The Lawless Love

 

After the first wave of the pandemic, the fear of Corona had lifted its anchor from the pools of mass psyche. After being stretched, and consequently being forced to forego most of the things that define our life and living, the world of we humans was reverting to its former position. As the winters approached, again the world got busy in rearranging the tit-bits that the virus had ruffled.

Politics emerged in open light after the forced hibernation. Polarisation, systematic nurturing of fear and phobias, churning out of suitable narratives and other schemes and manoeuvres once again started doing the rounds.

In the last week of November, 2020, an ordinance dropped like a hammer, forcing down a nail in the hearts that are yet to start looking at the world through complex divisions. Young hearts hardly see beyond the adrenaline-pumped soufflés. The UP cabinet approved a mischievous (but politically lucrative as all mischief are) draft ordinance. It sanctioned to outlaw the so called attempts to religious conversions through enticement, coercion, deceit and marriage.

The state Governors are always waiting with a glee for anything landing on their table to ink their stamp. Usually they are an offshoot of the party running the central government. Things turn very funny if some opposition party rules a state. Then it’s a puppet show between the Chief Minister and the Governor. No wonder, to appease the appointing masters at the centre, the Governors stamp any kind of ordinance with such gusto as to even pierce the stamp through the paper. Even the tables bear the permanent marks of this enthusiasm. They probably visualize the opposition face on the paper. Under the force of such an overzealous stamp, any leap in interfaith relationships was now at the risk of 10 years of imprisonment.

India is a very spirited, perky and easy country to live and prosper now provided you have just enough brain to accept the narratives built by the party in power without any questions or suspicions. On the other hand, you have to guard yourself against a lot of brickbats if you have a questioning mind.  

The right wing activists had successfully created a narrative through the token call of ‘love jihad’. It meant, they claimed, a diabolical plan by the Muslim men to seduce Hindu women and girls, forcing them into marriage and relationships resulting in conversion to Islam. So the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance 2020 started scanning the interfaith relationships with its blinding flashlight to find out the strains of a conspiracy that solemnized the marriage primarily to effect religious conversion. It was supposed to maintain law and order and ensure justice and dignity for the women. The constitutional right to choose one’s partner across faiths was now infringed by a new zealous clause.

An over-zealous nationalism is a steel-frame. It’s a sturdy jingoistic wall of defence against the outside enemies. It, but, very soon seeks to define the enemies within to keep the heat on. One feels the hardness of its steel bars, especially if you have that much of independence of mind and liberty of soul as would take you at a plane from where the narrow parochial compartments look silly to you.    

As per the ordinance, the offense being cognizable and non-bailable, the police officer had the authority to arrest the suspect without a warrant and could start an investigation without seeking the court’s permission. The DM could even award compensation up to rupees 5 lac to the victims of such forced conversion. An interfaith union seeker was required to apply in the prescribed format two months in advance before the planned conversion. The violation of this clause carried imprisonment between 6 months to 3 years and a penalty of 10,000 rupees. In effect, the stern eyes of law found all interfaith marriages as mere false pretext to force the gullible Hindu women into religious conversion through sham marriages. The constitutional right to the freedom of religion had a questioning iron sickle held against its throat. The term ‘love jihad’ was slowly getting a foothold in the form of a legitimate concern over marriages by lure, force, fraud or instigation, all to ensure religious conversion.

Armed with the provision, the right wing activists now waited with glee to swoop upon the infiltrators into the zone of illegitimacy to prove their enthusiasm for the cause of cultural war. And the opportunity came just hours after the promulgation. The police said a Hindu man has accused a Muslim man of putting pressure on his daughter to convert to Islam. They knew each other from their college days and he had been troubling her for a couple of years.

The girl’s father accused the Muslim man that he threatened them with dire consequences if they opposed the conversion. A prompt action was taken. The threat to religion was immediately quelled.

A relationship between two young people of different faiths has multiple layers to draw meaning from: Parental recrimination, social sanction, fear, patriarchy, bigotry and criminality. The matters of the heart were thus put on the anvil to be hammered under the pretext of beating the malware of coercion, inducement, fraud and allurement.

