New Delhi: The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has demanded that the Narendra Modi government put in place a “stringent” law to prevent the so-called “love jihad”.
The organisation’s joint General Secretary, Surendra Jain, claimed that lately there had been an increase in cases of love jihad, which refers to instances of Muslim men marrying non-Muslim women.
“Today, the non-Muslim society in Bharat also is furious,” he said in a press statement issued Friday. “The VHP warns this unholy alliance that these elements should fear the ire of society and stop this disgusting act immediately. All the state governments have been expressing concerns over these conspiracies from time to time.”
The VHP leader claimed that chief ministers of a number of states have been expressing their concerns in this regard. “The VHP demands that the central and the state governments, realising the monstrousness and magnitude of the love-jihad conspiracy, enact strong laws to stop it!,” he added. “At the same time, VHP also appeals to the society to remain ever-more vigilant about such incidents and take constitutional measures to prevent them.”
His statement claimed that “every year more than 20,000 non-Muslim girls fall victim to this conspiracy”.
The VHP statement comes in the wake of the Tata Group’s Tanishq Jewellery pulling down a controversial advertisement celebrating a Hindu-Muslim marriage. The jewellery brand removed the advertisement from all platforms on 13 October after it was panned on social media for allegedly promoting love jihad.
‘170 cases in last 8-10 years’
VHP, an RSS affiliate, also released a list of 170 so-called “love-jihad” cases that allegedly took place during the last 8-10 years.
“Whether it is the case of a love-jihad victim sacrificing her life by self-immolation in Lucknow or the headless body of a love-jihad victim found in Sonbhadra, these incidents have been coming out in large numbers during the last 8-10 days that are enough to shock even a stone-hearted person to shudder and tremble,” Jain said. “From Kerala to Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, there is widespread and overactive a network of love-jihad conspiracy to trap unsuspecting non-Muslim girls… This is not only an uncouth and grotesque way of increasing the population through ‘Ghazwa’ to materialise demographic-jihad, but also an added range of terror campaigns.”
The VHP also claims that the women are ill-treated by Muslim men they marry.
“After being locked in the jihadi trap, these girls are not only forced to convert to Islam but also forced to live hellish lives. Apart from the incidents of human-trafficking to throw them into the prostitution trade and selling them, the incidents of forced sexual abuse by men and friends of the whole persecuting family also comes in the newspapers,” Jain alleged.
“When these inhuman tortures become too much horrendous, then these girls find no way out but to commit suicide, but a very few girls get the opportunity to lodge complaints with the police.”
Jain also alleged that organisations such as the PFI, SIMI, ISI are behind them. “That is why whenever and wherever there is a love jihad case in a court of law, big lawyers are immediately given millions and crores of rupees as fees to stand up to plead for the lone-wolf love-jihadists,” he added.
He further said that due to “vote-bank politics or other vested interests, the secular fraternity in India today openly supports these jihadists without worrying about the future of Hindus and the country”.
Also read: You can #BoycottTanishq, but here’s really why we are so scared of Hindu-Muslim marriages