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Table of contents

Decoding ‘Love Jihad’: What is it?

The improbability of ‘Love Jihad’ and the challenge of conversions 04

Love, jihad aur dhoka: The Hindu woman’s body as rightwing battleground 06

‘Love Jihad’ enters Uttar Pradesh

Imported from Kerala: How the ‘love jihad’ ploy failed in its state of origin 09

In land of honour killings, BJP’s ‘love jihad’ campaign is a death warrant 11

‘Love jihad’ in Uttar Pradesh: BJP’s latest strategy against Akhilesh 13

Why BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit is regretting raking up ‘Love jihad’ issue 15

How BJP made ‘Love Jihad’ a political weapon

Watch: BJP’s Yogi Adityanath tells Hindus to marry a 100 Muslim women 18

Who is afraid of BJP’s ‘love jihad’? The Congress party 20

BJP MP Hema Malini had no objection to love jihad in her films: Akhilesh 23

BJP drops mention of ‘love jihad’, talks about crimes against Hindu women 24

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Decoding ‘Love Jihad’: What is it?

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The improbability of ‘Love Jihad’ and the challenge of conversions

R. Jagannathan, August 27, 2014

T he BJP and the Sangh Parivar are kick-ing up a big fuss over “Love Jihad”. They should pipe down. Not only will they be

heating up an already communal atmosphere, they are also on the wrong track.

Leaving aside some anecdotal incidents of inter-communal love and conversions to Islam result-ing from these liaisons, the fact is if 'Love Jihad' is actually an organised system to obtain con-verts, it is a sign of desperation in those seeking to use this route to change demography. I pro-pose to explain why through some hypotheses.First, 'Love Jihad' is a very inefficient and costly

way to seek conversions. To make it viable you need a sufficient number of youth willing to sacrifice their time and energies to wooing members from another community - not just for a sexual fling, something men are always willing to expend energies on, but a long-term invest-ment like marriage. Even if one assumes that the wooer is going to desert or contract another marriage of his choice post-conversion, such things cannot remain covert. They will excite community reaction - which then slows down the process of further conversions.

'Love Jihad' will thus ultimately be self-defeat-ing. Worse, it is an indirect acknowledgement by the community seeking converts that normal methods of conversion - marketing propaganda, popularisation of good practices, and promises

of spiritual and economic inducements - cannot work anymore.

It is interesting to note that the phrase Love Jihad originated in Kerala, where communal demography is moving towards a balance where conversions are both more difficult and costlier for all communities. The Kerala religious de-mography is roughly 55:45, with Hindus at 55 percent and Muslims and Christians together accounting for the balance (roughly 25:20 be-tween Muslims and Christians).At 55:45, Hindus would have lost sufficient numbers over the centuries and will now be close to acquiring "herd immunity" to further conversions.

"Herd immunity" is a term the medical com-munity uses in the context of epidemics. New diseases (ebola, swine flu) have a tendency to spread faster in the initial stages than later, when significant numbers have already con-tracted the disease. When the bug or virus initially infects individuals, the number of potential additional people to infect is larger, and so the chances of transmitting the disease are greater. Once many people contract it, the number of potential targets falls, as the weaker members die, the stronger ones survive, and the balance population becomes resistant to it or is less likely to come in contact with an infected person.

Herd immunity is lowest for small and homog-enous communities, and higher for very large, but diverse, populations with genetic variations. Herd immunity is also lower for very large, but monocultural, communities (as in China and Japan). In India, despite diversity, herd immu-nity among Hindus has reduced of late due to the homogenising effects of urbanisation, glo-balisation, and the reduction of casteism.The absence of herd immunity explains (par-tially) why Islam conquered small, homogenous tribal communities in the Middle East in its earlier centuries, sometimes even overwhelming

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entire nations with not-so-large populations. It also explains why small tribal communities in the north-east have completely turned Christian over the last two centuries even while the bulk of caste-based Hindudom has not.

However, herd immunity has not been achieved is large swathes of the diverse Hindu population in various parts of the country, and this is why Islamic and Christian evangelical groups are more successful in gaining faster conversions outside Kerala - in Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh, for example.

The potential market for conversions is so huge that normal techniques for conversions work quite well. There is absolutely no need for deploying Love Jihad, which is a costly weapon and unwieldy to use. In Kerala, where herd im-munity is being achieved, the desperate meas-ure of Love Jihad may have some takers but not elsewhere.

In is interesting to note that both Hindu groups and the church have raised concerns about Love Jihad in Kerala. So one cannot dismiss the idea altogether. But Love jihad as a purely male appropriation of women from other communi-ties into theirs cannot work over the long term unless there is a reverse process also at work: Muslim women enticing men (the so-called “honey trap”) from other communities into marriage and conversion. If too many Muslim men marry outside their existing patriarchal hunting grounds within the community, the re-sult will be a shortage of Muslim grooms - even assuming some amount of bigamy is permitted in Islam.

