Faith Is Not a Licence to Injure - An Indian Proposal to Prohibit Religious Practices That Cause Serious Physical or Neurological Harm

India should protect freedom of religion fiercely.

It should protect the freedom to believe.

The freedom to disbelieve.

The freedom to pray.

The freedom to meditate.

The freedom to worship Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, Allah, Jesus, the Buddha, Mahavira, Waheguru—or nobody.

But religious freedom should never be confused with a licence to damage another human being.

A civilisation can protect temples and brains simultaneously.

It can protect spirituality and bodily autonomy simultaneously.

It can protect religious diversity while saying something remarkably simple:

No god, guru, scripture, institution or tradition places a person above another human being’s right to bodily and mental integrity.

This principle should apply equally to every religion and to non-religious organisations.

I. Don’t Ban Beliefs. Ban Demonstrable Harm.

The phrase “brain-damaging religion” would make terrible legislation.

It is scientifically imprecise and legally dangerous.

Someone disliking an ideology does not establish neurological damage.

An atheist should not be able to demand the closure of a temple because he considers prayer irrational.

A Hindu should not be able to prohibit Islamic practices merely because she considers their theology false.

A Muslim should not be able to prohibit Christian evangelism because he considers Christianity mistaken.

A religious family should not be able to prohibit atheistic literature because they believe it corrupts the mind.

The State should therefore never have a Ministry of Correct Beliefs.

The law should instead examine objectively measurable conduct and consequences.

The question isn’t:

“Is this religion true?”

The question is:

“What was done to this human being?”

II. Indian Law Already Recognises the Basic Principle

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita defines “hurt” as causing bodily pain, disease or infirmity and separately recognises categories of grievous hurt. (⁠India Code)

India also already possesses a particularly relevant legislative experiment.

Maharashtra’s 2013 legislation against human sacrifice and specified inhuman or dangerous practices prohibits, among other things, conduct performed under supernatural pretexts involving tying or chaining people, beating them, forcing substances into their mouths, exposing them to chilli smoke or heated objects, and dangerous practices undertaken to obtain purported supernatural powers. Importantly, the same legislation expressly protects many ordinary religious activities that do not cause physical injury or financial loss. (⁠India Code)

That distinction is crucial.

Prayer isn’t the target. Injury is.

India’s Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act also already recognises “magic remedy” claims involving talismans, mantras, kavachas and other alleged miraculous powers in connection with diagnosing, treating or preventing disease, although that Act principally regulates advertising rather than establishing the broader framework proposed here. (⁠India Code)

The missing piece is a clear nationwide framework addressing serious harm committed under religious, spiritual, supernatural or purported healing authority.

III. Proposed Law

Religious and Spiritual Bodily Integrity and Safeguarding Act

Purpose

To protect every person in India from serious physical, neurological and psychiatric injury caused through coercive, reckless, fraudulent or abusive religious or spiritual practices while preserving peaceful religious belief, worship, teaching and voluntary spiritual practice.

The law should be religion-neutral.

Hinduism gets no exemption.

Islam gets no exemption.

Christianity gets no exemption.

Sikhism gets no exemption.

Buddhism gets no exemption.

Jainism gets no exemption.

Tribal and folk religions get no exemption.

New religious movements get no exemption.

Atheistic organisations get no exemption.

Gurus get no exemption.

Neither do “wellness”, psychedelic, occult or self-improvement organisations merely because they refuse to call themselves religions.

The protected entity is not the ideology.

The protected entity is the human being.

IV. What Should Actually Be Prohibited?

The Act should prohibit organisations and leaders from intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing or creating a substantial risk of serious injury through practices including:

Physical violence disguised as purification or exorcism. Beating, burning, whipping, strangling, chaining, forced restraint or similar conduct cannot become lawful merely because someone calls it spiritual treatment.

Dangerous deprivation. Coercing extreme fasting, dehydration, sleep deprivation, oxygen deprivation, prolonged exposure to heat or cold, or physically exhausting rituals where serious injury is reasonably foreseeable.

Forced ingestion or administration. Giving someone intoxicants, poisonous substances, psychoactive compounds or purported medicines without legally valid consent and appropriate safeguards.

