Written by Avaneesh Mishra
Dehradun | Updated: September 27, 2024
How an interfaith relationship culminated in demolition of six houses in Moradabad
Last week, some people allegedly barged into a woman’s house to abduct her. And then the bulldozers rolled.
Written by Dheeraj Mishra
Moradabad | Updated: July 1, 2024 10:12 IST
Until recently, this village under Moradabad’s Mudha Pandey Police Station had never seen anything controversial. All that changed last week, when an interfaith love story ended in allegations of attempted kidnapping. And then, the bulldozers arrived.
This weekend, district authorities demolished six houses belonging to a Muslim family accused of trying to abduct a 20-year-old Hindu woman from the same village.
[ . . . ]
Does popular morality trump Constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental rights? Justice Renu Agarwal’s track record at the Allahabad High Court would seem to indicate so.
Scroll’s analysis of Agarwal’s rulings in almost 400 petitions by couples seeking the High Court’s protection from the threat of violence from the community shows that she granted such orders only to married couples who had registered their marriages and had no first information reports pending against them.
On the other hand, unmarried couples were never granted protection from violence or interference.
In addition, Agarwal has, through her judgments, created the legal requirement that unmarried inter-faith couples may live together only if one of them converts to the religion of the other.
On March 11, the Supreme Court had in a judgment issued guidelines stating that courts “must grant an ad-interim measure, such as immediately granting police protection to the petitioners, before establishing the threshold requirement of being at grave risk of violence and abuse”.
However, Agarwal delivered at least three orders denying protection to live-in couples after that.
Agarwal was appointed as Additional Judge of the Allahabad High Court on August 15, 2022. She was promoted from the subordinate judiciary, where she had been serving as a district judge.
She was appointed as a permanent judge of the High Court on September 25 last year. She is set to retire on June 21.
Agarwal first gained prominence in April last year when she dismissed the protection petition of a couple living together on the sole grounds that the woman was still legally married to another man. Agarwal remarked in the judgment that “[l]ive-in-relationship cannot be at the cost of social fabric of this country”.
Over the last two months, she has also garnered media attention for dismissing several similar pleas for protection in cases where one or both the persons in live-in relationships are married to other people.
Agarwal’s caseload of protection petitions by couples has increased rapidly, an analysis of all the judgments delivered by her available on the Allahabad High Court’s website shows.
She delivered only one judgment in such a case in 2022. In 2023, she decided seven pleas for protection by couples fearing violence from their families or other members of the community. However, in the first three months of 2024 (up to March 27) – which is 87 days – she heard at least 391 protection petitions.
Scroll could not locate a single order by Agarwal in which she ordered protection for an unmarried couple living together. This, even though a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court had, in a landmark 2018 judgment prescribed preventive, remedial and punitive measures for the state to protect inter-caste and inter-faith married couples as well as unmarried couples.
In an assortment of orders denying protection to persons living together who are married to others, Agarwal has said that “such illegal relations need not be protected” and “such relations will create chaos in society”. She often concludes these dismissal orders by saying that such relationships are “in contravention of law of land”.
However, there is nothing unlawful about a married person living with someone other than their spouse. Adultery was decriminalised by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Moreover, these protection petitions were moved by couples only to seek protection against the use of criminal force or any unlawful act. Under Indian law, all individuals, irrespective of the nature of their relationships, are entitled to such protection.
In many of these cases, the female partner put on record the fact that she fled her husband due to mental or physical abuse. But Agarwal’s decisions never seemed to have accounted for that while emphasising the existence of the marriage as grounds for criticising such live-in relationships.
Agarwal has also reasoned in several such orders that a live-in relationship where the partner has not obtained divorce from their spouse is an offence under Sections 494 and 495 of the Indian Penal Code.
In fact, both these sections deal with the offence of bigamy – where a person who is already married marries for the second time. They do not apply to live-in relationships.
Even when the persons living together have no spouses, Agarwal has still denied them protection.
In several cases, she has denied protection to couples on the grounds that they did not produce any evidence to show that “their relationship is of a permanent nature”. How does one determine such a permanent nature? According to Agarwal, it is to be done by furnishing a “desire to get married in future”, evidenced by “joint account, financial security, joint property or joint expenditure” to show “that their relationship is in the nature of marriage”.
