Friday 17 October 2014

Love Jehad –Real Threat or Phobic Fantasy?

Who is Afraid of Hindu-Muslim Couples?

One of the most unfortunate tendencies in India’s political discourse is to reduce every issue into a “for” versus “against” proposition following the pattern of school-college debating society’s style of engagement with issues.  This propensity for polarizing all issues into two extreme positions an important reason why almost every issue leads to a permanent stalemate and we rarely move towards solutions..

“Love-Jehad” has come to be one of the latest additions to a meaninglessly polarized debate on a sensitive issue.  On the one hand Love-Jehad has been portrayed by Hindutva groups as a sinister and well planned conspiracy to seduce, abduct, blackmail or coerce young Hindu women to convert to Islam under the guise of love affairs with Muslim men.  On the other hand, the “secular” opponents of Hindutva are projecting it as a case of “freedom of choice” in marriage.  They castigate the campaign against “Love-Jehad” as a conspiracy of obscurantist Hindu groups to keep the sexuality of Hindu women under the control of Hindu patriarchs.

Let’s try and sift the chaff from the grain of both sides:
To begin with let us be clear, even the radical Hindutva groups do not object to genuine marriages between mutually caring individuals even if they be a case of Hindu-Muslim union.  A good example of this is the marriage of film script writer Salim Khan with a Maharashtrian Hindu woman.  Salim Khan neither eloped with nor abducted his wife.  He secured the family’s consent and did not insist on his wife abandoning her faith and family culture.  Both the husband and wife not only follow their respective faiths but also fully respect each other’s religious sensibilities and rituals.  In their bedroom the wife has her puja sthal replete with Hindu deities while Salim Khan has a dedicated space for his namaz.  The entire family celebrates both Hindu as well as Muslim festivals.  Their sons have also gone for inter-faith marriages and follow the same inclusive lifestyle.  Therefore, these marriages have neither evoked social disapproval nor invited any hostility among Hindus.  If anything Salim Khan’s family is often held up as an example of inter-faith harmony.  However, Muslim fundamentalists do look upon Salim Khan’s life style with hostility

Moral of the story: When the two families join together in celebrating a Hindu-Muslim union and when there is no coercive conversion, none in Hindu society have problems with it.  

However, the angst about “love jehad” is to do with surreptitious marriages, often under false pretext or with hidden agenda of forcing Hindu women into the Islamic fold as concubines or sex slaves. 

There is no denying that some families are hostile even when the love affair between a Hindu girl and Muslim man is genuine, especially if the couple elopes without even informing their parents thus causing great deal of social humiliation.  Marriage by elopement is uniformly looked down upon by all communities even when it is not inter-religious.  This is because in most close knit traditional societies (word “tradition” not to be mistaken for “backward” or “obscurantist – but simply meaning societies that values their social and cultural heritage) marriage is not treated as a union of two individuals but a coming together of two families.  This occasion is not only considered sacred almost all over the world but also considered incomplete without the blessings of the family elders and joint celebration by members of the two families.  The idea of inviting relatives and friends of witness the occasion is to drive home the message, that marriage is a social bond, it’s not just a license to establish sex relations between a couple. Hindu marriage vows in fact include taking responsibility for each other’s families.

My experience tells me that in most cases where the man genuinely cares for the woman, he would not like to break her bonds with her family.  The couple would do their best to win over the confidence of the woman’s parents and vice versa.  A marriage has a far better chance of surviving with dignity if the two families respect each other and act as glue between the couple.  Those who treat marriage as a liaison between just two individuals are living a Hollywood fantasy.

But “Love-jehad” has very little to do with “love”.  It is more a trap than a romantic liaison.  That is why it is causing upset not just among Hindus but also among Sikhs and Christians. It’s causing angst not just in various states of India but also in other countries.

 For instance, the Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance of the Kerala Catholics Bishops Conference also published a report highlighting the criminal conduct of love jehadists. It said, “There were 2868 female victims of “love jehad” in Kerala from 2006 to 2009.” The situation must have been grave enough if the then chief minister of Kerala, VS Achuthanandan, belonging to the Communist Party Marxist alleged conversion of non-Muslim girls to Islam under pretext of love marriage as part of an effort to make Kerala a Muslim majority state.  The Kerala state police inquiry into this phenomenon concluded that “there are reasons to suspect “concentrated attempts” to persuade girls to convert to Islam after they fall in love with Muslim boys. Since the demographic profile in certain districts of Kerala, Bengal etc has changed dramatically in recent decades, it lends credence to this charge.

