Sign before praying: A new conversion law is affecting churchgoers in Indian state
The forms, a copy of which the BBC has seen, have no official standing. It also requires people who want to convert voluntarily to notify authorities in advance. The state government did not respond to the BBC's repeated requests for comment.While the law applies to all religions, the anxiety is being felt most deeply at places where minorities, especially Christians, worship.
- ▪The forms, a copy of which the BBC has seen, have no official standing.
- ▪It also requires people who want to convert voluntarily to notify authorities in advance.
- ▪The state government did not respond to the BBC's repeated requests for comment.While the law applies to all religions, the anxiety is being felt most deeply at places where minorities, especially Christians, worship.
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| Original publisher | BBC News — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmj4jg2vxvpdo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss |
| Publication time | Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:50:19 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-29T01:13:03.685Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-29T01:13:03.685Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | fC4jQAH7DWrO · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Sign before praying: A new conversion law is affecting churchgoers in Indian stateImage source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, A new anti-conversion law in Maharashtra has sparked fears among Christians ByJanhavee Moole, BBC Marathi, Mumbai and Zoya Mateen, BBC News, DelhiPublished2 hours agoSome churches in and around India's financial capital Mumbai have begun asking worshippers to give a declaration in writing - "I came here to pray of my own free will."Visitors write down their names, sometimes add an ID card number, and sign to say that nobody forced or enticed them to attend church. The forms, a copy of which the BBC has seen, have no official standing.
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