Advocate Chetna Sharma is a practicing lawyer who fights ‘Love Jihad‘, & founder of organization ‘Hindu Swabhimaan‘ under Akhara parampara . She has worked with Durga Vahini too. She is passionate about saving the youth from the concept of Love Jihad, which is a term casually dismissed by upper social strata of the urban society in Bharat today, specially the leftist liberals. She has met victims of Love Jihad and even rehabilitated few girls. Her organization is mainly focused on western UP currently but she hopes to expand gradually. The main aim of this organization is to make both young girls & boys capable of understanding and fighting (physically, mentally & emotionally) the menace of Love Jihad and related issues. She has been in news several times. I discuss the whole concept with her, her interview :

Below is the summarized transcript of the interview, every question and the key points of her each answer are being mentioned :

-Namaste Chetna ji, thank you for giving us time. Beginning from basics, please tell us what is ‘Love Jihad’.

Chetna ji –

• This issue needs to reach more & more people, urban society.
• Love Jihad is a small word, it is actually ‘Jihad Against Women’. It has various aspects – Rape Jihad, Kidnapping etc, many things which expose the cruelty against women in Islam.
• Love Jihad is basically targeting, grabbing a young girl who doesn’t yet understand the concept of marriage /nikah and then exploiting her, making her reproduce many kids and increase population, and then if she tries to run away from all this – torture her, that is beyond imagination and happens nowhere in civilized society.
• Love is usually only till the time the girl doesn’t give a statement against her family and society under section 164. When a girl elopes, parents will obviously file a police complaint / FIR. Generally, girls are not found. But if she is found, she records a statement with police under section 161. Statement under 164 is a confidential statement with magistrate, everything depends on it. On the basis of that statement, the girl is sent with the boy as most of them have turned 18 years of age by then.
• Life remains fine for many of them for next 4 to 5 years. They keep reproducing kids. Jihad begins post this, then they realize they don’t have any legal rights. In our dharma, there is only one marriage. Our daughters are used to this kind of family. When they begin getting more wives, our girls object. Then the torture begins. Because they are not used to seeing this. And then our girls are not able to sustain objection, because they have handed over themselves fully to them!
• We must understand that it is in their culture to have more women. It is their custom. This is Jihad.
• Do you think a love relationship is possible between a 41 year old man and a 15 year old girl? That would be her father’s age. Impossible.
• What category of a love relationship would you call it when a 21 yr old girl goes to a man whose first Muslim wife is giving birth to a 3rd child at that time?

-People say Gauri Khan, Kiran Rao (wives of Shahrukh and Aamir Khan) are also married to Muslims. These women didn’t convert to Islam. So, these examples can’t be called Love Jihad…

Chetna ji –

• These are ‘example-setters‘, for the society.
• Our youth gets inspired from movies and celebrities, these stars are role models. Youth wishes to follow the acts of these stars.
• Like there are many serials, movie on Jodha Akbar. But people don’t know our real history. There was no Jodha, there was a queen called Phoolrani or so. She went to Akbar under a peace accord when her brothers were locked up by Akbar. So how can it be called a love relationship? Love is a very pious relationship.
• Love Jihad is a very old concept. Thousands of our daughters, when 16,000 queens sacrificed themselves by doing Jauhar to save themselves from the harem of Alauddin Khilji.
• Akbar changed that strategy and decided to go for marital relationship with kafir women. So this depiction of Jodha Akbar as a love relationship actually strengthens Islamic Jihad / Love Jihad.
• Our children don’t know our true history. It is not written from our point of view, truthfully.
• Hence, these are ‘example- setters’.
• In fact, ‘no conversion’ is even worse for the woman when it comes to legal rights. She neither belongs to Hindu society nor Muslim. We keep seeing such things in court. If you are not converted, you anyway cannot claim any right in the court without a ‘nikahnama’, because marriage is a contract as per Islamic law. It is not a sanskar like in Hindu culture. Rarely, a negligible percentage gets married under Special Marriage Act. For the rest, nikah doesn’t happen. Post the elopement, the boy gets an affidavit made, girl thinks she is married. Only much later, after years, she gets to know she has no legal standing. Young girls have no legal knowledge and nobody is even telling them.

