Winnipeg Free Press By: Gwynne Dyer
Altaf Qadri, File / The Associated Press Files
In this March 28, 2019, photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, speaks with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath during an election campaign rally in Meerut, India.
THE “Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance” was passed into law in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Nov. 28, providing jail sentences of up to 10 years for Muslim men who marry Hindu women with the intention of converting them. “Love jihad” must be stopped at all costs, to preserve the Hindu majority in India.
Opinion
THE Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance was passed into law in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Nov. 28, providing jail sentences of up to 10 years for Muslim men who marry Hindu women with the intention of converting them. Love jihad must be stopped at all costs, to preserve
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (occasionally known in the White House as “India Trump”) depends almost exclusively on Hindu votes to win elections, so anything that threatens to reduce the number of Hindu voters is obviously a problem for him. People with mathematical skills, however, may calculate that the threat isn’t really very big. India’s population is one-and-a-third billion people (1,353,000,000 people, to be precise), and there are currently only 195-million Muslim Indians 14% of the whole. For Muslims to become the majority by “Love Jihad” will require Muslim men to marry at least 481-million Hindu girls. There’s probably no more than 75-million Muslim men of marriageable age in India and most of them are already married. According to Islam (and to Indian law), Muslim men can have up to four wives, but there’s still not enough Muslim men to marry all those Hindu women without exceeding four wives each.
There are about 40 castes in Pakistan [File: AP/K.M. Chaudary]
On September 29, Manisha Valmiki, a 19-year-old Dalit girl succumbed to her injuries from a gang rape committed by four Thakur (upper-caste) men in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. News of the incident caused outrage across India and the rest of the world, including in Pakistan and the diaspora.
I and many fellow Pakistanis have actively participated in social media campaigns demanding justice for Valmiki. But few of us have said much about another horrendous death of a Dalit woman.
On September 30, just a day after Valmiki’s death, 17-year-old Momal Meghwar took her own life in the village of Dalan-Jo-Tarr in Sindh province, Pakistan. A year earlier, she had been brutally raped and filmed by three men who have remained at large.