Polarise and Divide is the Strategy of the Right: 'Love Jihad' and Religious Re-conversion | Two reports

Who loves Love Jihad

by Johnson T A, Lalmani Verma (7 September 2014)

Karnataka, the state where the term was first used publicly to decry a love marriage, has pushed it to the background since a police report found no evidence of such a conspiracy to target Hindu girls. But despite the huge numbers of ‘conversions’ cited, proof is not what this campaign is based on.

The ogre of ‘love jihad’ had already been given a life of its own in the inner sanctums of right-wing groups when, in August 2009, 18-year-old Silja Raj ran away with 24-year-old Asgar Nazar from Chamarajnagar, a small Karnataka town around 180 km from Bangalore.

The eldest daughter of a bakery owner in the town, Silja had met Asgar, a driver, briefly the previous year on the way to Chitarriparamba in Kannur district in Kerala with her family. Love had blossomed. After Silja’s father C Selvaraj resisted his daughter’s request to marry him, on August 8, 2009, they had eloped.

Initially, Selvaraj took a few Muslim friends from Chamarajnagar along to visit Asgar’s home in Kannur, hoping to request the boy’s family to allow him to take his daughter home. Asgar’s family, however, refused, saying the two were already married.

Over the next few months, as Selvaraj ran around for help to get his daughter back, it became the first publicly cited example of ‘love jihad’ in BJP-ruled Karnataka and perhaps the country. The love marriage was turned on its head and a concept that was already a reality for right-wing groups was now trotted out as an example of a widespread Muslim conspiracy to woo Hindu girls for conversion.

Five years later, ‘love jihad’ has travelled north, to Uttar Pradesh, where it has been officially made part of its politics by the BJP, and east, where Jharkhand has been hit by right wing-led bandhs over an alleged forced conversion. Any inter-religious marriage or affair now faces the risk of being seen as part of a conspiracy. Defined in RSS terms, it is a movement to convert “vulnerable” Hindu girls to Islam, to decrease the population of Hindus and increase Muslim numbers in the country. The latest issues of two Sangh mouthpieces, Panchjanya and Organiser, have their cover stories on ‘love jihad’, and talk about the alleged abduction of a Hindu girl in Meerut and the case of Tara Sahdev, a shooter from Jharkhand who has accused her husband of forcible conversion.
- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/who-loves-love-jihad/

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'Love Jihad' and religious conversion polarise in Modi's India

Reuters, Sep 07, 2014 at 01:16am IST

Hasayan (Uttar Pradesh): Fired up and full of vitriol, Hindu activist Rajeshwar Singh is on a mission to end centuries of religious diversity in India, one conversion at a time.

His voice echoing off the walls of a Protestant church across a narrow street, Singh railed against foreign faiths at an event last week to convert a Christian family to Hinduism in the rural town of Hasayan, 140 km (87 miles) south of Delhi.

"We will cleanse our Hindu society. We will not let the conspiracy of church or mosque succeed in Bharat (India)," he said, standing in the family's front yard by a ritual fire lit to purify the poor, lower-caste converts.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/love-jihad-and-religious-conversion-polarise-in-modis-india/496855-3.html