– You are founder and president of ‘Hindu Swabhimaan’ . Please tell us about the work of this organization.

Chetna ji –

• We take spirituality, principles of Geeta as base, and then we train our youth (both girls and boys) like Hindus have been doing in traditional Akharas, like lathi chalana etc.
• This boosts the morale of the youth, especially girls.
• Earlier our culture was like, daughter of one family was the daughter and sister of everyone in that village. We are trying to bring that culture back.
• Hindu Swabhimaan aims at strengthening our basic culture. It aims at making girls and boys capable of fighting Love Jihad in  all the ways.
• It is mainly active in western UP, now expanding in Haryana and Rajasthan too.

–You keep posting inspirational posts on Facebook. Please tell about about some cases of Love Jihad. 

Chetna ji –

• The case that hurt me most was of a 15 year old girl who expired. A 41 year old Muslim man came in contact with her through telephonic conversation. He used to call her very regularly. He influenced her so much that she went from Hathras to Muzaffarnagar to meet him. There she was gang raped for 2.5 months, she was a month pregnant when I met her. She was transferred to Meerut for fear of riots. I got a call for giving her some clothes. When I went to meet her, I mean.. how can you deny Love Jihad, how can the urban society deny Love Jihad… when i saw her, she was bathed with acid. She gestured me to come close, she couldn’t speak. She wrote on a piece of paper the name of the man ‘Tarneem’. She wrote that she wouldn’t survive, nails were drubbed into her head. She wrote if her hair would be ringed, blood would drip from the hair. Her jaws were broken because of frequent kicking and that’s why she couldn’t speak. She was transferred to Safdarjung hospital where she expired. The man was caught and news came on TV in the episode of Sansani. The girl’s father got threats from Pakistan. How can this ever be termed as a love relationship?

• The other case is the infamous Sarava kand or the Meerut Love Jihad case. I won’t go into the details of the main case as that case got manipulated and the girl ultimately went back to that Muslim boy. But another girl of the same family, who was attached to this same boy (yes, same boy! and nowhere in the news), I have tried to rehabilitate that younger girl, worked on her for 10 months. People used to challenge me that she would also go to the same Muslim family. This girl was so talented, inter pass out with 88% and a great artist (sketching). She was saved from going there but she is totally broken from inside. Jihadis kill all the talent, beauty-wise, education-wise..

• Now look at Tina Dhabi, IAS topper, this is an example-setter again. When our girls get influenced and go into Madrasas, they are given target of getting 5 more girls. I can say this because I am in contact with these girls, but these girls will not come out in public. A single girl goes, and her entire circle gets influenced. Minute observations are required. This cannot be called love.

• Islam is not at fault here, we are at fault. We don’t teach our children, we haven’t told them our history, culture. We don’t tell them that our religion is the best. How many young know about Jauhar? Now these young don’t mind converting to Islam.

• And this is not a simple crime. It is a crime that targets our girls specifically. Today our daughters are targeted. This cannot be put in the category of simple crime. 

• These girls fall prey to human trafficking. UP High Court has clearly stated that girls lost in last 10 years need to be found. There is a place called Dasna in UP, a girl eloped with a boy there, that boy still lives there but nobody dares to ask him where that girl has gone.

• Jihad comes to the whole family. Hindus have only two kids. Demography is changing fast. Son gets killed, daughter comes back to ask property share. So, this is also Land Jihad… this has various associated angles. We are not observing those. We are not communicating enough.

-Now these girls go and the entire blame falls on these girls only. You may call it feminism, but these girls are at a loss on both sides, ignored on both sides. How far is it correct to blame these girls?

Chetna ji –

• You can blame them 10 to 20%, that too only the girls above 20 years of age. There is a lot of difference between our and Islamic culture. They live in small houses, everything is open there inside the house. So young girls get attracted to them.  Its our own fault that we are blaming these girls.
• The terror created by Muslims for their own girls, we have never created it. We never corrected our children at the first fault.
• We never instill pride in our daughters for our heritage. We don’t teach them our dharma, religion.

