By Joanna Slater
November
26, 2020
Marrying
across religious lines has always been a challenge in India, a vast multifaith
democracy where the pull of family and tradition remains strong.
Indian Hindus take part in a
rally against “love jihad” in Ahmedabad in July 2018. (Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty
Images)
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Now
politicians in India’s ruling party are contemplating laws to thwart such
unions, driven by a conspiracy theory that views them as a tool for
conversions.
At a rally
last month, the leader of the country’s largest state warned of the danger of
“love jihad,” an inflammatory slur referring to an alleged plot by Muslim men
to convert Hindu women through marriage.
Men who
“conceal their names and play with the honor of daughters and sisters” should
prepare for their final journeys, thundered Yogi Adityanath, the radical Hindu
monk who leads the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The “love
jihad” smear is baseless, but it has become common parlance among members of
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. In recent weeks, four state governments
have promised to enact new laws to combat the purported threat.
On Tuesday,
the state cabinet in Uttar Pradesh — home to more than 200 million people —
approved an order criminalizing religious conversions “by marriage” with jail
terms of between one and 10 years. The order, once it’s signed by the state
governor, would also nullify unions in which a woman changes her religion
solely to marry.
The new
laws will deepen concerns that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s
Muslim minority is increasingly subject to suspicion, discrimination and even
violence.
Couples
belonging to different religions or castes have long faced hurdles in India
that range from familial opposition to death threats. There is no official data
on how many interfaith marriages there are in the country, but a study based on
statistics from 2005 suggested they represented about 2 percent of the total.
In 2017, a high-profile
alleged “love jihad” case made its way to India’s Supreme Court. The court
ruled in favor of Hadiya, center, whose marriage to a Muslim man was dissolved
by a lower court on the grounds that she had been brainwashed into converting
to Islam.
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In recent
years, some such couples have also endured harassment by Hindu extremists, who
have revealed their identities and personal details online.
Now the
notion of “love jihad” — once relegated to the Hindu nationalist fringe — has
moved on to the legislative agenda in states controlled by the BJP.
Conspiracy
theories alleging plots to seduce Hindu women and convert them to Islam have
circulated for years, propagated by “a section of Hindu nationalist activists,”
said Charu Gupta, a historian at the University of Delhi who studies issues of
gender and sexuality. “But now it has this endorsement and sanction from authority
and power.”
Earlier
this week, Arun Singh, the national general secretary of the BJP, told
reporters in Delhi that “love jihad” is a “very serious problem” that states
should pass laws to address. “Many mothers and sisters have suffered its bad
consequences.”
Such
assertions are without basis. In India’s Parliament earlier this year, a
government minister said no case of “love jihad” has been registered by federal
authorities and no such term is defined in Indian law.
A probe by
a national investigating agency in 2018 examined 11 interfaith marriages in the
state of Kerala and found no proof of coercion.
More
recently, police in the northern Indian city of Kanpur formed a special
investigation team in August to scrutinize such relationships. The probe was
initiated after several women became involved “with men from a different
religion,” which caused “public anger,” said a copy of the team’s final report,
which was viewed by The Washington Post.
The police
examined 14 cases of interreligious relationships where some wrongdoing was
alleged, either by a woman or her family members, and found no evidence of
conspiracy, said Mohit Agarwal, a senior police official in Kanpur.
Despite the
absence of evidence for the phenomenon of “love jihad,” three more BJP-controlled
states — Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka — have pledged to enact laws
targeting it.
Anil Vij, a
minister in the Haryana government, was among those promising strict action.
“No one should, either by trapping a person in the web of love, temptation, by
seducing or by threatening, change someone’s religion,” he said in a recent
television interview.
Companies
that depict interfaith romance have faced outrage. In Madhya Pradesh, state
police registered a complaint against two Netflix India executives after a
Hindu nationalist group objected to a scene in the serial “A Suitable Boy.” In
the scene, a Hindu woman and a Muslim man share a kiss near a Hindu temple.
(The complaint is unlikely to result in any penalty for Netflix.)
Last month,
the jewellery brand Tanishq was forced to withdraw an advertisement built
around a touching scene of interreligious harmony at a baby shower. It evoked a
furious response from some Hindu nationalists, who threatened to boycott the
brand for promoting “love jihad.”
Such
rhetoric has prompted some unusual responses. A trio of journalists launched an
Instagram account in late October called the India Love Project to highlight
true stories of interfaith couples. The response has been overwhelming, said
Samar Halarnkar, one of the founders. Every day new stories arrive, he said.
“It’s
moving, it’s inspiring and in a sense, frustrating,” said Halarnkar. “The very
fact that we’ve had to start something like this indicates where we are today
as a country.”
India has a
decades-old law that is supposed to make it easier for interfaith and
intercaste couples to marry, but in practice often ends up doing the opposite,
said Surbhi Karwa, a gender and law researcher in Delhi. Under the statute, an
advance notice period and other formalities are required to ratify such unions.
The new
laws under consideration in BJP-controlled states are “effectively telling
people that you can’t marry outside your faith,” said Karwa. Women already face
an uphill battle to assert their own choice of a spouse in India, where
arranged marriages are the norm for most couples. Now, Karwa said, “the state
is going to make it even more difficult.”
Many
interreligious couples view the current atmosphere with dismay. Abdul
Mustaqeem, a civil servant, is Muslim, and his wife Sonam, a language trainer
who goes only by her first name, is Hindu. They met as students, fell in love
and married in 2014. Today’s environment is “turning toxic” for couples like
them, said Mustaqeem.
Close
friends who once saw their relationship as normal have begun questioning it,
the couple said. They think twice about posting their views on controversial
topics on social media to protect their families.
“It’s hard
to keep quiet, but we choose to,” said Sonam.
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Taniya Dutta in New Delhi and Saurabh Sharma in
Lucknow contributed reporting.
Joanna Slater is the India bureau chief for The
Washington Post. Prior to joining The Post, she was a foreign correspondent for
the Globe & Mail in the United States and Europe and a reporter for the
Wall Street Journal. Her previous postings include assignments in Mumbai, Hong
Kong and Berlin.
Original Headline: It was never easy being an
interfaith couple in India. Now some states are making it harder.
Source: The Washington Post
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/love-jihad-interreligious-couples-view/d/123612