Medical obstruction. Coercively preventing someone from receiving necessary medical treatment because an organisation claims that prayer, ritual, exorcism, supernatural intervention or an unqualified healer must replace appropriate healthcare.

Dangerous purported mental-health treatment. Assaulting, restraining, starving, terrifying or otherwise harming someone because depression, psychosis, epilepsy, dissociation or another condition has been characterised as possession, divine punishment, witchcraft or supernatural contamination.

Deliberate induction of physiological crisis. Practices intended to produce unconsciousness, seizures, hypoxia, severe dehydration or other dangerous states without legitimate medical justification and safeguards.

Abuse of children and dependent adults. A parent or religious authority should not be able to consent on behalf of a child to conduct that would otherwise constitute serious abuse merely by describing it as religious discipline.

V. Examples

Imagine someone experiencing seizures.

Instead of obtaining medical assistance, an alleged healer ties the person down, beats them and claims a spirit must be expelled.

The law should care about the restraint, assault and resulting injuries—not whether spirits exist.

Imagine a retreat leader intentionally keeps participants awake for several days while severely restricting food and water despite participants becoming medically unstable.

Again, theology is irrelevant.

Investigate the conduct and the medical evidence.

Imagine parents peacefully teaching their child that prayer heals.

That alone should not be criminal.

But imagine someone deliberately prevents emergency treatment for a critically ill child while claiming supernatural intervention makes medicine unnecessary.

Now the State has a legitimate safeguarding interest.

The dividing line is not:

religious versus secular.

It is:

belief versus harmful conduct.

VI. “Brainwashing” Should Not Be the Criminal Offence

This distinction is essential.

Terms such as:

brainwashing, mind control, spiritual manipulation and cult programming

can describe genuine experiences, but they are too ambiguous to constitute offences by themselves.

A prosecutor should have to establish specific conduct.

For example:

coercion,

fraud,

unlawful confinement,

threats,

assault,

medical neglect,

administration of substances without consent,

serious sleep deprivation,

sexual abuse,

financial exploitation,

or medically demonstrated injury.

Otherwise governments could eventually label inconvenient political movements, minority religions or unconventional philosophies “brainwashing”.

That would create precisely the authoritarian machinery such legislation should prevent.

VII. What Counts as Neurological Damage?

This should require evidence.

Not:

“My son stopped believing our religion after joining another religion, therefore they damaged his brain.”

Not:

“She became an atheist after university, therefore university brainwashed her.”

Not:

“He became religious, therefore religion damaged him.”

Instead, allegations of neurological injury should require appropriately qualified clinical assessment and, where relevant, objective medical evidence.

Possible legally relevant outcomes could include medically substantiated:

traumatic brain injury,

hypoxic brain injury,

neurological impairment,

seizure-related injury,

toxic injury,

persistent cognitive impairment,

or another clinically established physical or neurological condition.

Psychological harm requires its own carefully drafted standards rather than pretending every distressing experience constitutes literal “brain damage.”

VIII. Consent Matters—But Consent Is Not Infinite

Adults may voluntarily undertake activities involving some risk.

People fast.

People climb mountains.

People practise demanding meditation.

People participate in pilgrimages.

People undertake martial arts.

People undergo body modification.

Religion should not automatically receive stricter treatment than comparable secular activities.

But valid consent should require:

capacity + information + voluntariness + ability to withdraw.

Consent obtained through confinement, threats, deception about material risks, intoxication or coercion should not be treated as genuine consent.

And consent should not automatically excuse conduct causing catastrophic injury where existing criminal law would otherwise intervene.

IX. Protect Ordinary Religion Explicitly

The legislation should contain a strong freedom clause.

Nothing in the Act should prohibit, merely because it is religious:

prayer;

meditation;

chanting;

singing;

pilgrimage;

religious education;

sermons;

philosophical teaching;

ordinary fasting by competent adults;

wearing religious clothing;

peaceful rituals;

voluntary worship;

criticism of religion;

conversion;

deconversion;

atheism;

mystical claims;

belief in miracles;

or belief in supernatural beings.

