Skip to main content

Countering Love Jihad? Person of Indian origin in US floats NGO Interfaith Marriages

In an email alert to Counterview, a senior Washington DC-based activist has said that recent trends suggest, when India is regressing, the diaspora in the US is fast progressing ahead with having interfaith marriages. In the long haul, the more we are united, the lesser the friction between the peoples and greater the prosperity, he believes.
According to Dr Mike Ghouse, President, Centre for Pluralism, “Unlike the young men and women in India where parents arrange their marriages, in the US, the children find their own mates”, adding, “What is good about our kids is they don’t have filters like religion, nationality, race, or ethnicity, they rightfully fall in love and look forward to marrying them.”
A person of Indian origin, Dr Ghouse said, “Back in our home countries, parents establish the criterion to select your spouse, and you check them off to find the spouse that fits the criteria. One of the shameful criteria is what kind of dowry she will bring, and what kind of financial status the guy has, is the person from the same caste or religion, or ethnicity.”
Claims Dr Ghouse, the American young men and women of South Asian origin “are independent, and unlike their parents, they are open-minded, and have no barriers between them and another person. The question of religion does not arise with them, but it becomes an issue with the parents.”
Pointing out that he has floated an organization called Interfaith Marriages, which has “taken up the role of officiating interfaith single-faith weddings making it easy for the parents and the bride and groom”, Dr Ghouse, who volunteers as interfaith marriage officiant, says, “In last decade I have officiated nearly 200 weddings from people of different faiths and nationalities, several of them went smoothly.”
The organization has been floated amidst the Sangh Parivar in India has been campaigning against what it calls Love Jihad, alleging Muslim boys seek to allegedly lure Hindu girls into marriage. Several states have promulgated laws seeking to restrict this type of allurement.
Admitting that some of the parents in the US are also adamant that they will not accept a Hindu boy, Muslim girl or a Jewish, Christian or a Sikh spouse, he says, “This happens even with single or divorced adults in their 40’s and 50’s. But in every case, we had a fruitful conversation, and finally, everything comes together for the happiness of their children.”
Citing a Pew survey, which says that two in five Desi Americans marry outside their faith, that is marrying with a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Sikh, or the other that includes even hard-core atheists, Dr Ghouse asserts, a few parents have expressed frustrations like, “I raised my girl with good religious education, she was observant of all the rituals and tradition we followed, and I cannot believe she chose to go with this guy from another faith.”
He adds, “The parents on both sides, make subtle to blatant efforts to ask the bride or the groom to convert to their faith. They pursue this relentlessly no matter how many times their kids say No to them, then finally they beg to at least have their name change to suit their faith. A few of them yield to such demand, provided there is no record of the temporary name anywhere, lest their family members and their friend back in India make a ruckus about it.”
“When a couple is deeply committed to marrying, they go ahead and get married any way but sorely miss out on the ceremony. Over the years, I have seen too many couples miss out on the joy of that additional sense of completeness that comes with a religious tone in the ceremony”, he says.
He underlines, “Marriage is between two individuals, and their families and friends ought to be supporters and cheerleaders to celebrate and complete their joy. When we officiate a wedding, we work with the couples and the parents to ensure the wedding goes smoothly and everyone is on the same page, that is to cheer the couple.”

Comments

TRENDING

Trump’s research cuts 'may mean' advantage China: But will India leverage global brain drain to its advantage?

When I heard from a couple of NRI professionals—currently on work visas and engaged in research projects at American universities—that one of President Donald Trump's major policy thrusts was to cut federal funding to the country's top educational institutions, I was instantly reminded of what Prof. Kaushik Basu had said while delivering a lecture in Ahmedabad.

How the middle classes are returning to the BJP fold, be it Delhi or Gujarat: Mahakumbh, Sitharaman's budget

Whatever reasons may be offered for the Aam Aadmi Party's defeat in Delhi—whether it was the BJP's promises of more freebies than AAP, the shedding of ultra-nationalist slogans, or the successful demolition of Arvind Kejriwal's "Mr. Clean" image—my recent interaction with a group of middle-class individuals highlighted a notable trend. Those who had just begun to sit on the fence were now once again returning to the BJP fold.

How to turn India's e-waste problem, third largest, into opportunity? Simple: Offer industry incentives!

How should one interpret a major problem that may be bogging down a private consultant while preparing an industry-friendly report on a situation that adversely impacts society—especially when the consultant sees little possibility of progress in the supposed desired direction?

Mystical, mysterious, nature's marvel? Truth behind Gujarat’s so-called disappearing temple

I was a little surprised to read a story in Business Today, a publication that should have nothing to do with religion or spirituality, let alone superstition. Carried as one of the choices by Google News, whose algorithm decides which stories to feature, the story attempts to describe a natural phenomenon using terms such as "mysterious," "mystical," "marvel of nature," and "intriguing."

Google powered AI refuses to correct grammar of a 'balanced' piece on Trump sending chained immigrants to India!

This is a continuation of my blog on how, while the start-up-developed AI app DeepSeek is being criticized for consistently rejecting content related to China or Maoism, there appears to be no mention in Western media about why another app, developed by the powerful Google, Gemini, remains silent on Indian political issues.  

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

  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.  I don't know who owns this site, for there is nothing on it in the About Us link. It merely says, the Nashik Corporation  site   "is an educational and news website of the municipal corporation. Today, education and payment of tax are completely online." It goes on to add, "So we provide some of the latest information about Property Tax, Water Tax, Marriage Certificate, Caste Certificate, etc. So all taxpayer can get all information of their municipal in a single place.some facts about legal and financial issues that different city corporations face, but I was least interested in them."  Surely, this didn't intere...

World Hijab Day? Ex-Muslim women observe Feb 1 as No Hijab Day, insist: 'Put it on a Man'

I didn't know that there could ever be a thing as World Hijab Day until I received an email alert from Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), stating that several ex-Muslim women's groups had observed the same day—February 1—as No Hijab Day! According to Namazie, the day "was created on February 1 as a direct response to World Hijab Day" to "illuminate the coercive and oppressive realities of the hijab as a pillar of sex apartheid and a war on women."

5% poor in India? Union govt claim debunked, '26.4% of population below poverty line'

A recent paper, referring to the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 of the Government of India (GoI), has debunked the official claim that poverty has substantially declined. Titled "Poverty in India: The Rangarajan Method and the 2022–23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey", the paper —authored by scholars CA Sethu, LT Abhinav Surya, and CA Ruthu—states that "more than a quarter of India’s population falls below the poverty line."

Why burn Manusmriti? Why not preserve it to demonstrate, display historicity of casteism?

In a significant Facebook post, Rana Singh, former associate professor of English at Patna University, has revealed something that few seem to know. Titled "The Shudras in Manusmriti", Singh says,  because Manusmriti is discussed so often, he thought of reading it himself. “This book likely dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, and the presence of contradictory statements suggests that it is not the work of a single author,” he says in his Facebook post in Hindi, written in 2022 and recently reshared.