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This story is from August 31, 2014

Love jihad is insidious; the fear seeps into the home, the bedroom: Charu Gupta

Historian Charu Gupta has extensively explored the links between sexuality, politics, culture and religious identity in colonial Uttar Pradesh. She believes that the current love jihad campaign taps into the anxieties of a patriarchal society where women are asserting themselves in matters of love and marriage. Constant repetition of the idea will give the construct a stamp of validity, she tells Malini Nair.
Love jihad is insidious; the fear seeps into the home, the bedroom: Charu Gupta
Historian Charu Gupta has extensively explored the links between sexuality, politics, culture and religious identity in colonial Uttar Pradesh. She believes that the current love jihad campaign taps into the anxieties of a patriarchal society where women are asserting themselves in matters of love and marriage. Constant repetition of the idea will give the construct a stamp of validity, she tells Malini Nair.

Where did the idea of love jihad take root?
Though the term love jihad was not used, the idea was used as early as the riot-prone 1920s in UP, particularly western UP. In fact, the very same places where it is being talked of now. There were some factors: the Moplah Rebellion in Kerala had pitted Muslim agitators against high-caste Hindu landlords. And the non-cooperation movement had just ended so there was little to bind communities together. In this context, the Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha used the idea of the humiliation of a woman's body as a glue to bring cohesion in the fractured Hindu identity. In Bengal, the Nari Raksha Samiti was talking of forced abduction and conversion of Hindu women as well. Everything was used to spread the fear — courts, law, papers, gossip, rumours. Pamphlets and handbills with titles like ‘Hindu auraton ki loot’ were distributed. It was an orchestrated campaign that worked up the cliché of Muslim goondas preying on the honour of innocent Hindu women. In most cases, as documented in the UP police abstracts of those years, these were cases of romance and elopement.
How much damage can the campaign inflict today on social ties between Hindus and Muslims?
It will create bigger, deeper communal problems than ever before. The idea of love jihad has now acquired an international and more menacing tone because of Islamist terrorism. Then there is social media — you just have to do a basic search on Facebook to find senseless, virulent stuff on love jihad posted by right-wing elements today. The insidious thing about the idea of love jihad is that it does not need a cataclysmic event to create anxiety and distrust in the minds of a community. The fears don’t seep into the public space but into your intimate spaces — your home, your bedroom, the common psyche.

The impact is often much sharper and more dangerous than even a riot because it works very vividly in public imagination. Also the problem is that in an atmosphere like this, Muslim fundamentalism too is fanned. This has been proved historically.
But love jihad is off the BJP agenda, officially at least.
Yes, but it is talking in its resolution of women of one community being targeted by the men of another. And it is obvious who they are referring to. Ironically, sexual aggression is ingrained in the patriarchal familial structure. So you camouflage that by attributing all malevolence to another community. You know, in the 1920s, a big percentage of these ‘sinister’ romances were between Muslim men and women who were marginalized in the Hindu community — widows (widow remarriage was rarely practiced), Dalit women or even sex workers. And Arya Samaj noticed this fact soon enough.
In this age is it easy to persuade people that smart young women are being gulled into relationships by fanatical young Muslim men?
The problem is that constant repetition of an idea gives it a stamp of validity. I am not saying that there are no cases of forced marriages or conversions. But here, totally different cases and trajectories are made to appear similar till they become a trend, which they are not. And they pander to every community cliché — that Muslim men are sexually charged and violent, that Hindu women are innocent but foolish and weak, and that Hindu men are strong and protective of them. Look how the Dharma Raksha Samiti kicked off its campaign on Raksha Bandhan in UP. As if Hindu men never exploit women, emotionally or sexually.
You are saying there is hypocrisy in the idea of love jihad?
A woman deciding on her own love life or marriage is always seen as a threat in patriarchical societies. It is easier to attribute a woman’s choice to sinister communal designs than her own free will. There is a lot of anxiety about women exerting their intimate religious rights. It makes it seem as though male authority is slipping.
For instance, in the 1920s there were diktats that Hindu women should not deal with Muslim tailors, grocers, teachers, even Muslim lac bangle sellers. They were asked instead to opt for glass bangles made by Hindu craftsmen. There were fears about the spaces where such romance could bloom, unobserved.
In western UP today, there is some prosperity, women’s aspirations are changing; the gender demarcation is changing. Interreligious romance is common. They had to crack down.
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