Hindutva forces crashing interfaith wedding with cries of love jihad is shameful
Among other things that have become a fixture in an India heading towards “Ram Rajya”, love jihad is perhaps the most dangerous one. Popularised by the Hindu-Right, the love jihad bogey revolves around the belief that Muslim men in India are conspiring to convert Hindu women by ensnaring and subsequently marrying them.
Not only does this evil idea take away any and all agency women have with respect to their freedom of choice, it also demonises Muslim men as a group trying to threaten the Hindu fabric of India. The nation recently witnessed the horror that an idea like love jihad can perpetuate, when a Hindu man from Rajasthan hacked and burnt alive a Muslim man and recorded the whole thing in video to be a message for all. But it’s not just the supposed “crazies” that partake in this vile ideology. It is also the members of Bharatiya Janata Party who believe in tearing communal harmony to shreds with this false ideal. And two families from Ghaziabad learnt this the hard way.
On December 22, BJP, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Raksha Dal and Dharam Jagran Manch (all far-Right Hindu groups) workers clashed with the police in Ghaziabad over the marriage of Mansoor Harhat Khan, a Muslim man and Nupur Singhal, a Hindu woman, claiming this was an act of “love jihad”. The couple, who got married under the Special Marriage Act, held a reception at the Singhal’s house at Raj Nagar in Ghaziabad. To their horror, this happy occasion was soon gatecrashed by a group of hooligans from various Hindutva outfits, led by BJP Ghaziabad city president Ajay Sharma, who created a ruckus outside the woman’s house, staged a sit-in outside the house and disrupted traffic.
“Bride’s family is under pressure and she is also being forced to adopt Islam. It is a case of love jihad and we oppose it. They have not taken any permission from the administration for the marriage,” claimed Sharma, the man who led the mob to the betrothed’s gate, speaking to Hindustan Times. But according to the bride, the groom and their families, that is nowhere near the truth. Speaking to IANS, Pushpendra Kumar, the father of the bride, said: “I had been receiving phone calls for the last two days to stop this marriage. But both are major and mature enough to know what’s wrong and what’s right. They have decided to live together, so they have registered their marriage under the Special Marriage Act (SMA) in Ghaziabad. We had arranged a reception party today (Friday). I don’t see any love jihad in their marriage.”
He, as reported by Scroll, even tried to reason with the mob outside his house, but the groups, it would seem are averse to reasoning, especially when it cuts through their obvious propaganda. “They wanted to do their own politics, that’s all. I was only a pawn for them. They wanted their limelight… Even the boy [Mansoor Harhat Khan] was ready to do pheras,” he said, adding, “But what will we get out of that? My daughter has not even changed her surname.”
“I was expecting something of this sort and was well prepared. It does not matter what people think. It was our decision,” Nupur Singhal, the bride, told The Times of India.
And where the families failed to reason with the goons, the police failed further, ultimately resorting to lathi-charge them, when they refused to budge.
As the Scroll report notes, it is perhaps the procedures of the SMA that tipped off the Hindu groups. Under this act, the procedure requires a lot of documents to be submitted. Once that is done, the local government puts out a notice – with the families’ addresses – in newspapers as well as the local court, announcing the marriage and asking for people to come in and file objections, in case they have one. In the light of this incident, this rule should ideally be reviewed.
Surprisingly, now that the story has received the attention of the national media and all the facts are out in the open and perhaps the police action, the BJP, in a rare occasion, admitted to its mistake. Sharma later said, “Someone told us that a Hindu girl is marrying a Muslim boy. And that the marriage was being conducted under duress. But then I spoke to the girl’s parents and he said that our information was wrong. Now I don’t think it is a case of love jihad. The parents are fine, the girl is fine.” But, of course, he also added, “If there is something wrong happening in society, we need to act. The police can’t do everything.”
The Hindutva agenda, it seems, is not ready to change anytime soon. In fact, the only reason why the groups may have come to their senses is because both the families are affluent; belong to a metropolitan area and command, perhaps, some power. As was exhibited in the case of Shambhu Lal Raigar who murdered Mohammad Afrazul, in rural areas, for the economically challenged, the law of the land comes second only to the mob-mentality of far-Right groups. Had this couple decided to get hitched under such conditions, their fate may have been far worse than a few hooligans camping outside their gate.