Fighting the “Love Jihad” : India is working itself into a frenzy about interfaith marriages
Hindu Nationalists warn of a Muslim plot to seduce Hindu Women
THE older woman’s slaps come quick and hard, followed by a shrill, “Have you no shame?” The younger woman sits still, eyes downcast, holding a hesitant hand to her stinging cheek as if in disbelief. Captured earlier this month in the city of Aligarh, 140km south-east of the Indian capital, Delhi, this little act of violence was mild by the standards of videos that go viral across India’s 1.2bn mobile phones.
Yet the scene was widely shared, and for compelling reasons. The two women were complete strangers. The older one happens to be Sangeeta Varshney, a prominent local member of India’s ruling party. The younger woman, who is Hindu, had been spotted sitting in a teahouse with a man who is Muslim. In a later interview on television, Ms Varshney explained that as a mother and a Hindu herself, she had a God-given right to hit the other woman. This was, she continued, a clear-cut case of “love jihad”.
Ms Varshney is far from alone in believing that the 80% of Indians who are Hindu face a concerted, predatory effort to entice their womenfolk away from the faith. One populist Hindu organisation’s helpline claims to have “rescued” 8,500 girls from “love jihad”. A website called Struggle for Hindu Existence carries endless titillating stories about Muslim youths luring Hindu maidens into wickedness. Repeated police investigations have failed to find evidence of any organised plan of conversion. Reporters have repeatedly exposed claims of “love jihad” as at best fevered fantasies and at worst, deliberate election-time inventions. Indian law erects no barriers to marriages between faiths, or against conversion by willing and informed consent. Yet the idea still sticks, even when the supposed “victims” dismiss it as nonsense.
In May, a court in the southern state of Kerala summarily annulled a five-month-old marriage on grounds that the wife, a convert to Islam, had disobeyed her parents and been lured into a potentially dangerous liaison with a Muslim man.Sensitivities in Kerala have been high since the discovery, last year, that several newly-wed Muslim couples had emigrated to fight for Islamic State. Still, it seemed bizarre for a judge to order this 24-year-old woman, who had converted a year before meeting her future husband, while studying at a medical institute, to return to her parents’ house. She has been held there ever since, under police guard and, say the few who have attempted to visit her, against her will. Even as her husband mounted a legal challenge to the divorce ruling, India’s supreme court in August ordered a special anti-terror unit to investigate his background.
It is not only Muslims who are accused of preying on Hindu women. A 28-year-old Hindu woman filed charges against a yoga centre in Kerala earlier this month, alleging that she had been held there against her will for three weeks, abused and indoctrinated in an attempt to make her divorce her Christian husband. Her affidavit alleged that another 60 women had been held at the centre in similar circumstances.
And it is not just Hindus who harbour suspicions. Earlier this month a Buddhist organisation in Ladakh, a mountainous region on the borders of Tibet, issued a stark warning. All Muslims in the area would have to leave, or risk the consequences, unless Syed Murtaza Agha “returned” his wife, Stanzin Saldon, to her Buddhist family. For several days Muslim-owned shops in the region stayed shut, but the danger seems to have passed. Miss Saldon, a 30-year-old development consultant who says she converted to Islam five years ago, published a persuasively eloquent letter in Indian newspapers. It states bluntly that she married out of love and for no other reason, and feels insulted by the accusation that she might not be able to think for herself. The Buddhist elders, who had termed conversion a “wicked and depraved act”, have fallen silent.
“Women often become a marker when sharper lines get drawn between communities,” says Charu Gupta, a historian at Delhi University. Efforts by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to build inter-caste alliances among Hindus have brought religious differences more to the fore, she believes. Still, says Ms Gupta, it is a shame to see state institutions and India’s courts take on the role of prejudiced patriarchs: “They have internalised a demonisation of the Muslim male, and see women as essentially foolish and immature.”
In Aligarh, police did not arrest Ms Varshney for assaulting a young woman. They did not bother the Hindu vigilantes who had hauled the couple out of a teahouse. But they charged the Muslim boyfriend with “lewd behaviour”. Only several days later, following a public outcry over the video clip and at the prompting of local women’s-rights groups, were charges pressed against Ms Varshney.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Invading the bedroom"
The little act of violence was mild by the standards of videos that go viral across India’s 1.2bn mobile phones.
The scene was widely shared, and for compelling reasons. The two women were complete strangers. The older one happens to be Sangeeta Varshney, a prominent local member of India’s ruling party. The younger woman, who is Hindu, had been spotted sitting in a teahouse with a man who is Muslim. In a later interview on television, Ms Varshney explained that as a mother and a Hindu herself, she had a God-given right to hit the other woman. This was, she continued, a clear-cut case of “love jihad”.
State institutions and India’s courts take on the role of prejudiced patriarchs: “They have internalised a demonisation of the Muslim male, and see women as essentially foolish and immature.”
In May, a court in the southern state of Kerala summarily annulled a five-month-old marriage on grounds that the wife, a convert to Islam, had disobeyed her parents and been lured into a potentially dangerous liaison with a Muslim man. Sensitivities in Kerala have been high since the discovery, last year, that several newly-wed Muslim couples had emigrated.
It is not only Muslims who are accused of preying on Hindu women. A 28-year-old Hindu woman filed charges against a yoga centre in Kerala earlier this month, alleging that she had been held there against her will for three weeks, abused and indoctrinated in an attempt to make her divorce her Christian husband. Her affidavit alleged that another 60 women had been held at the centre in similar circumstances. The Economist
Link to Source: https://www.economist.com/node/21729806
The National Campaign Against Torture (NCAT) in its “India: Annual Report on Torture 2019” released on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture stated that a total of 1,731 persons died in custody during 2019 i.e. deaths of about five persons daily. These included 1,606 deaths in judicial custody and 125 deaths in police custody.
Torture is perpetrated to extract confession or bribes and torture methods used in 2019 included hammering iron nails in the body (Bihar), applying roller on legs and burning (Jammu & Kashmir), ‘falanga’ wherein the soles of the feet are beaten (Kerala), stretching legs apart in opposite side (Kerala), hitting in private parts (Haryana), electric shock (Punjab and Uttar Pradesh), pouring petrol in private parts (Uttar Pradesh), applying chilly power in private parts (Kerala) beating while being hand-cuffed (Kerala), pricking needle into body (3-Year-old minor in Tamil Nadu), branding with hot iron rod (3-Year-old minor in Tamil Nadu), beating after stripping (Haryana and Assam), urinating in mouth (Uttar Pradesh), inserting hard blunt object into anus (Bihar), beating after hanging upside down with hands and legs tied (Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh), forcing to perform oral sex (Gujarat), pressing finger nails with pliers (Assam), beating with iron rods after victim is suspended between two tables with both hands and legs tied (Madhya Pradesh), forced to do Murga pose or stress position (Haryana), and kicking in belly of pregnant woman (Assam).
Indian police officers in the town of Nagina chased a group of Muslim teenagers into an empty house. They grabbed them and took them to a makeshift jail. And then, the boys and community leaders said, the officers tortured them.
Four of the boys, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, said that police officers used wooden canes to beat them and threatened to kill them.
Indian Police officers over the course of 30 hours terrorized them.
According to two of the boys, the officers laughed during beatings, saying, “You will die in this prison.”
More accounts are emerging of abuse meted out by police officers.
Almost all the violence has been directed toward Muslim residents. More people — at least 19 — have been killed!
Witnesses said that police officers opened fire on demonstrators with live ammunition, broke into houses and stole money, and threatened to rape women.
Police officers were encouraged by their superiors to kill protesters.
The Indian police have become a lynch mob! Inidan police officers having been given the green light by senior officials to use harsh measures against Muslims.
A 20-year-old Dalit man was allegedly burnt alive over his relationship with a woman from another caste, the killing causing his mother to die of shock.
The victim was beaten up, kept hostage in a house and set ablaze.
Locals rushed to the spot on hearing his cries and took him to a local hospital. He was referred to a Lucknow hospital but succumbed to injuries on the way.
India : Hyderabad : Andhra Pradesh Telangana2018-09-20
A father attacked his 20-year-old daughter and her newlywed husband in the heart of the city on Wednesday, chopping off her left forearm and slashing her jaw. The incident comes days after a Dalit youth was mercilessly murdered in front his pregnant wife in Nalgonda district.
Police said the father was upset over the inter-caste marriage — the woman an OBC (Other Backward Class), her husband, B Sandeep (22), a Dalit. Sandeep and Madhavi Chary, in a relationship for five years, secretly got married on September 12, despite stiff opposition from her father.
Madhavi was left with a 12-inch gash on her neck and jawline and her left forearm barely hung by the skin. She was in a 10-hour surgery at the time of going to print. Sandeep, in another hospital, received 10 stitches to close the deep wound at the angle of his mouth; the attending doctors said he was in deep shock.
