[Watch/Read] Operation Juliet: The Fabrication Of Love Jihad Concept

News Source: Cobrapost | Image Source: Siasat

Operation Juliet is the name given to the sting operation carried on by Cobrapost over a year to ascertain the meaning, nature and modus operandi of people involved against Love Jihad. But before we come to the sting operation itself, it is essential to know clearly what the term “Love Jihad” itself means and how politically charged its history in India is. We are sure that The Logical Indian community readers must have heard of it time and again at least since 2009.

To put it in a nutshell, Love Jihad refers to alleged wooing of young girls belonging to non-Muslim communities by young Muslim boys and men, feigning love, and ultimately converting those girls to Islam through marriage under Muslim laws. It has been claimed that it is an organized tool of conversion of girls and women from one religion to another through emotional appeal.
The term rose to prominence in 2009 when it was claimed that a large number of conversions were going on in Kerala and Mangalore. Soon the concept stormed the entire nation and even spread beyond the political boundaries of India, spilling over to Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Although Muslim organizations in India have denied these allegations, many Hindu, Sikh and Christian organizations have been concerned about this concept. In fact, many organizations have put their heads together to counter this perceived concept.

2010: Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan claimed that conversion of non-Mulsim girls to Islam was an attempt to make Kerala a Muslim majority state. When the PFI dismissed these allegations due to findings of police, BJP Mahila Morcha demanded an NIA investigation rubbishing the probe by PFI. The Congress clamped down on the comments by the CM as dangerous.

2011: In December, Mallika Prasad of BJP asserted in the Karnataka legislative assembly that 69 of 84 Hindu girls who had gone missing and then recovered had admitted that they were “lured by Muslim youths” professing love. The debate remained indecisive since some members of the legislative assembly favoured government intervention while some Congress members declared that it would spell the doom of communal harmony in the district. However, outside the assembly, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader opined that police was afraid to take action against the Love Jihadis.

2014: The controversy took a violent turn when BJP MP Yogi Adityanath claimed that Love Jihad was “an international conspiracy targeting India” although the moderate Indians considered it an absurd theory. Akhil Bharitiya Vaishya Ekta Parishad of Uttar Pradesh decided to restrict the use of mobile phones by women to avoid contact with Muslim men. This was regarded as an infringement of freedom of choice of women by feminist voices. Why is there no respect for the choice of girls and women in love or marriage?

The same year (October) a Hindu woman from Meerut who had declared that she was gang-raped and forcibly converted to Islam, confessed to the police that she had received threats from her family and in a written statement admitted that she had eloped with the Muslim man willingly and was not raped or forcibly converted.

2015: Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad even declared that the marriage of actress Kareena Kapoor to actor Saif Ali Khan was an instance of Love Jihad. Kareena Kapoor’s face was shown as half-covered with burqa while the other half had bindi and sindoor on it.
In fact, there started a “suddhikaran” (purification) programme in those districts in West Bengal which had BJP stronghold. The campaign entitled “Bahu lao, Beti bachao” (bring a daughter-in-law, save a daughter) was aimed at converting Muslim women who married Hindu men by offering protection to them. This was the answer of the Hindu right wing groups to Love Jihad.
Till now it was assumed that BJP was involved in the campaign against Love Jihad based on the inflammatory speeches given by the BJP leaders before crowds and the riots that they were a party to. However, Operation Juliet, the sting operation conducted by Cobrapost and gulail reveals categorically the entire organized campaign against Muslim youths, the people involved in it and the convoluted ideology that acts as the driving force.

Watch the video to see for yourself how there has been a collusion between Sangh Parivar, Bhartiya Janta Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the police and lawyers who have abducted couples who indulged in inter-religion marriages, tortured the Muslim men and coerced the Hindu girls to confess that their sexual relation with Muslim partners of their choice was not consensual but rapes. Methods involved vary from cajoling to threat to beating the Hindu girls, while the Muslim partners are thrashed and Hindu men are incited to protect the “honour” of their Hindu women, the “honour” based on patriarchal Manusmriti which gives no voice or choice to Hindu women.

Three people didn’t take her away by force… Girls are girls…it has been said about them that they will change according to circumstances in five minutes…when she was slapped and coerced, she wrote the FIR (that we wanted).”
– Sanjay Rana, BJP MLA from Thana Bhawan

“When we used to go out to kill Muslims, we roamed for entire nights, and if we came back empty-handed and without having killed anyone, then I felt very weird…and when we killed any Muslim, there used to be celebration, like one was very happy from within.”
–Shiv Kumar, who broke away from the Sangh Parivar because he felt that BJP was not fanatic enough, and founded his own Krishna Sena.

“If the BJP hadn’t supported, then his life would have been ruined.”
– Sanjay Rana.