Some State Governments including the Governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka are reportedly considering the enactments of a love jihad law. By this law, forcing marriage by a religious conversion will be called 'love jihad'; marriage will be declared void and liable to be punished with an imprisonment up to 10 years.
The term “love jihad” has very menacingly slipped into our public vocabulary. It has become a toxic rhetoric which has gradually taken a shape of a political campaign.
A few weeks ago, the Tata Tanishq, a popular jewellery brand advertisement created massive uproar all over India. It was viciously trolled in social media.
Some people smelt love jihad in the advertisement. The advertisement was being shown featuring an interfaith baby shower. It was all about a shimantani celebration (celebrating expectant motherhood) of a Hindu girl married in a Muslim family. The idea behind this jewellery advertisement was to celebrate the oneness among different communities. But the film stimulated so divergent and severe reactions contrary to its objective that the advertisement was ultimately withdrawn.
In fact, forcible religious conversion, by all account, is a cognisable offence now in India. Many States at present, including Odisha have anti conversion laws.
Such law in Odisha is called the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967. A provision in this law stipulates that ' no person shall convert or attempt to convert, either directly or otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by the use of force, or by inducement or by any fraudulent means, nor shall any person abet any such conversion'. This forcible conversion will be a crime and punishable.
Section 366 of Indian Penal Code also criminalises any act of kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to marry by force.
Therefore, there are adequate laws and penal provisions in India to prevent and punish any religious conversion and marriage of a woman against her will. But why then a love jihad law now, thus a question is being asked.
It is feared, the law is to target the inter- faith marriage mainly the marriage of a Muslim boy with a Hndu girl. It is to squeeze the freedom of a woman to love and marry a person of her choice. It contravenes the constitutional guarantee of right to choose.
Quashing an FIR which accused a Muslim man of abducting a Hindu woman and forcefully marrying her after converting her to Islam, the Allahabad High Court recently has opined that two adults are free to choose their partners and it is their right to freedom of choice as to whom they would like to live with.
The court has made these observations while hearing a petition filed by one Salamat Ansari and Priyanka Kharwar which sought quashing of the FIR filed by the woman' s father.
The couple had got married last year after Priyanka converted to Islam. The right to choose one's partner to marry irrespective of caste, creed and religion has been upheld in the court's judgement as par with right to life and liberty.The love jihad law, it is apprehended, will not be just confined to interfaith marriage only.
It may be extended to a law banning the inter caste marriages mainly the marriage between a girl belonging to a Hindu higher caste with a lower caste boy. The casteist khap panhayats will demand and pressurise for this law for protecting their honour and dignity. A barbaric feudal law may resurface.
It is not known, why the cultural traditionalists of the Indian society hate love and consider the lovers as the enemies of tradition and why they invoke religion and caste to deny the women the freedom to love and marry. Perhaps they consider, the act of love is exclusively a male affair.
On being asked if Mahatma Gandhi favoured marriages between Indians professing different religions, Gandhiji in the Harijan dated 16.3.1947 had answered that though he always had not held his view in favour of the inter faith marriage earlier, he had come to conclusion long ago that an inter religious marriage was a welcome event when it took place.
Marriage in his estimation was a sacred institution. Hence, there must be mutual friendship - either party having equal respect for the religion of others. There was no question in this of conversion.
The happy event of marriage could take place only when communities shed mutual enmities and had regards for religions of the world. But Gandhi in that article in the Harijan had lamented that the Indian society had not reached the stage of mutual toleration but surely, the mutual toleration would grow to mutual respect for each other's religion. The marriages then would be widely welcome.
It is therefore, time now to reimagine and work for an inclusive Indian society without restraining pure love for marriage, irrespective of religion and caste. Jihad in love sounds unusual and is suffocating.
(A Gandhian author, columnist, a lawyer, Puri. Phone: 9861469328)