ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS IS NOT COINCIDENTAL

INTERFAITH ROMANCE FICTION IN THE ERA OF LOVE JIHAD

- MAYA PALIT

“THE NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY (NIA) has also submitted to the Supreme Court of India that this phenomenon of Hindu girls getting converted to Islam is part of the conversion plot. ... They have been divinely ordered to a. Fight nonbelievers overtly or covertly b. Abduct their women c. Either marry them in 2/3/4 numbers. Or keep them as sex-slaves and enjoy as long as you want e. Marry the one you want f. Sell the one that you no more want.”

“Muslims are opening multiple mehendi shops. Women are getting mehendi applied by Muslim youths at these shops. This is wrong. They have other intentions—love jihad.”

“It’s not Love Jehad. It’s Sex Jehad. Sadly too many Hindu, Christian, Sikh girls fall for sexual prowess of these trained stud bulls and mistake it for love.”

The first of these quotes is from a work of fiction. The second is a claim made by Vikram Saini, then a Bharatiya Janata Party state legislator, and the third is a since deleted post on X, by Madhu Kishwar, an activist and commentator. The fiction might sound less crazed than the stuff circulating in the public domain, but all three reveal a perverse, anxious imagination, underscoring how the love jihad conspiracy has been galvanised to fuel rabid, dehumanising vitriol against Muslims. It undermines individual agency and perceives interfaith relations as part of a wider national threat, as well as betraying a deep inferiority complex. The construction of Muslims as a seductive Other also assumes that Hindu women (though Kishwar thoughtfully broadened her ambit of concern to other faiths) are naïve morons in need of saving.