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'Love jihad' bogeyman resurfaces
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A poster warning about a "love jihad" was put up in the premises of the national headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi last week. It warns "Hindu brothers" about Muslim men marrying Hindu girls to convert them to Islam. Citing the examples of Bollywood actors Saif Ali Khan and Aamir Khan, the poster points out that they married Hindu women and had children, and then went in for a divorce.
"Wake up Hindus, wake up. Beware of Love Jihad," the poster warns, appealing to people to report such incidents, and provides an e-mail address and a mobile-phone number for that purpose.
The message was issued in the name of the Anti-Love Jihad
Front. The poster was reportedly put up at the BJP office by the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena, a Delhi-based right-wing outfit that has protested against writer Arundhati Roy and lawyer/activist Prashant Bhusan among others for their views on Kashmir.
"Love jihad" is a term used in India to refer to the alleged "mission" of Muslims to convert girls of other communities to Islam by feigning love and marrying them. It was in September 2009 that this term entered popular lexicon in connection with the reported forced conversion to Islam of two women in the town of Pathanamthitta in the southern state of Kerala (see India lost in 'love jihad'
, Asia Times Online, October 28, 2009). It was alleged that the two women were lured by two Muslim men "feigning love".
Initially, the women said their conversion was voluntary. However, subsequently - they were staying with their parents in the interim period on the court's orders - they claimed they were abducted and coerced to convert. The two men were reported to be members of Campus Front, a student outfit of the Popular Front of India, a conglomerate of Muslim organizations that is alleged to be engaged in radicalizing Muslims in south India.
The media accused the men of "love jihad".
While the Koran lays out three ways in which a Muslim can spread the word or wage jihad - by word of mouth, with the pen, or with the sword - those intent on maligning Islam have added a fourth, jihad through feigning love.
An avalanche of reports on "love jihad" followed the Pathanamthitta incident. Love jihadis, the reports said, were everywhere - at college campuses, restaurants, movie theaters and Internet shops - and were acting not on individual impulse but as part of an organized campaign. Some alleged that an organization called Love Jihad or Romeo Jihad existed. Others said it was a movement.
Leading the smear campaign were religious groups, parties and organizations, which weighed in with "facts and figures" to prove that love jihad was not a figment of anyone's imagination. The BJP, the main opposition party in Parliament, accused "love-jihad activists" of "getting foreign money". The Sri Ram Sene, an organization of goons that has beaten up women in pubs on the claim that it is protecting "traditional Indian values", alleged that thousands of girls had been converted in the past few years by the love jihadis.
Christians too claimed they were victims. The Kerala Catholic Bishops Council's Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance warned its flock in an October 2009 newsletter of the "threat" posed by the love jihadis. "Forums known as Love Jihad and Romeo Jihad use love as a terrorist weapon," it said, claiming that young men were being supplied with "weapons necessary for their cause". The "weapons" were motorbikes, mobile phones, fancy clothes and money that young Muslims needed to flash around to trap girls.
Incidentally, Christians, who have been in the crosshairs of the Hindu right wing for their offer of "inducements" to convert Hindus to Christianity, have joined hands with Hindu right-wing organizations against the love jihadis.
In the years since the furor over the incident at Pathanamthitta, allegations of love jihad have surfaced in other parts of the country. In neighboring Karnataka, a legislator of the ruling BJP claimed in December 2011 that of the 84 girls who had gone missing in Dakshina Kannada district between January and November that year, "69 confessed they had been lured by Muslim youths who professed love".
The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) organization alleged that 3,000 Hindu girls were "missing" in Dakshina Kannada and 30,000 in the rest of Karnataka state. According to police statistics up to the end of September 2009, 404 girls were reported missing, of whom 332 had been traced. Of those who were missing because they had eloped, many were Hindus, but they were found to have run off with non-Hindus as well as Hindu men.
Police investigations revealed too that there was no organization called Love Jihad or Romeo Jihad, nor were the inter-communal marriages the outcome of a concerted conversion campaign or mission.
Yet the scaremongering continues as websites of the HJS among others carry innumerable reports on cases of love jihad.
The love-jihad bogey thrives on the insecurity of Indian parents.
Marriages have traditionally been arranged by parents in India. This is slowly changing and youngsters are increasingly choosing their own partners, sometimes even outside their caste and subcaste, or even religion. Increasingly too, youngsters are defying their parents and eloping.
It is this loss of control over their children's choices - these "children", incidentally, are usually above the age of 18 - that is driving the anxiety over "love jihad".
It has its roots in a patriarchal culture that is evident among all of India's communities.
While Muslim patriarchs confine their daughters to the home or put them under a burqa, those among Christians and Hindus are busy policing their daughters, thinking up of ways and means to control their choices.
The Kerala Catholic Bishops Council advised its flock to monitor their children's activities, even discourage them from using mobile phones or spending long hours on the Internet. "The computers should be placed in common places at home and their history checked frequently. The parents should be alert if teenagers are keeping a distance from family members," it said.
There is also anxiety over another issue that Hindu communalists have efficiently stoked for decades, and that is regarding the demographic threat that Muslims supposedly pose to the majority status of India's Hindus. They allege that the Muslim rate of population growth is higher than that of Hindus and that Muslims are averse to adopting birth-control measures. In these circumstances, the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindu right-wing organizations, warns that Muslims will one day outstrip the country's Hindu population.
Muslims account for roughly 13% of India's population, while Hindus account for a whopping 80%. Yet to many Hindus who believe the Parivar's propaganda, the demographic threat from Muslims is a clear and present danger.
Parivar propaganda depicts love jihad as part of the grand Muslim conspiracy to turn Hindus into a minority in India some day. It has convinced some Hindus that love jihad is aimed at turning their daughters into "baby-producing machines" for Muslims.
Coverage of "love jihad" in the mainstream media had died out over the past year. It would seem that the poster at the BJP office was aimed at putting the issue back on the front pages.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. |
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