Since the Love Jihad case in Kerala came to light, the entire country has been up and about…so much so that the Supreme Court too was forced to take cognisance of the matter and order the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to look into the allegations.
Of course, this is not the first time that we are hearing of an alleged case of ‘love jihad’, but what makes this case more interesting than the others is the fact that it was the Kerala High Court that dubbed the marriage between the Muslim Man and his former Hindu wife a case of ‘love jihad’ all the way back in May this year.
Now the man challenging the Kerala High Court’s judgement in the Supreme Court after filing a Special Leave Petition has once again brought the spotlight back on the issue of Love Jihad.
There have been several voices that have spoken both in favour of and against the Kerala High Court judgement. While some see it as a patriarchal move that is attempting to stifle individual freedom, others are calling it a landmark judgment for the court has identified a larger malaise of the society that needs to be dealt with.
The truth, according to me, lies somewhere in between those blurred lines. After all, we live in a world that has seen how young impressionable girls have been and are being brainwashed and recruited by the ISIS. How can one forget those three London girls who have now been forever lost to ISIS?!? Those three teenagers were not only popular girls at their school, they were straight-A students, who were “groomed” to travel all the way to Syria, only to be married off to Syrian fighters. [Note: On August 11 last year, Sultana (one of the three girls) was believed to have been killed. She was barely 17 at the time!]
In fact, what needs to be mentioned is that post the three girls fled to Syria, several girls from the same school made similar attempts to flee to Syria…so much so that in March 2015, five more girls, who attended the same school as the three girls, were barred from travelling abroad by a High Court judge…a step that probably went on to save their innocent naive lives.
While one can argue that Hadiya (the woman whose marriage to the Muslim man was annulled by the Kerala High Court) is a grown woman and is not a teenager, the reality is simple: People are vulnerable, no matter their age! This is not to say they are stupid or fdumb! After all, time and again…history tells us that intelligent people were cheated by the very people they trusted. Thus, people remain vulnerable irrespective of intelligence.
Hence, even though we may wonder regarding the extent of due diligence conducted by the Kerala High Court before it decided to annul the marriage on the pretext of ‘Love Jihad’, the truth remains that the Courts and the Society need to wake up to the sobering fact: We don’t live in a world where ‘Love Jihad’ and ‘Jihadi Brides’ are simply urban legends…we live in a world where Jihadi Brides get killed in the name of Jihad!
