Consider This from NPR - India's 'Love Jihad' Laws Make Marriage Difficult For Interfaith Couples

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

In India, where arranged marriages are the norm, people typically marry within their religion or caste. But occasionally, some find love on their own and end up with a partner of a different faith. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. Mohammed Shamim and Simran Sagar live in India, and they've been waiting to get married for years. Oh, here they are. Okay. They're coming out of the gate of the magistrate's office. NPR correspondent Lauren Frayer met them last winter when they thought their special day had finally come. Oh, you can't tell if they're smiling or not because they're wearing masks. Are you smiling?

Shamim was not smiling as he walked out of a Delhi courthouse last winter because the wedding didn't happen. You see, Shamim is Muslim and his fiancée Simran is Hindu. People look at us with hatred. Like, why is that good Hindu girl dating a Muslim? The couple met at a test prep center in their hometown. Shamim was 21 and Simran was 18. We're from a small town. It's conservative. People talk. So we used to have to go on dates secretly. Simran would cover her face with a scarf. They dated in secret for four years.

The plan was to graduate college, get good jobs, and then win their parents' acceptance. It was a solid plan until... Big breaking news. The state cabinet has plan until... Big break in years. The state cabinet has approved a bill against love jihad. Love jihad. That is the term Hindu conservatives use to accuse Muslims of forcing Hindu women to convert to Islam. Love jihad laws have been passed in several Indian states.

They prohibit a bride or groom from converting to his or her fiancé's religion. The idea is to stop forced conversions. I felt like the ground shifted beneath my feet. Days after Shamim and Simran's state, Uttar Pradesh, passed the law, police started to break up weddings. At times, Muslim men were even arrested. Shamim was scared. I thought I'd lose Simran.

Neither of us was thinking of converting religions. But I just knew this law would fuel hatred and intolerance. So they packed their bags and they ran. I switched off my phone and didn't turn it on again until our bus reached Delhi. I had messages from my parents crying, begging me to come back. They never thought I'd do something like this. Consider this. In a country where arranged marriages are the norm, any love marriage can be controversial. But for couples of different faiths,

those marriages can mean becoming outcasts or worse. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Tuesday, September 14th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Let's get back to Mohammed Shamim and Simran Sagar. They fled 200 miles from their hometown in Uttar Pradesh after the Love Jihad law was passed in their state. The couple's first home together was a safe house in Delhi, a cement room with a hot plate in an old army barracks run by the local government to protect interfaith couples.

Was this an army barracks? A police officer guarded the couple's apartment while the two of them spent their days doing marriage paperwork. Now, India does allow interfaith couples to marry, but they've got to get past a couple of hurdles. Establish residency, then there's a waiting period, and during that time, anyone is allowed to object. So if their families or their neighbors don't approve of the marriage... They can't get married there, so they have to move to another state. Asif Iqbal runs an NGO that is helping Simran and Shamim and about a thousand other couples annually with safety issues and paperwork. Iqbal says interfaith marriage is just what happens as India develops and women join the workforce. Technology allows young people to connect

and fall in love. Before there was some kind of space for such couples, but after this act, the police is against it. Even those who are supporting them or helping them, the friends, they are also keeping away from the marriage. They don't want to be witness because they are scared. Because of the love jihad laws, some city clerks refuse to carry out their duties. Some will even leak couples' names and addresses to extremist groups. Shamim and Simran just want to get married. Simran says it shouldn't be this hard. This is Simran singing a love song as she makes tea for her hopefully soon-to-be husband. That was back in March. Six months later, a lot has changed.

Shamim landed an engineering job, and Simran is studying to be a police officer. And yes, they are finally married, no longer living in a safe house. The couple has moved back to their hometown, where their parents accept their marriage. While this couple was able to work things out, people in India are still trying to prevent interfaith marriages from taking place. NPR's India correspondent Lauren Frayer has been following this story. We're going to let her take it from here. Kanti Sharma's six-year-old son plays in the leafy street outside his house. Strolling the quiet streets, Sharma explains why he chose this suburb to raise his family. There's no traffic here. It's safe. It's a mixed neighborhood.

He means Hindu families and Muslim families. But we all get along, he says. That is, until last fall, when his Hindu neighbors invited him to their daughter's wedding to a Muslim man. Why can't the guy find a Muslim wife? I personally think interfaith marriage is wrong. It just leads to problems. Of course, I had no grounds on which to object to this particular wedding until they passed that law. A week before the wedding, his state, Uttar Pradesh, passed a law against so-called love jihad. That's a term Hindu conservatives use when Muslim men marry Hindu women and convert them to Islam. Sharma wasn't sure whether his neighbor's wedding

involved any religious conversion. But just in case, he says he felt a civic duty to alert the police. At first, the police refused to do anything. They said the bride and groom were adults. If their families are okay with the marriage, why are you objecting? I told them, I just want to make sure the law is followed. It's for the welfare of my community. Unsatisfied with the police's initial response, Sharma took his complaint elsewhere. To the Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu supremacist group that's been linked to attacks on minority Muslims.

Hinduism is ancient, the Mahasabha's local leader Pankaj Tiwari told me in an interview in his office, which is lined with pictures of Hindu idols. Originally, everyone in India was Hindu, he said. But over the centuries, people converted to other religions, and now we have to return to our roots, he said. He says his group keeps a national database of interfaith couples to try to stop them from marrying. We have informants in every neighborhood, another official, Mukesh Mani Mishra, explains,

and we pressure the police to halt the weddings. Staff crowd around to show me cell phone photos of the couples they've broken up. Like this, 3 December. So this is in December, couple. They used slurs to refer to Muslims. This is a fringe group, but its members say they feel emboldened with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalists in power. So when Sharma complained to them about an interfaith wedding in his neighborhood,

the Mahasabha used their influence and say they forced police to act. Police arrived at the bride's house hours before the wedding last December and halted the preparations. NPR confirmed this with the bride's family, who were too scared to go on tape. Months later, the couple remained unmarried. The bride's father told us her life is ruined. At the local police station, I asked officials why they halted this marriage. The families deny wrongdoing. Did police find evidence to the contrary? Who was the inspector who responded that day? But I was told that every officer involved that day

has since been transferred. No one would talk. Police deny cooperating with any extremist group. Back in Sharma's mixed neighborhood, bells ring at a Hindu temple not far from a mosque. Sharma strolls past the house of the neighbors whose wedding he broke up. When we pass in the street, we no longer say hello, Sharma explains. But he has no regrets.

He's been getting more and more involved in Hindu nationalist politics. And he says lots of other neighbors, Hindus, congratulated him for what he did. That's NPR's India correspondent Lauren Frayer. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.