Agarwal has denied protection to inter-faith live-in couples on an even more novel basis: that one of the parties did not convert as per the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
The rationale for this was not even spelled out by her in some of her initial dismissal orders in such cases in February. Eventually, she explained that as per section 3(1) of the act, conversion is required for relationships “in the nature of marriage”, which means live-in relationships.
On this basis, at least 26 protection petitions by inter-faith couples were dismissed by Agarwal between February 15 and March 20.
This contrary to a September 2023 order of Justice Surendra Singh-I of the Allahabad High Court that had granted police protection to an inter-faith couple living together. Singh-I had held that any two adults are at liberty to enter a live-in relationship without interference.
Now that the Allahabad High Court has made it mandatory for couples seeking protection to declare their marital status from April 1, unmarried couples may face rejection of their pleas at the outset by the court.
On April 4, a two-judge bench of the High Court upheld Agarwal’s position that the act prohibits inter-faith live-in relationships, making this the established position of law for all single judges of the court.
Scroll had last month reported on the High Court denying protection even to married inter-faith couples due to procedural delays under the act.
Even married couples approaching Agarwal’s court for protection have not been guaranteed favourable orders.
Agarwal granted married couples protection orders on the condition that their marriage be registered under the Uttar Pradesh Marriage Registration Rules, 2017. She made the protection of substantive fundamental rights conditional upon the fulfillment of procedural legal requirements: if the registration does not take place within two months of the order, the protection is to stand vacated.
She also dismissed at least five protections petitions by married couples, all in 2023, on the basis that first information reports had been registered against the couple – usually against the husband by the wife’s family. None of her orders specify the reason for denying protection only due to the existence of these first information reports.
In June 2023, a 24-year-old resident of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh eloped to Bareilly with her 30-year-old boyfriend. It was not a conventional marriage – the woman was Muslim and her husband Hindu. They got married at the town’s Banke Bihari temple and the woman converted to Hinduism.
However, the woman’s father was opposed to the union. He threatened to kill the couple to protect the honour of his family.
On July 5, the couple moved Allahabad High Court seeking protection from the woman’s father. On January 9, the court rejected their plea.
The reason was the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, popularly known as the anti-conversion law, which has put several inter-faith couples in the state in a bind.
In recent years, states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have passed such laws to counter what they label “love jihad” – a Hindutva conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of trapping Hindu women in romantic relationships in order to convert them to Islam.
The 24-year-old woman and her husband were one of nine inter-faith couples to whom the Allahabad High Court denied protection in January alone.
In identical orders, Justice Saral Srivastava rejected pleas because the petitioners had not complied with the provisions of the anti-conversion law.
As Scroll’s conversations with the advocates of the nine petitioners revealed, the law puts inter-faith couples at risk precisely when they are seeking protection from violence from family members.
Some of the advocates said that the petitioners had moved to comply with the procedures set out by the law months ago but have been kept hanging by the local administration.
The anti-conversion law does not have any provisions on the protection of inter-faith couples. But the advocates said that since the law was introduced in March 2021, the court has started turning down pleas for protection.
At the heart of these rejections are Sections 6, 8 and 9 of the anti-conversion law. Section 6 concerns marriage and “unlawful conversion”. The other two deal with declarations that an individual must make before and after they have converted.
In his orders, Justice Srivastava asked the nine petitioners to file fresh pleas once they “solemnise marriage after following the due procedure of law”.
Uttar Pradesh has not been a safe haven for inter-faith couples. In 2019, the Indiaspend news website documented 39 instances of vigilante violence against such couples across India between 2015 and 2018. Fifteen of them were from Uttar Pradesh – the highest number.
In 2018, the Supreme Court asked districts across states and Union Territories to set up shelter homes for runaway or distressed couples. According to a report in The Hindu in October 2022, only three states have such shelters: Haryana, Punjab and Delhi.
The nine inter-faith couples moved Allahabad High Court between February 2023 and January 2024. Eight of them are from western Uttar Pradesh, from towns like Ghaziabad, Amroha, Moradabad, Rampur, Meerut, Saharanpur and Kanpur.
The only petitioner from the eastern part of the state is from Varanasi.
Out of the nine couples, five are women who were Hindus who converted to Islam. In two cases, Muslim women converted to Hinduism.
