My response to Sagarika Ghose's "Ishq ishq ishq: Love can build a new social contract"

Find her original article here : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/bloody-mary/ishq-ishq-ishq-love-can-build-a-new-social-contract

To find her original tweet, type "The war against #lovejihaad”. Why cultural traditionalists are terrified of love and it’s subversive power to smash religious and caste barriers." to the Twitter search bar and press "search".

Before I even begin to criticize what's wrong with the content of her article, I can't help but criticize what's wrong with the content of her related tweet itself.

Cultural traditionalists aren't afraid of love. In fact, love has been a tradition of the Indic culture since time immemorial.

A woman is loved as a baby, as a daughter, as a sister, and later, as a wife, and further later on, as a mother. In every stage of her life, there are men around her to love her, protect her and take care of her in every stage of her life.

It was a society in which a woman could choose what she wanted to do with her life. From a worker all the way to the ruler of the state, a woman could choose just about any role available.

It was the society that have the world queens, that ruler justly over vast expanses of rich land.

So, really, traditionalists don't have a problem with love. Their problem is with the phenomenon called "love jihaad" and that too is because it's one sided, and is an active weapon employed by the Islamists to turn India into a place where Hindus and other Indic religious groups aren't free to be what they are.

Ex : Pakistan

" “Love jihad” evokes long-held stereotypes. Stereotypes of the con quering Muslim invader ravaging the innocence of Hindu women or a leering Mahmud of Ghazni type spiriting away local lovelies."
~ What's actually happening is that the war that invaders like Mahmud of Ghazni waged, is still being waged, but at a lower and a somewhat different level.

Mahmud wasn't a simple politician. He was an Islamist, laid waste to the Dharmic land that he invaded, and ravaged the purity and innocence of the Indic women he came across on his way. He was a rapist, a murderer, and a criminal altogether by today's standards.

When Islamists lure Hindu and other non muslim women into marrying them, converting them to Islam or not is another problem. However, the problem here is that after the marriage, or sometimes even since before it, these women start being used as sex slaves of the Islamist, or sometimes other men he knows.

So, really, the stereotype thing is active even today, even though not as obviously as before.

"Many reports have now shown that love jihad – or Muslim men abducting raping and converting Hindu women – is a myth."
~ Actually, this isn't a myth. It's true that this doesn't happen at a large scale like it happened a few decades ago, especially when Islamists like Mahmud or the Mughals were ruling india, but it's still happening.

What's the difference between kidnapping a woman and raping her, and coercing a woman into coming with a man's self and forcing her to submit to his sexual demands? The only difference is the time and the frequency. The earlier happened for at least eight centuries and at a very high frequency, while the latter is happening today, and at a lower frequency.

That's the only difference. Neither of them is a myth.

"Yet those for whom the Muslim is the perennial, black-bearded foreigner bent on deflowering that patriarchal construct known as “our women”, love jihad is a delicious political fantasy and mobilization campaign."
~ India never had a concept of "our women". It had the concept of "our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters" and at the same time, the concept of "our fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons".

So the situation in India before the Islamist attacks was that of mutuality, and not that of women being under the ownership of men.

Also, the Islamists weren't bent of deflowering any patriarchal construct. They were bent on converting the entire India, to Islam. In other words, they were bent on establishing their own patriarchal system all across a land that didn't know any serious level of patriarchy before.

India today is statistically around 80% Hindu, but in nature its Hindu percentage is much lower than this. This is because Indian Dharmic communities today are also heavily influenced by eight centuries of Islamist rule, and thus even they are somewhat Islamic, even though not at the same degree as muslim Indians themselves are.

"When UP BJP state chief Laxmikant Bajpai pronounces, “Ninety per cent of all rapes are committed by Muslims,” or when Yogi Adityanath thunders that “the same treatment will be meted out to 100 Muslim girls,” they not only reveal mentalities that believe communal polarization is good for politics but also mindsets that see any relationship that is not sanctioned by society as “rape”. "
~ It's no secret that any violent crime is rampant in the muslim society, and not just rape. Also, in India, Muslims are disproportionately more likely to commit rape, and that too against Hindu women, compared to, say, Hindu women raping muslim men.

Yogi said something controversial, and there's no denying that. But we have to consider the reason he was driven into saying that. When the ruler of the most populated Indian state sees Islamists ravaging innocent Hindu girls and getting away with that on a regular basis, and seeing that he can't do anything about that with his own power, is there any wonder he gets furious? Should he not care for his own people, the majority of India as well?

Any relationship not sanctioned by society isn't rape. Rape is rape.

"By this definition, are BJP leaders MJ Akbar, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Shahnawaz Husain, and even the late Sikandar Bakht, guilty of love jihad because they married Hindu women?"
~ At this point, it's important to get clear on what Love Jihad actually is vs what it's wrongly known as. For that, first, let me explain what jihad is.

