Opinion Marriage, politics, propaganda

need to ensure the smooth inheritance of property by legitimate sons of mostly male owners. This explains the fact that men were free of the moral codes and restrictions designed for women.

The system of patriarchy that the primacy of private property created ensured that the freedom of women to choose their husbands was either denied to them or curtailed in varying degrees. In our own society, with the system of caste divisions based on preserving the purity of each caste, additional restraints are placed on women’s freedom to enter into self-choice marriages by the taboos placed on inter- caste unions. Even non-Hindu communities that retain caste divisions punish transgressions of caste barriers in different ways.

In a situation where marriages within the same religious community but across caste barriers evoke responses that range from disapproval, disownment, banishment from the family home to violence and even killings, the opposition to marriages between people belonging to different religious communities is even greater.

Despite all this, even before Independence, inter-caste and inter-community marriages did take place, often between members of prominent families, and did not lead to public protests or agitations. After the passage of the Constitution, which gave major women and men the right to choose their own life partners and the right to marry under the Special Marriages Act, such marriages have been occurring with increasing frequency. While they have often been opposed bitterly and violently by members of the families concerned, until recently, they have not led to organised public demonstrations of opposition.

Recent decades have witnessed a new phenomenon, which is the increasing political mobilisation on the basis of caste and community by all political parties, excluding the Left. This not only utilises differences between members of different castes and communities, but emphasises areas of conflict and creates new ones in order to strengthen their separate identities and make them willing and enthusiastic participants in mobilisations and conflicts that are basically politically motivated.

It is in this context that we have to look at the frenzy that is sought to be created over relationships between Hindu women and Muslim men by the Sangh Parivar. Of course, there is no such activity in response to relationships between Hindu men and Muslim women and, in fact, the Parivar lists the infrequency of such relationships in its litany of complaints against the Muslim community.

The creation of this frenzy has little to do with either facts or religious concern. Its political motivation can be gauged by comparing the Parivar propaganda material in this regard with that put out by other political organisations. Some examples will reveal uncanny and unsettling similarities.

“The black-haired Jewish youth lies for hours in ambush, a Satanic joy in his face, for the unsuspecting girl whom he pollutes with his blood and steals from her own race. By every means, he seeks to wreck the racial bases of the nation he intends to subdue. Just as individually he deliberately befouls women and girls, so he never shrinks from breaking the barriers race has erected against foreign elements. It was, and is, the Jew who brought Negroes to the Rhine, brought them with the same aim
and with deliberate intent to destroy the white race he hates, by persistent bastardisation, to hurl it from the cultural and political heights it has attained, and to ascend to them as its masters. He deliberately seeks to lower the race level by steady corruption of the individual…” (Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf).

On December 10, 2012, a new alliance of backward-caste parties was formed by PMK founder S. Ramadoss. The meeting was unanimous about Dalits and passed a resolution that said “Dalit youths are specifically targeting other caste girls. Dalit boys lure other caste girls, spoil their lives and leave them in the lurch after snatching their money.” A PMK MLA, Kaduvetti Guru, added that “Dalit youths are luring girls by wearing T-shirts, jeans and goggles. They present cellphones to girls
and mesmerise them.”

And this is taken from a “Warning issued to Hindu girls” in Kerala in 2007 (more recent pamphlets resort to even greater obscenities): “This organisation (responsible for ‘love jihad’) makes use of groups of boys belonging to a particular religious faith. They are taught how to lure girls… Further, the organisation orders its followers to marry them within a short period of six months and to have at least four children… The organisation gives one lakh rupees to such converted women and also gives financial support to boys to start business activities… The ‘love jihad’ organisation provides its members with mobile phones, motorcycles, good clothing, etc, for more effective allurement of girls… The Rama Sena people saved these stupid girls from becoming the breeding cows of Islam and joining some Muslim harem.” After this, the language becomes unprintable.

So the question, “Who’s afraid of a Hindu-Muslim couple?” must be addressed carefully. Yes, family members of young people wanting to enter into such relationships may have concerns and fears about problems of adjustment, compatibility, religious observation, etc. While they can certainly discuss their concerns with the couple in question, they also have to accept that, since the Constitution gives all adults the right to choose their life partners, it is completely illegal to use coercion or violence to force them to change their minds.

On the other hand, there are political organisations that are playing on these concerns and fears to create public frenzy, hatred and violent confrontations because they believe that communal polarisation serves their political ends. And
they are indifferent to the social and human costs involved.

The writer is a member of  the CPM and former  Lok Sabha MP from Kanpur.