Thread by @ahmermkhan

How Hindu extremists are carrying out violent attacks to stop interfaith relationships with Muslims in India.
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w/ @HannahEP, @kyrievangelou, @katielambornyes & @SartajAlamIndia.

“I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, my son’s image is always with me.”
@HannahEP & I report from Karnataka and New Delhi: theguardian.com/world/2022/jan…

Outtakes from our film.

Arbaaz Mullah, a 24-year-old Muslim man from Karnataka, was killed in September – allegedly for falling in love with a Hindu girl.

In India, interfaith marriages have always carried a social stigma & faced resistance by all faiths as they often require religious conversion.

But, in recent years, since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power, such unions – particularly between Hindu women and Muslim men – have become a dangerous political flashpoint due to a discredited but pervasive conspiracy theory known as “love jihad”.

According to India’s national investigation agency, there is no evidence for “love jihad”, nor is it reflected in India’s population data, where Hindus continue to make up about 80% and Muslims 14%.

In Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh which has had the highest number of love jihad arrests since the new law was passed, Ashu Agarwal, 52, a local leader of one of the most active rightwing Hindu groups, Vishva Hindu Parishad, claimed families approached them “day in, day out”…

…for help in preventing interfaith marriages and love jihad cases.

“For the last 50 years, we have known about love jihad but we weren’t able to express ourselves and the issue was swept under the carpet,” said Agarwal.

Ramakant Konduskar, the founder and leader of Shri Ram Sena Hindustan, denied any involvement of his organisation in the killing.

“Those who were arrested were doing great work for Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] and that’s how they got trapped in this case,” he said.

Karnataka is one of the states also proposing to bring in a “love jihad” law, but, in the interim, rightwing Hindu groups have been active themselves.

It was one such group, Shri Ram Sena Hindustan, that got wind of the relationship between Mullah, a Muslim, and Shweta Kumbhar, a Hindu, in the city of Belgaum.

Mullah’s mother, Nazima Shaikh, tried desperately to intervene. “I told him to stay away from the girl, that it was dangerous,” she said. When he refused, Shaikh moved the family to a new house.

Shaikh said she would fight for justice for her son until her last breath.

“How are there such hard-hearted people in this world? He didn’t do any wrong to anyone and yet they cut him into pieces,” she wept.

“I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, my son’s image is always with me.”

Ashu Agarwal of VHP pointed to a recent case of an alleged internationally funded “love jihad syndicate” in Bareilly, led by a local Muslim man, Syed Nizam.

But Nizam’s family said the case was trumped up & being used to punish him for getting involved with an older Hindu woman.

Nizam was allegedly kidnapped and beaten by the woman’s relatives, then handed over to the police, beaten in jail until he made a video confession that he was accepting money from abroad to rape and convert Hindu women.

Nizam has now been behind bars for more than five months.

“He was a father of three and was [not] involved in conversions, he wasn’t even very religious. This is a false case but we are Muslim, we can’t do anything,” said his mother, Latifan Begum.