–I get surprised how these Hindu girls agree to wear Burqa/ Hijab and live that kind of life. I can’t figure out what attracts these girls to them…

Chetna ji –

• We are not dominating. Basic female nature needs protection. Today, our male society is not in a position to protect our women.
• Today girls see their mothers as either suffering or commanding. Both are bad situations. A man must stay in a a man’s role to save the culture.
• Nuclear families – girls are not mentally / intellectually satisfied. They go outside, outside they see glamour, passion, power.
• We need to tell our girls about their religion – where a father rapes his daughter, and a fatwa declares that daughter as the ‘wife’ of that father… we need to explain the battle logically to our children. 
• We need to tell our children that there is no relationship of a brother and a sister in Islam, except between the children from the same mother. Cousins marry on both sides. 
• We need to tell our children that marriage is a contract in Islam by law. Children don’t know the word ‘Meher’. It is very different from dowry, it is the payment of the marriage contract. 
• We need to begin telling the difference in culture right from young age. Don’t preach hate, simply tell the truths.
• Everybody knows what is taught in Madrasas. There is a ‘daan patra’ for Jihad kept there. Every Muslim visiting a madrasa donates a part of his earning in that for Jihad. So, Jihad is a very powerful concept in there, very difficult to fight it.
• We need to teach dignity to our daughters, teach sense of judgement. Feminist thoughts need to be for Hindu society, not for families.
• We are 4 siblings. My mother was a physics professor, wrote competition books. We don’t want to produce more children today. A single child will talk to whom? He/ she will go outside only. Instead of blaming the kids, we need to see where we stand today.
• We have become liberal not to produce even 2 kids, and by doing that, we have misdirected the destiny of our children/ daughters. We are responsible for this, not our children.
• There’ll be Rape Jihad in future. Today, daughters of Yazidis are being sold. How can we forget our past? In Mirpur, Kashmir, 5000 Hindu women were sold in the market. In Kabul, there’s a still a gate that mentions ‘ dukhtare hind neelame do dinariyan‘ that Hindu girls sold in 2 Dinars.. What we went through, we are again preparing our children for the same! Entire Europe is fighting Islam. We have been through Rape Jihad, Love Jihad, Jauhar…
• Daughters of Hindu leaders have married Muslims in past, and we know what happened to the most. Shiela Dikshit’s daughter married a Muslim, now she is facing domestic violence. When daughters of powerfuls are not happy, you can imagine the fate of middle class families.

-The issue of casteism…

Chetna ji –

• Inter-caste marriages should be opened/ encouraged. The coordination among Hindu families will improve.
• Our girls will get more opportunities / options among Hindus to get married.
• We had Swayamvars, girls could choose their husbands based on certain conditions, the kshatriya bhav and economic status of the boy.
• We are working on this, we do Ajgar panchayats for this issue in rural areas, especially focused on Kshatriya families.

–You don’t feel scared?

Chetna ji –

• I don’t feel scared because I believe in Geeta. Aatma is deathless.
• This is the reason why we keep spirituality as our base.
• Jihadis have no fear of death. Hindus need to learn to be fearless, if they become fearless, the problem of Jihad will die.
• ‘Nirbhay swagat karo mrityu ka, mrityu hai vishram sthal; Jeev jahan se phir chalta hai, dharan kar navjeevan sambal’
• Death is like changing clothes, I’ll get a new body and fight with more zeal!
• When there is question of survival, there is no option but to fight.
• We must stand up for our daughters.

-Your suggestions for Hindu family, the men of the families….

Chetna ji –

• Male dominated society should prevail, there are reasons for it.
• This doesn’t mean that men should beat women, or keep them locked or torture them. I am saying it in a different sense.
• Men should lead, take strong decisions. Women should not lead. Women are gifted with power of communication, which is lacking in men. Women need to coordinate more in society. Men are responsible for keeping family members satisfied.
• Men have reduced their role in families. They are busy with their gadgets and TV. They need to socialize more.

–Thank you Chetna ji for speaking to us. 

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