Interfaith romance is risk amid India’s Hindu nationalist surge
BELAGAVI, INDIA» Arbaz Mullah’s love story began, as romances often do, when he first laid eyes on the woman of his dreams, Shweta Kumbhar.
Over nearly three years, their courtship in many ways resembled that of any other couple: They went on dates and to movies, snapped selfies, frequented public parks, made each other promises to get married. But those secret vows would never be fulfilled.
The romance so angered relatives of Kumbhar, a Hindu, that they allegedly hired members of a hard-line Hindu nationalist group to kill the 24-year-old Mullah, who was Muslim.
They did exactly that, according to police. On Sept. 28, his bloodied and dismembered body was found on a stretch of railroad tracks.
While interfaith unions between Hindus and Muslims are rare in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, and other Hindu nationalists have forcefully decried what they call “love jihad.” The discredited conspiracy theory holds that supposedly predatory Muslim men deceive women to coerce them into changing their religion, with the ultimate aim of establishing domination in the majority-hindu nation.
The “love jihad” issue has pitted the BJP against secular activists who warn it undermines constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and puts Muslims in the crosshairs of hard-line Hindu nationalists, emboldened by a prime minister who has mostly stayed mum about rising attacks on Muslims since he was first elected in 2014.
“This conspiracy theory demonizes the Muslim as the other and creates victimhood and fears in the Hindus that India is going to be converted into a Muslim country,” said Mohan Rao, a retired professor of social sciences at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University who has researched interfaith marriages. “It’s absurd.”
Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a BJP spokesman, said the party has no objection in principle to interfaith marriages, which are legal, but suggested that concerns about “love jihad” are valid.
“BJP is not completely against interfaith marriages. Basically, it is an individual choice,” Agarwal said. “But to lure somebody through financial means, or some coercion, or some sort of motive to convert, that is not acceptable.”
India’s National Investigation Agency and some court rulings have rejected the “love jihad” theory as baseless. Census data show the country’s religious mix has been stable since 1951, and India remains predominantly Hindu with Muslims making up about 14% of its nearly 1.4 billion people.
Nonetheless, rights groups say violence against interfaith couples has increased in recent years, perpetrated by hard-line Hindu
nationalists out to stop such relationships. Hundreds of Muslim men have been assaulted, and many couples have been forced to go into hiding. Some have been killed.
It was against that backdrop of fear that Mullah and Kumbhar began dating in 2018 in the city of Belagavi, in the southern state of Karnataka.
They hit it off instantly. But soon their conservative neighborhood was abuzz with gossip about a romance between a Hindu woman and Muslim man.
Mullah’s mother, Nazima Shaikh, was worried. She was all too familiar with the frequent news stories about interfaith couples being targeted in Karnataka, which is governed by Modi’s party.
“I was unsettled because I knew how it could end,” Shaikh said.
She tried to persuade Mullah to end the relationship, but he refused. Their love was too great, and he was determined.
Meanwhile, Kumbhar’s family was aghast. Shaikh said she appealed to them to give the relationship their blessing but was told that “they will kill or get killed but won’t let their daughter marry my son.”
Soon, Mullah began receiving threatening calls. First they came from Kumbhar’s family, then from members of the hard-line Hindu nationalist group Sri Ram Sena Hindustan, or Lord Ram’s Army in India. They demanded money and for Mullah to break
up with Kumbhar.
Kumbhar’s parents also sought to stop her from seeing him, so the couple began meeting clandestinely in faraway towns and in fields in the countryside, according to friends.
When the threats grew, Mullah reluctantly agreed to end the relationship after being told it would mean he would no longer be bothered. But the couple continued to correspond in secret — and her family was incensed when they found out. It wasn’t long before he was summoned to meet again with the members of Sri Ram Sena Hindustan.
Late that night, the phone rang at Shaikh’s home.
“Life would never be the same,” she said.
Investigators say that at the meeting, Sri Ram Sena Hindustan members bludgeoned Mullah with clubs and decapitated him using a knife. They then allegedly placed his body on the railroad tracks to try to make it look like he died when a train ran over him.
Ten people were soon arrested, though formal charges have yet to be brought. They include Kumbhar’s parents, who according to senior investigator Laxman Nimbargi have confessed to paying the killers.
The Associated Press was unable to speak with Kumbhar. After a brief time in police custody, she is now staying with relatives who declined to make her available or even say where she is.
Sri Ram Sena Hindustan denied that its members killed Mullah and said the group is being targeted for “working for the benefit of Hindus.”
Its leader, Ramakant Konduskar, who calls himself a foot soldier in the battle to save Hinduism, said he is not against any religion but people should marry within their own. He considers “love jihad” a threat to society.
“Our Hindu culture is thousands of years old,” he said, “and we should preserve it and value it.”
A 2020 Pew Research Center study found that roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent their own from marrying outside the faith. An even larger share of Muslims, nearly 80%, said they favored preventing interreligious marriages.
Some jurisdictions governed by Modi’s party have begun trying to codify that sentiment into law.