In fact, the reverse Love jihad, where females entrap males from other communities, is actual-ly more feasible for the simple reason that men are less choosy - and actually make patriarchal gains if they marry Muslim women (as this blog in Reality Check India argues). This is because we know that women are more careful in pick-ing male partners than men for biological and evolutionary reasons. Acecdotally, too, I have heard of more Hindu men willing to convert to marry Muslim women or even to marry twice. I know of one senior editor who converted to Islam to marry a second time when the earlier spouse would not offer an easy exit. But honey

traps too suffer from the same limitations of men entrapping women: it demands too high a personal price from the women concerned, and moreover will ultimately be opposed by con-servative Muslim society if carried out on a scale where demographics are altered significantly.

Net-net, I believe that Love Jihad - apart from being a contradiction in terms, is improbable except at the margin. It is a possibility -but not a probability - in states like Kerala and Assam, where demographic realities have reduced the Hindu proportions, enabling them to be more resistant to conversions. They may be close to achieving herd immunity.

The reasons why conversions are a big issue with Hindu groups are two-fold. One, since Hinduism does not believe in conversion and has, therefore, not developed a well-organised, institutionalised system for expansion of the faith like Islam and Christianity, some Hindus want conversions banned. But this is anti-free-dom and not acceptable in our pluralistic soci-ety. Two, there is a sense of greater vulnerability since herd immunity has not been achieved in large parts of India.

Banning conversions is actually an acceptance of defeat. Those who care about conversions away from Hinduism thus need a different strategy - which I don't propose to discuss in detail here. The key elements of this strategy are obvious, though: one is to solidify Hinduism in-ternally by making Hindutva a social movement about eliminating caste rigidities rather than being anti-other religions. The other is to create a long-term plan for expansion and conversion in virgin markets like the Americas, Europe, south-east Asia and Africa.

Remember, just as Hindus don't have herd immunity in India, Christians don't have herd immunity in the areas they dominate. They are as vulnerable as Hindus in India to conversion. The communities most vulnerable to Hinduism and Buddhism are the Islamic world - which has no herd immunity whatsoever even though there are more than 50 countries professing Islam as a religion. Banning conversions and apostasy is a sign of extreme herd vulnerability.

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Love, jihad aur dhoka: The Hindu woman’s body as rightwing battleground

Sandip Roy, August 25, 2014

N ational-level shooter Tara Shadeo says she thought she was marrying Ranjit Kumar Kohli from Ranchi but it turned

out he was really Raqibul Hasan Khan. After their wedding which happened with Hindu rites she says she was tortured, abused, even bitten by dogs as he tried to force her to convert to Islam.

It’s a ghastly story and Hasan, who is abscond-ing, has been charged with IPC section 295A. But now it’s become not just Tara Shahdeo’s trauma. It’s Exhibit A in the larger Love Jihad firestorm.

The VHP called for a bandh in Ranchi saying Hasan “could be part of a jihadi outfit carrying out forcible conversions by luring Hindu girls into marriage.”

Apparently bombs are passé. Make love, not war is the new jihadi strategy.

Actually it’s not that new. The Love Jihad bee has been rattling in the Hindutva bonnet for a while now. Way back in the 1920s, the Arya Samaj launched campaigns against abduction and conversion using poems like Chand Musal-manon Ki Harkaten reports Rohan Venkatara-man in Scroll.

In 2013 we heard of an eve-teasing incident in Muzaffarnagar which led to the murder of one Shah Nawaz which led to murders of two other youths, Sachin and Gaurav and eventually flared into full-scale communal violence and indefinite curfew. In 1927 in that same Muzaffarpur an-gry crowds gathered as a rumour spread that a Hindu girl had been forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man, writes Charu Gupta in Economic and Political Weekly. The Hindu Sabha had volunteer corps active especially at railway stations, keeping an eye out for Hindu women eloping with Muslim men.

Now that same anxiety can be recycled but far more efficiently thanks to WhatsApp and SMSes.

In 2009 groups like Sree Ram Sene accused Muslim extremist youths of feigning love to seduce Hindu women in Karnataka and then using them for terror activities. The state High Court asked the police to investigate after the parents of two Hindu girls said their daughters had been “cheated” into converting to Islam by two Muslim college mates. The Karnataka police told the high court they could not find any great love jihad conspiracy. The campaign fizzled out and Shree Ram Sene contented itself with other ways to protect our moral fabric namely drag-ging women out of pubs by their hair.

But Love Jihad otherwise known as Romeo Jihad was too sexy an idea to just go away. In Kerala a Christian woman who had converted to Islam was arrested in Kochi for providing 2 SIM cards to her Muslim boyfriend in an Ernakulam jail on drug peddling charges. He then allegedly passed the cards onto a Lashkar-e-Taiba opera-tive also in that jail. “Love Jihad is part of global Islamisation project,” pronounced the Global Council of Indian Christians. The chief minis-ter Oommen Chandy said in 2012 that 2,667 women had converted to Islam in Kerala since 2006 but he denied there was any organised

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Love Jihad.

That ironically stings even more. It meant good Hindu girls were willingly marrying Muslim men as if their own men were not good enough. It hits Hindu masculinity right in the gonads. Were they being out-shairi-ed in the race to the altar? The only thing that made sense to the wounded pride was a great love-sex-dhokha conspiracy.