Jihad is an arabic word which means "strife". In the Islamic context, however, this means striving in the cause of Allah.

Jihad comes from the root "jahada" and the words derived from this route is found all over the quran, and all of them mean some kind of strife.

A few examples are as follows.

2 : 218 wajaahadoo : and strove
3 : 142 jaahadoo : strove hard
4 : 95 almujaahideen : those who strive

This verse actually promotes the idea of fighting in the cause of Allah with one's life and wealth, so that should verse alone should give a clear idea of what jihad is.

So jihad means striving in the cause of Allah, or in the cause of propagating Islam across the world.

Now that what jihad means is clear, let's look at another fact.

There are different types of things Islamists do to take over the world in the name of Islam ie there are different types of jihad, and they're known by different names.

Violent jihad : carrying out violent attacks against non Muslims and secular Muslims in order to make sure a territory is fully governed by sharia.

Population jihad : breeding more kids to take political control over a non muslim majority land.

In the following hadith Muhammad gives an idea about population jihad and its purpose.

https://sunnah.com/mishkat/13/12

Now, let's talk about love jihad.

Love Jihad is when a muslim, male or a female, pretends to love a non muslim of the opposite gender, in order to use that non muslim to strengthen the muslim community through making a family with the muslim person. This isn't the standard definition as this concept has no standard definition.

However, what Love Jihad is known as is when a muslim woman marries a Hindu woman, and uses her to breed kids, with or without converting her to Islam.

If a muslim man allows his Hindu wife to teach Hinduism to his kids, if he allows his kids to be Hindus, is that love jihad too? No, that's not love jihad.

If a muslim woman marries a Hindu man, and doesn't allow her kids to be Hindus, is that love jihad? Of course it is.

So, love jihad isn't a matter of which gendered person is muslim, but a matter of what the ultimate result of the marriage is.

I tried to find out about the religions of the two kids of MJ Akbar, but couldn't come up with any conclusive result. However, if I go with their names, ie Prayaag and Mukulikha, they sound like Hindu names so I'll go with Hinduism in this case. If that's true, that's not a love jihad case, because that didn't result in the birth of a muslim bloodline and the death of a Hindu one.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has one kid, whose name is Arshad, so it's fair to say that it's a case of love jihad.

The two sons of Shahnawaz Hussein are Arbaaz and Adeeb, so that too is a case of love jihad.

The two sons of Sikander Bakht are Anil and Sunil, so going by their names, that too isn't a case of love jihad.

"How about Subramaniam Swamy’s own daughter who is married to a Muslim? That’s “love jihad” too?"
~ Yes, and that too is by the above criteria. Her two kids are muslim, and thus it's causes the death of a Hindu bloodline, and thus love jihad.

"The Meerut gang rape “love jihad” story has become intensely complicated with reports of a possible consensual relationship gone wrong, an abortion which was dubbed an appendicitis, and the police now saying that the victim’s claims are contradictory."
~ typical Indian police. The same guys who were forcing the parents of Tuktuki Mondal to withdraw the complaint regarding her being abducted by some Muslims...oh wait, you were saying it doesn't happen anymore! What's this?

"Even the case of shooter Tara Sahdev seems a complex family story where her husband has claimed he was born of a Sikh father and a Muslim mother and himself a late convert. So far, there is still no hard empirical evidence of “love jihad”."
~ so, since these two cases are unclear, there are zero empirical evidence for love jihad?

What about all the girls who were constantly harassed into converting to Islam? What about those who committed suicide because of that? What about the girls killed by their muslim "lovers" or husbands? What about Nikita Tomar?

All of that doesn't count as empirical evidence? Then what are they? Isolated incidents?

"While urban living spaces are becoming starkly divided along religious lines, old patterns of co-existence still persist in villages."
~ why don't they persistent in muslim majority areas in India? For example, what happens if a Hindu guy marries a muslim girl in Kashmir, settles there and ends up fathering Hindu kids?

What about all the Hindu men murdered by their muslim girlfriends or lovers? Coexistence?

What about all the muslim girls mustered by their families for loving Hindu guys? Secularism?

Why does coexistence have to be a one sided way?

Why are some people attacking Hindus for criticizing a phenomena, while being silent on Muslims literally killing people over the opposite scenario?

"Where mandirs and masjids flourish in togetherness, is it not but natural that love should blossom even across the walls of religious separation?"
~ again, the question remains. Why does it have to be one sided?

"The rapes committed during the Muzaffarnagar riots, or assaults on dalit women by upper castes, are acts of social vengeance aimed at terrorizing rival communities."
~ how's this even relevant to this topic? Agreed, that kind of violence is definitely wrong, but it's irrelevant to this topic.

"But how can any relationship across the religious divide, perhaps involving some personal religious negotiation, be called “rape” or “love jihad?"
~ again, this people arises from the fact that such relationships are almost always one sided.

Statistically, in India, out of all married Hindu women, 2.1% are married to non Hindus, while out of all married muslim women, only 0.6% are married to non Muslims.

