Love is a universally endorsed thing and there are very few places on earth where loving someone is considered as a taboo or is a cause of sectarian belligerence, something that’s taking place in India and is actually being legitimised by the government of the day. The leitmotif of “love jihad”, which has been projected as sacrilege committed by the Muslims, who are now considered as human flotsam, is now exploited repeatedly by the Hindutva fascist apparatchiks who are running agitprop to garner a large voter base for the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With the demand to ban a certain tv commercial advertisement made by the Hindustan Unilever for its detergent brand — Surf Excel — where a Muslim boy is seen escorted by a Hindu girl safely to a mosque for prayer during Holi, the Hindu festival of colour spraying, the Hindutva fascist camp’s hired thugs have displayed that they’re not going to give up the most-effective weapon of “love jihad” with the crucial Lok Sabha election around the corner.
It’s not merely the television commercial that features children celebrating friendship and bonding irrespective of religious differences, it’s about the bigotry and the sexual perversity displayed by the Sangh Parivar’s recalcitrant thugs by colouring the advertisement campaign in communal shades. The issue is that the pervert misogynist and necromaniac criminals, who unapologetically advocate exhuming the corpse of Muslim women to rape them, are now calling the Surf Excel advertisement immoral because it goes against their patriarchal narrative, it doesn’t follow their guideline of demonising and vilifying Muslims. It doesn’t follow their guideline of opposing romantic relationship or friendship between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man; portraying the latter as a conspirator working towards a demographic revolution. The sickness of their mind, the venom they spew and the cocooned shell in which they live a parasitic life, can’t allow them to see the bigger picture without loathing the Muslims in it.
The big question is when these Hindutva fascist thugs are incessantly spreading the flagrant innuendo over the purported “love jihad” by peddling fake news, bush telegraphs and vitriolic content on the internet, how bad is the situation at the grassroots? How is the “love jihad” propaganda faring at the bottom of the pyramid where it was supposed to strike? To gauge the effect that this incessant propaganda has on the common people from the Dalit and other backward castes (OBC) one needs to reach out to the rural and urban Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan, Assam or West Bengal, where the Muslims will narrate how the community suffers the worst whenever a male member elopes with any Hindu woman, especially any woman from the upper-caste elite background. Even eloping with OBC or Dalit women has turned into fodder for genocides and pogroms in the communally volatile regions of west Uttar Pradesh, where the RSS is running its radicalisation camps with a large number of proselytisers working day and night to manufacture thousands of Hindutva fascist thugs ready to kill Muslim men and rape Muslim women of any age.
Throughout Uttar Pradesh, the Zionist Israel and the US imperialism-sponsored Hindu Yuva Vahini’s slogan “ten Muslim women for one Hindu woman” is used as a catchphrase by other Hindutva fascist minions who are running terror workshops in villages and cities under the patronage of the police and the administration of Yogi Adityanath. They are cajoling the unemployed Hindu youth to join the ranks of different progeny organisations of the RSS and earn a lot of money from extortion, land grabbing, cow seizing and trading. Abducting women from the Muslim community, any female member of a family from 12 to 50 years of age, then forcibly converting them into Hinduism (though one can be born into Hinduism and can’t convert into it due to the inherent caste system) and raping them, have become the new show of masculinity by these state-sponsored thugs. They have made open exhorts to violence against the Muslim men who dare to fall in love with Hindu women and have implemented an extra-Constitutional rule throughout their territory.
Gangs of rumbustious hooligans are carrying out vigilance over women of villages in these states; they are deciding whom women should befriend, whom women should marry, how women should behave and what women should wear. They’re calling shots over which love affairs will work and which won’t. Caste supremacy and purity is their principal goal and women are treated by these misogynists as “assets” of the patriarchal family that can be traded by the men but can’t have an independent existence. As most of the Muslim families are also deeply feudal and patriarchal in their approach, the example of Muslim men’s control over women is used by the Hindutva fascist thugs to justify their own patriarchal oppression and domination. In the rural areas, the elopements always result out of inter-caste or inter-religion affairs, where the men are mostly from socio-economically backward sections, which give enough elbow space to the Hindutva thugs, who appear as the saviour of Hindu women, to polarise the people on religious lines and fuel communal tension. Also due to the socioeconomic backwardness of the men who elope, it becomes easy to torment their families or persecute the couples.
