· The city came close to a riot last
fortnight over a Muslim boy marrying a Sindhi-Hindu
girl.
· The Bajrang Dal has formed a Hindu
Kanya Suraksha Committee.
· The Sindhi panchayat wanted their girls
to stop using mobiles or riding two-wheelers
and to abandon the city's fashion of covering
their heads and faces Islamic style.
· The state CID keeps tabs on all Hindu-Muslim
marriages.
· According to one list distributed by
the Bajrang Dal, 341 such marriages have taken
place between 1997-2004.
· Families of Muslim boys who run away
with Hindu girls are harassed by the police.
· The Muslim community has responded
to the latest uproar with a dignified silence.
· ***
Are Hindu-Muslim marriages made in heaven too?
Perhaps, but if you happen to be in Bhopal,
capital city of Madhya Pradesh, that saccharine-sweet
cliche is swiftly turned sour by a vicious form
of saffron vigilantism. Hindutva's brigadiers
unleash mayhem on the streets each time such
a marriage takes place, the state cid keeps
a list of such couples, and the parivar's propaganda
machine spews uninterrupted venom about predatory
Muslim men luring innocent Hindu maidens.
Over the last one month, the state home department
has recorded six inter-religious marriages in
Madhya Pradesh, three each in Indore and Bhopal.
But while the Indore marriages provoked no stir,
Bhopal came close to a riot on April 14 over
the issue. Of the three Bhopal couples, one
Neetu and Rehan quietly returned to their respective
homes after they were tracked down. Since they
claimed they had got married already, their
families are now believed to be thrashing out
the details. One couple is yet to be traced.
It is, however, the elopement of Priyanka Wadhwani,
a girl from a wealthy Sindhi family, and Umar,
also from a leading Muslim family in Bhopal,
that triggered the biggest storm in the city.
Incensed, the Sindhi community convened a panchayat.
Much deliberation later, the elders concluded
that it was mobile phones and two-wheelers that
were leading their daughters astray and perhaps
a curb was required on these. A "distinctly
Islamic" influence was also discerned in
the practice of Bhopal girls covering their
heads while riding. "They say
they do it to protect themselves from heat and
dust," said Madhu Chandwani, general secretary
of the Sindhi panchayat. "But it's clearly
a fashion picked up from some Muslim girls.
We Sindhis left Pakistan to protect our daughters,
and here in India they are moving around with
their heads covered."
The girls, however, did not take kindly to
the panchayat's diktat and took out a procession.
Sindhis in Indore too expressed reservations.
Confronted with all the opposition, the panchayat
backtracked and said these were just views and
not a firman on the community.
As for Priyanka and Umar, they are in hiding
in Mumbai and are said to have contacted activist
Teesta Setalvad. Umar's family thinks it would
be foolish for them to return as Umar could
be attacked or even thrown into jail in bjp-ruled
Madhya Pradesh. Never mind if the court has
ordered that the couple be given protection.
Priyanka and Umar's troubles have been compounded
by the fact that Priyanka's family has close
links with the parivar. Outlook met her uncle
Lajpat Rai Wadhwani in the company of known
parivar activist Bhagwandas Sabnani, who is
also said to be a close aide of Uma Bharati.
Uncle Wadhwani was categorical that "Priyanka
is dead for us". More vocal was Sabnani
who was not only instrumental in organising
the panchayat but was also behind the creation
of the Hindu Kanya Suraksha Samiti, another
parivar front organisation that will largely
be run by the Bajrang Dal. Love doesn't enter
into the picture for Sabnani; it's all part
of a larger conspiracy to convert Hindus to
Islam. He outlines the diabolical design Muslim
boys perpetrate: wear tilaks to disguise themselves
as Hindus and hang around girls colleges; threaten
and force the girl to run away with them and
then abandon them since they can marry many
times.
Bhopal girls cover their heads against the
dust, but for Sindhis it's Islamic That both
Umar and Rehan have converted to Hinduism is
not enough to wash their sins. "It's meaningless,"
says Sabnani. "Done under pressure."
With the families of both boys under attack
in Bhopal, the Hindu conversion could indeed
have been a tactical move. For Sabnani, there
is no doubt: "In no time, they will reconvert."
The most sensible thing for the couple to have
done was to marry under the Special Marriages
Act, but it's a long bureaucratic process that
requires a month's notice during which anyone
can object to the proposed marriage.
