Weaponisation Of Marriages

The plight of an interfaith couple in Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand, should draw the nation’s attention to the dangers of the weaponisation of personal preferences. The couple, a Muslim man and a Hindu woman in their 20s, had submitted a notice to the sub-divisional magistrate, as required by law, of their intention to marry each other.

To their astonishment, their personal details appeared online and were widely shared by Hindu right-wing groups as yet another instance of “love jihad.” They knocked on the doors of the Uttarakhand High Court for protection. Yet, emboldened right-wing groups have created trouble with the woman’s mother claiming she was “lured and misled” into the relationship.

That young people in love and intending to marry should face “threats to life” and constant harassment from assorted self-appointed custodians of society speaks volumes about India’s social morass today. Interfaith couples choose to marry under the Special Marriage Act, which mandates a notice to officials at least a month in advance.

This information has been used, stolen, or leaked to stop the marriage itself or put pressure on the couple to call it off; in extreme cases, violence against the man or the woman has been recorded too. The recent Uttarakhand incident, like scores of such incidents earlier, underscores how the law itself has been weaponised in the pursuit of narrow and sectarian religious-political ends.

This is not the first incident of its kind, nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. And, increasingly, the law offers little protection to the couple and holds no deterrence to the vigilantes unless the courts step in. This is nothing to be proud of.

In turning “love jihad” into a campaign and empowering not only local offices but also vigilante groups, usually of young unemployed right-wing men, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, for which this has been a “major” issue in the past decade, has presided over the degeneration of social etiquette and norms.

Uttarakhand is not the only state either; in the so-called progressive Maharashtra too, the Eknath Shinde-led state government set up district-level committees in December 2022 to enquire into inter-religious and inter-caste marriages.

The antidote has been the setting up of ‘safe houses’ for such couples to use between the notice period and their wedding if they feel threatened by their families or outsiders. However, not all governments have set them up despite judicial prompts. A marriage is an intensely personal affair with no place for governments, and much less for vigilantes.

Secular marriages, couples choosing to marry beyond their faiths using the Special Marriage Act, should have been the epitome of a tolerant and harmonious nation. The ruling party wants us to see these as shameful for Hindus. Nothing could be sadder.