The matter went right up to the Kerala High Court.  On December 10, 2009, Justice Sankaran ruled that there were indications of forceful conversion under the garb of love in the state with the blessings of certain political outfits.  He asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such “deceptive” acts.  There are similar, reports coming from certain districts of Bengal, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This is happening on mass scale in a much more sinister form in Bangladesh and Pakistan where young Hindu and Sikh women are brazenly abducted with full support of the state authorities.  These forced conversions are an important reason why the population of Hindus has sunk dramatically in both these countries.

The Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhism, has taken a serious view of reports that Sikh girls in England and America are falling victim to 'love jihad' by Pakistani youth seducing non-Muslim girls for converting them to Islam and using them in jihadi activities. Some of these girls were later dumped by their husbands in Pakistan, where the in-laws have been using them as domestic slaves.

This phenomenon is not limited to Hindu and Sikh girls or Indian Christians. According to a report by June Thomas, culture critic of Slate and editor of Outward, between 1997 and 2013, a small the northern English town of Rotherham at least 1,400 girls, some not even teenagers, were groomed for sexual exploitation by Pakistani men. The findings of an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham declared that they were raped by multiple predators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of girls who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened that they would be next if they told anyone.  The scope of the abuse: 1,400 children represent 0.5 percent of Rotherham’s population.

It is noteworthy that most of the victims were white and most of the predators were from what is known in Britain as “the Pakistani-heritage community.” British Home Secretary Theresa May told Parliament that “institutionalized political correctness” contributed to authorities turning a blind eye.

The Indian government is similarly turning a blind eye to this menace out of fear of being dubbed anti-Muslim.  However, in order to get this issue due attention, it needs to be freed from the clutches of rabble rousers claiming to speak on behalf of Hindutva. The fact that hysteria mongers like Yogi Adityanath and rabble rousing outfits like Bajrang Dal are leading this campaign robs it of serious credibility.  Secularists dismiss the issue alleging that this is the outcome of phobic fantasies by Hindu groups who exaggerate stray cases of Hindu-Muslim marriages to project them as a tsunami of conversions. 

This arrogant dismissal only adds fuel to fire.  Let us not forget that the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in UP were triggered by a Jat Hindu girl being sexually harassed and pestered over time by some Muslim young men. In this case, she was resisting being trapped. But there are many who do fall for seduction. Had the Muzaffarnagar harassment case been a solitary one, Jats would not have reacted with such fury. 

Even if the total number of trapped girls run into a few thousand, we need to view the figures in the perspective of other atrocities against women.  For instance, a few hundred cases of bride burning every year in certain parts of India led to such widespread outrage all over the country that a spate of extremely stringent laws had to be enacted to put them down.  Similarly, a few well publicized brutal rapes were enough to get people so agitated that a draconian new law was passed with lightening speed to assure people that the government was serious about protecting women from predators.  Therefore, even if “love-jehad” has resulted in a few thousand Hindu, Sikh or Christian women being trapped into conversion to Islam through foul means, especially if they have ended up as sex slaves – the phenomenon deserves serious attention.

Unfortunately, in India issues relating to women get to be taken seriously only if left oriented feminist NGO’s backed by powerful foreign funding agencies choose to project them.  These NGOs have come to dominate social and political discourse in media to such an extent that unless they endorse an issue, it is considered illegitimate.  Thanks to the persistent demonization of BJP and allied outfits, any issue that is taken up by Hindutva groups, is automatically dismissed with disdain by these powerful NGOs as well as the Congress party and its leftist allies.

This is exactly where the role of non-partisan social scientists and media professionals becomes crucial. We need to rise above left-right divide to investigate this menace with thorough precision.

Only then we will know the real extent of the threat—whether it is real or phobic.  An essential prerequisite for coming to a resolution of contentious issues is the ability to sift grain from chaff, the ability to distinguish between the legitimate grievances of any group or individual and their illegitimate fears.  Its only when you are able to redress the legitimate complaints that you acquire the moral right to put your foot down against illegitimate assertions and phobic fantasies. 


A shorter version of this article was published in The Indian Express on 17th October, 2014  http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-real-threat-a-phobic-fantasy/




Saturday 11 October 2014

A Typical Case of “Love Jehad”

Here is a typical case of “Love Jehad” whereby a minor school going girl was enticed under false pretense, repeatedly raped, fleeced, blackmailed and pressured to convert. There are countless such hapless victims. The unusual thing about this case is that this girl finally gathered the courage to confess to her mother (her father is dead) and lodge an FIR. The case is currently being tried in court but the family is living under mortal terror because of continuing threats from the criminal minded young man and his accomplices who trapped the girl in the first place.