The Maharashtra legislation provides a useful conceptual precedent because it distinguishes prohibited harmful conduct from protected ordinary religious activities. (⁠India Code)

You can believe something scientifically unverified.

You simply cannot assault somebody with it.

X. Organisations Should Not Automatically Be Banned

There is another important safeguard.

Suppose one priest at an enormous religious organisation assaults somebody.

Closing the entire religion would be absurd.

Institutional sanctions should therefore be proportional.

For an isolated offence:

prosecute the offender.

For negligent institutional supervision:

fine, regulate and impose safeguarding requirements on the organisation.

For repeated systemic abuse:

suspend the offending programme or facility.

For an organisation substantially structured around criminally harmful practices, or one that repeatedly facilitates them despite judicial orders:

a court could suspend or prohibit the relevant entity or activity.

Dissolution should be an exceptional judicial remedy—not an administrative weapon available to whichever government happens to be in office.

XI. Proposed Enforcement Architecture

India could create a Religious and Spiritual Safeguarding Framework rather than a religious-policing agency.

Complaints involving alleged neurological or physical injury would be investigated through ordinary law-enforcement and health institutions.

Medical questions would be evaluated by appropriately qualified independent professionals.

Children and dependent adults would receive enhanced safeguarding.

Organisations above an appropriate size—or those offering residential retreats, healing programmes or intensive practices—could be required to publish:

emergency procedures,

medical-risk disclosures,

child-protection policies,

complaint procedures,

and rules governing physical restraint and administration of substances.

Serious institutional sanctions would require judicial review.

The identity of the religion would be legally irrelevant.

XII. Penalties

Penalties should track the harm rather than the religious label.

Existing criminal offences should continue to apply to assault and injury. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, voluntarily causing grievous hurt can already attract imprisonment, with substantially greater consequences where permanent disability or a persistent vegetative state results. (⁠India Code)

The proposed Act could add institutional consequences:

regulatory fines;

compensation and rehabilitation for victims;

temporary suspension of dangerous programmes;

mandatory safeguarding reforms;

disqualification of responsible leaders from running specified residential or healing programmes;

and, in extreme and repeatedly non-compliant cases, court-ordered dissolution of the responsible legal entity.

Where conduct causes death, sexual violence, trafficking, unlawful confinement or another serious offence, the relevant general criminal law should apply.

Religion should neither aggravate nor erase the underlying crime merely because it is religion.

XIII. No “God Told Me” Defence

A person’s religious motivation may explain why they acted.

It should not automatically legalise what they did.

If somebody burns another human being, saying:

“God instructed me to purify him”

does not erase the burn.

If someone beats a person during an exorcism, calling the blows sacred does not make the injuries imaginary.

If someone deliberately deprives another person of oxygen to produce a mystical experience, metaphysics does not alter physiology.

A secular republic does not need to determine whether God spoke.

It needs to determine:

What did the defendant do?

Did the victim consent?

What harm resulted?

Was that harm reasonably foreseeable?

Was an offence committed?

That is enough.

XIV. The Principle India Needs

India does not need to choose between science and religious freedom.

It needs a boundary between freedom of consciousness and power over another person’s body.

Believe whatever you wish about the universe.

Pray to whomever you wish.

Reject every god if you wish.

Become a monk.

Become an atheist.

Meditate.

Chant.

Fast responsibly.

Seek transcendence.

Argue about metaphysics for the next thousand years.

But another human being’s brain is not your religious laboratory.

Their body is not your theological property.

Their illness is not an opportunity to demonstrate supernatural authority.

Their child is not experimental material for a guru.

Their suffering cannot be erased by calling it purification.

India can remain one of the world’s great homes of religious diversity while establishing one uncompromising constitutional principle:

Your faith belongs to you.

Another person’s body belongs to them.

And whenever the two collide, human bodily integrity must have the protection of law.

— Mahakali Tribunal
Intelligence · Justice · Wealth

Draft legislative maxim

“No religious, spiritual, supernatural, traditional or ideological character of an act shall constitute, by itself, a defence to conduct that otherwise constitutes unlawful physical or neurological injury, coercion, abuse or medical neglect under the laws of India.”