‘Love Jihad’ Legislation Will Further Marginalise Muslims And Undermine Women’s Agency And Rights
By Pragya Tiwari
30 Nov 2020
India is a
triumph of the imagination: innumerable cultures, languages, and worldviews,
often at odds with one other, loosely bound by a constitution that frames equal
rights and common values for an impossibly diverse population.
A Muslim reads the Quran in
Juma Masjid on the first day of Ramadan in Ahmedabad, India on April 25, 2020
[File: Reuters/Amit Dave]
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One of
these values is secularism, which has been upheld as a central constitutional
principle despite the chequered relationship between Hindus and Muslims – the
two largest religious communities in India – historically tested by friction
and violence.
More
recently, however, this principle has been challenged by an unprecedented rise
of Islamophobia.
The rise of
the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is rooted in a socio-political
ideology that asserts that India is a Hindu country, has led to the
marginalisation of Muslims through activism on the ground, propaganda online,
and policymaking at the highest levels. The latest in a line of
disenfranchising policy decisions is legislation criminalising so-called “love
jihad”. This month, India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the BJP, has
passed an ordinance to this effect and four other states are likely to follow
suit.
“Love
jihad” is a term used by the political and religious right to describe an alleged
phenomenon where Muslim men lure Hindu women, by hook or by crook, into
marrying them and converting to Islam. Right-wing propagandists claim that this
is an organised racket rooted in a widespread conspiracy.
However,
successive probes have failed to find any evidence that such a conspiracy
exists and the central government has admitted that the term has no credible
definition. Moreover, not only are any actual offences that may be committed in
this regard, such as forced conversion or marriage that is entered into under
false pretences or coercion, already punishable under existing legislation but
also the wide framing of the proposed legislation goes against India’s constitution and sound judicial
precedent.
What then
is the intent behind pushing for such legislation? One way to answer this
question is to examine its premise and potential consequences.
Ideas of
purity of blood are intrinsically linked to ideologies that seek to establish
the supremacy of one imagined community over another. In the 1930s, aspersions
over the citizenship of Jews and intermarriage between “Aryan” people and Jews
were the foundation of the Nuremberg laws.
The
proposed laws against “love jihad” should be, similarly, placed within the
context of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a piece of controversial
legislation passed last year that enables the state to question the citizenship
of Indian Muslims. While this legislation sought to other Muslims as
“outsiders” to the country, the narrative of “love jihad” seeks to other them
within Indian society.
The central
premise of the proposed new legislation vilifies Muslim men in particular, and,
by association, Muslims in general, as untrustworthy and malicious –
entrenching suspicion in the psychology of the nation. It reduces them to their
religious identity by implying that they are committed, foremost, to “religious
warfare”, even when it comes to something as intimate as love. It also reduces
them to second-class citizens who cannot take for granted the right to life and
liberty guaranteed by the constitution.
Rule of law
and access to justice in India are both cripplingly weak for its
disenfranchised classes and communities. Muslims, who are also more likely to
be poor, constitute a disproportionately high fraction of under-trials in
India’s prisons.
Last year,
the government passed a law criminalising instant divorce among Muslims. While
withdrawing legal sanction of the regressive practice was a laudable step,
serious concerns were voiced about the decision to criminalise it. The anxiety
was the same as it is with the impending legislation on “love jihad” – that the
law can be misused to incarcerate members of the community under false
pretexts.
The
Frankenstein monster of “love jihad” has already taken on a life of its own. Fake
rumours and videos have been circulated on social media alleging that women are
being targeted by Muslim men, leading to riots and lynching. The chief minister
of Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath, while announcing that he intends to enact a law
against “love jihad”, also declared that Muslim men guilty of the crime ought
to be killed.
Casting the
Muslim man as the potential enemy furthers not only an ideological agenda but
also a political one. The creation of a common enemy helps to consolidate a
Hindu vote bank, bringing together voters on a highly emotive issue and
encouraging them to vote along religious identity lines rather than other
concerns, giving the BJP an edge over other parties during state and national
elections.
The added
consequence of this legislation, designed to push a political and ideological
agenda, will be the further entrenchment of patriarchal norms. In large parts
of India, women still struggle for basic freedoms with little say in matters
concerning their education, work, finances, and marriage.
If a woman
dares to defy her family and community in order to assert her right to choose
her own partner, she could be faced with threats, violence and, at times, even
death. Commonly, families of women who elope press charges against the couple
in order to deploy state machinery to break them up or make an example of them.
“Love jihad” laws are bound to be weaponised in this context, but there is also
something even more insidious about them.
The idea of
“love jihad” is rooted in the mindset that women are chattel and a family’s
honour hinges on safeguarding them against marauders. In the aforementioned
speech, Adityanath used the words “the honour of our daughters and sisters”
referring to what he believes is at stake.
The
insistence that there is a conspiracy also insinuates that women are gullible
and therefore lack the agency to make sound decisions with respect to their own
lives. In the recent past, “love jihad” has been used as an excuse to restrict
women from using mobile phones and to encourage vigilantes who take to moral
policing and harassment of couples. The idea also further endangers women’s
right to privacy by creating a mechanism to question and probe their consent to
marry and convert.
Every
society struggles with dark instincts. By writing a lie into law, the BJP is
appealing to these very instincts that can tear through the fragile
constitutional bond that has held India together as a democracy, despite the
odds, and further put in danger the lives of India’s Muslims and women.
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Pragya Tiwari is an editor and journalist based
out of New Delhi. She writes for a number of publications on policy, politics
and culture.
Original Headline: What is behind India’s ‘love
jihad’ legislation?
Source: The Al-Jazeera
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/‘love-jihad’-legislation-marginalise-muslims/d/123626