UP anti-conversion law amounts to discrimination and a violation of the right to equality What is the purpose of such a law? There is no data produced by the UP government on any harm from inter-faith marriages. Updated: December 18, 2020 8:50:29 am An analysis of “India Human Development Survey data, 2005” showed that only 2.21 per cent of all married women between the age of 15-49 had married outside their religion. (Illustration by C R Sasikumar) In 1967, when Richard Loving challenged the ban on inter-racial marriages in the State of Virginia, the United States Supreme Court stated in Loving v. Virginia, “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State…We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”