Second Indian state brings in ‘love jihad’ law

Protests against the love jihad law in Bangalore earlier this month

Credit: Jagadeesh Nv/Shutterstock

A second Indian state has introduced controversial ‘love jihad’ laws effectively criminalising weddings between Hindus and Muslims.

Under the new law in Himachal Pradesh, any resident forcing another to change religion before marriage will now face up to seven years in prison and have the union declared void.

Opponents of the law in India say the move in Himachal Pradesh is an attack on interfaith unions and India’s historic secularism by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

While no religions are named in the law, in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, the first place to implement the law, at least ten Muslim men are facing ten years in prison for allegedly forcing Hindu women to convert to Islam for marriage.

BJP-ruled Himachal Pradesh has the highest percentage of Hindus out of India’s 36 states and union territories at 95 percent.

Jai Ram Thakur, the state’s chief minister, said there had been a rise in conversions for marriage, but did not provide examples. 

"It has been observed that there is a rise in conversions by fraudulent means and unless checked well in time, this practice may erode the confidence and mutual trust between the different ethnic and religious groups," he said. 

In Uttar Pradesh, Muslim men say they have been subject to torture in custody while a Sunday Telegraph investigation found one woman who had been detained had undergone a miscarriage while in detention, allegedly after being given injections of abortion-causing drugs against her will.

Similar complaints against Hindu men have been ignored by the police.

The BJP has been accused of implementing a succession of Islamophobic policies since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected with a landslide victory in 2019.

Leading BJP politicians have repeatedly claimed that Muslim men are trying to convert Hindu women to Islam, as part of a plot to enact demographic change. This is despite the Indian Government admitting in February it had not found one case of so-called ‘love jihad’ nationwide. Muslims make up just 14 percent of the Indian population.