A Bill against conversion, a blow against freedom

A private decision made public — the politics of marriage in the age of Hindutva

Much before Maharashtra’s anti-conversion Bill was introduced in the Assembly, an interfaith couple living in Mumbai spoke of their unusual dilemma at a meeting of such couples. Despite being married for two years with their families’ approval, they were reluctant to register their marriage, lest slogan-shouting Hindutva vigilantes, tipped off by someone in the registrar’s office, descend on their housing colony, jeopardising their stay there. They even contemplated getting their marriage registered in a non-BJP state, but that would have involved shifting there for months.

Life is only going to get more difficult for such couples in India’s most modern city, now that Maharashtra’s anti-conversion Bill has been passed. That’s precisely the aim of the Bill, as has been declared repeatedly by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Even where couples have opted for the Special Marriage Act (SMA), which entails a civil ceremony where no conversion or religious ritual takes place, women continue to be threatened by vigilantes, who access the couples’ contact details from the marriage registrar’s office or the SMA website, where they are displayed for the duration of the mandatory notice period under the SMA.

It is this dangerous provision under the SMA that has made many interfaith couples opt for a quick and discreet religious marriage, which involves conversion. However, since 2021, BJP-ruled states have made that impossible by enacting anti-conversion laws in which the collector needs to be informed in advance of any intended conversion. The Maharashtra Bill has made such marriages even riskier: the names of those wanting to convert will be displayed in the collector’s office so that anyone can object. A private decision has, thus, been made open not only to State approval, but also to public approval.

This provision of informing a government authority in advance of one’s intention to convert has been stayed by the high courts in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat as violative of the rights to privacy and freedom of religion. In Uttar Pradesh, courts have directed registrars to register marriages even when no such intimation has been given. In fact, a similar provision was struck down in 2012 by the Himachal Pradesh High Court, which asserted: “The State has no right to ask a person to disclose what is his personal belief.”

That, however, didn’t prevent BJP governments from incorporating the very same provision in their anti-conversion laws, for, whatever the Constitution and the courts may hold, in their worldview, neither marriage nor conversion is a personal decision. Both involve choice, and for conservatives of any faith, anyone, especially young people, exercising an independent choice that goes against the norm, is a threat to society. Daughters, particularly, cannot be allowed to exercise choice as they are seen as repositories of family ‘honour’ in the Asian subcontinent. It is telling that under this Maharashtra law, ‘women’ have been grouped with ‘minors, SC/ST members and those of unsound mind’ to form the group whose conversion would attract higher fines.

So, instead of ‘honour killings’ that take place after a woman marries a man of her choice, in BJP-ruled states, collectors, and under Maharashtra’s law, any member of the public can prevent such marriages from taking place.

It was a public campaign that led to this Maharashtra law, not any increase in forced/fraudulent conversions. But this was an influential section of the public: Hindutva organisations, linked to, and backed by the ruling BJP. Significantly, the case that sparked off the demand for such a law didn’t fit the stereotype of ‘love jihad’, i.e., a ‘misled’ Hindu girl ‘trapped’ into conversion. Neither had 27-year-old Shraddha Walkar, who was killed by her live-in Muslim partner in 2022, converted, nor was she held captive. In fact, she even came home with her partner after her mother died, only to go back with him. After she refused to heed her father’s pleas to come back, he stopped communicating with her.

But such contradictions have never deterred those for whom a Hindu girl marrying a Muslim is a ‘religious defeat’ — and these include sections of the media which made Shraddha Walkar a symbol of ‘love jihad’. Indeed, despite Walkar’s obvious choice to continue living with an abusive partner, the Fadnavis government set up a panel after her murder to ‘monitor’ interfaith marriages. What that panel unearthed is not known, but another committee, headed by the state’s DGP, decided that an anti-conversion law was needed.

Ironically, only last year, the police was forced to protect interfaith couples in safe houses set up by the Maharashtra government on orders of the Bombay High Court.

Evidently, despite the restrictive measures aimed at stopping the most natural phenomenon, love still keeps happening across religious boundaries, even in BJP-ruled states. Hopefully, Maharashtra will not be an exception.

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)