Diversity Will Be Truly Meaningful When India Celebrates Rather Than Criminalises Hindu-Muslim Marriages
By Sagarika Ghose
November
29, 2020
Long before
Zaheer Khan and Sagarika Ghatge, there was Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Sharmila
Tagore. Muslim men married Hindu women and the public was enthralled by their
marriages. The dazzling Pataudis and Khans were well protected by celebrity
status and social power, and no one accused them of love jihad.
Mansur
Ali Khan Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore
-----
But the
story is very different for ordinary citizens who choose to marry outside their
religion. They remain at the mercy of the state and vigilante squads because
they aren’t well-known. Akhila Ashokan or Hadiya married Shafin Jahan and faced
years of torment before the Supreme Court finally ruled in 2018 that ‘the right
to marry a person of one’s choice is integral to Article 21.” In spite of this,
today couples who break the religious barrier are shadowed by fears of
committing ‘love jihad’.
Love jihad
sounds gender neutral, but in reality it’s a pernicious anti-woman term aimed
at denying agency and individual freedom to women. Proponents of love jihad see
women as “Hamaari Bachchiyan” or
mindless infantilised objects who are controlled by patriarchs. They see Muslim
men as the perpetual Mahmud of Ghazni-stereotypical marauding `enemy’. The
proponents of `love jihad’ cannot tolerate that in the 21st century love is a
socially revolutionary force that is destroying barriers of religion, caste,
community and even gender.
Zaheer
Khan and Sagarika Ghatge
------
Liberty-destroying
state power has started intruding dangerously into personal decisions like
marriage choices. Uttar Pradesh has promulgated an ordinance that criminalises
Hindu-Muslim marriages which are deemed “fraudulent” on the grounds that they
are designed to force religious conversions. Such marriages are being painted
as sinister attempts by Muslim men to convert Hindu women. Other BJP states
like Madhya Pradesh are mulling similar laws. Governments claim this
legislation is necessary because Muslim men use fake identities to lure Hindu
women into conversion.
But apart
from the fact that hard statistics on such cases are extremely sketchy, laws to
deal with such offences already exist in IPC’s Section 420 against cheating,
fraud or deception. Nor does every Hindu-Muslim marriage result in conversion.
The Special Marriage Act allows couples across religions to marry lawfully
without changing religions. Actor Urmila Matondkar is married to a Muslim and
hasn’t converted.
Is there
really need for a separate law that gives the state such enormous power over
citizens’ personal lives? In UP, a Hindu-Muslim marriage and a desire for
conversion means that the couple must inform the District Magistrate and local
police two months earlier. These two months could become an opportunity for
harassment and torment of the couple, by family, state, and that familiar
spectre of moral policing — the right wing vigilante squad.
Saif Ali Khan and Kareena
Kapoor
----
Militant
traditionalists detest love and intermarriage. But independent India’s founders
wholeheartedly supported inter-religious marriage, rightly seeing it as a sign
of social progress and enhancement of democracy. When Indira Nehru, a Hindu,
married Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Such unions are bound to
benefit society.” Ambedkar was convinced intermarriages could liberate India
from caste prejudice. “The real remedy for breaking caste is intermarriage,”
said Ambedkar. In fact, BJP leaders M A Naqvi and Shahnawaz Hussain are married
to Hindus and Sushil Modi is married to a Christian.
The real
issue here is individual freedom versus the power of a partisan ideologically-driven
state to impose a forced collective identity on individuals. Women’s
empowerment is an officially echoed mantra, yet there’s a systematic denial of
a woman’s right to choose her partner or even convert if she chooses to. Hadiya
kept insisting she freely converted to Islam because she was drawn to its
tenets. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism as a Dalit liberation from
caste. The liberty to choose one’s own spiritual path is enshrined in India’s
Constitution. The state should have no role on who a citizen chooses to love or
which god she chooses to worship. If an individual chooses to change her
religion, for either social, spiritual or even frivolous reasons, others can
attempt to persuade, but violent state power should not be deployed against a
free personal choice.
India’s
touted diversity is not just a series of colourful regional floats to show off
at the Republic Day Parade. Diversity will be truly meaningful only when India
celebrates rather than criminalises Hindu-Muslim marriages. Like Gandhian
campaigns on eradication of social evils, perhaps it’s time for a citizens’
campaign in defence of love, love unrestricted by caste, community or religion.
Original Headline: No jihad against love:
Interfaith marriages must be celebrated, not criminalised
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/diversity-be-truly-meaningful-when/d/123616