Why should one get disconcerted by religious polarisation only? Our democracy has always thrived on polarisation since the beginning. Caste, class, region and ethnicities have been the driving forces of our democratic process. The Congress used these very lucratively for almost six decades to rule almost unchallenged. Now the present dispensation uses the religious factor that suits it the most. Unfortunately, it may sow the seeds of another division of the country a few decades down the line because an insecure minority is like having termites in the foundation of a nation. 

The government even considered to scrap a scheme that played a nice role in facilitating and promoting inter-faith marriages for the last almost four and half decades. The Intercaste and Interfaith Marriage Incentive Scheme 1976 by the national integration department in UP had operated for almost five decades to facilitate and promote an India belonging to the Indians only, not Hindus, Muslims, Chamars, Brahmins, etc, etc. To avail the incentives, an interfaith couple can apply to the local DM within two years of marriage. The official would then verify and sanction 50,000 rupees after his satisfaction. Last year, there were 11 couples getting the incentive. This year was a frigid blank as no amount had been released.

It shows the immovable iron walls emerging between different communities. The buffer zones are vanishing. The intermixing buffer zones are the ones that sustain the external boundaries of a nation. Hard lines within the body weaken the outer boundaries apart from laying the foundation of separatism within.

The things are getting tougher for selfless love these days. They are not easy for the freedom of thought and expression either. Truth will give you some vague solace in heart but a bluish bump on the head. The art of politicking is getting far too smart and powerful now. Liberalism is almost a synonym of sedition now. And all those who claim to have originality of thought and independence of spirit better watch their step now because they are the black sheep by default for not mindlessly kowtowing the grand march on the attractive thoroughfare of boiling emotions, cascading patriotism and itchy heroism. 

How will you judge and evaluate the amount of lure and brainwash to convert involved in any inter-faith relationship? The law in letter always has the propensity to be twisted around to serve the opposite in spirit.

The right-wing activists jumped with glee to add more patriotic feathers in their hat. A zealous group on the path of nation-building stopped the registration process of a Hindu-Muslim marriage and took the offenders to the local police station. A short video showed the activists questioning the woman in the police station.

‘Have you read the new law? Show us the permission of the DM to convert religion!’

They have a video of fearsome bearded men dragging a helpless Hindu girl out of her house in Pakistan. The girl cries as they drag her in the street in broad daylight.

‘Do you see this? This is what they are. Look, what they do to Hindu girls there. She is kidnapped in broad daylight and will be forcibly converted to Islam to be put into the harem of a toothless old man! Shameful that you bring stigma to our name!’

A young man raises a slogan to defend Bharat Mata. There is big round of religious, patriotic sloganeering.

Does someone’s committing a murder justify my own act of killing? The biggest harm the fundamentalist Islam has done is to inspire reactionaries in the otherwise peaceful sects and streams of faith in the modern world. Now the mobsters among the resurgent sections of various faiths justify their hard stand by saying, ‘The Muslims slaughter for their faith and we cannot even throw stones to protect our religion.’

The poor girl was at a loss to say anything. The mother, the inspector said, had complained that Rashid impersonated as Sonu to entice their daughter to force her into religious conversion. The girl maintained that she was of age and married of her free will and had come to register marriage in the court without any pressure.

Her marriage registration process hijacked by the right-wing activists, she was taken to the government shelter home. Muskan, the girl in objectionable love, not only lost her smile, she lost her baby also. Under the onslaught of these traumatic events, she miscarried her three-month pregnancy.

The law added to its credentials through this little episode. The parents of the girl had the satisfaction that they did all that could be done to keep theirs and the society’s fabric intact. The offenders had scars: She in her womb, he on his body. And the complex world kept on its path towards further complexity.

There are, and forever will be, good and bad Hindus and Muslims. However, it’s indisputable that goodness has far bigger chunk in both populations. The main problem with miniscule badness is that it sets up a symbolism far too big that casts a cloud of suspicion over the majority good part. In these grey areas, facts get fabricated and ideologies hatch that leave a cascading effect to shake the entire social fabric. Of course, all this serves the purpose of a few vested interests. Of this, the biggest vested group is the power aspirants, the rulers.