Skip to main content

Sangh Parivar's Love Jihad campaign also 'pitted against' inter-caste marriages

A Sangh Parivar campaign in UP against Love Jihad 
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*
The Love Jihad rhetoric is back in action in almost all the BJP-ruled states. They appear to be competing with each other in proclaiming to come up with a law to stop the ‘conspiracy’ to convert Hindu girls into Islam in the guise of ‘love’. The fact is, as a political party, BJP has been very active in creating issues and narratives which are woven around Muslim conspiracy theories. It suits to its political interests.
The Love Jihad theory is a calculated effort to deny individuals their choice to marry. India lives in castes and millions of Indians have been infected by the ideas of caste supremacy. Every caste has been fed with the ideas of its ‘golden past’, even as vilifying others. Crossing the caste barrier one of the biggest ‘dissents’ of our time. The same is true of inter-faith marriage.
Before the term Love Jihad was coined, we have had ‘love marriage’, as if marrying someone you love is wrong. Considered a “union” of two families, marriages have been turned into a huge industry. Investment in marriages have been considered a matter of ‘izzat’ or ‘prestige’. Crossing caste or religious barrier to marry someone you love is believed, under this narrative, a threat to caste or community “izzat”.
Targeting Muslims and Islam in the name of Love Jihad, in fact, serves the proponents of casteist forces who are proud of their ‘caste ancestry’. They want to maintain status quo. This is exemplified by the way the Uttarakhand government recently reacted to a document issued by a local district officer, which speaks about a government scheme that promotes interfaith and inter-caste marriages. It is a right-wing backlash to turn interfaith and inter-caste love marriages into something dirty.
Most of the interfaith marriages happen through the Special Marriage Act, 1954. The Act is being misused by the administration, particularly its clauses which speak of ‘no objection’ certificates from the families of both the boy and the girl. A notice period of 30 days is given. The notice of the proposed marriage pasted in public places.
There is nothing special about the Act. It does not provide any safety and security to the young couple seeking to get married. Lawyers use it to ‘arrange’ things. The cost is extracted from the young couple, which is ready to shed any amount to get things done.
The narrative opposing inter-faith marriages by BJP leaders is bound to have disastrous impact on ‘inter-caste’ couples, too. Caste is the one point they will never want to cross the border. Whenever such couples reportedly ‘run away’ from their places, cases are filed against ‘boys’ for ‘abducting’ the girl. False certificates are produced to suggest that the girl is a ‘minor’ in order to push the ‘abduction’ argument. If the things don’t “improve”, rape charges are pushed. All this is happening at a time when people have been found celebrating mob lynchings.
Young boys and girls are being killed by parents and relatives in the name of ‘threat to social order’. Ultimately, it is an all-out effort to ‘protect’ the social order of caste privileges. It is a strange order where everyone feels proud of being ‘above’ someone else. Caste hierarchy and its past is sought to be valorised and glorified to justify the existing social order.
Love Jihad has another specific characteristic: There is a huge outcry from those seeking to uphold purity of Hinduism when a Hindu woman marries a Muslim man, but this outcry evaporates in case a Muslim girl marries to Hindu boy. Ironically, in the latter case, it is the Muslim conservatives who seek to suggest that their community’s “izzat” is at stake.
There is a political motive behind Love Jihad. When Kareena Kapoor married Saif Ali Khan, it was dubbed as Love Jihad. On the other hand, in February 2019, RSS leader Ram Lal’s niece got married to a Muslim, yet it was blessed by all the top party leaders. BJP already has a number of leaders like Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Shahnawaz Hussain, whose wives of Hindu. And, none has sought to question Dharmendra and Hema Malini, both BJP MPs, converting to Islam to get married! 
When Dr Ambedkar, Periyar and other leaders wanted inter-caste marriages to break the caste barrier, their aim was to build a new society
When Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Periyar and other leaders wanted inter-caste marriages to break the caste barrier, their aim was to build a new society. One must be proud of being a humanist or secular humanist in delinking oneself from the past, which seeks to confine one to one’s caste-regional-religious identity. Our birth should be considered an accident, as we do not decide but we are given a caste or a religious identity to define us. This religious identity then creates artificial barriers and vilifies others who are not ‘like us’.
One needs toto take into account how Hindus and Muslims bigotry feeds each other. In the Indian subcontinent, Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists carry on with their own propaganda against plurality and make the other side look like a threat to their basic existence. As and when Hindus and Muslims get rid of the clutches of religious fanatics, these forces will automatically die down.
In fact, one should be proud of having an affair beyond one’s religion or caste, or even nationality, instead of getting succumbed to the pressure of getting ‘legitimised’ by the ‘religious’ elite of one’s community. A secular couple should promote secular narratives for their children, instead of preaching that religion never preaches violence.
Most of the violence that we witness in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar are religion-based, as the majoritarian religious identity seeks to take political control of the state, and for that stories are sought to be woven in order to find a villain. The Indian Hindutva campaigners find it through narratives around Pakistan, Article 370, Ayodhya, Common Civil Code and Love Jihad. In our neighbouring countries they have other narratives on similar lines.
One should feel proud of Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s Constitution and its humanist values that seek to legitimise interfaith and inter-caste union. The constitutional morality and not religious values, where a ‘girl’s’ religious identity is considered a loser, ought to be considered supreme. In multicultural societies, we need to explore and build up new socio-cultural values so that it does not become a hunting ground for competing religious fundamentalists.
A new narrative of ‘humanist marriages’ or ‘constitutional marriages’ or ‘civil marriages’, based on civilised principles, ought to be promoted. Religious practices should not be allowed to come in the way of marriages. They should be allowed to be dedicated to secular laws and principles. Inter-caste or interfaith marriages can survive only when one has faith in the Constitution and modern humanist values of equality of partners.
The real threat to dominant religious values can emerge only when one challenges the narrative that these marriages are not mere marriages but ‘self-respect’ marriages, to quote Periyar. where a woman is an equal partner and does not lose her identity. It is important that ensure that marriages become a union of two individuals who are mature enough to know about their rights, and when it is not possible to live together, they have the right to legally dissociate amicably.
Meanwhile, it is relieving that a two judge bench of the Allahabad High Court, Justices Vivek Aggarwal and Pankaj Naqvi, have upheld the rights of two individuals to marry as per their choice. It has overturned a single bench judgment of 2014, which was becoming the basis for the law against Love Jihad. The 2014 judgment had suggested that conversion for the sake of ‘marriage’ was not acceptable.
The two High Court judges have overturned the single bench judgment calling it in bad law. They said, “To disregard the choice of a person who is of the age of majority would not only be antithetic to the freedom of choice of a grown-up individual but would also be a threat to the concept of unity in diversity.”
Indeed, the right to live with a person of his/her choice, irrespective of religious persuasion, is intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty.
---
*Human rights defender

