LOVE JIHAD: FICTION OR TRUTH?

Let us first begin by addressing the elephant in the room which is women’s autonomy. Since the Central government is claiming that Hindu women are forced by Muslim men into marriage, it seems to the masses that the government is really concerned about protecting women’s freedoms.

Few facts which show us how free Indian women really are –

1. IHDS (Indian human development survey) 2012 tells us that only 4.99% women had sole control over choosing their husbands, while 79.8% women needed permission to visit a health center.
2. NHFS-4 (2015-16) – 41% of Indian women were allowed to go alone to the market, health center and outside the community.
3. 2016 NCAER survey shows us that only 5% of all marriages are intercaste.
4. IHDS 2005 data shows us that only 2.21% of all marriages were interfaith.

Now, let’s address the Special marriages act (SMA) of 1954. It helps in facilitating the marriage of couples professing different faiths. What are the conditions? Let’s see – first, men must be 21 years old and women must be at least 18 years old. Second, both should be capable giving valid consent and should not suffer from any mental disorder. So far so good. The 2 consenting adults must give notice to the marriage officer of the district for at least 30 days. Now comes the catch. The SMA law provides for objections to the marriage. Any person can object to the interfaith marriage as invalid within 30 days of the publication of the notice. Due to this 30-day objection period and societal pressures many interfaith couples are unable to marry using the SMA. Therefore, what they do is convert to the other religion. If the government really wants to stop conversion of religion just for the sake of marriage (as they claim they do) they must remove the 30-day objection period from the special marriages act of 1954. What 2 consenting adults of different faiths do is not anyone’s business other than those 2 adults. Moreover, anti- conversion laws already exist to prevent conversion just for the sake of marriage. An anti-conversion law has existed in Madhya Pradesh since 1968, in Orissa since 1967, in Gujarat since 2003, in Himanchal Pradesh since 2019, in Uttarakhand since 2018 and so on. States already have anti-conversion laws. Moreover, it must be noted that UP CM Yogi had cited an Allahabad High court judgement while passing the prohibition of Unlawful religious conversion ordinance (which news media and IT cell goons call “love jihad”). The high court judgement said that it is wrong if conversion happens solely for the purpose of marriage. Well, the Allahabad High court struck down its previous judgement. This is what they noted “We do not see Priyanka Kharwar and Salamat as Hindu and Muslim, rather as two grown-up individuals who, out of their own free will and choice, are living together peacefully and happily over a year.”

Let’s view the scenarios if an inter-religious marriage happens:

1. No religious conversion happens (to make sure this happens more often the 30-day objection period must be removed as has been the demand of many interfaith couples)
2. Forceful conversion happens – Partner can refuse marriage or file a case in sec 503/354.
3. Murder happens – section 302 applies.

Every scenario is already covered under existing laws. So what will this new Love Jihad law do ? UP Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion prohibits forceful conversions. It allows willing conversions with two months prior notice to the District Magistrate. Again, as I have said all these conversions just for the sake of marriage can be avoided if the 30 day objection period is gone and if more people get married using the SMA 1954. So what the law does is close to nothing. It’s just a way of spreading communal hatred and curbing women’s autonomy even further. It is not actually men of a certain religion that curb women’s autonomy. It is patriarchal society and their patriarchal family in general which curbs women’s autonomy. Let’s look at some more data. While looking at 583 rape cases in Delhi, The HINDU found that 40% of what was classified as rape was actually parental criminalization of consensual sex often when it came to inter caste and inter religious couples (SOURCE: Rukmini S., The many shades of rape in Delhi, The Hindu 2014). Again, women’s autonomy being curbed by patriarchal society and patriarchal households. In India, there is a dearth of love. Marriage is seen just as a transaction and women mostly as property. A paper called Markets and the rise of Dowry in India by Gaurav and Jeffrey (June 23,2019) makes the following observations: In 1940, 35-40% families took dowry. In 1975, this number jumped to 90%. Our society is so fractured when it comes to caste and religion (which is obvious by the fact that only 2% marriages are interfaith and 5% are intercaste) that it is often families, societal pressure etc. that curb women’s autonomy. Let’s talk about how fractured Indian society is when it comes to caste and religion. There was a very nice initiative started in 2013 to facilitate intercaste marriages. This initiative was called DR. BR AMBEDKAR SCHEME FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION THROUGH INTERCASTE MARRIAGE. Basically, 500 intercaste couples would receive 2.5 lakh rupees annually in monetary assistance. It would surely be very easy to find 500 intercaste couples in a country of 1.35 billion, right? WRONG. Only 19 couples received monetary assistance according to an Economic times report by Rohini Mohan (December 19, 2015).

