Why has the Uttar Pradesh assembly passed an amendment Bill to the Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act (“love jihad”), making it even more draconian? The maximum punishment has been increased to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5 lakh for violators, allowing any person known or unknown to register an FIR in conversion cases. Earlier, the complaint had to be filed in the presence of the victim, parents or siblings but now the scope has been widened.
During the three years that the “love jihad” Act was being implemented, most of the complaints were made by right wing activists or else by members of the Hindutva brigade putting pressure on hapless parents to file complaints against their daughters.
This amendment was pushed through hurriedly and no rocket science is required to surmise that chief minister Yogi Adityanath is the key architect behind it. Yogi’s chief ministership has been marked by increasing vigilantism and moral policing and this amendment is a continuation of that diktat. Houses being broken down by bulldozers, encounter killings, people being jailed and beaten up for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act. His moral policing sets him at par with the Taliban. His most recent piece of obscurantism was the directive that all eateries in UP and Uttarakhand along the route of the Kanwar yatra display the names of the owners. Thankfully, the order was struck down by the Supreme Court which found it highly discriminatory against the Muslim community.
After the Lok Sabha election, Adityanath is fighting with his back to the wall to remain in power. The BJP in UP is a divided house and a growing list of his opponents are working overtime to oust him. The CM’s appeal has always been to the hardline Hindutva brigade, and introducing this amendment is a continuation of this vote bank policy.
The ostensible reason being given for this amendment as that the UP state government is apprehensive of some “foreign and anti-national elements who are determined to bring about a demographic change” by unlawfully converting thousands of gullible Hindu women to the Muslim faith through the promise of marriage. State government data claims to reveal 427 such cases during the last three years.
Journalists Sreenivasan Jain, Mariam Alavi and Supriya Sharma in their book Love Jihad and Other Fictions: Simple Facts To Counter Viral Falsehoods documented just how many cases of love jihad have taken place in the last nine years. They found that the VHP had catalogued 36 cases of alleged identity deception but these remained unproven. The police on the other hand had been found to include cases of fraud, blackmail, intimidation, rape and murder under the category of love jihad. Can 36 unproven allegations be requisite proof that points to some large scale conspiracy to alter the religious demography of 1.4 billion people?
Just prior to Adityanath making this move, came a highly significant judgement on “love jihad” which went practically unnoticed. A sessions court in Uttarkashi presided by Judge Gurubaksh Singh acquitted the two accused, Uvaid Khan and his friend Jitendra Saini in what had become a highly publicised case of love jihad. The two had been charged with abducting a minor girl on May 26 2003 in Purola with the intent of forcing her to change her religion and “marry” her.
Following the course of 19 sittings in court, the girl broke down and admitted before the judge that she had been tutored by the police into accusing these two men of forcibly abducting her in order to take her from Purola to the nearby town of Naugaon. She admitted that she had merely asked the two men for directions to a tailor’s shop and they had agreed to show her where the shop was located. Her uncle, under pressure from the police, also pressed charges of kidnapping with attempt to elope which he too was unable to substantiate before the court of law.
These accusations had seen the town of Purola break into an anti-Muslim frenzy last year forcing 41 families to relocate to different parts of Uttarakhand. It saw both Uvaid Khan and Saini, who the VHP accused of being jihadis, being put into jail for over fourteen months.
Both men have been released from jail but no questions have been asked from the police or the Hindutva brigade about their role in whipping up this anti- Muslim hysteria.
The hurriedly-pushed-through Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance (love jihad law) in 2020 was strongly criticised by several judges who point out that it is violative of Article 14 (Right to equality), 15 (Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion), 21 (Right to life) and 25 (Freedom of conscience).
Undeterred by such criticism, BJP-ruled states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh introduced similar legislation. It must now be seen whether these states are going to follow suit in introducing this harsher version.
None of the arrests made under it have been able to stand the test of law. To cite some examples: An interfaith couple living in Etah district in UP saw the wife, Ayushi Pachauri, voluntarily admitting to becoming a Muslim. She had her Delhi-based lawyer prepare an affidavit attesting that she had voluntarily converted to become a Muslim. She had the foresight to send a copy of this affidavit to the SSP and SHO of Jalesar in Etah district and also to the National Commission of Women. That did not stop the UP police from issuing warrants of arrest against the groom, Javed Ansari and 20 of his relatives including three women relatives.
The UP police launched a virtual manhunt to track down Javed, his father, elder brother, cousin, cousin's friend, three brothers-in-law, father-in-law, father-in-law's brother and his son on the morning of December 22, 2020.
With five of them still not traceable, the police were willing to offer a reward of Rs 25,000 each to anyone who informed them of their whereabouts as though they are hardened criminals. The wife was taken into custody and brought to Etah.
Her father nevertheless filed an FIR at the Jalesar thana on December 17 leading to the arrest of Javed Ansari. Several months later, it was the court which struck down these multiple arrests.
The story of Muskan (Pinky) is probably the most heart-rending of all. This young Hindu woman was living alone in Dehra Dun and working for a finance company when she met Mohammed Rashid who ran a salon. They fell in love and got married in a simple nikaah ceremony on July 2020.
Rashid's mother Naseema became apprehensive following the passing of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020. Living as she was in Moradabad district, she felt it would be safer in the long run if they got their marriage registered in UP.
That turned out to be a complete miscalculation because Rashid and the pregnant Muskan, on their way to get the marriage registered, were accosted by a Bajrang Dal mob who roughed them up. Muskan informed the mob that she was a major and that her marriage took place almost six months before the anti-conversion law had been enacted. But this did not cut any ice with the mob or with the cops. The couple were arrested and while Rashid was jailed, the pregnant Muskan was sent to a shelter home where she suffered an abortion.
In UP, the courts have not convicted even one person under this ordinance, leading the Allahabad high court in a two-bench judgement in 2021 to issue strictures emphasising that the Constitution guarantees couples freedom to marry according to their choice. But this has not deterred the police, egged on by VHP and Bajrang Dal activists, from showing undue enthusiasm in getting interfaith couples arrested.
Two writ petitions to strike down this law are presently pending before the Supreme Court. Interestingly, this law goes against the earlier policy of the centre which was to promote interfaith marriages, with both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand offering a cash incentive of Rs 50,000 to couples who chose to marry outside their faith or caste. It is time Opposition parties and the public at large press the Supreme Court to do away with this horrendous and misogynistic law.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist
