Kerala to provide safe homes for interfaith couples
TRIVANDRUM: Kerala is setting up “safe homes” for interfaith couples amid growing intolerance fuelled by hardliners.
KK Shylaja, the state’s health and social justice minister, said these homes would shelter newly-wed couples up to a year.
“We will set up the homes with the help of nongovernment organisations,” she told the Kerala state assembly on Wednesday.
Those who earn less than Rs100,000 a year will also get Rs30,000 to find self-employment. If one of them is a Dalit, they will get Rs75,000.
The state has also included the interfaith couples who are government staff on the priority list for transfer of their choice.
The interfaith couples not only face ostracisation by their families and communities in some cases they also face persecution using the police.
Recently, a couple was at the receiving end when the National Commission for Minorities sought a report from the state police alleging “love Jihad” by the groom.
The girl from Kerala living in Delhi married a Muslim boy and is now living abroad after embracing Islam.
It created a hue and cry as the powerful Syro-malabar Church alleged that Christian girls were soft targets of hardliners who marry them and convert.
Following this, many priests and laymen under the same denomination came out against the church leadership against the “blatantly communal” propaganda.
Later, the junior home minister G Krishna Reddy told the Indian Parliament that there was nothing called “love jihad” in India.
In 2016, two Christian girls, one of them married to a Christian convert and another to a Muslim, had allegedly joined the Daesh fighters in Afghanistan.
It strengthened the propaganda that radical elements were trapping girls of other faith in marriage and indoctrinating them.
Even before that, in 2010, there were attempts by Hindu hardliners to brand interfaith marriages involving Muslims as “love jihad,” prompting people to view them with suspicion.
In 2012, Kerala police informed the high court, which sought a report on such interfaith marriages, that the allegations were baseless.
However, the interfaith couples continued to be soft targets of hardliners and parents not willing their children, embracing the faith of their spouses.
India, land of several castes and religious communities, languages and cultures, officially does not discourage interfaith marriages.
The government provides an incentive of Rs250,000 to an inter-caste couple if one of them is a Dalit, provided they register the marriage under the Hindu Marriages Act.