Let’s look at few more statistics –

1. 99% rape cases in India go unreported (LiveMint report).
2. Conviction rates of rape are a dismal 30%.
3. 93% rapes in India are committed by persons known to the victim.
4. Every 3^rd woman since the age of 15 has faced domestic violence (NHFS-4 survey).
5. Marital rape is not a criminal offence in India. It is only a crime in 52 countries worldwide. The government must make it a crime if it really cares about women.

In a country where there is dearth of love, where women are not free to take decisions, where there is rampant patriarchy and where marriage is seen as a transaction, women are seen as mere property. AND what the government is planning on doing with the Love jihad laws is telling society that WOMEN ARE INCAPABLE OF LIVING THEIR LIVES ON THEIR OWN AND MUST BE PROTECTED FROM THE BOGEY OF MUSLIM MEN. The truth however is that in many (probably even most) cases, it is the families which pressure women into NOT getting married to a man of a different faith or a different caste.

FEELINGS DON’T CARE ABOUT FACTS: How fascists exploit US vs Them biases

I’ve been arguing using facts that love jihad is a myth. If it is still not obvious to you, the Hadiya Case is a good example. The government was hellbent on proving Love jihad. What NIA and the SC found however was love, and No jihad. Justice DY Chandrachud made the following observation: Courts can’t annul marriage between 2 consenting adults. She came to us and told us that she married of her own accord. This observation is against patriarchy and favors giving autonomy to women. This is something that patriarchal society can’t accept.
If the facts clearly tell us that love jihad is a myth, why do our feelings get in the way? This is because there is no free marketplace of ideas. Most ideas in society are not debated and it doesn’t happen that the best idea which is the most factually accurate prevails. Just as the free market assumes rational consumers, a free marketplace of ideas also assumes rational consumers. Words are not just used in their descriptive, logical or semantic sense. In fascist politics language is not used simply to convey facts, but to elicit emotion (SOURCE: HOW FASCISM WORKS BY JASON STANLEY). We are anything but rational. We are riddled with cognitive biases, one of the strongest one being US vs THEM biases. This is beautifully shown by Robert Sapolsky in his book BEHAVE. Fifty millisecond exposure to the face of someone of another race activates the amygdala (brain part associated with fear). All of this happens unconsciously. We do a lot of OTHERING when it comes to race and religion. And fascists exploit these US vs THEM myths like anything. Fascists do not use facts to persuade us, they use feelings. They elevate the irrational over the rational and say words loaded with emotions to exploit our US vs THEM biases. If there is anything fascism is good at , it is Othering.

Let’s now draw our attention to some scary parallels of the love jihad theory with Nazi propaganda. In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler accused Jewish men of seeking to deliberately ‘pollute’ the ‘Aryan’ race by seducing and encouraging black men to seduce, white ‘Aryan’ women:

The black-haired Jewish youth lies for hours in ambush,

a Satanic joy in his face, for the unsuspecting girl whom

he pollutes with his blood and steals from her own race.

By every means, he seeks to wreck the racial bases of

the nation he intends to subdue. Just as individually he

deliberately befouls women and girls, so he never shrinks

from breaking the barriers race has erected against foreign

elements. It was, and is, the Jew who brought Negroes to

the Rhine, brought them with the same aim and with

deliberate intent to destroy the white race he hates, by

persistent bastardization, to hurl it from the cultural and

political heights it has attained, and to ascend to them as

its masters. He deliberately seeks to lower the race level

by steady corruption of the individual . . .

If you want to read more about this, you can google “black horror on the Rhine – 1920 Nazi campaign”.

Remember, Hitler and the Nazis, who viewed ‘Aryan’ women as racial property, regimented and repressed those same women as well. In a speech in September 1934, addressing the Nazi women’s organization, Hitler said that the German woman’s ‘world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home’—something that was expressed in Nazi propaganda as the creed of the ‘three Ks’— ‘Küche, Kirche, Kinder’ (kitchen, church and children). In the same way, the RSS, that uses Hindu women as an excuse to unleash violence on Muslim men and women, is also, as we have seen, violent towards Hindu women, using torture to coerce them into giving up ‘forbidden’ interfaith relationships. RSS-affiliated women’s organizations hold camps persuading their cadres to accept domestic violence as chastisement for ‘misbehavior’ (SOURCE: Fearless freedom by Kavita Krishnan).

If this scary parallel between Germany and India does not scare you, I don’t know what will. In Germany it was Jew vs Aryan. In India, it is Hindu Vs Muslim.