There seems to be a virulent epidemic sweeping across the
Hindi heartland. Many call it ‘love jihad’, to an uninformed literal translator
it could mean struggle for love. But, unfortunately for the uninformed
translator, the meaning is a tad bit more convoluted. Its so notable now that it has got its own wikipedia entry. Ignoring the local
variations, the common thread of explaining ‘love jihad’ to the uninitiated
would be: Muslim men entrapping Hindu women (note it is only woman who are being entrapped) by feigning love, leading to the Hindu women converting to Islam,
simultaneously swelling the cadre of jihadis and reducing the number of Hindus.
Mathematically it makes a pretty compelling case, with the Muslim men allowed
to follow ‘hum paanch haamere pacchis’
coupled with ‘love jihad’ the growth rate of jihadis should move from arithmeticprogression to a geometric one. And apart from the logical goal of demographic
inversion, ‘love jihad’ is supposed to enable Muslim men to proselytise (thereby
fulfilling his holy duty of proselytizing or preaching of Islam). And as a
by-product it may also pay some (intended or surprising) political dividends.
But given that members of our political class (in general) are the most honest and
upstanding (in the entire Milky Way), so for the moment we would ignore any aspersion
of political motive of those endorsing or impeding ‘love jihad’. Instead we
shall try to find out parallels in socio-political history of the world where the
political ruling class (usually men) moved mountains to find the antidote for saving
the honour of their bitiya. I am a sucker for propaganda videos and here is one on the topic.
My 'favourite' propaganda video: touches on all the 'important' points.
The very first instance which comes to mind would be the battery
of anti-miscegenation laws especially in United States and the Apartheid era
South Africa. The best way to explain them would be to paraphrase the Fourteen
words: interracial marriages should not be allowed ‘Because the beauty of the
White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth’ (note again it is only women
who have to be saved). The basic logic behind these Jim Crow laws to prohibit
race mixing was to protect ‘White Christian civilization’ which would be
endangered by violating ‘God’s original design, the plan God had for every
race.’ KKK’s recent literature exhorting purity of bloodline lists the reasons
why White women should be protected from Black/non-Whites, some pertinent to
our discussion are: ‘1) Negro genes are dominant over that of a White by a 4-1
ratio. This means that any offspring from such a union will always favor the
Black parent, even if the Black parent is
not a full-blooded Negro. 2) When and interracial baby is conceived, a White family line, thousands of
years old, has instantly ceased to
exist. In fact, one could say that the only reason and individual is White today is because all of
their ancestors mated only with other
Whites. 3) The Low I.Q. of Negroes has
been scientifically proven to be hereditary. Low I.Q. people breed
only more low I.Q. offspring and usually
have large numbers of offspring, further polluting the White gene pool. Blacks
score 15 to 20 points lower than Whites on every intelligence test ever given:
Blacks have brains which exhibit primitive features such as small size, light
weight, fewer convolutions (wrinkles linked to intelligence). For this reason,
the offspring of interracial couples will have lower intelligence than if the
White partner had a child by another White person.’ The list seems to be
created out of an inherent fear about the perceived existential crisis faced by
the White race. So the only way out is to save the honour of bitiya with violence against the would
be suspected violators. Many thousand words (in fiction and non-fiction) have
been written about lynching Blacks suspected of raping White women; now
transpose White with Hindus, Black with Muslims and purity of race with the
purity of culture, tradition (and fear of a supposed foreign invader imposing
its own insidious alien culture), the badlands of India seem no different from
the Deep South. Stark parallels can be drawn between Marion, Indiana and Muzaffarpur,
Uttar Pradesh. It is a sobering thought to remember that as late as 1967 United States
had restrictions on interracial marriages.
We have more examples closer to home but first further away
in time, about the Brown man’s lust for White woman. Novelists, columnists and
film directors have become famous harping different strains of the widely
advertised malady afflicting the White Man’s burden in his colonies. Generals
have thought to have proclaimed massacres to uphold the notion that for Brown
men White woman is as sacred as God. This was perhaps a direct consequence of
the colonial masters trying to create an aura of racial superiority thereby
licensing them to rule over the less formative subjects. A similar argument was
given to establish and justify slavery. Closer in time we have the historical
distrust mixed with inter-caste tension arising out of slogans of lutiya khatiya
bitiya. India Today explains it as an apparent strategy to maintain social
hierarchy by stoking fears of supposed policies of forcing upper caste men to share
water from the same jug, sitting together on the same cot with lower caste men and
(the holy of holies) inter-marriage between the castes. Here again the lynchpin
for creating an imagined/real enemy is to uphold the honour of the upper caste bitiya who are being eyed by the lustful
lower caste men hell bent on upending the customs of thousands of years. To
aptly complement these there have been several reported cases of honour killing
where couples of inter-caste marriages were put to death, often accompanied by
pronouncements from kangaroo courts.
To quote the detective ‘There is nothing new under the sun.
It has all been done before.’ ‘Love jihad’ is a mere repetition of a long
tradition of the patriarchal view of women as possession. Instead of
interracial marriage or inter-caste one this time the focus is on
inter-religious marriages. By no means is this endemic to India, recently in
Israel an Arab-Jewish couple had to exchange their vows amidst tight security
after hardline Jewish groups raised the same spectre of Muslim men marrying
non-Muslim girl to swell their cadre. In all these contexts the women is viewed
as a mere vessel to carry and care for offsprings, without any independent
existence, whose only purpose is to propagate the patriarchal bloodline. It is
just another fact to note that ‘love jihad’ got traction in the boondocks of a
state with high crime figure, low income per capita, site of most divisive
religious structures and highest number of seats to parliament.
For some more information/insight have a look at these two articles: 'Myth of Love Jihad: What’s Faith Got to Do With It?' and '“Love jihad”—the Sangh Parivar’s sexual politics by another name'
