When there was no fear of ‘love jihad’

During their election campaign in Chhattisgarh, BJP leaders made much of their favourite Muslim conspiracy – ‘love jihad’ – saying that under its Congress government, the state had become the ‘hub’ of this imagined scourge and promising to put a stop to it if BJP was voted to power. We will see on Sunday if the people of Chhattisgarh fell for it. 

‘Love jihad’. What an oxymoron. Even moronically how incongruous. One unites, gives life and joy. The other divides, kills and brings grief. As Shakespeare said, “Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt love.” 

I was swept by memories of my ‘salad days when I was young in blood and green in judgement’ and, impetuous as a young army officer, I and my two youthful colleagues serving in a cantonment town were courting three girls who were boarders in a local missionary college. And it so happened one
of them, who was seeing me, was a Muslim girl. 

Her parents, who were in the Middle East, got wind of it, rushed back to India, locked her up in their house, and fixed up a boy for marriage post haste. She called me one day when I was wondering why I had not heard from her for a week and pleaded desperately with me to get her out of the house before it was too late. 

She suggested that I arrange to have her secretly lifted out of her room past midnight and have her sent to Bengaluru, where her friend had agreed to put her up till she found a job. She was shy of 20 and still an undergraduate. I was in my mid-20s. Marriage was not on our minds. 

Young blood danced through our veins and there was a tumult in our hearts. It was heady and exalting, and the air and everything around tasted of kisses. It all did seem “apparelled in celestial light.” If in youth, girls and boys -- hearts enflamed and suffused with tender emotions -- don’t love, what can be more unnatural and unholy? 

Swept away by emotions, imagining myself a white knight in arms to rescue a damsel in distress, I went with my buddies on three motorcycles at midnight to her house, jumped the high-rise compound wall, clambered up to her room on the first floor, helped her out of the house over the barriers and on to my motorcycle pillion, and whisked her away to the railway station and packed her off to Bengaluru in the overnight mail train. 

When her parents discovered next morning that their daughter had taken flight, all hell broke loose. Police were alerted and eventually the girl went back, after extracting assurance from her parents that she wouldn’t be married off forcefully. I escaped court martial thanks to an army commander who was magnanimous and forgiving. 

Luckily, the Muslim family never accused me of ‘love jihad’. They were conservative, just as my parents were. They were not supportive of their children marrying outside their community. But they did not see our love as a Hindu conspiracy against Muslims. 

It’s presumptuous and delusional of upper castes to think that the families of backward communities and Dalits are happy when a girl or boy marries a Brahmin or a Thakur or a Jat. They all are as chary of it and do not encourage their children marrying outside their castes and religion. But when the young, on reaching adulthood, fall headlong in love and wish to tie the knot, it is barbaric of the elders to come in the way and stop the union of hearts. 

‘Love jihad’ is also a cruel double-speak. The campaign by the BJP and its Parivar affiliates in many states and their ordinances and ‘love jihad’ laws are selectively aimed at Muslim boys marrying Hindu girls and not targeted at Hindu boys marrying Muslim girls.
It’s also perverse logic because Hinduism has withstood many onslaughts over 2,000 years from immigrants and invaders of different religions and ethnicities and has remained resilient and all-embracing. It has absorbed and enriched itself without losing its core civilisational essence and identity. No other religion has celebrated love in all its many splendored facets and through its rich mythology glorified it in its temple architectures and other forms of art and literature, Lord Krishna being its pre-eminent deity and beloved symbol of love.

Over millennia, Hindus have converted to Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity -- some due to coercion, some through inducements, but most due to the despicable caste discrimination they face as Hindus. This current xenophobic fear and insecurity reflects an inferiority complex, stemming from a diminutive and dwarfed civilisational outlook and does injustice to a mighty civilisation. 

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine -- a retired civil servant -- and I watched a popular new Hindi serial, Dahaad. The opening scene was of a rich and powerful Thakur, seated in his ornate Haveli, somewhere in Rajasthan, flanked by his musclemen. He was distraught and fuming at the Superintendent of Police who stood before him submissively. The Thakur’s daughter had eloped with a Muslim boy, leaving a note that she was in love with him. The Thakur tells the police officer to deploy search parties and bring his daughter back as this was all part of a conspiracy by Muslim boys to seduce unsuspecting Hindu girls into marrying them and then converting them to Islam. When the police officer tries to argue that if the girl, who is a major, has gone off on her free will, then it is against the law to forcibly bring her back and arrest the boy, the Thakur threatens him with transfer by calling the minister. 

After the end of the episode, as we settled down over a glass of wine to chat, my friend narrated this story. His son has settled in the US. He had fallen in love with a Muslim girl whom he had met there. She is highly educated, and they have two lovely kids. My friend and his wife hit it off with their daughter-in-law from day one. But her parents had cut her off completely. 

As night fell, my friend, sipping his wine, was soon lost in reverie. He was likely thinking of his grandchildren. On such balmy, heady nights, your heart swells in the warmth of friendship. And I too reminisced. I wondered what became of the lass who lit up my youthful days…maybe she found her love and is happy somewhere. 

(The writer is a soldier, farmer and entrepreneur)