This actually breaks down to show that muslim men marrying Hindu women is 19 times as frequent as the gender swapped scenario.

That means, out of all Hindu - Muslim marriages, 95% have muslim husbands and Hindu wives, which leads to around that many of them causing the deaths of Hindu bloodlines while giving birth to new muslim ones, which leads to turning India into a place like Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, eventually.

The only real difference between the Muslims of those countries, and Muslims of India, is demography. Culturally, all of those countries are very similar, if we ignore the muslim cultural elements.

So, there really is no reason to think that India will not become a place like Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, if India becomes a muslim majority country.

"Love is rampaging through Bharat like never before."
~ so is Islamist violence, unfortunately.

"Young lovers are the enemy of tradition and traditional society is hitting out at them just as it did against Heer Ranjha and Laila Majnu!"
~ are you not going to talk about the fact that despite all the movies about romance between muslim boys and Hindu girls, there have been movies about love between Hindu boys and muslim girls that have actually got people killed by Muslims?

B"ut Cupid prowls in every tehseel and every basti and love is banging on the gates of tradition, demanding that either those gates open or be destroyed."
~ of course everything will be destroyed at the end when one part of the issue are Muslims, who have the habit of destroying everything they disagree with.

"Earlier this year, parents of an HCL engineer allegedly killed her for marrying outside her caste."
~ this happens in the muslim community all the time, but it becomes news only when Hindus do it.

Casteism isn't a Hindu problem. It's an Indian problem, that's further enforced by the caste reservation system of the Indian constitution.

"Last year in the gruesome Kolkata honour killing a man beheaded his sister for “eloping”. Khap panchayats repeatedly attack lovers."
~ Islamists attack lovers at a much higher scale, whenever the the couple are a muslim girl and a Hindu boy.

"Society is ferociously hostile to the power of love, precisely because love knows no caste creed or religion."
~ one society criticizes when the girls of own society marry boys of the other society, while the other society kills people over similar issues, and you're telling us that there's no difference whatsoever?

"Yet in a fast-changing liberalizing India, there’s no stopping love."
~ I agree. At some point, muslim girls are going to have enough and are going to fight back against their authoritarian families for their liberty to love and live with Hindu boys. Muslim boys are going to have enough too and fight back against their authoritarian families for their liberty to raise Hindu kids. So, I agree, love is going to win at the end.

"The Manusmriti may proclaim that a Brahmin who takes a sudra wife to his bed will sink into hell, Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena may have once campaigned against the “foreign concept” known as love, but Manu and Balasaheb are being overthrown almost every day by 21st century Roopmatis and Baz Bahadurs."
~ you know what other text says that a believing woman isn't allowed to marry, much less have sex, with an unbelieving man, and if she does, she burns in hell forever?

The quran. That's what.

"Traditional literature too supports love-acrossenemy lines. Dushyant fell in love with Shakuntala even though she was a poor hermit’s daughter.In the Tamil epic Silappadikaram, Kannagi fell in love with Kovalan even though he betrayed her."
~ again, this is irrelevant. This is Hindu - Hindu love.

"Today, however much the khaps, the maulvis and Sangh activists may rage and fume, they are up against an unstoppable torrent which is as much a “crime” as an avalanche or a deluge."
~ at least you blamed maulavis here, but you're selectively being less outraged over the party that commits more violence over this issue.

"Cultural intimacy between India’s communities was an ideal beloved of many thinkers like Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore. For Ambedkar, inter-caste marriage was an instrument of so cial democracy, a crucial step towards a discrimination-free society. Voluntary, consensual relationships across religions and castes is a modern ideal and consensual adult relationships between Hindus and Muslims are fundamental to creating a new social contract away from politics, the attractions of extremism and mutual suspicions."
~ again, the issue isn't love marriage. The issue is love jihad.

Women who marry muslim men generally don't have as much rights as women who marry non muslim men, and this has always been the truth.

In the following hadith, Muhammad's favourite child bride Aisha says that she's not seen any woman suffering as badly as the muslim woman, regarding a scenario in which a muslim husband beat his muslim wife so badly her skin turned green.

https://sunnah.com/bukhari/77/42

"Love is a return to the bhakti movement because love was the one emotion that bhakti saints Mira and Kabir sang about. Tapping into traditional rural fears of a sinister Muslim attack on Hindu girls may yield short-term political dividends, and young lovers may be killed, arrested, and persecuted. But the traditionalists are fighting a losing battle because Cupid is a naughty god and will keep shooting his arrows, until society is forced to realize that the right to love is on par with the right to life."
~ I agree. The muslim society is on survival mode these days because their bad religion is being exposed left and right and people are leaving Islam on a massive scale that history has never witnessed before, so yeah, sooner or later, they're going to have to admit that love wins over everything, and their very own hateful religion is no exception to that, and that no amount of killing their own girls and Hindu boys is going to stop that.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.