Maharashtra state sets up panel to spy on inter-faith, inter-caste marriages
In an authoritarian move by Hindu supremacists to further criminalize interfaith marriage, the Maharashtra state government has set up a panel that will collect extensive information on couples entering into inter-faith or inter-caste marriages, including about their families.
Opposition leaders have slammed the decision, calling it a “rubbish, retrograde, nauseating step to spy” on who marries whom.
The panel is set to collect details of both registered and unregistered inter-caste or inter-faith marriages, including those that were officiated only in religious places, and those that took place after the couple eloped.
The authoritarian move comes days after Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis indicated that the state would consider enacting a law on “love jihad.”
Love jihad is a propaganda narrative circulated by Hindu extremists, claiming that Muslim men have an agenda to seduce Hindu women into marriage and then force them to accept Islam. However, successive probes have failed to find any evidence that such a conspiracy exists.
Muslim men accused of Love Jihad have been publicly beaten, verbally abused, and arrested, sometimes for as little as being in the presence of a Hindu woman.
Muslim man who helped Hindu woman brutally assaulted in Karnataka
In a shocking incident, a 45-year-old Muslim man was brutally assaulted by Hindu extremists in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Karnataka state merely because he offered to hold the bag of a Hindu woman during a bus journey.
The man, Ishak, was seated in a bus, when a lady approached him asking him to hold her bag. Later when her stop arrived, she took her bag and got down from the bus.
The bus driver falsely accused Ishak of misbehaving with the woman and handed him over to a mob of Hindu extremists.
Ishak was brutally assaulted and taken to the hospital. The police have taken no action against the assaulters.
Chief of Hindu extremist paramilitary organization calls for expansion of branches
The chief of the notorious Hindu extremist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, said that every village in India should have a branch of the organization.
He was addressing a closed-door event with RSS members in Hindu supremacist BJP-ruled Assam state.
RSS has been criticized by international human rights organizations s an extremist and fascist organization whose members have participated in anti-Muslim violence. The RSS, along with other Hindu supremacist organizations, has been involved in mob lynchings, mosque and church demolitions, riots, and other attacks on Christians and Muslims.