One inter-faith couple does not wish to convert, and, in another, both converted to Buddhism. However, the conversions did not happen under the state’s anti-conversion law. That is now coming between them and their safety.
An advocate, who asked not to be identified, told Scroll how the law – and its demand for a conversion certificate – has become a problem for interfaith couples.
The advocate from Allahabad represents a woman from Rajasthan and her husband from Amroha in Uttar Pradesh. The woman converted to Islam to marry her partner. The couple are among the nine petitioners in the Allahabad High Court.
“Who will really go and get a conversion certificate from the government under this law?” the advocate asked. “There is fear of the police as well as the families.”
Under the 2021 law, conversion is not the private matter of an individual. Section 8 of the law directs those who wish to change their religion to make a declaration of it to the district magistrate 60 days before the conversion. The “religious convertor” has to also declare the location of the conversion ceremony to the district magistrate a month before it happens.
The local administration then launches a police inquiry. There’s more. Section 9 adds that after the conversion, the individual has to share with the administration details such as their name, name of their parents, address, occupation, income, name of the priest who oversees the ceremony and the name of the witnesses.
These details are then publicly exhibited at the office of the district magistrate. In the three weeks that follow, the district magistrate records objections to the conversion. The converted individual has to appear before the district magistrate and confirm his or her identity. If this process is without hitches, the administration issues a conversion certificate.
Section 6 of the law drags inter-faith marriages into this process. It outlaws unions that are “done for sole purpose of unlawful conversion or vice-versa”. It also declares that “all the provisions of Section 8 and 9 shall apply for such marriages to be solemnised”.
The burden to prove that conversion before or after marriage is lawful rests on the “person who caused the conversion”, says Section 12 of the law.
“If one tries to get the certificate from the district magistrate, the word will reach the father,” the Allahabad advocate pointed out. “Do you think the father will agree to the union?”
While the wishes of parents are not binding on any adults, under Indian law, the anti-conversion law opens up inter-faith couples to scrutiny from their families. Section 4 of the anti-conversion law allows “any aggrieved person”, immediate family members or anyone “related to him/her by blood, marriage or adoption” to file an FIR against the conversion if it is done through “misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or any fraudulent means”.
The law is not just a problem for those who wish to convert to Islam. A Ghaziabad resident’s wife was born Muslim but wants to convert to the Hindu faith.
Their counsel, Birendra Kumar Mishra, said that procuring a conversion certificate for an inter-faith union – by design – is now dependent on the consent of the couple’s families. “When someone has run away from their family, it is safe to assume that their family does not agree to their marriage,” he said. “So naturally, the parents do not approve. And if the parents do not approve, how will the district magistrate approve?”
Justice Srivastava denied relief to the Ghaziabad resident and his wife on January 9.
Then come safety concerns. Pradeep Kumar Kashyap, the counsel of a Moradabad woman, who converted to Islam, and her husband, told Scroll that the woman did file a conversion application with the district magistrate, but did not show up for the in-person verification, as Section 9 dictates, because she feared for her life.
“Before she got any protection, she could have been a victim of honour killing [by family members] if she went to the district magistrate,” said Kashyap. “That was the fear. This is a matter of a Hindu-Muslim couple after all.”
Since the Moradabad woman did not have the certificate, on January 16, Justice Srivastava rejected her and her husband’s plea for protection. “They told me that they would get a certificate and file a fresh petition,” said Kashyap. “But I haven’t heard from them since.”
According to the Allahabad advocate, before 2021, the Allahabad High Court would cite Supreme Court judgements like Lata Singh v. State of UP to grant protection to inter-faith couples. The 2006 judgement directed local administrations throughout India to protect inter-caste and inter-faith couples – if they are not minors – from harassment, threats and violence.
In November 2020, for instance, the court granted protection to at least 125 inter-caste and inter-faith couples. Justice Srivastava has passed such orders himself.
However, since the anti-conversion law came into force, it has become difficult for interfaith couples to secure legal protection, said the advocate.
In 2023, the Allahabad advocate’s clients got married in an Islamic ceremony against the wishes of their parents – from whom they now seek protection. After the ceremony, the woman converted to Islam by signing an affidavit of her conversion before a notary, a state-appointed official who witnesses signatures in legal documents. But this method is not recognised by the 2021 law.
“This law is only increasing criminality,” said the advocate. “People have not stopped converting. Ninety nine per cent of conversions these days are still happening through notaries. The administration should look into this.”