While the pressure to convert on a young non-Muslim woman marrying a Muslim man can be real, as a cold-blooded global Islamization strat-egy it makes absolutely no sense. It takes too long. It expends too much energy. It requires too much investment. And in a country where inter-caste marriages can still face enormous obstacles its outcome is too iffy.

But like all great urban myths the Love Jihad persists. It persists because the bodies of wom-en can prove to be a far more potent polarizing and organizing tool than even a Ram Temple. Only the truly devout ultimately care about go-ing on a pilgrimage to a Ram Temple in Ayo-dhya but the izzat of ma-behen-beti becomes ghar ghar ki kahani. There is already a great buzzing paranoia about Muslim minority be-coming a majority through sheer child-bearing prowess and four permitted wives. The Love Jihad adds Hindu wombs to the numbers game.

We live in a society where the control over women is bred into our national psyche irre-spective of religion. There is tremendous anxi-ety about what modernity does to the Indian woman. When filmmaker Paromita Vohra was filming Morality TV aur Loving Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani about Operation Majnu which targeted indecency and eve-teasing in public places she found the story was a far more “com-plex interweave” than the screaming headlines on television let on.

There was already great social unease about young women leaving homes to work in call centres or enrolling in Frankfinn Airhostess Training institutes and literally flying the coop. There was resentment about the new prosper-ity of Muslim meat exporters in western UP and “the panic of being culturally overwhelmed by English-speaking urban elites”. The conspiracy

theory of a love jihad against Hindu girls gave that free-floating social anxiety about losing control a face and a form and a clearly identifi-able "other". It made it a story not about moral policing but about saving communal honour, an idea that can provoke an almost medieval re-sponse (and electoral dividends).

“The abducted and converted Hindu woman was metamorphosed into a symbol of both sacredness and humiliation, and hence of the victimization of the whole Hindu community,” writes Charu Gupta in EPW.

It is far more comforting to see a jihadi conspir-acy instead of the far more damning personal choice. In the award-winning film Khamosh Pani, Kirron Kher, now a BJP MP, plays Veero, a Sikh woman in Pakistan who runs away in-stead of jumping into a well in 1947 to escape rampaging Muslim mobs. She is raped and becomes pregnant but eventually builds a life for herself as Ayesha in Pakistan. Over 30 years later when the truth is revealed she refuses to return to India with her newly-found brother. More than the communal horror of 1947 the shock of that story is her personal choice. That is the hardest thing for us to stomach.

That is why the love in a Love Jihad has to be necessarily portrayed as “false”. It is as much about the Muslim man as it is about the alleged-ly helpless gullible passive Hindu woman. The war against Love Jihad is also about controlling and policing that woman. It is a Lakshmanrekha masquerading as helpline.

It is entirely plausible that a person of one faith who marries into another regrets her choice later. It’s entirely possible that Tara Shahdeo got married under false pretences and was then tortured by her husband and in-laws. But just because these dots exist it does not mean we can connect them to spell out Love Jihad.

We are people, not sheep. We make complicated personal choices especially when it comes to love, as Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed glee-fully pointed out on Twitter: "Present BJP MP Hema Malini & Dharmendra (14th LS) were converted to Islam at the time of their marriage. Was it 'Love Jihad'? Only BJP can say."

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‘Love Jihad’ enters Uttar Pradesh

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Imported from Kerala: How the ‘love jihad’ ploy failed in its state of origin

G Pramod Kumar, August 25, 2014

T he “love jihad” controversy that has gripped Uttar Pradesh will most certain-ly vitiate the communal atmosphere in

the state, but what few realise is that this is the resurrection of a failed propaganda campaign that raised considerable anxiety in Kerala and Karnataka since 2009.

While in Kerala it’s more or less an old story, in Karnataka, its strong ripples had been visible even in the 2013 elections.

The curious coinage, which marries two unrelat-ed terms such as love and jihad, was first heard in the northern districts of Kerala. The charge, by Hindu and even Christian groups, was that Muslim youths were luring Hindu girls into love and then marriage with the sole purpose of con-verting them into Islam.

Once converted, the charge was, that they would be conveniently dumped. While the chief minis-ter of the state Oomen Chandy conceded in the state assembly in 2012 that 2667 women were converted into Islam in the state since 2006, the government said there was no sign of an organ-ised effort for forced conversions or “love jihad”. Although the government had limited evidence of Christian girls being converted (according to Chandy, only 447 Christian girls had been con-verted into Islam), the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) said 2600 Christian girls also

had been converted since 2006, making it a appear like a challenge faced by both Christians and Hindus.

The Global Council of Indian Christians charged that it was part of a “global Islamisation project”, and wanted Christians to be cautious. Chandy took a principled stand that his govern-ment would neither allow forcible conversions, nor hate campaigns against Muslims.

The Christian connection to love jihad in Kerala appeared to have gained some credence when a Christian girl who converted into Islam through marriage to a Muslim boy, was arrested for sup-plying SIM cards to a suspected Laskar-e-Taiba operative, the most notorious terror suspect in the state so far.

The anxiety over the alleged racket in Kerala was acute indeed.