Women and feminity play a crucial role in the fascist ideology. Women, contrary to the masculine and strong image of man projected by fascism, are always presented as weak, vulnerable and seeking protection from men. She is cast in different roles, however, she is finally a property, who is owned by and controlled by men. As women are vulnerable according to their doctrine, therefore, the fascists always portray the perceived “enemy” aggressing and violating the woman considered as a pious asset not to be violated.
For example, the nation or the country is often epitomised in the form of a woman, a mother, who is under attack from enemies and thereby, the fascists are able to evoke patriarchal passion and machismo among its hysteric followers and exhort them to attack the perceived enemy — in the case of India it’s the Muslim community. Thus, mother India is shown as a goddess under attack from a non-pious Muslim aggressor, while in the real life, the Muslim men are shown as predators harping for innocent Hindu women with an ulterior motive of changing the demography.
The fear of losing their women, whose virginity until marriage is considered as a sign of purity in the patriarchal setup, drives the men insecure. They fear a woman exercising sexual freedom, transcending caste, sect and class lines to chose a partner of her own choice and expressing womanhood in her own way. The woman, if she makes her own choice, becomes a liability, an object of shame and she can be then humiliated, violated and even killed to save the “family honour” earned through years of practising regressive patriarchy, bigotry and caste supremacy. Even though the Dalits and the OBCs have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by the upper-caste feudal landlords and elites, the caste hierarchy within these communities itself promotes their own version of patriarchy and inter-religion marriages, especially with Muslims, are despised by members of these communities alike their upper-caste counterparts due to the prevalence of the feudal socio-economic system and the caste hierarchy. Even Dalits and OBCs feel no shame in practising “honour killings” to impose their patriarchal will.
The blistering propaganda, the seduction of the gullible and uncritical Hindu minds at various hierarchies of the society using bush telegraph, the use of feral mobs to attack weak and hapless Muslims, killing of women in the name of “family honour” and forcefully divorcing inter-religion couples by using coercion through state machinery, economic blockade, torture, rape, arson, etc, show that they all are pieces of the whole system, blocks of the same chain created to shackle a woman from expressing her desire and to live her life.
The fear of losing their women, whose virginity until marriage is considered as a sign of purity in the patriarchal setup, drives the men insecure. They fear a woman exercising sexual freedom, transcending caste, sect and class lines to chose a partner of her own choice and expressing womanhood in her own way. The woman, if she makes her own choice, becomes a liability, an object of shame and she can be then humiliated, violated and even killed to save the “family honour” earned through years of practising regressive patriarchy, bigotry and caste supremacy. Even though the Dalits and the OBCs have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by the upper-caste feudal landlords and elites, the caste hierarchy within these communities itself promotes their own version of patriarchy and inter-religion marriages, especially with Muslims, are despised by members of these communities alike their upper-caste counterparts due to the prevalence of the feudal socio-economic system and the caste hierarchy. Even Dalits and OBCs feel no shame in practising “honour killings” to impose their patriarchal will.
The blistering propaganda, the seduction of the gullible and uncritical Hindu minds at various hierarchies of the society using bush telegraph, the use of feral mobs to attack weak and hapless Muslims, killing of women in the name of “family honour” and forcefully divorcing inter-religion couples by using coercion through state machinery, economic blockade, torture, rape, arson, etc, show that they all are pieces of the whole system, blocks of the same chain created to shackle a woman from expressing her desire and to live her life.