Despite the Allahabad advocate’s pessimism, at least two of the nine petitioners had obtained protection from the Allahabad High Court in 2023.
In February, Justice Syed Aftab Husain Rizvi directed local authorities to ensure that a 30-year-old Varanasi resident, and her Muslim husband, 29, were not harassed by her father. The father, said the couple, could “eliminate them for the honour of their family”, and if the court did not grant protection, “their lives may be endangered”.
In August, Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra granted protection to the 24-year-old woman from Rampur, who converted to Hinduism, and her husband who were “apprehending danger to their life and liberty” from the woman’s father who was “hurling constant threats” of honour killing and “interfering in their marital life”.
Both these orders, however, were conditional. Justice Rizvi said that the woman must convert and marry under the anti-conversion law. For this, the couple must move an application under Sections 8 and 9 of law. If the process was not completed within two months of the order, the protection would be “automatically vacated”.
Justice Mishra’s order did not spell out such a condition. But the 24-year-old Muslim woman’s counsel, Bhaskar Bhadra, told Scroll that the judge asked the couple to obtain a conversion certificate and appear for a hearing a month later.
According to Justice Mishra’s order, the Additional Chief Standing Counsel for the state told the court that since the woman is Muslim and her husband Hindu, “this is the case of inter-religion relationship and marriage is prohibited in the light of Section 8 and 9” of the law.
Later in the year, Justice Mishra shifted to a double bench to hear matters pertaining to criminal appeals. Justice Rizvi moved to a single bench to hear civil disputes. In January, the 30-year-old woman and the 24-year-old woman’s cases were listed before Justice Srivastava.
Neither of them have obtained a conversion certificate so far. The former’s counsel, Irfan Raza Khan, said that she had converted to Islam nearly a decade ago and could not provide a date or witnesses for her conversion.
The local administration made this a basis to reject her application under a law that came into effect in 2021. “We have challenged the mention of date and witnesses in the application under the [anti-conversion] law in the Allahabad High Court,” said Khan, who added that he had brought to the attention of the judge that law was being applied retrospectively.
Advocate Girish Kumar Gupta, the counsel for the 30-year-old’s father, told Scroll that her claim of converting a decade ago is an oral admission not backed by evidence.
The 24-year-old Rampur woman’s application to convert to Hinduism is still pending with the local administration, said Bhadra. “Where will these two go?” he added. “It takes at least six months to get a certificate. One could get legal protection earlier. Things have changed now.”
Advocate Sunil Kumar Srivastava, who is representing a Saharanpur resident and her Muslim live-in partner, agreed. “The conversion procedure laid out in the new law is very lengthy,” he said.
India is known as a land of contrasts. But few contrasts are greater than the one between statements of the judiciary and the everyday reality that gives rise to them. The Delhi High Court reportedly said in a recent case that the freedom of choice in marriage is integral to Article 21 of the Constitution. The right to choose a life partner according to the law is an essential part of personal liberty: it is thus a symptom of the presence of liberty in daily life. That this basic principle should have to be repeated by the courts through the years is sad enough. But the Delhi High Court added — other courts have said this too — that questions of faith have nothing to do with this choice. The repetition is necessary amid the divisiveness that has become more of a daily presence than freedom, tolerance and respect. The court’s reported phrasing also placed in proportion the issues of personal freedom and the place of religion in civil life, which together define the priorities of a secular society in a multi-religious country.
In contrast to the progressive vision implicit in the court’s statements was the occasion for them. The Delhi High Court was sitting on the bail pleas of the grandmother, mother and sister of a woman who had married outside her faith. Although the sister was granted bail, the older women, who allegedly encouraged and participated in the violence against the groom — beating him up, maiming him and throwing him into a drain — were not. Not just the fact of violence but the cruelty and crudeness of it exposed layers of hatred, which seem to be more confidently displayed nowadays. This is inevitable in a country that allows states to formulate laws against a non-existent phenomenon called love jihad. Apart from the rage against an interfaith marriage, there was also the hatred against a woman who exercised her freedom. These are now accepted and acceptable features even of Indian institutions, which is why the Delhi High Court had a firm message for the police to whom the couple had turned for help before the violence. The police are expected to act ‘expeditiously’ to help those who have married of their own will and according to the law. Is the contrast deepening?
