“Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.”
The Savage Love Jihad In India
Love Jihad In India: Inter-caste love marriages in India are believed to violate the fundamentals of a religion and is seen as a practice of destructiveness towards its customs and norms. Such marriages also become the cause for constructive wars between two religions. The conventional and prudent fears of religious groups lead to the creation of boundaries and give birth to community differences. The latest of such a war between the Hindu and Muslim community is the construct of so called ‘Love Jihad’.
According to the Hindus of the country, the Muslim community have launched an organisation called the love jihad formed with an intention to convert the Hindu women to Islam. The Muslim sect is believed to target and harm the Hindus through this act of conversion. The basis of this conversion is believed to be expression of false love expressed by the youthful Muslim towards the Hindu women in order to trick them.
In various parts of the country like Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala various Hindu religious groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti have been accusing the Islamic sect of conspiring the conversion of the Hindu women. These organisations have been holding various campaigns, conducting meetings as well as taking out processions as conspiracy. an act of awareness among the Hindus of their(Islam’s) conspiracy. They have also filed cases against the community of deceiving Hindu women through different tricks and converting them by a way of coercion.
Apart from this, the Hindus have put various other acquisitions on the Muslim youth such as the fact that they have been receiving gifts and other expensive things from terror groups outside India with the purpose to make the Hindu women fall in their false love. Such campaigns by the Hindus have increased tensions between the two groups and the immense hatred shown by the Hindus towards the Muslim men has created tonnes of panic around the country.
The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti have gone to the level of printing news in their newsletters on the importance of roles that the spiritual leaders must play in teaching and making their followers aware of the conspiracy of love jihad in india. They have also urged these religious leaders to persuade the families of their followers to completely stand against inter-caste love marriages.
This religious construct hasn’t started recently but dates back to the 1920’s where there were sharper differences between the two communities.
Various groups of the Muslim sect have been repeatedly accused of the forceful abduction and conversion of Hindu females. Various groups in the early 1920’s, majorly the Arya Samaj led movements promoting the act of shuddhi, where a Hindu female who was converted into another religion was supposed to be purified. Due to this, there were a rise in wars and communal fights between the two sects.
The leaders of the Samaj group spread propagandas wherein they accused the Muslim men for the reason behind the conversion of religion of the Hindu females.
Additional charges such as that of abduction, rape, sexual harassment, elopement, forceful marriages, etc were also inflicted upon them. This propaganda was not only restricted to campaigns but was also spread across various sources such as novels, posters, meetings, posters, newspapers, gossips, rumours, etc wherein the females were symbolised as victims of the Muslim men.
The allegation of love jihad intensified in the year 2009 where it gained attention not only nationally, but internationally too in countries including Pakistan and the United Kingdom.
Investigations in India were held in the year 2009, 2010, 2011 as well as in 2012, but there was no evidence found against such allegations. Religious tensions arose day by day back in these years. This fight became more prominent in the year 2014. A complaint was registered in the Bareilly district wherein a man complained against a Muslim youth of luring her daughter and forcing her to convert her religion. This case became very prominent, but lack of any conclusive evidence quashed all the allegations put upon them.
Recently, love jihad in india gained attention and became a hot and debatable topic among all. Various questions have been raised again in relation to the conversion of Hindu females for the purpose of marriage. The Allahabad High Court in the case of Noor Jahan recently pronounced a judgement stating that “conversion of religion merely for the purpose of marriage would be unacceptable”. Soon after that, the government of Uttar Pradesh passed an Ordinance with an intention to curb down the fraudulent conversions. This act has been proposed with the motive of breaking all the ties that can be possibly made and built between the Hindus and Muslims.
The ordinance restricts legal marriage between a Hindu and Muslim unless the Muslim converts his/her religion to Hinduism. The particular ordinance introduced not only is not only illegal but prima facie violates the very basis of the constitution of India. The ordinance has been analysed by various constitutionalists who have viewed it to be illegal and violative.
CONCLUSION
The ordinance so passed by the Uttar Pradesh has been demanded by many to be struck down as it might only further increase religious tensions among the two religions. Besides, there has been no evidence produced till date to show the existence of such an act by the Muslim community. If law is to be introduced, it must aim at bringing provisions that would prevent the fraudulent conversion of men or women to any religion. An act aiming and targeting only at a particular religion would damage the core rights provided by India’s constitution.