An important reason why this minor girl drew courage to lodge a case could well be that her elder sister was likewise seduced by another Muslim guy who even blackmailed her to convert and marry. However, for the last many years there is no trace of that elder sister.
I reproduce her FIR translated from Hindi to English.
----------------
SHO, Police Station,
South Delhi

Sir

I am Neelam Pande (name changed), D/O XYZ, Resident of ABC (in South Delhi). I am a student of Class 12. My date of birth is XX/XX/1996. This year in April, I was introduced to a boy by my friend Kalpana (name changed). He used to come to meet her near the school. He said that his name was Sameer. We began to chat on the phone and became friends. One day he asked me to come to meet him in the evening. I told my mother that I was going to the market and went to meet him. He took me to a park. He started molesting me and even while I kept objecting, he raped me then despite my resistance. He pressed my mouth with his hands to stop me from screaming. When I began crying he threatened to kill me. 

I was unable to tell anyone about this incident because I had lied to my mother when I went out to meet him. After this I stopped talking to him on phone even though he kept calling me. He kept coming to my school to meet me and kept asking to be forgiven. He also threatened to commit suicide if I did not forgive him. Then I again started talking to him. 

Then one day he met me in front of my school and took me out on the pretext that it was his birthday. He took me to a South Delhi guest house. There too he raped me against my will. I screamed but nobody was there to hear my screams. Probably the whole floor was unoccupied. He also told me that his name was Salim (name changed) and that he was a Muslim and he lived near Nizamuddin. He threatened to slit my throat with a knife and took many nude pictures of mine with his mobile phone. I was very scared because of his threats and I could not tell anyone because I had bunked school to go with him. After that he started threatening me and exploiting me. 

He had given me a mobile phone that I kept hidden and he used it to threaten me and to keep in touch. He also changed the handset and SIM cards that he gave me many times. He took me to that guest house and raped me on numerous occasions under threat of black mail. He never used to make any entry in the registers of that guest house because the man at that guest house was his friend and he used to phone that boy Karan before he took me there to let him know that he was coming. Salim also threatened me many time to force me to give him money which I stole from my mother’s purse and 2-3 times by using my mother’s ATM card. 

Salim asked me to convert to Islam and when I refused, he threatened to throw acid on my face and post my nude pictures on the internet. I became very frustrated with my life and finally one day I confessed everything to my mother. 

Salim mostly used the following numbers to contact me – [Neelam mentions exact numbers] and out of the phones that he had given me I remember the following two numbers:  [here again she provides numbers of those phones]

Neelam ends her FIR saying, " Salim Khan.... threatened me and raped me many times against my will. He also took my nude pictures and blackmailed me. I request that the above mentioned Salim be awarded rigorous punishment so that I get justice"

It is noteworthy that these two phones given to Neelam were actually stolen from some businessman. Salim had been caught by the police using those phones not only to trap Neelam but had earlier used them for-sexually-harassing and trapping other schoolgirls who this rogue used to ferry from home to school while he worked as a van driver. Cases against him had already been booked against him on that account.






Friday 10 October 2014

On The Slaves of "Fashion"

No word irritates me more than the word ‘fashion’. This disease like the aids virus destroys the capacity of individuals to think for themselves, it destroys their immunity to absurd behaviour patterns and has the capacity to turn perfectly normal human beings into jokers and brainless copycats.

The craze to be bracketed as “fashionable” influences innumerable small and big decisions of our life – from choosing the furniture of our house to selecting our marriage partner or even the books we read or the tones and accent we use to talk to others.

Western societies take enormous pride in the fact that they place the highest importance on individualism. As per this ideology every person has the freedom to make free choices in every domain of their lives. This emphasis on “freedom of choice” is assumed to make them a superior species – a more highly evolved specimen of the human race on earth. The westernized elite even in India have mesmerized themselves into believing that once they imbibe “individualism” in a large enough dose, they too become part of this superior species.

But very few people recognize that the fashion industry which has made inroads into every domain of life is systematically cutting at the roots of “freedom of choice”, “freedom of thought”, “freedom of self expression”.

Take the example of clothes: Despite the façade of free choice, in most western and now even westernized sections of Asian and African countries, what people wear is not anymore a matter of personal choice. It is largely pre-decided by the fashion industry.

 It is a master stroke of the fashion industry that women and men, old and young, as well as little children, whether from rich or poor families – all sport denim with a sense of pride as if it is a statement of having ‘arrived’ in life. At one time, it was the uniform of the poor dock workers in America. But the fashion industry has made it a style statement of the elite. Its absurdity can be gauged by the fact that torn, frayed and patched jeans are more expensive than a new outfit! To my unfashionable eyes, there can be no worse garment than a pair of jeans. They are not easy to wash or dry if you don't have a washer/dryer set  and people wear the same pair of  dirty, sweaty and smelly garment with impunity for days on end.