Until some time ago, it wouldn’t have raised any opposition in Kerala. It would have even been hailed as another right step forward. But today, religious groups not only publicly assume conservative positions but even the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the loudest claimant for Kerala’s progressive legacy, also gets caught on the wrong side. This is only the latest among Kerala’s many recent signs of stepping backwards.
Joisna Mary Joseph, a nurse in Saudi Arabia, had come on leave to her home in hilly Kodenchery in Kozhikode district in March. On April 9, she was found missing, according to her parents. Calls to her phone went unanswered. The parents registered a complaint with the local police. A few days later, Joisna appeared before the local court with M.S. Shejin and said they were in love and were about to marry. Joisna posted this later on her Facebook page too.
The affair became a major controversy in Kerala, with top leaders of political parties, religious organizations, and the media joining the fray. The reason? The religions to which Joisna and Shejin belonged. Joisna is a Christian — a Roman Catholic — and Shejin a Muslim. To add to the spice, Shejin happened to be an area-secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the CPI(M)’s youth wing. It triggered a row in the region, with local church leaders expressing apprehensions. They argued that Joisna was being held forcibly by Shejin with support from the ruling CPI(M) and Muslim groups. They suspected it was another case of ‘love jihad’, which Kerala’s Catholic church has been complaining about for long. Still, the affair didn’t evoke attention beyond the village, which had an equal presence of both Christians and Muslims.
But all hell broke loose when George M. Thomas, a prominent CPI(M) leader from the region, expressed displeasure over the affair. “Their elopement has hurt the relations between religions,” Thomas, a two-time CPI(M) legislator, told a news channel. Thomas even said that ‘love jihad’ was not non-existent in Kerala, although not to the extent claimed by organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He also added that in its internal documents circulated last September the CPI(M) had stated that girls in professional colleges were being lured by fundamentalist groups.
This kicked up huge headlines and the CPI(M) was blasted on social media for parroting the RSS and the Catholic church. Thomas was accused of being the CPI(M)’s bridge with the powerful Syro-Malabar Church and it was alleged that he had won elections with its support from the region, which was once a stronghold of the Congress and the Muslim community. Muslim organizations, too, went for the CPI(M)’s jugular. The next day, the CPI(M)’s Kozhikode district-secretary, P. Mohanan, launched a damage-control exercise. He said that Thomas’s comments on ‘love jihad’ were baseless and that the CPI(M) does not subscribe to them. “It was Thomas’s slip of the tongue. We firmly believe love jihad is completely the RSS’s propaganda.” At the same time, Mohanan said that Shejin, a CPI(M) member, should have informed the party before they lived together.
[ . . . ]
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/poisoned-love/cid/1862088
CPM publicly censures ex-MLA in Kerala for comment against interfaith marriage https://indianexpress.com/article/india/kerala/kerala-cpm-public-censure-george-thomas-love-jihad-7879101/
Mohan Bhagwat’s ‘Upbringing’ Lessons & the Great Hindu Victimhood Syndrome
He reinforces the sentiment that Hindus are failing in safeguarding themselves, even as the ‘others’ are doing so.
Granting protection to couple, Court say not even parents could object to the relationship
Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh), September 17
The Allahabad High Court has observed that adults have the right to choose their life partner, irrespective of the religion professed by them.
The court made this observation on Thursday while granting protection to an interfaith couple from Gorakhpur. "In such a case, not even their parents can object to their relationship," the court further observed.
Hearing a petition jointly filed by Shifa Hasan and her Hindu partner, a division bench comprising justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Deepak Verma said, "It cannot be disputed that two adults have the right of choice of their matrimonial partner, irrespective of the religion professed by them." [ . . . ]
By Lebo Diseko
Global Religion Correspondent
image copyrightGetty ImagesMost Indians see themselves and their country as religiously tolerant but are against interfaith marriage, a survey from Pew Research Center has found.
People across different faiths in the country said stopping interfaith marriage was a "high priority" for them.
The research comes after laws were introduced in several Indian states criminalising interfaith love.
Pew interviewed 30,000 people across India in 17 languages for the study.
The interviewees were from 26 states and three federally administered territories.
According to the survey, 80% of the Muslims who were interviewed felt it was important to stop people from their community from marrying into another religion. Around 65% of Hindus felt the same.
