The Indian State can seldom desist from fiddling with its people’s lawful personal affairs. Two consenting adults can marry legally; it is nobody’s business if one partner decides to change his or her religion to do so. The Special Marriage Act exists in case an interfaith couple wants a civil marriage; if not, it is up to the couple if one wishes to convert to the other’s faith. If such a marriage causes conflict with the respective families, the duty of the State and of the courts is to protect the pair should they ask the administration or the law for help. But under the Narendra Modi-led government, love jihad has become a way of persecuting such marriages — as though honour killings and khap panchayats were not enough. Love jihad is targeted at men of the minority community, who, apparently under false identities, are supposed to be inducing women of the majority community to marry them in order to convert them. Allegedly, this is part of a conspiracy to reduce the majority community to a minority one.

The government admitted last February that this phenomenon does not exist. This has not deterred the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, from announcing a law that will ban marriages pointing to love jihad, and threatening with death, indirectly, those men who allegedly lure ‘daughters and sisters’ into marriage by disguising their identities. Since no one can be put to death for this, the comment would encourage vigilante violence. The chief minister referred to a recent ruling of the Allahabad High Court that conversion purely for the sake of marriage was unacceptable. Funnily enough, in that case, a Muslim woman had converted to marry a Hindu man. The court, though, had mentioned a 2014 precedent in which the reverse had happened. That any court should rule thus is truly disconcerting. It is far less surprising that Mr Adityanath should use the judgment to suit his own purposes, and that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Haryana government should seize the instance of a girl’s murder in Faridabad by a stalker of another faith to announce plans for a similar law. Targeting a particular community and keeping ‘daughters and sisters’ under control, as though they are the community’s ‘property’, are two of the BJP’s favourite activities.