Majoritarian politics has been on the rise over the last few decades in India. Amidst this dominating push, one of the issues constantly brought up by the advocates of Hindutva ideology is that of love jihad. This self-explanatory surveillance slogan is not just deeply patriarchal but also infantilises the women it claims to protect.
Sameena Dalwai’s book, Love Jihad: A Feminist Retelling, uses her own experience as a child in an interfaith family to reverse the lens and reclaim the space long occupied by men to push extremist ideas. Dalwai writes, “We create innocent, violent men and blameworthy battered women. Against this brutal patriarchy, I view the love jihad trope. The first segment of this propaganda are the gullible Hindu women who are lured by Muslim men. If Muslim men did not do this, the Hindu women would continue to live glorious lives—so the propaganda goes.”
The book is a sociological take on the issue of love jihad. Divided into three sections, it explores the deliberate demonising of Muslim men, a primary factor that fuels love jihad. ‘Control’ and ‘terror’ are the two constant operatives that keep the propaganda going. It is the idea that a Hindu woman needs to be saved from the ‘demonic’ Muslim man. Using legal cases to explain how the majoritarian ideology has failed its women when it comes to equal rights and dignified living, Dalwai writes, “For Indian women crossing over the line, the Lakhshman Rekha, is a jihad. They must live out their lives within the space marked out for them, by a society severely prejudiced against them. Those boundaries are stifling and unfair, even cruel. However, they’re known by benign terms of family honour, community tradition and Indian culture. Patriarchy is a cunning system. It makes women carry their shackles like ornaments. Then any woman trying to disregard them can be seen as being rebellious, a jihadi.”
The book further discusses how politics spills into personal lives. Using personal accounts from her childhood, the author subverts the region vs. religion debate. She shares stories from her family, highlighting the fluidity of religious practices she experienced as a young adult. According to the author, it was the post-Babri demolition and 1993 Mumbai riots that made her aware of the religious dichotomy that surrounded her. Dalwai writes, “Being Muslim meant being the ‘other’ even in peaceful times.”
One of the most important segments in the book deals with the deliberate victimisation of Muslim women. Endless debates surrounding Muslim women revolve around burqa, triple talaq and polygamy. There’s little interest that liberal circles also show in Muslim women being ‘normal’. The non-existent narrative and the stereotype associated with all Muslim women are well tackled in the book. Dalwai writes, “Maybe it is easier to imagine Muslim women as scurrying around mutely in a burqa and not think of them as individuals when you are attacking their whole community? You can then believe that an attack on Muslims will in fact, liberate the women.”
Caste is another factor that forms an important part of the writing. It focuses on how making religious identities hyper visible leads to turning the issue of caste invisible. The book is an essential read because it provides a woman’s perspective on the issue of choice. Labelling and demonising the choices women make in public and personal spaces has been written about in great detail in the book. The book, however, is more academic in style and lacks the kind of storytelling that would have made it more interesting for younger readers.
