As 2020 unfolds, two things can be said with certainty about India.
One, the state and almost all of its institutions have made it clear that Muslims would be treated as subjects and not as citizens with the same rights as Hindus.
Second, there is a growing understanding among Muslims that the task of asserting their rights and rejecting the subjectivity imposed on them is something they cannot abdicate and leave for the future.
As the state, through various legal instruments, wage war against Muslim men, there is unfortunately no outrage in Hindu society at large.
The agency of Muslims is being taken away from them and their autonomy as citizens is being robbed of them in multiple ways and they are considered perpetually illegal. The very existence of Muslims is now under serious threat in India, but no political party believes it is as serious a problem as anti-agriculture laws. The most recent case is the so-called Uttar Pradesh anti-conversion law.
The parody of the law was exposed in the case of Pinki or Muskan and her husband Rashid Ali.
The miscarriage that a pregnant Pinki suffered while in state custody must be seen as a definite and decisive change in the relationship between Muslims and the Indian state and its institutions. The relationship between Muslims and Hindus is also changing. But most of us do not recognize the seriousness of the message of this incident.
We know that Pinki or Muskan were forcibly transferred to the Nari Niketan after the police arrested her Muslim husband and brother under the new law. Uttar Pradesh Illegal Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020. She married Rashid Ali in July this year, six months before the ordinance was enacted.
The union of the couple was his choice. She converted to Islam.
The court came to his rescue, but only after the police declared that there was no evidence to prove the forced conversion charge. The young woman was allowed to reunite with her husband after she declared that their marriage had her consent. Rashid and his brother spent 15 days in prison.
The media reported that Rashid was happy to be free, “We were married by mutual agreement. I’ve already spent 15 days in jail. But today I am happy to have been released, ”Rashid said after leaving prison. When asked if he felt the police had misused the new law, he decided not to speak.
That he has chosen to ‘keep quiet’ should concern us. The inability of a Muslim to express his distress when subjected to injustice has become routine.
It should not be forgotten that at least 11 Muslims have been arrested after the ordinance was announced. Hours after the new ordinance came into force, a most absurd arrest was made. Ahmed, a 22-year-old man, was arrested because the father of a married woman alleged that he threatened to kidnap his daughter and convert her. The woman is married and lives with her husband and here is the father claiming that Ahmed wants to convert her after kidnapping her. The police immediately go into action, form several search teams and “catch” Ahmed.
The latest is the arrest of a Muslim in Shahjahanpur. A 42-year-old married Hindu woman, mother of two, accompanied by members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad went to the police claiming that the man had established a physical relationship with her using a Hindu name and was forcing her to convert with the intention of take their property.
The man was immediately arrested and slapped by different sections of the IPC. How do we see this complaint? Are relationships, premarital or extramarital, between Hindu women and Muslim men now being tracked by community spies and vulnerable women blackmailed into accusing Muslim men of forced conversion and kidnapping?
Muslim men are in an impossible situation. How would you prove that the woman was lying?
These arrested Muslims are not as lucky as Rashid and Muskan. Himachal Pradesh has also enacted a similar law. BJP leaders are demanding it in other states as well.
Let’s go back to Muskan.
She has argued that doctors and authorities should be held responsible for the miscarriage. First they denied it, but now that it is confirmed there is no response to the accusation made by Muskan.
The crime is serious. A forced abortion should be treated like murder. Will responsible people be held accountable and held against the law? Again, an absurd question. It sounds unpleasant, but you can’t help but remember that one of the main characteristics of the propaganda of marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu woman, which supposedly makes this alliance more sinister, is that the bellies of Hindu women are used to produce Muslims. . TThe reverse is not only allowed but is desirable. So the destruction of an unborn Muslim becomes a duty.
These laws have a provision that if one of the couple returns to the ‘parental religion’ or mool dharm, it would not be treated as a crime. It is not necessary to guess what religion would obtain this exalted status of being the original religion or mother of this country. If a Hindu marries a Muslim woman and she converts to his religion, it would not be a crime under these laws. Instead, as we saw in the case of Uttar Pradesh, they would get protection of the law.
These laws against marriage for the purpose of conversion are the most powerful tool after the laws against slaughter of cows to criminalize Muslims, primarily Muslim men. The Triple Talaq Law was a forerunner in this regard.
It has been pointed out that these laws go against the right to choose, against love, against the agency of Hindu and Dalit women. All this, of course, is true.
The law will definitely affect them, but we must also remember that only Muslim men would face criminal charges. It is they who would be imprisoned. They will have to fight a long battle, ruining themselves and their families to prove their innocence.
The women in question would have to be extraordinarily brave like Muskan to save their Muslim partners from the Indian state. Could all Hindu women resist organized groups like Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad? Wouldn’t they be forced to criminalize their ‘lovers’ to save their honor or their lives?
The law against conversion is based on a lie. It says that marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women are performed for the purpose of conversion.
We are aware that what usually happens is that these types of couples get discouraged when they want to use the route of the Special Marriage Law.
Their names get publicized and become vulnerable as people from RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal patrol the marriage registry offices and track down the Hindu-Muslim couple applying for marriage. Furthermore, these couples must also save themselves from their own families. Therefore, the quickest route is conversion.
Marriage in an Arya Samaj mandir or nikah is the easiest way to get formal validation of your relationship. Claiming that Muslim men marry Hindu women with the aim of converting them is perverted logic. But the courts accept it too.
The lie in the case of the Talaq Triple Law was visible on its surface. But even progressives came to this government advocating for this law. Muslim men who left their wives without due process, that is, using instant triple talaq, would be imprisoned. What about non-Muslim husbands who abandon their wives without due process? Why are they not afraid of going to jail?
Therefore, Muslims have been placed in an unequal situation in India with all the agencies and laws set against them. Your rights as individuals and your rights as members of a religious community are constantly being restricted.
Lies and deceptions are being used to do this. But most of us call them anti-constitutional, anti-human and anti-Indian, but we cannot muster the courage to say that they are anti-Muslim and that the fact that these movements are anti-Muslim should be enough to fight them.
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