THE CATHOLIC Church has joined the chorus of protests against a controversial amendment made by Gujarat state to its anti-conversion law enacted three years ago.

The Gujarat legislature on 19 September passed amendments to the Freedom of Religion Act that excluded conversions to Buddhism and Jainism (branding them as Hindu religions) from the mandatory need to seek prior government permission for conversion. The state is ruled by the Hindu nationalist BJP.

"This amendment is trying to create division among [religious] minorities," Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes of state capital Gandhinagar, who is secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, told The Tablet on 26 September.

Pointing out that the Church had opposed the original legislation because it "infringed" the fundamental freedom of religion, Archbishop Fernandes said that the Church has appealed to state governor Naval Kishore Sharma to withhold his assent and so prevent the amendment from becoming law.

"Religious conversion is an inner call of grace which no power on earth can intervene in. Any interference of civil authority will only be to bring pressure on the conscience of people to desist from their innate human and spiritual right to make a choice of their own faith," the Catholic bishops pointed out in their 20 September memorandum to the governor appointed by the federal Government.

Meanwhile, Buddhist and Jain groups have also protested that the amendment projects their religions as offshoots of Hinduism.