Though it is dubbed ‘love jihad’ law, it is actually anti-conversion law. Started reading about it, trying to make sense of this law.
The above article gives a good timeline on anti-conversion laws in India.
The Freedom of Religion Bill was introduced in Parliament in 1979. It sought “official curbs on inter-religious conversion.” These bills were also not passed by Parliament due to a lack of political support.
In 2015, the Union law ministry had given the opinion that a law against forced and fraudulent conversions could not be created at a national level, since law-and-order is a State subject under the Constitution. However, state governments can enact such laws.
So, it is a State subject, and not the Center’s.
Interesting to note that Tamil Nadu passed a law in 2002, but repealed it in 2006. In UP’s case, it is an Ordinance, meaning it was not put to vote in the Assembly, but just unilaterally passed by the Yogi Adityanath’s government.
The PRS research shows certain common characteristics of the various state laws. While all states have banned conversions by force, fraud or allurement and inducement of money, only the Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and UP laws place a ban on conversion through marriage.
So, the UP one includes ‘conversion through marriage’, and based on the history of the current Yogi government — anti-Romeo squads etc —the law started being dubbed as ‘love jihad’ law.
The above article quotes Niloufer Venkatraman, the daughter of a Hindu Brahmin father and Zoroastrian mother and married to a Christian, and her India Love Project on Instagram. It also quotes Prachi Pinglay-Plumber, a Hindu Brahmin married to a Muslim man.
Weeks before the law was passed, Adityanath vowed to enact legislation banning “love jihad” — a term that lacks a legal definition since there’s no evidence the phenomenon exists. In a menacing local election campaign speech, the Hindu monk-minister vowed, “We will pass an effective law — those who hide their name and identity and play with the honour of our daughters and sisters, I am warning them in advance: If they don’t stop, their funerals will start.”
Far from preventing forced conversions, the new laws have sparked a harassment spike against interfaith couples, according to news reports. Shortly after the law was passed in Uttar Pradesh, media reports ran footage of a woman being heckled by members of a hardline Hindu group for marrying a Muslim. The woman later alleged she suffered a miscarriage in custody.
The article also captures the forceful marriages that happen to most women in India, within their own castes. But there is no specific law which can prevent this practice.
There are similar articles in the media which quote women and men who have had inter-faith marriages and living their life, following their own religion. Mani Ratnam’s Bombay taken during the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition needs a mention here, as it poignantly captured the struggles of a Muslim woman-Hindu man pair with their children twins, trying to lead a normal life in Bombay (now, Mumbai).
Live-in relationships have started becoming more common. India’s regressive marriage laws — particularly of the Hindi belt states — have to change soon. Or else, two things will happen. 1) The educated young generation with liberal values will fast lose faith in marriage as an institution, and 2) the vociferous Hindutva brigade with an increasing number of misguided college educated professionals won’t even try to understand the long term implications of such flawed laws, and cause further damage to the pluralistic Indian society.