Following complaints by the parents of two girls, who said that their daughters had been cheated into Islam through marriage, the Kerala High Court in 2009 had asked the state govern-ment to take a look. The government, after an investigation, told the court that although there were complaints of “love jihad”, there was no evidence to back such an allegation.

The alleged phenomenon was not restricted to Kerala alone, but had spread to the neighbour-ing state of Karnataka as well - more precisely in Mangalore which also has a multi-religious population. The Karnataka High Court also had asked the state police in 2009 to enquire into the allegations. The police, as in the case of Ker-ala, told the Court that there was no evidence.

Interestingly, the suspected activity brought the Christian and Hindu organisations together in Kerala. ''Both Hindu and Christian girls are falling prey to the design. So we are cooperat-ing with the VHP on tackling this. We will work together to whatever extent possible,'' K S Sam-

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son, an office-bearer of Christian Association for Social Action (CASA), a Kochi-based Christian NGO told Times of India in 2009.

Reportedly, there were referrals and informa-tion-sharing between the two organisations. The VHP had set up a hotline and claimed that it had received about 1500 calls in three months.

The Muslim groups called the charges, a ”ma-licious misinformation campaign" by Sangh Parivar outfits."The misinformation campaign against the non-existent organisation in the name of 'Love Jihad' would only lead to vitiating the prevailing communal harmony and create suspicion among various communities and the parties concerned should keep themselves away from levelling unsubstantiated charges”, a joint statement by prominent Muslim leaders said in 2009.

In Kerala, the controversy seemed to have set-tled down on its own in 2009 after the High Court intervention and the police investigation, but strangely it was revived by none other than the CPM veteran and the then chief minister VS Achuthanandan.

In a press conference, he had said that Mus-lim fundamentalists in the state were trying to increase their clout by encouraging conver-sions. He alleged that a lot of money was being pumped into the state to attract the youth and provide them with weapons; they are also per-suaded to marry Hindu girls.

Although the heat of the controversy died down, at least in its intensity, in Karnataka as well, the aftereffects are far from over. Reportedly, Deputy Chief Minister KS Eshwarappa had used the term during the election campaign in 2013 and was served with a notice by the Elec-tion Commission. This Open magazine article (http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/love-jihad) described how the organised campaigns by Hindu groups had vitiated the socio-cultural atmosphere of Mangalore even as late as 2013. There were also allegations of the involvement of Muslim boys from North Kerala.

From the evidence in Kerala and Karnataka since 2009, it’s clear that “love jihad” was an organised campaign by certain quarters to fuel the suspicion of Muslims. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the same communal anxiety has resurfaced elsewhere in the country. If religious leaders play with this fire, the price that we are going to pay will be higher because the commu-nal rife in UP at the moment appears far more vicious than that existed in Kerala and Karna-taka.

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In land of honour killings, BJP’s ‘love jihad’ campaign is a death warrant

Pallavi Polanki, August 26, 2014

W hat the Muzaffarnagar riots were to the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is perhaps hoping

‘love jihad’ will be to the state assembly elec-tions in 2017.

In an already deeply communalised political atmosphere of Western Uttar Pradesh, which by no coincidence is notorious for the brutal prac-tice of honour killings, the BJP has decided to resurrect the ghost of ‘love jihad’ for maximum impact.

For all their claims of wanting to ‘save’ Hindu women from ‘love jihad’, women’s rights activ-ists from Uttar Pradesh warn that the campaign will only tighten the patriarchal grip on young women and end up encouraging those who com-mit violent crimes in the name honour against those who dare tradition by marrying outside their caste or religion.

Despite the prevalence of honour killings in India, there is no official data on the heinous crime. The National Crime Records Bureau does not recognise honour killing as a separate crime category.But data based on news reports in Hindi and English national dailies on honour killings com-

piled by the Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives (AALI) paints a grim picture of Uttar Pradesh (UP). AALI is a Lucknow-based femi-nist advocacy group that addresses issues of vio-lence against women and has been working on women’s right to choice in sexual relationships.

In 2013, according to data compiled by AALI, there were 85 reported cases of honour killing in UP, compared to 24 in all other Indian states put together. Up to March 2014, the number of reported cases of honour killing in UP were 27 compared to five in all other states combined.

For the BJP to raise the bogey of ‘love jihad’ in a state with as a violent record of patriarchal crimes as UP will have extremely grave and long-term implications for young women and inter-religious couples, say women’s rights ac-tivists.

“This an extremely serious issue. This kind of a campaign will have serious negative impli-cations on couples who are in inter-religious relationships and marriages. They will be afraid now of being attacked or having such allega-tions levelled against them. Such statements (raising fears about ‘love jihad) have strong impact on people because it has to do with religious sentiments, with people’s faith and beliefs. When such insecurities are created in the minds of parents, they’ll be afraid that their daughters will be trapped. And because of such feelings of insecurity, the vulnerability and violence against women will only increase,” says Avantika Srivastva, Program Co-ordinator at AALI’s Resource Center.

