Hindus Muslims, All Communities United In Controlling Women’s Right to Choose Love

Editor added context: Inter-faith couple from Jharkhand facing police and family harassment moves to Kerala. Kerala High Court grants police protection for now but the couple continue to face threats because nobody is ready to give a women her right to choose love.

Md Galib (30yrs) & Asha Verma (27yrs) from Jharkhand have been in a relationship for over a decade. Galib an Engineer was working outside India. Asha’s family fixed her marriage with a person aged over 40 yrs. Hearing this Galib returned to India. As they are both adults they can opt for Court Marriage. They will have to marry without their family’s permission. Once they take legal route of Court Marriage, they will have to apply for permission and this application with personal details is pasted on the magistrate’s notice board for the next 30 days.

Anyone can object to the solemnization of the marriage during this “objection period” on such grounds as the couple has not attained the age of marriage, has a living spouse or is of unsound mind. But this serves as hot cake for the Hindutva Groups and the love-jihad allegations.

Recently, an interfaith couple was assaulted by the Hindutva extremists when they reached Court to get married. They had chosen to get married under the Special Marriage Act where neither the groom nor the bride needs to convert. So there was no conversion but still the Hindutva groups traced the couple from the notice board and attacked them.

News Minute on 20 July 2020 reported that 100s of couples were being bullied & harassed, their details spread over Groups after their marriage notices were posted in public. The exposure to personal details is a serious breach of privacy. Several couples in the last few years have found their Notices posted on social media. Though this mandate for Advance Notice was challenged before the Supreme Court, it got dismissed.

Earlier, to avoid the privacy violation and to avoid the attack of communal goons, couples had the option of doing a religious ceremony wherein one partner would convert to another’s religion. But over the years, states have passed laws criminalizing religious conversion which makes interfaith marriages nearly impossible. Those who advocate for the Uniform Civil Code are silent on this discriminatory Special Marriage Act’s exhausting period of 30 days revealing the identity of couples intended to get married legally without conversion and at the same time also criminalizing conversion marriage.

In the deeply patriarchal and regressive societies of India marriages are predominantly arranged i.e., decided by the family based on caste, religion, gotra, skin color, ethnicity. A CMIE report in 2018 found 93% of the marriages in India are still Arranged Marriages. Women are often not given the choice to say yes or not to such marriages and are expected to accept “elder’s decisions”.

When it comes giving women their right to choose, both communities, be it Hindus or Muslims fail because they consider women as communal property. In 2021 Pew survey found 67% Hindus feel it is necessary to stop women from marrying outside the religion. For Muslims, as per the survey, the corresponding figures are 80%.

Coming back to Galib and Asha, the couple got married at Kayamkulam in Kerala earlier this month. They first married as per Islamic customs at a masjid on 11th Feb. Later on Feb 16, they got married again at a temple following Hindu customs. But at the same time Jharkhand Police filed a case of abduction against Galib. On 14th Feb, Jharkhand Police visited the couple and took their statement in which the Asha told the police that she has married him with her free will.

Meanwhile, the couple also approached the Kerala High Court, seeking protection as Asha was continuously facing threats from he family. The good news is that Kerala High Court has granted police protection to the couple.

The fundamental right to ‘freely profess, practice and propagate religion’ does not exist in India today. The State has also weaponized itself to deny adult women their right to choose her love. And cutting across religion, in every community, an unsaid goal is to domesticate the women.

Love is a Threat Here.

This is a guest post. The opinions and facts described herein are of the author’s and not that of Women News. The column first appeared on the author’s Twitter (X) page as a Thread. Reproduced here with some editing by WN editors.