Incidentally, of Umar's eight brothers, the
eldest too is married to a Hindu, Aparajita
Sharma, daughter of a police DG and an IAS officer
herself. Reports in the media said the second
daughter-in-law too was a Hindu but she is in
fact Muslim, and goes by the name of Zeba. The
rest of the brothers are unmarried. When Umar
disappeared with Priyanka, it was Zeba's husband
and Umar's brother who was picked up by the
police and questioned repeatedly for five days.
All their connections and wealth can't stop
Umar's family from feeling nervous, enough for
them to refuse being photographed or be directly
quoted. They say people who tried to help them
were asked to lay off by the highest authorities
in the state. The police would land up at their
house at odd hours and without warrants. Umar's
conversion is hardly an issue for them. As a
family member says, "He is a 22-year- old
child. We are worried only about his security
and health." Currently the family has round-the-clock
police protection.
Hardly surprising, as many think that the state
government would have allowed a riot had the
regime in Delhi been friendly. But as Sajid
Ali, a senior lawyer and Congressman, says,
"We recently complained to the minority
commission in Delhi how there have been 112
incidents of communal tension since the BJP
came to power." Ultimately, the BJP dispensation
decided to back off and told its Bajrang Dal/VHP
cadres not to agitate further. Even the devout
doubted the intentions of the agitators. The
general secretary of the All India Sindhi Sadhu
Samaj, Mahant Baba Ramdas Udaseen, told Outlook:
"Social outrage is not surprising in such
cases. But these days such issues are also highlighted
for the political agenda of dividing communities."
And no one did it better than the parivar outfits
in Bhopal. They made political capital out of
the state's practice of tabulating such marriages,
something it has no business doing. The Bajrang
Dal went to town distributing an 'official'
list of 341 Hindu-Muslim marriages in Bhopal
between 1997 and 2004. Hardly an alarming figure
but enough to reinforce parivar lore of venal
Muslim characters pursuing innocent Hindu damsels.
Some years ago, VHP leader Acharya Giriraj Kishore
had gone on record to tell this correspondent:
"There is a physical reason Muslims can
seduce Hindu girls. They give them more sharirik
anand (physical pleasure) because they have
a surgery, Hindus don't." In Kishore's
view, circumcision is the Muslim's secret weapon.
In the face of such seductive logic, can reason
have a chance?
Surat's Hindu-Muslim couple thought TV could
save them...alas Like all love sagas played
out on prime-time news, the Khushi-Kadir story
that hit the headlines last week has several
layers of suggestive references, innuendos and
communal overtones. Already, the VHP in Surat,
from where the couple hail, has announced a
'survey' to identify all daily-wage labourers
to create a database of names and antecedents
because "outsiders are...luring away Hindu
girls". Many workers in the diamond polishing
units etc hail from outside the loom town (read
Muslim/Bangladeshi).
In communally polarised Surat, Khushi Agrawal
and Abdul Kadir Khan Nalband alias Kadir couldn't
have expected otherwise. Perhaps, theirs was
true love. Now, it doesn't matter. Kadir is
in a dingy police lock- up, facing kidnapping
and rape charges filed by Khushi's father. Khushi
was taken to a home for the destitute and homeless
to protect her from her parents and the powerful
Agrawal community before she was produced in
a Surat court.
Neither Kadir or Khushi would have anticipated
this outcome when they fled Surat last week
on a scooter and walked into the Star News office
in Mumbai, hoping to get a national airing for
their cause. For the twentysomething Kadir who
worked in a webworld outlet and the 15-year-
old (some say 16) Khushi, in love for three
years and facing hostility, eloping backed by
a news channel couldn't but work out.0
"It was a difficult decision but they
threatened suicide. If they went back, we knew
they'd be hammered. So, we decided to air their
story," said Milind Khandekar of Star News.
There was always the TRP potential. But even
as the Kadir-Khushi story played out from the
studios, the channel informed Mumbai police
officials who picked up the lovers and contacted
their Surat counterparts as well as both sets
of parents. Khushi's minor status sealed their
fate. But the ramifications had begun. An angry
Agrawal community alleged that their young girls
were being lured away by Muslim boys; heated
debates raged all the way in Mumbai's suburban
local trains. The VHP set out on the 'survey'
even as the Surat police chief warned action
against those conducting it. Prominent Muslim
organisations, rather than defend their young
men, urged them in politically correct tones
"to refrain from indulging in such acts
that bring the whole community to shame and
cause friction with other communities".
Hooligans calling themselves the Hindu Rashtra
Sena viciously attacked the Star News office,
smashing their way in, damaging property and
injuring staff. The attack cannot be condemned
enough; Mumbai police is set to take "strictest
action" with deputy CM R.R. Patil tracking
the progress. Not all inter-religious lovers
end in a rainbow finish, despite national TV.
