'Love jihad' becomes BJP poll plank in Uttar Pradesh

Ahead of Assembly byelections in some districts in western Uttar Pradesh, BJP leaders seem to be unrestrained in cashing in on the issue of “love jihad” to garner people’s votes.

Leaders have raked up the issue of inter-religion marriages against the backdrop of alleged incidents of “love jihad” wherein men from a particular community forcibly convert girls by luring them with the prospect of marriage.

Yogi Adityanath, one of the BJP’s star election campaigners and firebrand Gorakhpur MP, has denounced love “jihad” at almost all his public meetings in the poll-bound districts of the state.

In an apparent reference to forced marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men, he asserted that henceforth, no Jodhabhai would marry an Akbar. “We will not tolerate love jihad under any circumstances,” Adityanath said at a rally in Bijnore. BJP parliamentarian from Bijnore Kunwar Bhartendra Singh also spoke against the issue.

Controversial party legislator Sangeet Som, who was accused in last year’s Muzaffarnagar riots and recently granted Z-category security cover by the Centre, has called for a “mahapanchayat” to discuss the issue and cow slaughter. 

Reports of “love jihad” have come from various districts in the state, including Meerut, Bareilly, Faizabad and Muzaffarnagar. BJP leaders have alleged that such incidents are part of a well-planned conspiracy against the majority community by a religious minority. “They have been emboldened by the appeasement politics of the present dispensation in the state,” state BJP chief Laxmikant Bajpai claimed.

“‘Love jihad’ has become a big issue in the polls,” a senior Samajwadi Party leader conceded to Deccan Herald. He, however, alleged that the BJP was raking up the “non-issue” to “reap electoral benefits”.

SP leader and Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan had also used the Akbar-Jodhabhai analogy to talk about love “jihad”. However, he did not speak against inter-religion marriages. 
Khan said people of different faiths had married in the past and that it only strengthened communal harmony. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, meanwhile, had decried BJP’s absolutist stance on the issue. He said, “No one can put a ban on love.”