Sound Biting Conspiracy: From India with “Love Jihad”

Kathinka Frøystad

doi:10.3390/rel12121064

Abstract

Since 2013, India has seen a remarkable growth of a conspiracy theory known as “love jihad”, which holds that Muslim men conspire to lure Hindu women for marriage to alter India’s religious demography as part of a political takeover strategy. While earlier scholarship on “love jihad” emphasizes the Hindu nationalist propagation of this conspiracy theory, this article pays equal attention to its appeal among conservative Hindus. Making its point of departure in the generative effects of speech, it argues that the “love jihad” neologism performs two logical operations simultaneously. Firstly, it fuses the long-standing Hindu anxiety about daughters marrying against their parents’ will, with the equally long-standing anxiety about unfavorable religious demographic trends. Secondly, it attributes a sinister political takeover intent to every Muslim man who casts his eyes on a young Hindu woman. To bring out these points, this article pays equal empirical attention to marriage and kinship practices as to the genealogy of, and forerunners to, the “love jihad” neologism, and develops the concept of “sound biting” to bring out its meaning-making effect.

Highlights

Sound Biting Conspiracy: From IndiaWhen Lata, the main character in Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy (Seth 1993), fell in love with her Muslim college mate Kabir, she realized the futility of requesting her widowed mother’s permission to marry him so well that she did not even consider asking
While many strive to craft analyses that are politically neutral, some sympathize so strongly with the movement or political ideology they study that they elevate emic concepts and framings to analytical concepts and perspectives (Casas–Cortés et al being a case in point), while those who study meaning making they consider divisive are more prone to incorporate the vocabulary of their critics
Paliwal’s book Challenges before the Hindus, which appeared in the same year as Bhasin’s book, is worth mentioning. Though it does not represent an independent step towards the love jihad conspiracy theory as such, it offers another interesting window into the international influences that entered Hindu nationalist thought in this period

Summary

Introduction

When Lata, the main character in Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy (Seth 1993), fell in love with her Muslim college mate Kabir, she realized the futility of requesting her widowed mother’s permission to marry him so well that she did not even consider asking. As Seth’s novel suggests, Hindu families have considered Muslims unsuitable as marriage partners long before the love jihad neologism was invented. Its effect is to popularize the phantasmagoric narrative that Muslim men, such as Kabir, are not merely unsuitable marriage partners for young Hindu women such as Lata, and representatives of a sinister “Muslim Other” who conspire to lure Hindu girls into marriage, conversion and child-breeding. Their ulterior aim, this neologism further insinuates, is to alter India’s religious demography in preparation for a new Muslim takeover along the lines of the much-dreaded Mughal Empire. Before delving into Indian specifics, let me outline the triple analytical prism through which I approach the origin and generative effects of the love jihad concept

Compound Neologisms as Sound-Bite Order-Words

The Birth and Early Repetition of the “Love Jihad” Expression

Prior Apprehensions against Muslim Marriage Partners

Attributing Takeover Conspiracy

Findings

Concluding Remarks