Either Convert or Get Killed

In December 2020, the UP Police arrested a Muslim man,Taufeeq, for posing himself as a Hindu to marry a Hindu girl from Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh. Taufeeq who used the name of Rahul Verma on social media befriended the girl through Facebook. Taufeeq’s lies were exposed when he shared his relationship status on the social media and relatives started asking when the ‘nikah’ was held.

In September last year, a 23-year-old Hindu woman was hacked to death as she refused to convert to Islam by her husband Ejaz Ahmed and his friend Shoaib. The woman’s body was found in a forest area in UP’s Preet Nagar. According to her father, Priya Soni was trapped in love jihad by Ejaz and after marriage he was forcing her to embrace Islam which she had refused. She had to pay a heavy price.

Although several such cases have surfaced in the recent past where innocent Hindu girls were deceived and defrauded – many of them go unreported – the Left-Liberal media and commentariat tend to ignore them as they go against their cleverly-crafted narrative that seeks to show ‘Muslims as victims’. It suited their narrative to dismiss it as part of the ‘Hindutva agenda’ to vilify minority communities. However, their narrative fell flat when the Roman Catholic Church and other denominations came out with hard-hitting statements against organised and well-funded Islamist rackets operating in southern states to trap non-Muslim girls in love jihad. The highest decision-making body of the Roman Catholic Church in Kerala –the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council of India – revealed that more than 4,500 Christian girls had been ensnared in love jihad in less than one decade and some of them were used as couriers in terror activities. Now, Christians in Kerala are demanding a law against predatory love jihad rackets.

In most inter-faith marriages involving Muslims, there is more to it than mere love. Analysing inter-faith marriages, one can see that where Hindu girls are involved, in a majority of cases, they are forced to convert to Islam or killed or abandoned. The late music composer Wajid Khan’s wife, Kamalrukh, has recently dropped a bombshell when she accused her husband’s family of pressuring her to convert. She was forced to live separately after she refused to give into their demands. Imagine a Hindu boy falling in love with a Muslim girl. Experience shows that in most cases, they are either attacked or killed by

. For instance, Ankit Saxena, a 23-year-old photographer, was killed by the family of his Muslim girlfriend in Delhi in February 2018. (More cases in the box)

It was Justice KT Sankaran of the Kerala High Court who first blew the lid off organised ‘love jihad’ while hearing bail petitions of two Muslim youths. Justice Sankaran ordered the State police to conduct a probe into a series of such cases. The Director General of Police, Kerala told the court that that members of the allied organisations of the Islamist outfit, Popular Front of India, such as Campus Front and SDPI are known to be promoting religious conversion of young women in educational institutions and professional colleges. It is also quoted from the reports that certain organisations of Saudi Arabia are providing financial assistance to these activities under the head “Scholarships to the youth”. Justice Sankaran further referred from the report which also indicated about similar activities in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, where it is learnt that several Hindu girls were converted to Islam.

In the judgment, Justice Sankaran stated: “From some of the reports submitted by the police officers concerned to the Director General of Police, it is clear that there is a concerted effort to convert girls belonging to particular religions to another religion. It is also clear that this is being done with the blessings of some outfits mentioned in the reports. This should be of great concern to the people at large and to the Government. The Government is bound to protect the fundamental rights and civil rights of citizens. Article 25 of the Constitution of India does not entitle a person to indulge in activities to compulsive religious conversion. Compulsion is alien to the right conferred under Article 25 of the Constitution of India. The freedom of one should not entitle him to grab the freedom of another.”

All hell broke loose in the Left-Liberal circles after the Yogi Adityanath government passed the ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion Bill 2020’ ordinance with several other BJP-ruled states such as Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Assam having followed the suit. The law aims to curb religious conversion of gullible Hindu girls by trapping them in fraudulent romantic relationships by Islamists. According to the government, the legislation is meant “to check conversion with some stringent punitive provisions against individuals and organisations if found to have indulged in conversion, through manifestation of using force deceit by way of luring into marriage or any other improper manner”. Although the law is not specifically against inter-faith marriages, the critics have sought to create an impression that it targets inter-religious marriages. Even now, if somebody wants to convert to another religion for the purpose of marriage, the district magistrate must be notified about this 60 days prior to the marriage. The magistrate will undertake an inquiry to ascertain if the conversion is a consensual decision or if blackmail or deceit is involved in the process.

Mounting love jihad cases has triggered fear and anxieties among a large section of parents of non-Muslim girls. As stated in the judgment mentioned above, such cases if go unchecked, would lead to social schism. Left-Liberal cabal and media with no social commitment can afford to turn a blind eye to this socio-religious issue and raise cacophony to drown the voice of sanity. But no government or a civilised society for that matter can refuse to address those fears.