Mobile ban for girls: 'Love jihad' turns to moral policing in UP

Love jihad as an idea is gaining more and more credence in Uttar Pradesh and it now appears that the paranoia over this has even spread to urban communities with the wealthy vaishya (trader) community in Agra calling for a ban on school girls being allowed to use mobile phones in order to prevent Muslim men from ’luring’ Hindu girls.

According to a Times of India report the Akhil Bharitiya Vaishya Ekta Parishad (ABVEP), a committee of vaishyas (mostly traders by caste), passed the ban at a meeting that was attended by more than a thousand people including Union minister for micro, small and medium enterprises, Kalraj Mishra.

The report quotes ABEVP national president Sumant Gupta as saying, “Such things (mobiles, internet) lead young minds to fall in the ’love jihad’ trap. We are saddened and alarmed by the rising numbers of such cases in the state, especially when vaishya girls are involved. We have no option but to take precautions.”

In order to implement the ban, the community has promised that they won’t go around forcing girls but will instead counsel them by forming “units of youth and women across the state, drawn from the vaishya caste, to counsel teenagers against using mobile phones.”

This is perhaps the first time that such a ban has been called for in an urban area and within a relatively wealthy community. And expectedly those at the receiving end aren’t too happy about these diktats.

The latest diktat is just another indicator of the kind of communal polarisation that Uttar Pradesh has seen in the last couple of months, especially since the Lok Sabha election.

The report that a girl in Meerut was gangraped and forcibly converted to Islam brought  ’love jihad’ into national discourse, with BJP alleging that the UP state government led by Samajwadi Party is protecting Muslims who carrying out such crimes against Hindu girls.

In fact, the BJP UP unit had initially mentioned ‘Love Jihad’ as part of its agenda for the by-elections in the state which are due on 13 September. However the party then dropped direct references to the term and instead talked about how “atrocities against women of a particular community and perpetrated by those belonging to a particular community” in a not so subtle reference.

Interestingly UP state party chief Laxmikant Bajpai had in his inaugural address at the party meeting asked youths to be vigilant on the issue, questioning whether men of the minority community have got the licence to convert and rape women of majority community, but the term ’love jihad’ was later not specifically mentioned in the official party resolution.

The BJP might not have specifically mentioned the term in it’s party resolution but the issue has clearly been raked up enough by leaders of the party and has thus now gained a level of credence in UP’s politics. Worryingly “love jihad” doesn’t just come with communal connotations, it also means more restriction on women and girls as is evident from the mobile phone ban. As Firstpost Editor Sandip Roy had noted in his piece , " The war against Love Jihad is also about controlling and policing that woman. It is a Lakshmanrekha masquerading as helpline."

For the Hindu right-wing the idea that a Hindu girl could in some cases willingly fall in love with a Muslim man, who is the ultimate definite of the enemy and the other, is just not acceptable. The women’s body and choice are areas of control for patriarchy and in the case of Agra’s vaishya community, the lines have been drawn starting with the cell phones.