LOVE JIHAD

Religious Nationalism and The Transgressive Conspiracy Theory of Love Jihad in India

Written By- Areeka Khan

B.A Philosophy

Sophia College for Women, Mumbai

Edited by- Kashaf Ali

2^nd Year LL. B

Career College of Law, Bhopal

“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency, and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!”

― Mahatma Gandhi

According to Mark Juergensmeyer, an American sociologist and professor specializing in Global studies and religious studies, religious nationalism does not imply that religion is inherently nationalist. It also does not imply that nationalism is inherently religious. However, we occasionally see some form of fusion between the two. Sometimes the fusion is accidental and innocent. However, the fusion can be harsh at times, especially when it is intended to exclude groups within society that are not members of the dominant religion.

Religion and politics colliding and people fusing their national identity and their religious affiliation together is not a new phenomenon in India. When the country’s constitution was being drafted after independence and in the aftermath of the Partition, it was decided that the state would maintain a principled distance from religion. Although this delicate balance was largely preserved in the early years following independence, it did not take long for this blurry line between the state and religion to be crossed.

By all appearances, India remains a secular and multi-faith democracy. In recent years, underneath the country's outward tolerance, however, there is an undercurrent of Hindu nationalism that has successfully mobilized a large segment of upper-caste urban India and the wealthy into an orbit of authoritarian and anti-Muslim politics.

Hindu nationalism, like any other religious nationalism, is a majoritarian nationalism that connects India with Hindu identity and portrays religious minorities as the other whose loyalty to India forever remains questionable. Hindu nationalism is primarily a political movement that aims to re-establish India's Hindu identity through cultural purification and although all religious minorities in India face targeted violence, the Muslim men's increased targeted rhetoric is frequently framed as the primary threat. They are framed as both an internal and external threat to the country and being othered to the point where they do not belong within their own nation. The increased threat of love jihad which has been politically perceived has aggravated this framework.

Right-wing forces have systematically cultivated the terminology of love jihad. In India, the term “love jihad” typically refers to Muslim men using love to trick unwitting and naive Hindu women into marriage, convert them to Islam, and have multiple children, thereby increasing the Muslim population of India until the Muslims dominate. Although the conspiracy appears implausible and lacks evidence, the systematic dissemination of this concept, primarily by right-wing Hindu nationalist forces, has led much of the Hindu population to accept this threat as real.

Islamophobia has exacerbated divisiveness in an already divided nation. Not only is love jihad immensely polarising, but it also regards women's bodies as something that needs to be safeguarded and has fed into the belief that Hindus are historically marginalized victims at the hands of a minority group that threatens Hindu demographic supremacy.

Since its inception, love jihad has also been framed as part of a larger foreign-national conspiracy against India. Arvind Bhadoria, a cabinet member from Madhya Pradesh, fervently believes so. Many news outlets, including Zee News, have aired segments examining how love jihad is a Pakistani-funded conspiracy that operates through Indian Islamic organizations such as the Popular Front of India and the Student Islamic Movement of India. Despite these assertions, official police investigations into inter-religious marriages have revealed no evidence of a foreign-funded conspiracy.

Engaging in such mythmaking, political parties raise concerns and generated fear among the masses over demographic changes and frame it as a part of a more significant geo-political conflict where the state is required to secure its external borders and meticulously police its internal territory. For India, this demographic threat is both internal and external with Muslims inside and Muslims at the borders. This fear has aided in the securitization of love jihad.

Right-wing forces have made it quite clear that Muslims are to be regarded as a threat to crime, terrorism, and forced marriages. Threats like these have instilled fear in Hindutva voters and as a result, the electorate attempts to legislate away their concerns, compromising the rights of Indian Muslims. According to Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies and Professor of History at Temple University in Japan, Islamophobia is a thriving industry whipped up by those eager to achieve political objectives and "saffronize" history, heritage, education, and identity. In the name of a purified Hindu homeland, where non-Hindus are the enemy to be reconverted or eliminated, the sorrows of inequality, poverty, and caste provide willing foot soldiers who are eager to resort to violence.

Several states in India have, in response to love jihad, enacted a number of anti-love jihad laws to prevent Muslim men from coercing Hindu women into inter-religious marriages and conversion. Uttar Pradesh became the first state in the country to pass such a law in November 2020. Also known as the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, it forbids “unlawful conversion” by means of force, deception, or marriage. The legislation does not explicitly forbid Hindu women and Muslim men from getting married. Right-wing vigilante organizations, however, openly collaborate with the police to disrupt interfaith marriages, using the law as a state-sanctioned tool to undermine India's secular constitution, infantilize women and detain innocent Muslim men.

It is undeniable that the Hindu nationalist vision of Indian democracy differs significantly from its secular counterpart. It starts with the idea that secular nationalism is a sham and nothing, but a foreign imposition inflicted by elites associated with the Indian National Congress during the independence, obscuring India’s true Hindu identity. For them, Hinduism is the ultimate source of the country's identity, and this identity is under threat by love jihad.

Religion has become the main source of bigotry, prejudice, and bloodshed due to the merging of Indian politics with it. This marriage between religion and politics, in my opinion, should be considered unconstitutional and not an interfaith marriage between two consenting adults. Trampling on the founding principles of the country with religious nationalism, the leaders of our country fail to realize that without secularism, freedom, and equality, India has started to lose its meaning as the largest democracy in the world.

References:

· https://www.hindustantimes.com/elections/assam-assembly-election/will-enact-laws-to-prevent-love-jihad-land-jihad-promises-amit-shah-in-assam-101616747655727.html

· https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.elsevier-33fac876-1b22-3d3a-a006-0b5a1f5f893c

· https://www.hindustantimes.com/bhopal/love-jihad-funded-by-foreign-nations-conspiracy-against-india-mp-minister/story-tQNBwKIHcLtYa8KbJXGQ1N.html

· https://zeenews.india.com/video/india/deshhit-pakistan-is-funding-the-love-jihad-conspiracies-in-india-2307362.html

· https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/no-conspiracy-foreign-funding-in-inter-faith-marriages-say-kanpur-cops-2329238

· https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0976399619825691

· https://muse.jhu.edu/article/447095/summary

· https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/12/1074/htm#B5-religions-12-01074

· https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/crer/research/publications/research_papers/rp_no.23.pdf

· https://www.cfr.org/event/religious-nationalism-around-world

· https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325539000_Religion_and_Nationalism_in_Southeast_Asia