by MUKUL DUBE
I had two women visitors, both in the early 30s. When the subject of “love jihad” came up, one said, “Chacha, these people assume that all are like them.” I asked her to explain. She said that the followers of the RSS all think alike because, wherever in the country they go to a shakha, exactly the same things are put into their heads. They imagine that India’s Muslims are, like them, a regimented lot, a monolithic entity: something like lemmings, all thinking and acting alike. Because they have their own training camps for different purposes, they imagine that Muslim men too are trained in camps in the methods of seducing Hindu women.
The other, who has studied demography and who relies on common sense, said that the share in India’s Hindu population of those women who could become victims of such a thing as “love jihad” was not large. Thus Muslims are stupid, if indeed they want to use this strategy to increase their population in the country. The RSS crowd are whipping up fear of these stupid people, in the process ignoring the idiocy of their own convictions.
But here is their final argument. They said that the “danger to bahu-beti” line was one which would madden people who had been brought up on the myth that Muslim men have always been sexual beasts and rapists. The violent, sadistic rapes committed by their own comrades in Gujarat in 2002 are justified by saying, “Vo to sirf badla that.” That is, rape is sinful but rape-as-vengeance is honourable. Raped Muslim women cannot be called victims because they only get what they deserve.
In short, the Hindu Right defends every brainless thesis it advances by concocting another brainless thesis. All this bilge is
stuffed into the ever receptive heads of their cadres, who have been brain-washed almost since birth. There is no space for rationality.
Mukul Dube can be reached at dube.mukul@gmail.com