{"id":14469,"date":"2015-09-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/09\/19\/nepal-adopts-secular-constitution-but-retains-anti-conversion-language\/"},"modified":"2015-09-19T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T12:00:00","slug":"nepal-adopts-secular-constitution-but-retains-anti-conversion-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/09\/19\/nepal-adopts-secular-constitution-but-retains-anti-conversion-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Nepal Adopts Secular Constitution but Retains Anti-Conversion Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baptiststandard.com\/news\/world\/18313-nepal-adopts-secular-constitution-but-retains-anti-conversion-language\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>NEPAL, September 17, 2015 (Baptist Standard): HPI Note: This news report is coming from a Baptist Church publication.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers in Nepal rejected an effort to declare the Himalayan nation a Hindu state, adopting a new constitution Sept. 14 defining Nepal as a secular republic but retaining a controversial anti-conversion clause. <\/p>\n<p>Elijah Brown, chief of staff with the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, had spearheaded an international coalition&#8211;with significant Baptist involvement&#8211;calling on Nepal&#8217;s 601-member Constituent Assembly to reject language in the constitution that criminalizes &#8220;any act to convert another person from one religion to another.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brown expressed disappointment the constitution retained Section 31(3), which says: &#8220;No one shall behave, act or undertake activities that breach public order or break public peace\/peace in the community; and no one shall attempt to change or convert someone from one religion to another, or disturb\/jeopardize the religion of others, and such acts\/activities shall be punishable by law.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source NEPAL, September 17, 2015 (Baptist Standard): HPI Note: This news report is coming from a Baptist Church publication. Lawmakers,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}