-Analysis-

NEW DELHI — As 2020 comes to an end, two things can be said with certainty about India.

One, the state and nearly all its institutions have made it clear that the Muslims would be treated as subjects and not citizens with rights equal to Hindus.

Second, there is a growing realisation among the Muslims that the task of affirming their rights and rejecting the subjecthood imposed on them is something they cannot abdicate and leave for the future.

Yet as the state, through various legal instruments, wages a war against Muslim men, unfortunately there is no outrage in the wider Hindu society.

The agency of Muslims is being taken away from them and they are being robbed of their autonomy as citizens in multiple ways and they are seen as perpetually unlawful. The very existence of Muslims is now under serious threat in India but no political party thinks that it is as serious an issue as the anti-tiller farm laws. The most recent instance being the so called anti-conversion law of the Uttar Pradesh state.

The travesty of the law was laid bare in the case of Pinki and her husband Rashid Ali.

The miscarriage that a pregnant Pinki suffered while in the custody of the state should be seen as a clear and decisive change in the relationship between Muslims and the Indian state and its institutions. It is also changing the relationship between Muslims and Hindus. But most of us are not recognising the seriousness of the message from this incident.

We know that Pinki was forcibly moved to the Nari Niketan after the police arrested her Muslim husband and his brother under the newly enforced Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020. She had married Rashid Ali In July this year, six months prior to the promulgation of the said ordinance.

The union of the couple was their choice. She converted to Islam.

The court came to their rescue but only after the police submitted that there was no evidence to prove the allegation of forcible conversion. The young woman was allowed to rejoin her husband after she declared that her marriage had her consent. Rashid and his brother spent 15 days in prison.

A Muslim man offering evening prayers — Photo: Mayank Makhija/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press

The media reported that Rashid was happy that he was free, "We got married with mutual consent. I have already spent 15 days in jail. But today I am happy as I have been released," said Rashid after stepping out of the prison. When asked if he felt the police had misused the new law, he chose to keep mum.

That he chose to "keep mum" must worry us. A Muslim's inability to even express anguish when subjected to injustice has now become routine.

One must not forget that at least 11 Muslims have been arrested after the ordinance was announced. Hours after the new ordinance came into force, a most absurd arrest was made. Ahmed, a 22-year-old man was arrested as the father of a married woman alleged that he was threatening to kidnap his daughter and convert her. The woman is married and is living with her husband and yet the father was alleging that Ahmed wants to convert her after abducting her! The police promptly kicked into action, forming several search teams and "nabs' Ahmed.

Muslim men are being placed in an impossible situation. Those arrested Muslims are not as fortunate as Rashid and Muskan. The Himachal Pradesh state has also enacted a similar law. The leaders of the ruling BJP party are demanding it in other states as well.

But let us return to Muskan. She has alleged that the doctors and authorities should be held responsible for the miscarriage. First, they denied it, but now that it is confirmed there is no response to the charge made by Muskan.

The crime is serious. A forcible abortion should be treated like murder. Would the people responsible be held accountable and made to face the law? Again, an absurd question. It sounds distasteful but one cannot but remember that one of the main features of the propaganda of marriage between a Muslim man and Hindu woman, which allegedly makes this alliance more sinister, is that the wombs of Hindu women are used to produce Muslims. The reverse is not only allowed but desirable. So, the destruction of a yet-to-be-born Muslim becomes a duty.

At least 11 Muslims have been arrested after the ordinance was announced — Photo: Sajad Hameed/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire

These laws have a provision that if one of the couple returns to the ‘parent religion" or mooldharm, it would not be treated as a crime. One need not guess which religion would get this exalted status of being the original or parent religion of this country. If a Hindu man marries a Muslim woman and she converts to his religion, it would not be a crime under these laws. Instead as we saw in case in Uttar Pradesh, they would get protection from the law.

These laws against marriage for the purpose of conversion are the most potent tool after the anti-cow slaughter laws to criminalise Muslims, primarily Muslim men. The Triple Talaq Act was a precursor in this respect.

It has been pointed out that these laws are against the right of choice, against love, against the agency of Hindu and Dalit women. All this is of course true.

The law will definitely impact them but we also need to remember that it would be only Muslim men who would face criminal charges. It is they who would be jailed. They will have to fight a long battle, ruin themselves and their families to prove their innocence.

The women in question would need to be extraordinarily courageous like Muskan to save their Muslim partners from the Indian state. Would all Hindu women be able to resist organised groups like the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad? Would they not be forced to criminalise their "lovers' to save their honor or lives?

The anti-conversion law is based on a lie. It says that marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women are done for the purpose of conversion. To claim that Muslim men marry Hindu women with the aim to convert them is perverted logic. But the courts also accept it.

Muslims have been thus placed in an unequal situation in India with all agencies and laws arranged against them. Their rights as individuals and their rights as members of a religious community are being curtailed consistently.

Lies and deception are being used to do this. But most of us call them anti-constitutional, anti-human, and anti-Indian but cannot muster courage to say that they are anti-Muslim — and that alone should be sufficient grounds to fight against them.