Comments

TRENDING

Insider plot to kill Deendayal Upadhyay? What RSS pracharak Balraj Madhok said

By Shamsul Islam*  Balraj Madhok's died on May 2, 2016 ending an era of old guards of Hindutva politics. A senior RSS pracharak till his death was paid handsome tributes by the RSS leaders including PM Modi, himself a senior pracharak, for being a "stalwart leader of Jan Sangh. Balraj Madhok ji's ideological commitment was strong and clarity of thought immense. He was selflessly devoted to the nation and society. I had the good fortune of interacting with Balraj Madhok ji on many occasions". The RSS also issued a formal condolence message signed by the Supremo Mohan Bhagwat on behalf of all swayamsevaks, referring to his contribution of commitment to nation and society. He was a leading RSS pracharak on whom his organization relied for initiating prominent Hindutva projects. But today nobody in the RSS-BJP top hierarchy remembers/talks about Madhok as he was an insider chronicler of the immense degeneration which was spreading as an epidemic in the high echelons of th

Central pollution watchdog sees red in Union ministry labelling waste to energy green

By Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran*  “Destructors”, “incinerators” and “waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration” all mean the same thing – indiscriminate burning of garbage! Having a history of about one and a half centuries, WTE incinerators have seen several reboots over the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. 

First-of-its-kind? 'Eco-friendly, low cost' sewage treatment system installed in Gujarat

Counterview Desk Following the installation of the Unconventional Decentralized Multi-Stage Reactor (UDMSR) for sewage treatment, a note on what is claimed to be the  first-of-its-kind technology said, the treated sewage from this system “can be directly utilized for agricultural purposes”, even as proving to be a “saviour in the times of water crisis.”

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah*   The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual. 

Indo-Bangla border: Farmers facing 'illegal obstacles' in harvesting, transporting yields

  Counterview Desk  In a representation to the chairperson, National Human Rights Commission, human rights defender Kirity Roy, who is secretary, Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), has said that Border Security Force (BSF) personnel are creating "illegal obstacles" for farmers seeking to harvest their ripened yields and transport them to the market in village Jhaukuthi of Cooch Behar district.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview  story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded  reaction  in the form of a  link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Wasteland, a colonial legacy, being used to 'give away' vast tracts to Ratnagiri refinery

By Fouziya Tehzeeb* William D’Souza, a 55-year old farmer from Kuthethur, Mangalore, was busy mixing cattle feed when we arrived at his doorsteps. Around 25 km from the bustling city of Mangalore, Kuthethur is a lush green village with thick vegetation. On the way to William’s house the idyllic view gets blocked by the flares and smoke arising from the Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL).

CAA disregards India's inclusive plural ethos, 'betrays' ideals of freedom struggle: PUCL

Counterview Desk    "Outraged" at the move of the Central government to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA 2019) weeks before the election, the top rights group, People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), has demanded that the law be repealed. 

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Invincible, Modi 'taller' than BJP, RSS: An opportunity for Congress beyond 2024?

By NS Venkataraman*  With the announcement of poll schedule for the 2024 parliamentary election, there is palpable excitement and expectation amongst the countrymen  about the shape of things to happen in India after the  results of the election would be announced. There is also speculation abroad about the future course of developments in India.