Love Jihad: Sikandar Bakht And Raj Sharma - Power Erases Bitter Memories?
By V.V.P. Sharma
29 November
2020
Decades
ago, a young Muslim man and a young Hindu woman fell in love. They were both
educated, and lived in the same neighbourhood in Delhi. India was barely three
years into freedom. Noakhali was still a fresh memory.
L.K.
Advani (L), A.B. Bajpayee and Sikandar Bakht (R).
------
The couple
decided get married. Neither of them converted religions, and theirs was a
civil marriage.
The Hindu
Mahasabha was livid. Muslim men were endangering Hindus by luring their women
away, they said. The young man happened to be associated with the Congress. The
Mahasabha was both anti-Congress and anti-Muslim – and used this fiery formula
to trigger a communal conflict. There were targeted attacks on the Qureshi
community, of which the young man was a member, across Delhi.
Years
passed. It was 1977. The Janata Party was formed. The Muslim man, now not as
young, left the Congress, influenced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Jana Sangh.
Sikandar
Bakht was the first prominent Muslim in independent India to join what would
eventually become the Bharatiya Janata Party. Hindu Mahasabha members, if they
had any objections (and they did), kept these objections to themselves.
Nobody gave a second thought to the fact that Bakht’s marriage to Raj Sharma had roused the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha to launch and direct a communal riot in Delhi. Perhaps power erases bitter memories?
Amit
Malviya's Appointment in Bengal Shows How Heavily BJP Relies on Social Media
The
modern-day BJP, and its Hindutva brigade, would consider Bakht a practitioner
of Muslim ‘love jihad‘ to convert Hindu women. They are now trying to prevent
future Bakhts by bringing in a legislation to show them their place: a place
well outside the social fabric of their India.
Years
later, in 2016, a young researcher, Nazima Parveen submitted her PhD thesis
titled ‘Ideas of Homeland and Politics of Space: A Study of ‘Muslim Localities’
of Delhi’ to Victoria University, Wellington. After meticulous research, she
put together the facts about Bakht’s marriage.
She wrote,
on page 166 of her thesis:
“An
inter-religious civil marriage of an educated Muslim Qureshi boy belonging to
Congress, named Sikandar Bakht, with a Hindu Brahmin girl named Raj Sharma, in
May 1952, became a justification for Hindu nationalist forces to target [the]
Qureshi community. The perception of danger arising from Muslim youths marrying
Hindu or Sikh girls sharpened the mental and physical boundaries between Hindu
and Muslim localities and Mohallas. It also strengthened the anti-Congress,
anti-Muslim Kasai rhetoric constructed by Hindu organisations. A series of
communal conflicts began in the aftermath of this marriage which resulted in
targeted attacks on areas dominated by Muslims and specifically by the Qureshi
community. Mohalla Raqab Ganj, situated near Turkman Gate, Qasabpura, and other
Muslim areas, were attacked constantly with the tacit as well as active support
of police in 1952-1953.”
RSS
mouthpiece Organiser, as quoted by the Milli Gazette in 2004, said in an
editorial titled ‘Guilty Men’ in its June 2, 1952 edition:
“Notorious
Sikandar Bakht was a commander in the Muslim League’s National Guards. As the
favourite pet of Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was an evil power in partition-time
Delhi….We congratulate the Jan Sangh and the Mahasabha leaders and workers on
their articulation of public agony. Graceful Delhi has responded to their Hartal
call for the second day.”
Bakht died
in 2004, in office as governor of Kerala. He was one of only five BJP leaders –
along with Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley – to be
awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award.
The same
Organiser, in its issue dated March 7, 2004, wrote:
“In his
condolence message the RSS Sarsanghchalak, K.S. Sudarshan described Sikander
Bakht as an upright man of principles who had an affable temperament and
endeared himself to all those who came in contact with him. Political
untouchability was unknown to him and his earnest endeavour was to bring the
Indian Muslim society into the national mainstream.”
If the
Hindutva brigade could treat one of the BJP’s tallest poster boys in this
manner, what chance has an ordinary Muslim young man of being able to safely
marry a Hindu woman he loves, without facing violence from anti-‘love jihad’
vigilantes?
The
right-wing leadership is slowly but steadily increasing the tempo against
so-called ‘love jihad’. After triple talaq, the National Register of Citizens
and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, this is the latest dish on the communal
platter. Like with the other three, it will be a formal, legal affair, in the
form of a special law to deal with the “problem”.
Several
BJP-run states have announced they will bring in a law of this kind. Madhya
Pradesh was among the first to come out with a Bill – the Madhya Pradesh Dharm
Swatantrey Bill, 2020. It has a provision of five years imprisonment for forced
conversions for marriage. State home minister Narottam Mishra has a vivid
picture of what love jihad is: “…which means a woman is forced or lured by a
person of other religion for marriage and later she is tortured for
conversion.”
The fact
Mishra glossed over, and which underlines the political rather than legal
urgency of the Bill, is that Madhya Pradesh already has a law against forced
conversion: the MP Freedom of Religion Act. It requires that all converts
produce a legal affidavit that they were not under any pressure, force or
allurement to convert but are converting by their own will and desire, after
evaluating the religion properly. It also has a provision for a two-year jail term.
Why, then, a new law? What precisely is the Sangh Parivar’s definition of love
jihad?
Yes, there
may be cases of forced conversions. India is a big country. But another law
will hardly fix that problem. It needs a sensitive approach, and not communal
polarisation – that too around election time. The exception cannot become the
rule. Ask Sikandar Bakht.
India’s
anti-conversion laws are statutes in force to curb religious conversions that
are not voluntary. Such laws already exist in eight states, most of whom are
under BJP rule today – Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh,
Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Several other states are
considering such laws.
The
Constitution guarantees the freedom to profess, practice and propagate one’s
religion under Article 25, which is “guaranteed in respect of not one religion
only, but covers all religions alike, and it can be properly enjoyed by a
person if he exercises his right in a manner commensurate with the like freedom
of persons following the other religions”.
Supreme
Court verdicts are clear: the propagation of a religion means persuasion
without coercion. Conversion is voluntary. It is all about individual freedom,
as guaranteed by the Constitution.
It seems
like what the BJP is planning to do is criminalise conversion entirely, step by
step, by assuming that all conversion is forced. For any Hindu woman wanting to
convert to Islam, it could only be ‘love jihad’, the right-wing believes. To
survive scrutiny, the law it brings will be strictly legal, but the drama will
be in the way the law will be advertised – as a proactive measure to save Hindu
woman.
The
political perfidy at work behind the farce of love jihad – which has suddenly
raised its head as the BJP turns its attention to heavily polarised assembly
elections in Assam and West Bengal – is exposed by its own counter to love
jihad: Ghar Wapsi. The latter is “reconversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism”, a
prima donna among communal rituals for the Hindutva nationalists. Why is Ghar
Wapsi not under the purview of the proposed anti-conversion laws? With no
evidence, the party would like us to believe the conversion is always forced,
but the reconversion never forced – and that, on its own could raise questions
on any ‘Ghar Wapsi‘ that takes place.
-----
V.V.P. Sharma is a journalist, academic,
blogger and commentator on politics, society and democracy.
Original Headline: Even Late BJP Posterboy Sikandar Bakht Would
Know 'Love Jihad' Is Only a Ruse
Source: The Wire
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/love-jihad-sikandar-bakht-raj/d/123519
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism