By Shadab Ahmad Moizee,
Kabhi masjid pe ja baithe Kabhi mandir pe ja baithe
Parindon me yaha firqa parasti kyu nahi aati….
This poetic verse expresses the freedom of birds, but in 21st century love birds need to define their love according to self-confessed contractors of religion.
Love is a complex feeling. Mirza Ghalib tried to define it with poetry, Shahjahan tried to define it with a monumental masterpiece, and everywhere somebody or the other is busy redefining love for the future generations. The past holds a record of all those who fought for love. Romeo-Juliet, Heer-Ranjha, all have a distinct story to tell and inspire the multitude of couples across the world. The freedom to express has become so much easier now than ever before.
But what’s making love difficult? As often quoted, love is a sea raging with fire, you fail if you cross; succeed if you drown.
Recently the unproved logic ‘Love Jihad’ came into lime light after the alleged gang-rape and conversion of a Hindu girl in Meerut by village Pradhan Nawab and molested by Sanaullah, both are Muslims. But that alleged rape case has contradicted their own statement after the Uttar Pradesh Police said that she was operated for ectopic pregnancy at Meerut Medical College on 23 July, 2014 and not in Muzaffarnagar as she had said in her statement.
Meerut government hospital’s register said a different story that the girl was accompanied by Kaleem and in the records Kaleem’s relationship is mentioned as husband. In the FIR (First Information Report) lodged by her family, it says she was raped on July 23, in a madrasa in Hapur, near Meerut. But in her medical examination on the same day, she told the female doctor the rape occurred almost a month earlier on June 29, in an open field. Meerut is highly communally sensitive place.
Love jihad is arumor-mongering campaign in which Muslims youth allegedly entice or as popularly said seduce the non-Muslim (Hindu) girls or women into love affairs and force them to convert to Islam and enchant them with petro dollar and charm.
The controversy flared up in 2009 when many Hindu girls converted to Islam in Kerala and Karnataka, Who invented the term Love Jihad is not clear but in September 2009, some posters appeared on Trivananthapuram, Kerala under the name of right wing group Shri Ram Sena titled ‘warning against Love Jihad’. When the issue got hyped so much that in October 2009, the Karnataka government ordered a CID (Criminal Investigation Department) investigation to crack down the reality of love jihad, but the CID probe found no truth in it. DGP of Karnataka Jacob Punnoosealso states “there is no evidence of any organized attempt by any group or individual using feigning love to lure women to convert to Islam.”
The issue was then being kicked up by communal force from Karnataka to Kerala High court, according to Indian express reports on 9 December, 2009, Justice K T Sankaran, was hearing a bail plea of a Muslim youth arrested for allegedly convincingly converting two girls. After studying the case diary in ‘Love Jihad’ cases, Justice Sankaran said “such incidents under the pretext of love were rampant in certain parts of the states, Quoting the police report, the judge said about 3,000 to 4,000 forced conversions under the banner of ‘love’ had been reported in Kerala within past four years. Most of the incidents were from the North Kerala districts of Malappuram, Kasargode and Kannur. Despite of the Justice Sankaran Comments the high court stayed police investigation as they saw no element of coercion. Investigation reports refute the presence of any organisation behind the conversion of girls into Islam. But after all the denial the saffron brigade got frustrated and use the illogical words in western Uttar Pradesh, well known for communal violence, to polarize the states.
Naina’s (name changed) life is nothing more than an exile. Her phone is frequently checked. She can’t go anywhere alone. She is also not allowed to make Muslim friends at college. Her only mistake is that she has fallen in love with a Muslim boy and this is something which her parents hate the most. After love jihad shining over the mainstream media, her life got even worse. “Love is free. It can’t be interconnected with different religious propaganda. VHP and RSSis all set to regenerate its name in the news by coming up with such nonsense terms. It can only create interreligious mayhem”, she adds with a sense of disgust on her face.
Besides all the argument or turndown on love and jihad, RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) and other religious group, operates the matter as manoeuvre or conspiracy against the Hindu religion or as the Hindu girls are on the verge of extinction and RSS is the only ray of hope that save the Hinduism. Calumnious campaign is running on the name of “Bahu Beti Bachao Andolan.” Suddenly after the Meerut alleged rape case, Hindu right wings showing great alacrity on the issue.
Shri Krishan Shriwastava, Mahamantri, Vishva Hindu Parishad Delhi, says, “Muslims youth lure our girls with facebook, they used sex chat on facebook to seduce our girls. Muslim boys get themselves smartly dressed, tied the holistic thread (that typically connotes that they are Hindu), they even goto temple and pretend their names as Hindu, get married to our girls so that they can increase their population. They are also doing population Jihad.”
“Later on they leave our girls or send them to other countries. There have been a planned approached to accomplish these intentions since long and as far as our information Arab countries do the funding for this,” he added.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan explains the term Jihad in his book “The True Jihad: The Concept of Peace, Tolerance and Non Violence in Islam,” the word ‘jihad’ is derived from the root juhd, which means ‘to strive’ or ‘to struggle’. It denotes the exertion of oneself to the utmost, to the limits of one’s capacity, in some activity or for some purpose. According to Islamic teachings, jihad is of two kinds. One is with the self (jihad bin nafs), that is, making the maximum effort to keep control over negative feelings in one’s self, for instance, arrogance, jealousy, greed, revenge, anger, etc. The other form of jihad is that which is engaged into propagate the constructive message of Islam not the war.
But today jihad is often taken as synonyms to terrorism and war. Syed Hamid Hassan in his book “Islam Facts versus Fiction” has given a chapter on love jihad in that he said “If Jihad is taken in its misconstrued form, it certainly cannot be employed to promote romance between two individuals, for love is spontaneous as well as instinctive. It needs neither catalysts nor external props. It can neither be feigned nor staged. It blossoms in hearts and progress with mutual interaction.
A sadhu turned politician, Yogi Adityanath, BJP’s MP from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, is not new to controversy, an old alleged video of him came into media attention in which he is saying that, if they (Muslims) take one Hindu girl, we will take 100 Muslims girls.In another altercation in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, he says “from now on, no Jodha will marry Akbar, but like Chandragupt Maurya, we too will bring back our girls.”
On the contrary, Ejaz Ahmad Aslam, National president, Jamat-e-Islami Hind says “we have to give respect and freedom to every women and girls either she belongs to Hindu or Muslim community, if there is any case of elopement or elicit relations or coercion of fraud, whether inter-community or intra-community, it is not a Hindu versus muslim question, but a social problem which has to be solved jointly.”
He also adds, “to profess, practice and preach a religion of one’s choice is the fundamental right of every citizen of India, Jamat-e-Islami Hind or any religious outfist has no right to intervene in personal believes.
Charu Gupta, associate professor of history at Delhi University has written an article in Indian Express title “The myth of love jihad”, where she stated that “In 1920’s Uttar Pradesh witnessed a flurry of orchestrated propaganda campaigns by a section of Hindu publicists against conversion of Hindu women, elopement with muslims but the term Love Jihad was not at the time.”
In 1920’S Hindu group used the slogan ‘Hindu aurton ki loot’ and this time they used ‘Bahu Beti Bachao Abhiyan’. She pointed out that in 1924, Meerut was the centre of communal tension on the name of non-existing Love Jihad and this time again after almost 9 decades Meerut is in limelight.
Machoarchy or patriarchy (machoism or patriarchism) decides the use of women, sometimes in ribaldry like Maa ki…, Behan ki…., or sometimes to show fake pride on the name of honour killing. Saffron outfits act promptly on any inter-religious marriages or affairs and currently the love faces the threat of being criticized as ‘Love jihad’.