By Ram Puniyani
On October 1, a Bareilly court gave life imprisonment to a Muslim man in case of a complaint of sexual assault. In the judgment the judge commented that it is a case of ‘love jihad’, which the police have failed to present that way. The girl was a Hindu. During the court proceedings the girl did withdraw the complaint on the ground that she had to lodge the complaint under the pressure of a Hindutva group. The judge had none of it and social propaganda probably ruled his verdict. Judge Diwakar in his judgment commented sui generis that Muslim men target Hindu women to get married.
The judgment went on:
“In simple words, love jihad is the practice of Muslim men to convert women from non-Muslim communities to Islam by pretending to love them and marrying them. Illegal conversions through love jihad are carried out by some anarchist elements of a particular religion or are made to do so or are involved in a conspiracy… A huge amount of money is required for love jihad. Hence, the fact of foreign funding in love jihad cannot be ruled out…”
‘Foreign funding in love jihad’ is a novel concept. I wish the judge had named the country which is sending the money for this.
While propaganda around ‘love jihad’ was the first one in the jihad series, now of course there are number of jihads which are popularised – land jihad, UPSC jihad, flood jihad, and corona jihad amongst others. There are communal anchors who specialise in tabulating the types of jihad. This is a classic case of trivial issues being magnified to demonise a religious community which is regarded as ‘foreign’ and is targeted in a covert and overt way to be presented as the ‘enemy other’. This creation of the ‘enemy other’ lies at the root of communal Hindutva politics which is dominating the social scenario in India.
The ‘love jihad’ propaganda is not very old. Just a couple of decades earlier some Christian Bishops from Kerala started this calumny and it was picked up intensely by Hindutva activists. Their propaganda machinery is well oiled by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh shakhas, RSS-run schools, sections of media, social media and a parallel social media run by the IT cell in particular. The propaganda that there is an organisation funding Muslim men to lure Hindu girls was investigated and was found to be a hoax.
Many reasons go towards the bolstering of the bogey of love jihad. The first one is the demography. So far, a major propaganda point is that Muslims have many wives and children and they will overtake the Hindu population. To this is added the myth of love jihad, the conversion of Hindu women through it and the birth of their children. Yet another aspect which has been added to it is that these women will be trained to be part of the Islamic State.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
