Open Forum
New Delhi, 17 December 2020
Inter-Faith Marriage
SHORTCUT TO CONVERSION?
By Dr.S.Saraswathi
(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka
are in the forefront keen on enacting a law against conversion via love marriage.
Though anti-conversion laws are in force in many States against using
inducements or force for religious conversion, the present move has drawn wide
attention because of its link with love and marriage which are personal matters.
UP has already promulgated an Ordinance on Unlawful Conversion of Religion.
This has been challenged in the Allahabad High Court.
‘Love jihad’ is considered by some as an “Islamophobic
conspiracy theory” that accuses Muslim men of targeting non-Muslim women for
conversion to Islam by feigning love. In recent times, it was first noticed in
2009 in Kerala – the State where 26.56% of the population is Muslim and which
has much closer contact with the Middle-East Islamic countries than other
States. Soon, Karnataka reported similar cases and more States followed. It
gained national importance very quickly, as more reports of inter-religious
marriages with extraneous motives came from many places in India.
‘Love jihad’, also nicknamed as ‘Romeo Jihad’,
it is said, was also spreading to Myanmar, Pakistan and the UK during 2009 and
2014. It is reported that the Sikh Council received accounts from girls from
British Sikh families falling victims to ‘love jihad’.
Historically, however, this phenomenon is not
unknown. The same fear of conversion following pretended love and fake marriage
was felt in the 1920s without any particular name. Riots occurred in some
places over abduction of Hindu women and their forced conversion to Islam. A historian mentions about such cases in
Kanpur and Mathura.
The term ‘love jihad’ was used by the Kerala
High Court in 2009 when it ordered joint investigation by Karnataka and Kerala
police into ‘Love Jihad Movement’. It
related to a habeas corpus petition filed by parents of an adult woman who had
married a Muslim man and subsequently converted to Islam.
The term ‘love jihad’ became popular in 2007 when
a Hindu fringe organisation Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Dakshina Kannada of Karnataka
and parts of northern Kerala carried on campaigns against it. It was said that
Muslim boys were given training for the job of making false love with a view to
converting girls and effectively adding to Muslim population.
A plea in Allahabad High Court challenges UP
Government’s Ordinance of 11 December on ‘love jihad’ – a term used to
discredit marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women. The Ordinance that has
raised huge controversies contains several issues that have to be settled by
courts. It is not solely a clash between unlawful conversions and a civil right
of every citizen pertaining to private life.
The Ordinance promulgated by the UP
Government prohibits a person from converting the religion of another through marriage.
It enables any person related to the converted person by blood or marriage or
adoption to lodge an FIR against conversion. It empowers courts to declare any
marriage as void if it is performed for the sole purpose of unlawful conversion
or if unlawful conversion is done for the sole purpose of marriage. It is a
cognizable and non-bailable offence punishable with imprisonment of up to 10
years and a fine of up to Rs.50,000 under different categories.
Allahabad High Court in its verdict on 11
November stated that: “The right to live with a person of his/her choice
irrespective of religion professed by them, is intrinsic to right to life and
personal liberty. Interference in a
personal relationship would constitute a serious encroachment into the right to
freedom of choice of the two individuals”.
The concept of ‘love jihad’ has more serious
social concerns and political impact than marital relations and family life. In
India where religious conversion is mixed up with politics and treated as a
political problem because of wide use of religion in elections, conversion
through marriage has become a major issue. Therefore, arguments regarding right
to love and right to choose one’s marriage partner seem very elementary. The
dispute is not about genuine love and marriage, but about conversion that
accompanies by force or fraud or inducements. The fear is about demographic
transformation with all its consequences imposed by calculated human
intervention upsetting population structure.
Further, discussions point to some terror
organisations using ‘love jihad’ as a tool to convert innocent Hindu women --an
aspect overlooked by champions of right to love, but needs investigation as
part of our fight against terrorism.
The right to propagate religion guaranteed in
the Constitution does not include the right to convert in the words of the
Supreme Court uttered in 1977 which upheld the Freedom of Religion Acts of
Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. These early laws did not bar conversion by marriage.
Love and marriage are private matters
protected by the Constitution as a person’s fundamental right. ‘love jihad’
laws openly clash with the right to privacy whatever may be the provocation for
the laws or the justification for interference with that right. A landmark
judgement was delivered unanimously by a 9-judge bench of the Supreme Court on
23 August 2017. It thoroughly analyses the concept of privacy and implications
of the right to privacy and records multiple opinions and various facets of
privacy that are presented in arguments thus making it almost the ultimate word
on the issue.
The unanimous judgement holds that privacy is
a “concomitant of an individual’s right to exercise control over his own
personality and finds its origin in the notion that certain natural or inherent
rights are inseparable from human personality”. It confirms that like other rights under
Fundamental Rights, it is also not “absolute” and its violation must, besides
the test of due process and procedure, a factor in legitimate State interests.
Elaborating on the right to privacy, the
verdict reminds us that it imposes a duty on the State to protect the privacy
of individuals. As the court noted, this duty involves the liability that is to
be incurred by the State for intruding into the right to life and personal
liberty which are inalienable to human existence. These rights are not granted
by the State or created by the Constitution and cannot be taken away by the
State.
The Supreme Court approached the issue as
rights and privacy centred and not from the possibilities of bogus marriages
for various illegal purposes. Those keen on ‘love jihad’ legislation seem to be
concentrating solely on illegal motives that are working and disrupting peace
and harmony. Thus, there is a fundamental difference between pro and anti ‘love
jihad’ groups about the problem itself and their objectives.
Religious conversions are already subject to
several restrictions which can be enlarged if necessary in the context of
increasing cases of involuntary inter-faith marriages. Every citizen has got
the right to change his religion according to his free will, but no religion
has got right to make forcible conversions. The right to propagate religion
does not include the right to convert others to one’s faith. Inter-faith
marriage used as shortcut to conversion is misuse of right to private life.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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