Veteran Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah slammed the growing trend of harassing Hindu-Muslim couples in India in the name of Love Jihad. The actor in his interview with Karwan-e-Mohabbat recently.
He also condemned the use of the word, ‘Love Jihad’ by the Hindu community to stop inter-faith marriages.
“I am furious with the way divisions are being created, like the love jihad tamasha in UP. Firstly, the people who coined this phrase don’t know the meaning of the word jihad.” He then reinstated that no one would be ‘stupid’ enough to that Muslims will overtake the Hindu population. “It is unimaginable,” said Shah in the interview. Adding that “Muslims will have to have so many babies.”
#NaseeruddinShah on the #LoveJihad tamasha
"The people who coined this term- do they even know the meaning of Jihad?" @harsh_mander @gulrayys pic.twitter.com/uFA0WOFlQz— Karwan e Mohabbat (Caravan of Love) (@karwanemohabbat) January 17, 2021
He added that the phrase, Love Jihad, restricts social interaction between people of different faiths.’
Read more: Love Jihad:Viral videos show Hindutva’s control over Police
“They not only want to discourage interfaith marriages but also curtail social interactions between Hindus and Muslims,” he added.
Talking about his marriage with Pathak, he said he always believed that his inter-faith marriage would set a healthy precedent in society.
“We have taught our children about every religion. But we have never told them that they belong to any particular religion. I always believed that these differences would slowly fade away. I believed that my marriage to a Hindu woman would set a healthy precedent. I don’t think this is wrong,” he added.
He said that even his mother did not force him to ask Pathak to convert to Islam before marriage.
"What are you afraid of losing? You have earned enough to take care of seven generations." #NaseeruddinShah calls out the elite of the Hindi film industry for their failure of solidarity. pic.twitter.com/HaetGf4dnT
— Karwan e Mohabbat (Caravan of Love) (@karwanemohabbat) January 18, 2021
“My uneducated mother, brought up in an orthodox household, prayed five times a day, observed Roza all her life, went for the Hajj pilgrimage, she said, ‘the things that have been taught to you in your childhood, how can that change? It is not right to change one’s religion,” said Shah while talking about his mother.
Read more: Hindu women charged with ‘Love-Jihad’ for converting to Islam
Again regretting the growing harassment of the couple, he said “This is not the world I had dreamt of.”