Love Jihad by Muslim Romeos is not something new. Nor is the narrative a canard cooked up by the BJP to win elections, as mischievously alleged by some dumb politicians (most of whom have Hindu names) and many ignorant media anchors.
This dangerous phenomenon had found mention at least twice in the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in the years 2010 and 2011. It is a pity that some foolish politicians wearing the green-coloured secularism on their sleeves have chosen to deny its existence. What is far worse is that many media anchors and column-writers have started denying that love jihad has already made deep inroads into several parts of India. Nearly five years ago there was a major furore across several States of South India due to increased activities of Muslim youth working overtime to entice Hindu and Christian girls of impressionable age.
Our politicians and inadequately read media anchors ought to know that according to Wikileaks, a cable mailed by Andrew T Simkin, US Consul General in Chennai on February 26, 3010, had alerted his bosses in the USA that “an alleged conspiracy of ‘foreign-funded’ Muslim men attempting to seduce, marry, and convert Hindu and Christian women, has led to state-level investigations and generated widespread suspicions” in South India. The public at large dubbed the so-called conspiracy a “Love Jihad,” and finally top politicians in Karnataka and Kerala were forced to confront the issue in public forums.
The same denouement is likely to be repeated in U.P. Bihar and Maharashtra in the coming months where battalions of love jihadis funded by gulf petro-dollars have been on rampage for last several years.The contents of the Wikileaks cable further highlighted that many Hindu and Christian groups were outraged at the ongoing Islamic plot, while Muslim groups were trying to defend their co-religionists against the conspiracy theorists belonging to Hindu and Christian communities. Though police investigations in South India have cast a doubt on the existence of an organized campaign of ‘Love Jihad’, the recurring assertion of its existence demonstrated “ the suspicion and intolerance that exist among some of the religious communities in the region.”
Initially the pernicious effects of the origin of Love Jihad had been noticed in the coastal region of southern Karnataka and northern Kerala, where religious and communal violence used to occur almost regularly. Equally, the stark truth about Love Jihad highlighted by many researchers cannot be rebutted easily.
On the one hand, Manish Tiwari of Congress, Naresh Agarwal of Samajwadi Party and the Chief Minister of U.P., Akhilesh Yadav were waxing eloquent on 24/7 television channels denying and deriding the campaign of Love Jihad. On the other hand, simultaneously, the complaint of a prominent national shooter, Tara Shahdeo, surfaced in the media which shocked the Hindus. Tara has alleged that a Muslim, Raqibul Hussain had enticed her into love marriage by pretending that he was a Hindu named Ranjit Kohli. She alleged that she was tortured to accept Islam as her religion. Tara showed her injuries to Mahua Majhi, Chairperson of the State Women’s Commission. Her complaint is a complete rebuttal of the lies being trotted by the secular chatterati of India’s warped political universe.
Incidentally, in a PowerPoint presentation circulated by the World Sikh Alliance four years ago, it was mentioned that Muslim love- jihadis in the UK were enticing Sikh and Hindu girls by pretending to be Sikhs by wearing a ‘Karra’ (iron bracelet regularly worn by Sikhs) and by claiming to have Sikh surnames like ‘Gill’. No wonder, the modus operandi used by Raqibul Hussain to entice the unsuspecting Hindu girl Tara Shahdeo was similar to the stratagem used by love-jihadis of the United Kingdom, exposed by Sikh World Alliance.
The Wikileaks cable sent by Andrew Simkin in February 2010 to his bosses in the USA further warned that it will be hugely embarrassing for Hindu parents to reveal to friends and relatives that their daughter had been seduced by a Muslim man. The fact that it happened due to the machinations of multiple foreign-funded organizations targeting innocent Hindu girls will make the parents of seduced girl often feel ashamed to explain to themselves and others what really happened and how things went wrong.
The cable further added that the ‘Love Jihad’ brouhaha also illustrates the perceived threat that many Hindus in the region feel from ‘forced conversions’, and the general encroachment of ‘alien’ religious forces into what they see as a Hindu religious spaces. These perceptions — and the related tensions — will likely continue regardless of the content of Karnataka’s official report on the alleged ‘Love Jihad’.
It will not be easy for India’s secular chatterati to ridicule or deny the existence of a vigorous campaign of ‘Love Jihad’ launched with help of foreign funds to entice Hindu and Christian girls. The truth is already out in the public domain and truth doesn’t really give a damn about the falsehood-preaching politicians bearing Hindu names. Ultimately they will succeed in further painting themselves as anti-Hindu mavericks trying to charm their Muslim votebank by denying the truth. The allegations are not only true, but the fact that they have gained so much attention in popular public perception will ensure that the growing hostility between religious groups will tear apart the fabric of social harmony. It will escalate tensions in the badly-fractured relations between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians all over India.
It is a national shame that platoons of secularism-doped Hindu politicians like Akhilesh Yadav, Gaurav Bhatia and Manish Tiwari are trying to assist the Jihadis to take over India through a demographic coup. It is not only Hindu girls who are being seduced and converted. The Christians of Kerala are also angry over the demeaning antics of jihadi Romeos.
In an incisive article titled ‘Love Jihad: A Myth or a Mission’, posted on the website of Uday India, an honest Muslim scholar, Syed Wazid Ali, has given some startling facts based on the statistics of a survey conducted by the Crime Record Bureau of Kerala Police and Kochi’s University of Advanced Law Studies. The survey revealed that the number of girls missing from Kerala was 2127 in 2006 and 2560 in 2008. The police are said to have no information with respect of nearly 600 girls out of a total of 4,687 girls trapped in two successive years by love-jihadis. It is only the dumb Hindu leaders and ignorant and/or motivated media “analysts” who are trying to rescue the fundamentalist fraudsters.
It is time for Hindu leaders to speak out openly instead of trying to avoid tackling this dangerously deceptive demographic challenge to the Hindu identity of India.
Ram Ohri is a former IPS officer and writes regularly on security issues, demographics, and occasionally, on policy.