In a scenario, where inter-religious couples are even denied shelter by landlords because of the ‘sensitivity’ of the issue, a campaign of this sort will expose them to even more hostility and insecurity, say activists. Even the police, they say, in the case of inter-religious relationships or marriages are keen on sending the girl back

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to the family because of the potential for fear of a communal flare-up. And that’s the situation even without a vicious campaign like ‘love jihad’ being unleashed against them.

Asked about the impact of this kind of propa-ganda on practice of honour killings, Srivastva said, “Of course, this provides encouragement to people who call for honour killings. And it also increase regressive social practices such as early marriages. Parents will say they don’t want their daughters falling prey to ‘love jihad’. And the impact won’t be limited to the issue of marriage, there will be direct implications on the day-t0-day to life of women – her mobility will be restricted, her use of mobile phones will be controlled and so will what she wears, whom she meets.”

Slamming the ‘love jihad’ campaign as a ‘politi-cal stunt’, Rehana Abeed, an activist who has spent the last two decades fighting for women’s rights in Western UP’s Meerut, Muzaffarna-gar and Saharanpur districts, also warns of the threat it poses to the lives and rights of women.

“This is not only a threat to communal harmony it is also a ploy to deny women their rights. They want to bring the Talibani system into India. The people who are spreading the fear of ‘love jihad’ are Hindustan’s Taliban. Just like there are fanatics in the Muslim community, there are fanatics in the Hindu community too. They want to keep women in chains…This kind of propaganda will only lead to more honour kill-ings, more daughters will die. It give embolden patriarchal forces to oppose the rights of young women to study, to communicate freely, to wear what they want,” says Abeed, who is founder-director of NGO Astitva.

On the question of conversion in inter-religious marriages, AALI explains why for some couples conversion is simply the most practical solu-tion to getting a quick legal marriage certificate. The Special Marriage Act that recognises inter-religious marriage has one very serious practical problem, says Srivastva.

“When couples apply to be married under the Special Marriage Act, a one-month notice an-nouncing the marriage is put up in court. This creates fear in the minds of couples of word of their marriage reaching their families. They are also afraid that if someone in the family comes to know, it could even lead to honour killing. But if the boy or girl converts, they have the op-tion of either going to an Arya Samaj mandir, in which case they will get a marriage certificate by end of the day, or doing a nikah, in which case they will get a nikah nama, which is also a le-gally valid document. So this also a reason why the boy or the girl converts,” explains Srivastva.

All too familiar with the extreme pressure and blackmail tactics used by families, they say, it is not uncommon for girls to be forced to testify against the boy who is then jailed and charged with kidnapping and abduction charges.

Not surprisingly, providing support to inter-caste and inter-religious couples has exposed organisations like AALI and Astistva to attacks and vilification campaigns. “There have been multiple attacks on me and my organisation. I have been fighting since 1989 for women’s rights. Earlier we used to be called house-wreckers. Now we are called kidnappers. Things are only going to worse now,” says Abeed.

In deciding to play the ‘love jihad’ card in a deeply patriarchal and communally charged state like UP, BJP has not only endangered the rights of women but also made them vulnerable to the worst kinds of patriarchal violence.

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‘Love jihad’ in Uttar Pradesh: BJP’s latest strategy against Akhilesh

Ratan Mani Lal, August 25, 2014

D oes something called ‘love jihad’ re-ally exist? No one is sure and there is no documented proof but in this year’s

climate of communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh it has come handy as a political tool. Implicit in the idea is a very low opinion of girls of the Hindu community – they lack any sense of judgement, thus can be easily lured into love and made to convert to Islam - but in the pre-vailing situation not many as prepared to argue that. ‘Love jihad’ is serving a purpose, and it has nothing to with love.

A day before its executive meeting at Vrinda-van, the leaders of the BJP discussed at length how ‘love jihad’ is emerging as a major threat to girls of the Hindu community, and vowed to create awareness about it in the region. It was an informal discussion but it left no doubt in the minds of people present that it was a serious issue, at least in the BJP-Sangh Parivar scheme of things.

On Friday, while the party office-bearers talked about measures to tackle ‘love jihad’, alleged instances of conversion of Hindus to Islam were also taken up. Other leaders alleged that the state government was providing ‘protection’ to such elements who were ‘trapping’ Hindu girls especially in this region. “The trend became vis-ible about seven-eight years ago but has caught

momentum in the last two years,” said an MLA from western UP.

Saturday’s session, which the BJP’s national president Amit Shah, failed to attend due to other party commitments, choose not to raise the issue. However, the president of the state unit, Laxmikant Bajpai, in his address touched the subject indirectly while discussing the issue of forced conversions and subsequent deteriora-tion in the communal environment. “Such cases have increased in recent months,” he pointed out. All leaders avoided the phrase ‘love jihad’ in their addresses. However, it is clear that it has entrenched itself in the political-communal discourse of the state.

According to Prof Rahul Shukla, a professor in history in a Lucknow University college in Luc-know, the term ‘love jihad’ refers to attempts by Muslim boys to lure Hindu girls in friendship, followed by offers of marriage, and then the girls are converted to Islam. “Allegation of this kind was first pointed out by some activists in Kerala more than a decade ago and it has sur-faced in Uttar Pradesh in the last few years,” he said.

