Interfaith love a risk amid India's Hindu nationalist surge

Nazima Shaikh, mother of Arbaz Mullah weeps as she speaks to the Associated Press at her home in Belagavi, India, Oct. 6, 2021. Arbaz Mullah was a Muslim man in love with a Hindu woman. But the romance so angered the woman’s family that — according to police — they hired members of a hard-line Hindu group to murder him. It's a grim illustration of the risks facing interfaith couples as Hindu nationalism surges in India.

Hindu women perform rituals as they participate in festivities of a religious occasion in Belagavi, India, Oct. 7, 2021. 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 favored preventing inter-religious marriages. The locked entrance of Shweta Kumbhar's home is decorated with flower garlands in Belagavi, India, Oct. 7, 2021.

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.

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. 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.She tried to persuade Mullah to end the relationship, but he refused. Their love was too great, and he was determined.

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.Investigators say that at the meeting, Sri Ram Sena Hindustan members bludgeoned Mullah with clubs and decapitated him using a knife.

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