Love jihad

This is part of the tension here.

The allegation is that Christians are using money, schooling, or medical care to draw poor and tribal communities away from Hinduism and that Muslim men caught Hindu women to convert them, an alleged conspiracy they call Love Jihad.

Critics say such accusations have fueled harassment of Christian prayer meetings and interfaith couples and that the laws give those making them away... and that the laws give those who are making them a way to draw the police into questions of prayer, marriage, and belief.

Maharashtra's government says the new law leaves people free to convert by choice while addressing what it says is a rise in forced conversions that existing laws have failed to curb.

That suggestion became a claim and then much more of a cause.

It was being called a case of love jihad.

Now, I need to explain this carefully.

Love jihad is a term that's been pushed by right-wing Hindu nationalist groups in India.

It's the claim that Muslim men are deliberately seducing Hindu women as part of this organised plot to convert them to Islam.

It's been widely described as a conspiracy theory and in 2020 the Indian government's own Home Ministry told Parliament that the term isn't defined under any law and that no such case has been reported by any of the central agencies.

But just to be clear, 20 is what he was tried for.

The higher numbers come from police suspicion and from his own claims, but I couldn't find anything confirming them.