{"id":145590,"date":"2020-12-17T00:49:14","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T19:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/?p=145590"},"modified":"2020-12-17T00:49:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T19:19:14","slug":"shortcut-to-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/2020\/12\/17\/shortcut-to-conversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Shortcut to conversion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inter-Faith Marriage<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Dr.S.Saraswathi<\/strong>
\n(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.
\n\u2018Love jihad\u2019 is considered by some as an \u201cIslamophobic conspiracy theory\u201d 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 \u2013 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.
\n\u2018Love jihad\u2019, also nicknamed as \u2018Romeo Jihad\u2019, 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 \u2018love jihad\u2019.
\nHistorically, 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.
\nThe term \u2018love jihad\u2019 was used by the Kerala High Court in 2009 when it ordered joint investigation by Karnataka and Kerala police into \u2018Love Jihad Movement\u2019. 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.
\nThe term \u2018love jihad\u2019 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.
\nA plea in Allahabad High Court challenges UP Government\u2019s Ordinance of 11 December on \u2018love jihad\u2019 \u2013 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.
\nThe 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.
\nAllahabad High Court in its verdict on 11 November stated that: \u201cThe 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\u201d.
\nThe concept of \u2018love jihad\u2019 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\u2019s 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.
\nFurther, discussions point to some terror organisations using \u2018love jihad\u2019 as a tool to convert innocent Hindu women \u2014an aspect overlooked by champions of right to love, but needs investigation as part of our fight against terrorism.
\nThe 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.
\nLove and marriage are private matters protected by the Constitution as a person\u2019s fundamental right. \u2018love jihad\u2019 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.
\nThe unanimous judgement holds that privacy is a \u201cconcomitant of an individual\u2019s 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\u201d. It confirms that like other rights under Fundamental Rights, it is also not \u201cabsolute\u201d and its violation must, besides the test of due process and procedure, a factor in legitimate State interests.
\nElaborating 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.
\nThe 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 \u2018love jihad\u2019 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 \u2018love jihad\u2019 groups about the problem itself and their objectives.
\nReligious 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\u2019s faith. Inter-faith marriage used as shortcut to conversion is misuse of right to private life. \u2014 INFA<\/p>\n

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Inter-Faith Marriage 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-145590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-features"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}