Taking the sting out of ‘love jihad’ law

The Gujarat High Court’s order staying some sections of the state’s new anti-‘love jihad’ law is a setback to the state government. It would also serve as a cautionary note to other governments that have instituted such a law or are planning to do so. The Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2021, was notified by the government in June. The law is a more stringent version of one that already existed and it was enacted in a hurry. An anti-‘love jihad’ law has been in force in the state since 2003. The government introduced some clauses in it through amendments which in effect treated an inter-faith marriage as involving forced religious conversion and thus as a criminal offence, unless permission was sought from a competent authority for that. Since such permission would be difficult to get and a request for it would be used to put pressure on the intending couple to refrain from marriage, any inter-faith marriage becomes impossible.

The court said that some sections of the law would not operate “merely because the marriage is solemnised by a person of one religion with (a person of) another religion without force, allurement or fraudulent means, and such marriages cannot be termed as marriage for the purpose of unlawful conversion”. The court also noted that the government tried to shift the burden of proof on the accused. After an FIR is filed, the accused would be taken to jail and has to prove that the marriage did not take place by coercion. Any relative of the victim could file a complaint, too. It is clear from these provisions that the aim of the law was to prevent inter-faith marriages from taking place, to criminalise them, and to show up the male of the minority faith as the villain who seduced girls and did harm to the Hindu faith.

The court has done well to order a stay which it thought was necessary to “protect the parties solemnised in an inter-faith marriage from being unnecessarily harassed”. During the hearings, the court made it clear that marriage is a matter of personal choice, and probed the government on its view on the matter. Religion should not be a barrier for love and marriage. Laws that constrain inter-faith marriages in many ways are generally driven by politics, and they do not respect the personal freedoms granted by the Constitution. There is no credible evidence to prove the claims made by Hindutva groups about ‘love jihad’. Governments should actually be encouraging inter-faith and inter-caste marriages to promote the spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness in society.