The LAOT Team is delighted to bring our readers a book discussion on Dr. Sameena Dalwai’s latest book, Love Jihad: A Feminist Retelling. Over the next few weeks, we have invited scholars to review the book, which will be followed by a response to the same by Dr. Dalwai. To kick of the book discussion, Dr. Dalwai has provided a thematic summary of her book. We are extremely grateful to Dr. Dalwai for collaborating with us on this project.
Why this book?
This book started in October 2020 as an op-ed piece in Indian Express, written in response to the trolling of a Tanishq advertising campaign called Ekatvam, meaning oneness. The advertisement featured a Hindu daughter-in-law and her Muslim mother-in-law celebrating a baby shower and was intended to celebrate the coming together of different traditions under a single roof. However, it faced severe criticism, and the outrage was so fierce that Tanishq eventually withdrew it. Unsettled by this I wrote about my own interfaith family: how my parents got married 50 years earlier, how they raised us on Socialist principles, and how we each forged our own paths. I wrote that short article in a single sitting, over the course of a couple of hours, and it generated massive interest. Strangers started sharing their own stories, and made me realise how uniquely Indian our mixed families are. I wanted to write a book that presented these fun stories of chaos and confusion, and the rich cultural heritage that such families create.
Why does the book not have reports on cases?
I did not want to tell the heartbreaking stories of interfaith couples, but the jubilant lives that they live together. The legal ramifications of the Love Jihad propaganda have been subject of extensive reportage and several books. Fine journalists and scholars have documented the arrests, the police cases, and the courtroom battles. I did not want to repeat the research that had already been conducted. Instead, I wanted to delve into the personal and reach the political, to tell the story of the nation through the tales of ordinary people. The personal, after all, has always been political, and nowhere is this truer than in the choices people make about whom to love and whom to make a home with. In the introduction, you will find everyday tales of interfaith families, which are both very common and very unique at the same time. For this purpose, I drew on my own family, along with my experiences as a student, activist, and lawyer. These real-life stories make the propaganda against interfaith marriages seem ridiculous. Placed beside an ordinary dinner table, the conspiracy simply collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
What is the main argument of the book?
There are 3 chapters in the book, pertaining to Hindu Women, Muslim Men and the Dalit Bahujan masses. Each identity has been chosen deliberately, because each one carries a burden that the Love Jihad narrative either exploits or erases. The Love Jihad discourse makes first two identities hyper-visible, with the assumption that gullible Hindu women are being seduced by conniving Muslim men for marriage and childbearing in order to increase the Muslim population. It is a powerful myth that denies women their intelligence and men their humanity in a single stroke. The chapter on Hindu women questions the glorious lives of women within their own families and society, without the interaction with the Muslim anti-hero. It traces their journey from birth to education, from labour to sexual attacks. From the sex ratio at birth and the fair wages they are denied, to the marriage market determining her value and marital rape forming an exception in law, the data points to the cruelty women face within a harsh patriarchy. The danger to her, in other words, is always inside the home, while outsiders are invented to blame. The next chapter shows that Muslims are currently a hunted minority in India. The cunning Muslim man of the propaganda is, as statistics show, being denied education, employment, housing in cities, and the right to protest. Systematic violence against Muslims has reached an alarming apex; lynching, riots, pogroms, random arrests, imprisonment, and police brutality together reveal a pattern of othering the largest minority in India. This chapter ends with a section, ‘Do Muslim women need saving?’, which argues that singular caricatures of oppressed Muslim women feed into the demonization of the Muslim community and fail to recognize the agency and struggles of women. To cast her forever as a victim in need of rescue is only another way of refusing to listen to what she wants. In addition, this chapter weaves in the idea that Indian Muslims are diverse communities, impossible to put into small boxes. To underline this point, I talk about my own extended family in the Konkan belt of Maharashtra. Their jokes, their food, and their coastal cadence of speech refuse every stereotype that seeks to contain them.
Why discuss Caste in a book on love jihad?
The third and final chapter deals with the elephant in the room, the caste system, that the Love Jihad trope seeks to erase or hide. To speak of love in India without speaking of caste is to describe a river while ignoring its source. By presenting only two visible identities, Hindu women and Muslim men, the right-wing discourses attempt to mask the existence and continued cruelty of the caste system. By focusing on the Muslim, casting him as the outsider villain, it tries to hide the fissures and hierarchies within the supposedly united Hindu front. This chapter considers the contemporary situation of Dalit Bahujans, pointing out the harassment they face in schools and universities, exploitation in the workplace and violence across the country. These are not relics of some distant past, but events reported in this very morning’s newspaper. It argues that control over labour and marriage are the two hinges on which the whole structure stands. ‘Honour crime’ can be seen as a precursor to ‘Love Jihad’ where the abhorred Dalit is now replaced by the feared Muslim.
What is feminist retelling?
The propaganda views women as numbers, wombs, or fodder for the family or country. Feminism puts women at the core of their own story. They are the heroines, and the world is viewed from their vantage point. The feminist retelling asks: how would women like to live their lives? What kind of society can we build around women’s choices and freedom? I think the feminist politics, by rejecting notions such as Love Jihad, shows us possibilities of love beyond borders and families without hierarchies. There may be interfaith families as well as LGBTQIA+ families, with adopted or biological children, with or without legalities of marriage. Women may choose to stay single or form communes with others without having to defend their lives to all and sundry. Feminist politics aims at freedom and compassion.
Who is the audience of this book? What do I hope to achieve with this book?
This book is written for the common reader, who is intelligent but confused due to onslaught of propaganda. It provides arguments and ammunition to the compassionate, logical individual to rethink their assumptions. The book hopes to free them from prejudice.
This post was written by Sameena Dalwai edited by Aastha Gupta and published by Sukaina Naqvi.