The virulent “love jihad” campaign costs millions of rupees, as a large army of Hindutva thugs, several online accounts, platforms, database, devices, etc, are required to build up the infrastructure of the institutionalised hate that will second as a “spontaneous response” for the BJP. There are people paying this huge sum of money with a motive, and that motive is an evil one. The investment is done to create a divided and fractured society that can be exploited by big corporate capital, feudal landlords and comprador capitalists.
Can these enemies of love win a battle against the quintessential qualities of human beings? Can their boisterous cacophony, their muscle-flexing and wielding of arms and ammunitions deter the lovers from falling in love? Can the hatred spewed by the Hindutva fascist thugs stop the flowers from blooming in spring? Can their weapons, their rioting, massacres, rapes, etc, wipe out the essential parts of quotidian human emotions and feelings? Can their venom spitting kill the buds of love, compassion, bonding and care? Can the “love jihad” diatribe stop love blooming between people of different communities?
One big NO can suffice as the answer to all the above questions. Love has a class character and a caste character imposed on it by the class and caste-ridden patriarchal society. However, the basic human instinct to love couldn’t be tamed by the whip-wielding sclerotic rulers of the country. It’s often at the end of massive socio-economic and political upheaval that tectonic changes occur in all aspects of human life. Right now, as India is reeling under the juggernaut of Hindutva fascism, which is pulverising the democratic aspirations of the people and the constitutional values like equality, secularism, democracy, social justice, etc, the time is approaching that a gigantic wave of people’s resentment will hit the throne of tyranny and shake the empire.
A massive revolutionary struggle by the working class, the peasantry, the toiled people and the youth of the exploited and oppressed sections of the society, including the women, will definitely defeat the Hindutva fascist Modi regime and establish a just, equal and socialist society, where love will be normal, mainstream and hatred a fringe disorder that will be dealt in the same way the former general VK Singh deals with mosquitoes that enter his bedroom at night. That’s definitely the end of all form of terrorists, especially the Hindutva fascist terrorists patronised by the Brahminical semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state for long, and of course the beginning of the smashing of patriarchy by the Indian women, who will also smash the venomous “love jihad” bandwagon, once and forever.
Can these enemies of love win a battle against the quintessential qualities of human beings? Can their boisterous cacophony, their muscle-flexing and wielding of arms and ammunitions deter the lovers from falling in love? Can the hatred spewed by the Hindutva fascist thugs stop the flowers from blooming in spring? Can their weapons, their rioting, massacres, rapes, etc, wipe out the essential parts of quotidian human emotions and feelings? Can their venom spitting kill the buds of love, compassion, bonding and care? Can the “love jihad” diatribe stop love blooming between people of different communities?
One big NO can suffice as the answer to all the above questions. Love has a class character and a caste character imposed on it by the class and caste-ridden patriarchal society. However, the basic human instinct to love couldn’t be tamed by the whip-wielding sclerotic rulers of the country. It’s often at the end of massive socio-economic and political upheaval that tectonic changes occur in all aspects of human life. Right now, as India is reeling under the juggernaut of Hindutva fascism, which is pulverising the democratic aspirations of the people and the constitutional values like equality, secularism, democracy, social justice, etc, the time is approaching that a gigantic wave of people’s resentment will hit the throne of tyranny and shake the empire.
A massive revolutionary struggle by the working class, the peasantry, the toiled people and the youth of the exploited and oppressed sections of the society, including the women, will definitely defeat the Hindutva fascist Modi regime and establish a just, equal and socialist society, where love will be normal, mainstream and hatred a fringe disorder that will be dealt in the same way the former general VK Singh deals with mosquitoes that enter his bedroom at night. That’s definitely the end of all form of terrorists, especially the Hindutva fascist terrorists patronised by the Brahminical semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state for long, and of course the beginning of the smashing of patriarchy by the Indian women, who will also smash the venomous “love jihad” bandwagon, once and forever.
