By Omar Rashid
New Delhi: “Love jihad,” the conspiracy theory manufactured by the extremist Hindutva ecosystem to demonise Muslim men in interfaith relationships, has found its way into a lower court judgement in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly.
A judge, while sentencing a Muslim man to life for allegedly raping his Hindu girlfriend by presuming a false Hindu identity, ruled that it was a case of ‘love jihad’. Although the criminal case against the Muslim man, Mohammad Aalim, and his father did not involve charges of unlawful conversion, additional district judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar concluded that it was a “case of unlawful conversion through love jihad” and criticised the police for not invoking charges under the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
Judge Diwakar, who is not new to controversies, said that under “love jihad, Muslim men target Hindu women through marriage for conversion to Islam in an organised manner.” Muslim men, through a “pretence of love” and “deception”, marry Hindu women for the purpose of converting them to Islam, added the judge, echoing what the Hindu right-wing has been projecting without substance for many years to criminalise interfaith relationships and intimidate such couples.
In his 42-page conviction verdict delivered on September 30 – a copy of which is with The Wire – Diwakar said the main goal of love jihad was for “some anarchic elements of a particular religious community to wage a population war against India and establish their dominance as part of an international conspiracy.”
Judge Diwakar said the country could face “serious consequences” if the Union government did not put an end to “conversions through love jihad,” which was being carried out through a “syndicate to entrap Hindu girls in love”. The syndicate, said Diwakar, was targeting weaker sections of non-Muslim communities, tribals, Dalits as well as women and children from backward castes to convert them to Islam at a large scale through various allurements, psychological pressures and “brainwash.” This was being done so that “a situation like…Pakistan and Bangladesh” could be created in India as well, claimed Diwakar, who also pointed out that the girl in the Bareilly case belonged to an Other Backward Caste (OBC) community.
The judge further claimed that he could not rule out the possibility of foreign funding behind love jihad. “Love jihad needs money in large sums,” he said. Diwakar stressed that unlawful conversion “cannot be taken lightly,” as it is a “threat to the nation’s unity, integrity and sovereignty.”
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