The survey also asked about the relationship between faith and nationality. It found that Hindus "tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined".
Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) said it was very important to be Hindu in order to be "truly Indian".
The study found that despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs, members of India's major religious communities "often don't feel they have much in common".
"Indians simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres - they live together separately," the study said.
Many lead religiously segregated lives, it added, when it comes to friendships, and "would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or village".
Marriages between Hindus and Muslims have long attracted censure in conservative Indian families, but couples are also facing legal hurdles now.
India's Special Marriage Act mandates a 30-day notice period for interfaith couples. And some Indian states led by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have taken further steps, introducing laws which ban "unlawful conversion" by force or fraudulent means.
It is in response to what right-wing Hindu groups call "love jihad" - a baseless conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of luring Hindu women with the sole purpose of converting them to Islam.
image copyrightGetty ImagesThe opposition to interfaith relationships is something Sumit Chauhan and his wife Azra Parveen can relate to. Mr Chauhan is from a Hindu family, although he identifies by his Dalit caste (formerly known as untouchables). Ms Parveen is a Muslim.
Mr Chauhan said his Hindu relatives "had some misconceptions about the Muslim community, but I convinced my mother and sister and brother."
But for Ms Parveen, things were not as simple. Her family refused to let them marry, she said. The couple decided to tie the knot in secret, and Ms Parveen's family did not talk to the couple for almost three years, Mr Chauhan said.
And even though they are now on speaking terms, Ms Parveen's parents still won't publicly acknowledge the marriage.
"Last year, my wife's younger sister got married but we were not invited," Mr Chauhan said. "You shouldn't have to change your religion to marry someone you love."
https://www.thequint.com/videos/documentaries/love-jihad-mission-hate-interfaith-couples-vigilantes-police-politics-nexus
Dear all,
We, from the Centre for Equity Studies, in collaboration with Rosa
Luxemburg Stiftung and NewsClick invite you today to attend a webinar
on:
The Bogey of Love Jihad:
Constitution, Legality & Social Harmony
18th December (Today), 5pm
We would be in conversation with
Speakers:
Apoorvanand
Meena Kandasamy
Natasha Badhwar
Tanika Sarkar
Vrinda Grover
& Zoya Hasan
Moderated by:
Harsh Mander
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81630860217?pwd=RnJMeFRib2FSNjJxcWlIeVBTZU9XZz09
Passcode: 167772
Webinar ID: 816 3086 0217
Will also be livestreamed in the Centre for Equity Studies Facebook page.
A Note on the theme:
It is a matter of great anxiety that the government of Uttar Pradesh had recently formulated the ‘The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020’ on 27th November 2020. It attempts to provide certain provisions to put restrictions for undergoing religious conversion. Over and above the earlier laws against conversion, this ordinance incorporates a section, where it puts restrictions over interfaith marriages. Over the past few years, the Hindutva forces actively propagated a false-narrative to establish that Muslim men are manipulating Hindu women for marriage as a conspiracy. The Hindutva forces have termed this as ‘Love Jihad’.
This ordinance has not just subverted the constitution but has provided legal sanctions to openly propagate communalism and target the Muslims. The ordinance requires individuals to submit an advanced declaration of the proposed religious conversion sixty days prior, to the District Magistrate. With several brutal incidents of ‘(dis)honour-killing’ for ‘inter-faith’ and ‘inter-caste’ marriages coming to the fore, it is more than certain that this law would increase pressure on the individuals, which will lead to further brutality. It’s a direct attack on individual freedom even to choose one's partner. This ordinance is also an onslaught on the provisions guaranteed in the ‘Special Marriages Act’, which allows individuals from different religions for a marriage under the Special Marriage Act.
In the recent past, we have witnessed many instances, where the law is used in an openly discriminatory manner, according to the religion of the individual. It would widen the divide in the society, where It differentiates between Muslim men marrying Hindu women and Hindu men marrying Muslim women. This ordinance would perpetuate the ‘Brahmanical Patriarchy’ and it would push back the progressive interventions and advances gained by the progressive women’s movement in India. We have long witnessed similar violence and misuse of law when adult Dalit men have consensual relations with adult women of advantaged castes.
Now, the legal sanction to this hate-filled agenda requires larger public debate and condemnation.
Regards,
Harsh Mander and CES team.
