marriage lie within an area where individual autonomy is supreme.”

This principle has direct relevance to the Allahabad High Court's present case. If an adult woman can constitutionally choose her partner, and if she can constitutionally choose her faith, the mere fact that the two decisions occur together cannot automatically transform both into evidence of illegality.

Puttaswamy and the Constitutionalisation of Personal Choice

The deeper foundation for this doctrine is the Supreme Court's nine-judge decision in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India.

Puttaswamy transformed privacy from a narrow protection against physical intrusion into a broader constitutional guarantee of individual autonomy. The Court recognised that privacy includes the ability of individuals to make fundamental decisions concerning their own lives, identity and relationships.

Shafin Jahan expressly relied upon this understanding. The Supreme Court explained that the autonomy of the individual includes the ability to make decisions on matters central to one's pursuit of happiness, including belief, faith, love and partnership.

This produces an important constitutional proposition: autonomy is not simply the right to make popular choices; it is the constitutional protection of the individual against external control over intimate decisions.

That is why the language of "family honour" has repeatedly failed as a constitutional justification.

In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that the choice of a life partner is an inseparable facet of liberty and dignity and rejected attempts by families or communities to impose their own conception of honour upon consenting adults.

The Court's reasoning is particularly relevant to cases involving interfaith relationships because it distinguishes social morality from constitutional morality. A community may disapprove of an interfaith relationship; that disapproval does not acquire constitutional status merely because it is widely shared.

The later judgment in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India reinforced this principle by explaining that constitutional morality requires the State to resist majoritarian or popular sentiment when fundamental rights are at stake.

The constitutional position is therefore increasingly clear: the State protects the individual even from the social group to which that individual belongs.

But Does Freedom of Religion Mean an Unqualified Right to Convert? No

A serious analysis of the Allahabad High Court order must avoid the opposite mistake as well.

The Constitution protects freedom of conscience under Article 25, but this does not mean that every alleged conversion is constitutionally immune from regulation.

The Supreme Court's decision in Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh remains the foundational authority in this area. The Court upheld state legislation regulating conversions by force, fraud and allurement and distinguished the right to propagate religion from a supposed right to convert another person.

The significance of Stainislaus is not that it creates a constitutional prohibition on voluntary conversion. Rather, it recognises the competing constitutional interest in protecting the freedom of conscience of the person allegedly being converted.

This is where the present controversy becomes legally interesting.

The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, as amended in 2024, prohibits conversion through misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or fraudulent means. The statute also contains provisions dealing with conversion associated with marriage and prescribes a declaration procedure.

Therefore, the legal distinction is not between "conversion" and "no conversion". It is between voluntary conversion and unlawful conversion.

That distinction must remain meaningful.

If an adult independently decides to adopt another faith, the mere fact that the decision coincides with an interfaith relationship cannot by itself establish force, fraud or undue influence. There must be some legally cognisable basis for attributing coercion.

Otherwise, the protective purpose of an anti-conversion statute could paradoxically become a mechanism for controlling the very freedom of conscience that Article 25 protects.

The Newer Supreme Court Position Makes the Distinction Even More Important

The issue has acquired additional significance following the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Rajendra Bihari Lal v. State of U.P., which directly examined several proceedings arising under the Uttar Pradesh conversion law. The judgment discussed the constitutional framework surrounding Article 25 and the statutory scheme of the U.P. Conversion Act.

More importantly, while analysing the relationship between conversion and personal autonomy, the Supreme Court reiterated the principle from Shafin Jahan that matters of faith and marriage belong to the sphere of individual autonomy. It reproduced the proposition that the State and law cannot dictate an individual's choice of partner merely because that choice is socially disapproved.

This creates an important analytical framework for the Allahabad High Court's case:

First, the State can investigate an allegation that a conversion was obtained through coercion, fraud, undue influence or another prohibited means.

Second, the State cannot treat the mere fact of conversion as evidence that coercion necessarily occurred.

Third, an interfaith relationship does not itself establish unlawful conversion.

Fourth, family opposition cannot substitute for evidence of coercion.

Fifth, where an adult is alleged to be confined because of her religious or marital choice, the court must give substantial constitutional weight to her own statement.

This is where the doctrine of autonomy meets the doctrine of religious freedom.

The Real Constitutional Tension: Protection or Paternalism?

The most difficult question raised by cases like this is not whether the State can prevent forced conversion. It plainly can.

The harder question is: who decides whether a choice was voluntary?

There is a danger of constitutional paternalism if the answer becomes "the family", "the community", or even "the State" without sufficient evidence.

An adult woman may make a decision that her parents consider irrational, irresponsible or contrary to her upbringing. None of those descriptions, standing alone, converts the decision into legal coercion.

The Supreme Court's autonomy jurisprudence is based precisely on the proposition that constitutional rights would become meaningless if judges were permitted to substitute their conception of a person's welfare for that person's own considered choice.

At the same time, autonomy cannot be invoked as a shield for genuine exploitation. If evidence establishes physical force, threats, fraud, manipulation or undue influence, the law must intervene.

The answer, therefore, is not absolute autonomy and not absolute State control. It is evidence-based autonomy.

That is perhaps the most important lesson of the Allahabad High Court's decision to produce the women before it.

The Court has not said that every conversion is lawful. It has not said that every interfaith marriage is beyond scrutiny. It has said, in substance, that the constitutional status of the women requires the Court to determine whether they are exercising their own will before anyone else is permitted to control their lives.

The Constitution Protects Choice Even When Choice Is Controversial

The Allahabad High Court's order should therefore be understood as part of a much longer constitutional trajectory.

From Lata Singh to Shafin Jahan, from Puttaswamy to Shakti Vahini, and from Navtej Singh Johar to the Supreme Court's more recent discussion in Rajendra Bihari Lal, Indian constitutional law has progressively moved towards recognising autonomy as an essential component of dignity and liberty.

The doctrine does not make personal choices immune from law. Marriage remains subject to legal conditions. Conversion obtained through coercion, fraud or prohibited inducement can be regulated. Criminal allegations can and must be investigated.

But there is an equally important constitutional boundary: the State cannot convert disagreement into coercion, and families cannot convert disapproval into detention.

The present case therefore raises a question much larger than whether two women may convert to Islam or marry Muslim men. It asks whether an adult citizen remains the author of her own identity when her choice conflicts with the expectations of her family and community.

The answer supplied by India's constitutional jurisprudence is increasingly unequivocal.

A Constitution that protects only socially approved choices protects very little at all.

The real test of liberty is whether the legal system protects an individual's choice precisely when that choice is unpopular, controversial or deeply opposed by those around her.

That is why the Allahabad High Court's insistence on hearing the women themselves is constitutionally significant. Before the State decides what happened to them, it must first allow them to say, in their own voice, what they chose—and whether anyone chose for them.