The propaganda has its negative consequences. The social environment had become so commu-nally surcharged that even normal friendship between a Hindu girl and a Muslim man was now branded as an attempt of ‘love jihad’ de-spite the fact that the two may not be having an intention to get married.

“Local reports suggest that the recent case of a Hindu girl teaching in a madarsa being forced to convert to Islam could be an example of such confusion. It appears that the girl and the main accused knew each other for a long time,” said Sandeep Kumar, a social activist.

Last month, reports had come in from western UP districts of Meerut, Saharanpur and Bijnore

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that local workers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had launched a rakhi campaign to create awareness to protect Hindu girls from ‘love jihad’. Under the campaign launched weeks before Rakshabandhan, rakhi had been tied to the wrists of hundreds of girls and even men to remind them of the pledge to protect their kin. With no clear way to defining ‘love jihad’ it is open to interpretations.

It is also an issue that has the potential to draw emotional reactions from people who are not particularly well-informed. As the trend of com-munalisation of the society shifts from urban to rural areas in the state, it is likely to be turned into a handy tool for communal propaganda.

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Why BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit is regretting raking up ‘Love jihad’ issue

IANS, August 27, 2014

L ucknow: The issue of 'Love Jihad' is being seen by some within the BJP as a self-goal. And more than one party

leader admits it was a mistake raking up the is-sue of "Love Jihad" in politically sensitive Uttar Pradesh.

Several leaders now say that Uttar Pradesh party president Laxmikant Bajpai went over-board in propagating the concept before the leadership in New Delhi gently pulled up the state unit. With by-elections due on 13 Septem-ber to 11 assembly seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party was a divided house when its state execu-tive met in Vrindavan.

Party sources say while it is fine to consolidate Hindu votes, one must be careful raking up issues that can communally polarise the state, and in the process alienate the politically un-committed Hindu.

On the first day of the Vrindavan meet, party leaders upped the ante on "Love Jihad" - al-legation by Hindu outfits that Muslims marry Hindu women and then force them to embrace Islam. BJP leaders like Vinay Katiyar and Bajpai discussed and debated the topic in the party forum and insisted it should figure in the politi-cal resolution.

Union minister Kalraj Mishra, who represented BJP president Amit Shah at Vrindavan, played along and appeared to be convinced that the slogan was a vote-catcher. The tempo was scaled down only after a nudge from the nation-al leadership -- aka Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reliable sources say the central leaders were so miffed at the "Love Jihad" nomencla-ture that Home Minister Rajnath Singh flew to Assam, giving a slip to the Vrindavan conclave.

BJP leaders now blame Bajpai for being "over-zealous" in public utterances. "Bajpai has a penchant for melodramatic words in public discourse which should be avoided at all costs because they harm the party's prospects," a party leader told IANS. Added another leader: "This 'Love Jihad' is a non-issue. It will have no takers outside the fringe."

Others pointed out that the BJP won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in May while harping on issues of good governance and economic de-velopment. "Going overboard communally can lead to reverse polarisation," a party leader said, adding that worried Muslim voters in Ut-tar Pradesh would then rally behind one strong non-BJP party in every constituency.

A state executive member from western Uttar Pradesh pointed out that a woman party leader had herself embraced Islam to marry an already married man years ago, in a reference to Bolly-wood stars Hema Malini and Dharmendra.

While the state unit of the BJP continues to claim that there is increasing sexual assaults on Hindu women by members of another commu-nity, the "Love Jihad" concept has gone under-ground. It will be left to groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal to take up the issue. On its part, the BJP will focus on develop-ment as it trains its guns on the ruling Sama-jwadi Party.

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Saanya, a young woman from Rae Bareli who married a Muslim seven years ago, says she finds the "Love Jihad" accusation disturbing. The resident of Indira Nagar told IANS that she coaxed her husband, Ali Hasan, to vote for the BJP in this Lok Sabha polls and now feels let down. "Why are they raising such issues?" she asked. Like her, many others have raised the same question.

Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali, a member of the Muslim Personal Law Board, says there is no such thing as "Love Jihad".

"There have been stray incidents where conver-sions have been done for marital purposes but for that the entire community cannot be held guilty," Mahali told IANS. "The BJP only wants communal polarisation."

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How BJP made ‘Love Jihad’ a political weapon

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Watch: BJP’s Yogi Adityanath tells Hindus to marry a 100 Muslim women

IANS, August 27, 2014

W hen an undated Youtube video of BJP MP Yogi Adityanath allegedly telling Hindu supporters to marry a hun-

dred Muslim women for every Hindu woman marrying a Muslim and forcibly made to convert to Islam surfaced, it created an uproar across the country, in wake of the Love Jihad contro-versy.

But on Tuesday night, the BJP member claimed the video was not authentic. "It is the media's

responsibility to get a video examined before showing it," he told Headlines Today when asked to comment on the issue.

In the clip found on Youtube, Yogi Adityanath can be heard telling his supporters that the Ut-tar Pradesh High Court had questioned the state government on why so many Hindu girls were eloping with Muslim men to which the govern-ment had no answer. The yogi further narrates what a youth from Gorakhpur said about the issue, "Probably in the rest of Uttar Pradesh Hindu women run away with Muslim but in

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Gorakhpur, Hindu men marry Muslim women and bring them home." In the background hoots of glee can be heard from men attending the speech.