If it were destitute who were wearing a jeans top that looks like a wretched rag or worn out banyan along with torn jeans, one could overlook it as a circumstantial compulsion. But when the sons and daughters of wealthy parents or filthy rich film stars go to designer stores and buy the kind of raggedy outfits that one would feel ashamed of giving even to a beggar on the street, one can only call it the perverse magic of the fashion industry.

Even though it is fashion moguls sitting in London, Paris and New York decide what is to be labeled the “in thing” that particular season, people gleefully imagine they are making “free choices” when buying clothes. In fact fashions change faster and more erratically than Mother Nature’s largely predictable seasons. If they declare purple to be the fashionable colour for that season, then one will find virtually every single store displaying purple dresses that season. The appeal of  fashionable purple doesn’t last beyond a few months. It is a sure thing that in the coming season, another colour as arbitrarily picked as the first one is declared the happening colour. And yet all those women who wore purple outfits influenced by the status attached to it in shop display windows would like to imagine that they went for that particular dress out of free choice.

Likewise, very few women are left with gumption to decide on the basis of personal preference or convenience about how tight or how loose her garment will be. This is decided by a set of fashion designers whose faces she has never seen and whose name she may not have heard. It is only a rare woman who will use her own mind to decide for herself how long or short her skirt or kurta will be, whether she will wear a maxi or a mini. These decisions have been appropriated by the doyens of fashion. Similarly, for ages, it was considered an embarrassment if a woman’s undergarment peeped through her clothes or if her brassiere strap peeked through her blouse. But today, it is considered trendy to show off your bra even more aggressively as the outer garment.

On the one hand, mavens of fashion based in distant London and New York decide how much flesh a woman should expose, how much of her  she is going to reveal, whether she wears halter neck or full sleeves; on the other hand even ordinary tailors are no less quick in persuading their clients to copy the fashion trends from Bollywood movies and TV shows  to adjust the length of kurtas and cuts of blouses. But those who hypnotically copy the sharara of Aishwarya Rai or a mini skirt worn by Kareena Kapoor don’t think there is any need to look at their shape or the form of their own bodies in the mirror to judge honestly whether what looks good on Aishwarya or Kareena will also look good on them. It is only when a person assesses his or her own physique and picks out her clothes accordingly, gives primacy to comfort and body fit, that the person can be said to have made an individual choice. But fashion enslaved people lose such judiciousness.

If it was just a matter of wearing inappropriate clothes, one could ignore it as foolish behaviour. But when women wear six inch long pencil heels which are proven to be harmful and can cause permanent damage to one’s feet, then you know that the disease called fashion has the ability to impair rational thinking.

The matter is not limited to external trappings. Today, men and women are spending   lakhs of rupees to change the colour of their hair, reshape and inflate their breasts to firm up their bottoms or reduce their waistlines. In the process, they inflict untold misery on their bodies- sometimes causing permanent damage. Ever since fashion monarchs declared size zero as the desirable form for the female body, millions of women have gone on crash diets at the cost of ruining their health and undergoing self harming operations like liposuctions to refashion their bodies into unrealistic forms and shapes.

But even more  harmful are those who dare not step out of their laxman rekha of intellectual fashions. On every social issue they not only have pre set answers based on what is considered politically fashionable at that time but also appropriate physical gestures to go with each response. Because these intellectual fashions are manufactured in the universities of North America and Europe and backed by the financial clout of western donor agencies, therefore, even in India these fashions are remote controlled from the West. All these NGOs and academics that strut around mouthing fashionable jargon consider it a great intellectual achievement to shape their views and research findings according to the political requirement of their donors.

This is an important reason why most of our NGOs indulge in export quality activism based on imported ideas. Similarly most of the elite academics produce only export worthy treatises which have very little worth at home. For instance, most of our “eminent” social scientists don’t care to write books which can be read and used by students in Meerut or Bhagalpur universities. They feel they have arrived only when Harvard and Oxford recognize their books – never mind if few in India can make sense of them.

Likewise our internationally networked social activists don’t care one bit if their own neighbours or relatives heed  their prescriptions. They are happy if they get applauded in conferences organized in Los Angeles, Berlin or Melbourne. The day the elite sections of our society stop chasing fashions unleashed in the West and instead learn to take decisions on the basis of the ground reality in this country and the aspirations of the people of India, we will acquire the capability of solving many of our big and small problems. 





Madhu Kishwar

Madhu Kishwar
इक उम्र असर होने तक… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …اک عمر اثر ہونے تک