Shadeo…deceived by Ranjit Kumar Kohli
into marriage….real name Raqibul Hasan
Khan…..suggestion for the Muslim community….advocate a court marriage
in the case of mixed couples….if a girl from another community is to enter a Muslim
home….genuine effort to have a more enlightened
approach….
….
…….
We are in complete agreement with Saba Naqvi Bhaumik (a Shia Muslim married to a Bengali Hindu) that civil marriages will go a long way to help resolve the love-jihad problem….but why not suggest civil marriage for every one? Especially as she (correctly) notes that personal marriage laws “diminish women.”
………..
……..
As SNB explains there are enough morons (to borrow the language of Ram Gopal Varma) like Raqibul Hasan Khan to bring to life (and keep alive) the “love jehad” theory. Fact remains that Muslim boys/girls will be falling in love with Hindu girls/boys. We imagine that the social barriers today are a bit more tightly drawn around muslim girls, hence the Muslim boy-Hindu girl match is more likely…hence all the poisonous confusion.
…………..
This is how a muslim women rights body views the problem with the personal law as applied to marriages:
….
Among other things, the draft law contemplates a complete ban on
the oral, unilateral and triple divorce (talaq) and seeks, instead, use
of ‘talaak-e-ahsan’ method where at least four attempts at
reconciliation are made before the divorce is granted.
….
The draft law stipulates that a Muslim marriage should be solemnised
only when the bride is at least 18 years old and the groom 21. Further,
there should be “an unambiguous consent” by both, and neither of them
should have a living spouse. Polygamous marriage should be strictly prohibited and marriages
should be compulsorily registered, payment of maintenance to the wife
and children must be made mandatory during the marriage, or in the event
of separation and divorce, it says.
A minimum ‘mehr’ should be paid to the bride before the marriage
and the amount should not be less than the groom’s annual income, the
draft law says. The BMMA will launch a nation-wide campaign for creating
awareness about the need to codify the Muslim Personal Law and make the
government act towards it, Soman said.
……….
The way we see it is the conversion “problem” is essentially an issue of purity. For example in a Brahmin household, a Muslim daughter-in-law may not be permitted to participate in puja ceremonies. Likewise a Hindu daughter-in-law will create a problem for Muslim households. However that is essentially a problem for the pandits and the maulavis to resolve. Simply issue fatwas that all temples (mosques) is open to people of all faiths, creeds and castes.
As we march to the future we have the following three choices: (1) we harmonize in a manner that is considered to be fair by all communities, or (2) we fight and break up (partition) or (3) we fight and the minority groups get assimilated (by the majority). Option II was the easiest one and we have seen two partitions over six decades (both disasters at an epic level).
Option III is an even more ugly one (and right now we have something like that taking shape in Pakistan where Hindu girls are abducted in plain view) and the Sangh Parivar will be very happy to work towards this goal. Here we should also mention that the separate but equal approach favored by the left-liberals and secularists did not work in the USA and will not work in India. It is also a repulsive notion.
That leaves us with only Option I as the reasonable way forward.
As we imagine, conservative muslims dislike civil registration of marriage because it is not the way of the Sharia and more importantly, this is a backdoor way to assimilation (with Hindus). The actuality will be that inter-faith couples will further the cause of communal harmony. We are a great believer in inter-caste marriages as well and for the same reasons. The idea of India is an important one to support (and to strengthen) and we cannot let the extremists win.
…….
If there is a historical profile to be used, it would be upper-caste
men and/or Muslims who controlled lands and would just pick up and
devour women from the lower castes or social strata. It is very likely
that following some cross-religious marriages, the woman is pressurised
to convert.
The recent case in Ranchi of national-level shooter Tara
Shadeo, who has alleged that she was deceived by one Ranjit Kumar Kohli
into marriage, only to discover that his real name was Raqibul Hasan
Khan, is a sad individual tale with its own particular details. No
responsible organisation in multi-religious India would see it as
conclusive evidence of a trend involving over 144 million Indians.
….
More than an insult to men from a particular denomination, the notion
of love jehad is at its core an insult to all women, who are seen as
nothing more than chattel, led astray sometimes by wicked men with
impure thoughts. But they can apparently be made to see the righteous
path with the help of the VHP/RSS that has launched a “brotherhood”
campaign in western UP where Hindu girls will tie rakhis on Muslim men.
In the land of khap panchayats, brother and sister will presumably live
in innocent harmony till the families decide it is time for wedlock and
child-rearing to keep the caste and community lineage going.
….
Empirical socio-economic data should be collected from areas where
love jehad is supposed to have happened and where it has now allegedly
spread to. That would be Kerala, the Mangalore coast of Karnataka and
now western UP. One can hazard an intelligent guess that in all these
regions the Muslim community would be large in numbers, of which there
would be a prosperous strata. They would have come up economically and
it is also very likely that the more visible signs of this prosperity
would be an increase in the numbers of minarets of madrassas and
mosques.
….
Still, people do live in the same towns and the chemistry of love and
attraction cannot be circumscribed. Girls of one religion will continue
to fall in love with boys from another and vice versa.
But because the
situation in UP is poised so delicately and the potential for trouble so
great, here’s a suggestion for the Muslim community: clerics, prominent
citizens and elders of the community should advocate a court marriage
in the case of mixed couples. As it is, Muslim personal laws diminish
women’s rights. If a girl from another community is to enter a Muslim
home, a genuine effort should be made to have a more enlightened
approach.
In the small towns of UP, the community should organise,
reflect and come up with a rational strategy. Clerics too must show that
they can speak for something beyond defending regressive personal laws
and feeding off the fears of a community.
…….
The husband of national champion shooter Tara Shahdeo was arrested in
a joint operation by Jharkhand and Delhi Police on Tuesday night,
sources said. Ranjeet Singh Kohli alias Rakibul Hassan Khan, 30, was arrested from a place near the Delhi-Ghaziabad border.
Last
week, national rifle shooting gold medallist, Tara Sahdeo, had alleged
that she was tortured to change her religion to Islam by a Muslim man
who claimed he was a Hindu and married her. In her police
complaint, Sahdeo claimed she got married in June this year to a person
named Ranjit Kohli. She said the marriage was solemnised as per Hindu
rituals.
However, during the Islamic
holy month of Ramadan, when people invited her husband for Iftar, she
came to know that her husband’s name was Rakibul Hassan. She allegedly
found the name on the invitation cards to the Iftar.
She also alleged that Hassan and 20 other people forced her to change her religion. When she refused, she was allegedly beaten up. Sahdeo
also alleged that she was threatened with dire consequences if she told
anyone about the conversion. She alleges that she was kept under close
vigil but when Hassan went to New Delhi on August 19, she sent a
message to her family members and was rescued.
…..
Link (1): http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?291813
Link (2): muslim-womens-organisation-seeks-changes-in-personal-law
Link (3): love-jihad-tara-shahdeo-rakibul-hasan-khan-ranjeet-singh-kohli