Yogi Adityanath goes on to say that they will ac-cept these Muslim brides and will cleanse them and introduce them to their new religion.

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Who is afraid of BJP’s ‘love jihad’? The Congress party

Saroj Nagi, August 27, 2014

N ew Delhi: Hindutva is now trying to enter drawing rooms, bedrooms and the boudoir, playing on people’s emo-

tions. If, in the 1980s and 1990s, it invoked the past and invaded the puja room by invoking re-ligiosity and people’s sentiments over the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, more than 20 years down the line it is trying to tweak its anti-Muslim stance with a more contemporary and equally potent propaganda that peers into private spaces and goes by the name of ‘love jihad’.

And the Congress, which tried to make the secular-communal faceoff a political issue in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections without any success, is at a loss on how to counter the possibility that the RSS and its various outfits may use this ‘love jihad’ as part of its ground level campaign to further communalise and polarise the at-mosphere in Uttar Pradesh where elections are slated in 2017 and in other parts of the country. Already a marginal player in UP, such a cam-paign threatens to squeeze out whatever little life breath is left in the 129-year-old party in the state.

‘Love jihad’ or ‘Romeo jihad’ refers to alleged instances of love feigned by Muslim men to trap Hindu -- or non-Muslim -- girls into marriage before converting these young women to Islam.

The combination of the two words 'love' and 'ji-had' carries dangerous overtones that threaten to subsume all inter-personal relationships and individual choices.

The BJP was reportedly planning to include this in its political resolution during its state execu-tive meeting in Mathura which had been called to prepare the roadmap for the 2017 Assembly polls. But it developed cold feet after its central leaders frowned at the idea and the opposition parties raised a hue and cry.

Even though BJP’s state unit chief Laxmi Kant Bajpai alleged that "a particular community" is doing 'love jihad', the subject did not figure in the document perhaps also because the BJP did not want to overtly deviate from the twin themes of development and good governance that hoisted the party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to power at the Cen-tre.

"The term is a media creation….The party is concerned about the deteriorating law and order situation in UP where the administration and the police show a bias towards a particu-lar community,’’ said BJP’s national secretary Srikant Sharma, adding that the party was par-ticularly concerned about the oppression of and violence against women in the state.

But for many of the BJP’s ground level workers the failure to refer to the so-called 'love jihad’ in the document did not mean much because they had already imbibed the message that is likely reflect in their campaigns. Examples like those of Ranchi-based former shooter Tara Shahdeo in which she reportedly learnt of her husband’s Islamic name accidentally and reports that she was being forced to convert to Islam have only emboldened BJP workers to continue with their campaign.

And those who have watched the BJP grow over

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the years would recall that the party took up the Ayodhya issue only after the VHP and some oth-er RSS affiliates had done the spadework first.

Many believe that the 'love jihad’ campaign will follow the same mode. Indeed it was only after the Dharma Jagran Manch -- an RSS outfit tasked to run campaigns to stop conversions of Hindus -- called for a front against 'love jihad’ that the BJP’s UP unit began talking about it. And if the saffron party presses ahead with it, it would spell bad news for the Congress which is yet to get out of the trauma of the 2014 polls.

Politically, the Congress can hope to fight off the BJP and its Hindutva ideology by reaching out to secular and anti-BJP forces as it did when it set up the UPA and defeated the BJP-NDA in the 2004 and the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and more recently, when it joined the RJD and the JD-U to keep the saffron party at bay in the by-elections to 10 Assembly seats in Bihar. But it starts fumbling and stumbling in nervousness when it has to deal with emotive issues such as the Ram temple agitation of the Hindutva brigade or the Mandal agitation of the social justice forces.

The party will attempt a tightrope walk -- not be seen as supporting the contention that a thing called ''love jihad’ exists, while at the same time asserting that if anyone has gone in for such a union with malafide intent then stern action should follow. "If there are complaints of this nature then there should be an impartial in-quiry by a central agency or the judiciary but the BJP should not create hatred between people,’’ said senior Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed.

"But they want to divide society and drive a wedge between different communities for the sake of getting some votes….They will stoop to any level,’’ he charged, while trying to put the BJP in the dock by pointing out that several Muslim leaders in that party have Hindu wives and their children bear Muslim names. In his tweet he wondered how the BJP would describe marriages like that between cine stars Hema Malini and Dharmendra who had adopted Islam to tie the knot.

Notwithstanding this, the Congress is clearly worried on how to counter a campaign that

threatens to stoke primal passions, specially in a society that continues to be divided among caste, communal and religious lines and theo-retically swears by the honour and prestige of the community in general and of its girls and women in particular. Set against fears that the Muslim minority is trying to increase its popu-lation through the practice of taking four wives, 'love jihad’ gets an added sinister meaning by projecting that the entire womenfolk of the Hindu community is under siege.

All that the Congress can think of now is to try and create social awareness against the at-tempts to divide communities and use its wom-en wing to counter campaigns that show women to be vulnerable and gullible to emotional overtures. It also hopes to rope in NGOs to take the message down to the grassroots that such insinuations are an insult to women.

Sources indicated that while the party is yet to discuss the issue, it is worried about the Hin-dutva brigade’s reported plan to make 'Love jihad’ its subterranean campaign theme in UP where the law and order situation is already fragile because of an increase in communal riots and rapes and crime against women.

Given the sensitivity of the subject, it is sig-nificant that Ahmed, a Muslim, has so far been the only senior Congress leader to react on the issue, with even the voluble Digvijaya Singh strangely keeping quiet for the moment.

The Muslim groups, on their part, dismissed the charges as a "malicious campaign’’ by the Sangh affiliates. The Vice-Chancellor of Deoband’s Darul Uloom alleged that the term 'love jihad’ was coined to foment disturbances and margin-alize the minority community.

According to him, "A fight against the evil is called 'jihad’. But some people are using this to disturb communal harmony in the country for political gains. Linking such negative ideas with Islam is against the betterment of the country. Islam doesn’t identify anything called Love Jihad," he said.

The latest attempt to whip up passions over 'love jihad’ in UP and elsewhere are linked to similar moves in Kerala and Karnataka, spe-

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cially since 2009 where Christian and Hindu groups alleged that their girls were befriended with the intent of converting them to Islam and dumped after marriage. There were allega-tions that this was part of a "global Islamisation design’’ and even had a terror link to it which needed probing. Indeed, outfits such as Sree Ram Sene alleged that Muslim extremist youths seduced Hindu women and used them for terror activities. Amid such charges, the Kerala and the Karnataka High Courts were requested to look into the matter.

In a replay of the adage that there was no smoke without fire, the two worried govern-ments admitted to the conversions but, intent on preventing a communal flare-up, denied it was done under duress. They assured that they would neither permit forcible conversions nor allow a hate campaign against Muslims.

The controversy lost its intensity over the months but the embers continue to smoulder, threatening to turn into a major conflagration at the first spark. The fact that Keralite economy was bolstered by remittances from West Asia only added to the suspicions. Coupled with fears about the increasing radicalization of Muslim youths and reports of some joining jihadi outfits such as the ISIS, the 'Love jihad' campaign, if launched, would make for a lethal and volatile mix.

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BJP MP Hema Malini had no objection to love jihad in her films: Akhilesh

PTI, August 25, 2014

L ucknow: UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday took a pot-shot at BJP for raising the issue of 'love jihad' (af-

fairs involving Muslim boys and Hindu girls) by suggesting that its MP Hema Malini had no qualms about acting in movies which showed such relationships.

"You hear the song of BJP MP's film 'Dhar-matma'. Will it promote love or not," Yadav told reporters while replying to queries on issue of "love jihad" raised by BJP in its Uttar Pradesh executive meet.

The Chief Minister was referring to actor-turned politician and Mathura MP Hema Malini's 1975 movie, which also starred Feroz Khan.

'Love jihad' is a term coined by some Hindu groups for alleged efforts to get non-Muslim girls to convert to Islam through love affairs.

"Youth should be vigilant against love jihad. Why is the government lenient on those who indulge in such practise? Have they (youth of the minority community) got license to convert the girls of majority community," UP BJP chief Laxmikant

Bajpai said on Saturday addressing the two-day meeting of state party executive committee in

Vrindavan.

Yadav also released a book "1857 ki kranti" penned by journalist Pawan Kumar Singh on Sunday.

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BJP drops mention of ‘love jihad’, talks about crimes against Hindu women

PTI, August 25, 2014

M athura: After breathing fire over 'love jihad', BJP on Sunday dropped mention of it in the party's political

resolution but continued to rake up the issue of alleged crime by men of minority community against Hindu women as part of efforts to con-solidate its vote bank ahead of assembly elec-tions in Uttar Pradesh.

The political resolution passed at the party's two-day state executive meet made no direct reference to 'love jihad' (marriage between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman), but won-dered, "Is it just a coincidence or a design be-hind atrocities against women of a particular community and perpetrated by those belonging to a particular community?"

BJP accused the Samajwadi Party government of shielding crime by men belonging to a partic-ular caste and religion against women belonging to a particular community without using the word 'Hindu'.

It also sought to rake up communal issue by saying the state government was openly protect-ing those involved in animal slaughter. State party chief Laxmikant Bajpai had in his inaugu-ral address yesterday asked youths to be vigilant on the issue of 'love jihad', questioning whether men of the minority community have got the

licence to convert and rape women of majority community.

However, interestingly, the political resolu-tion passed today did not have any reference to 'love jihad'. When asked why the resolution was silent on 'love jihad', Bajpai said, "It was not on the agenda, so there is no question of having it in the resolution."

After its grand performance in the Lok Sabha elections in the state, where it bagged 71 of the 80 seats, BJP asked its workers to strengthen the organisation from the booth level so that it can come to power in the state with thumping majority.

It asked partymen to launch a people's move-ment against "complete anarchy and lawless-ness" and oppose "communal appeasement and crumbling law and order".

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