The Sangh Parivar had organised a bandh in Ranchi on Monday. On Thursday, the BJP called for one in Chatra. Today, the VHP has declared a shutdown in Khunti. On the day after Eid too, there was a bandh by the Sangh Parivar - to protest a clash in Ranchi between Muslims, adivasis and the police the previous day, in which one individual had died.
The Monday bandh was protesting the delay in the arrest of Ranjeet Singh Kohli, whose wife Tara Shahdeo alleged that he had assaulted her with the intention of converting her to Islam. The Sangh Parivar alleged that it was a case of Love Jihad. The momentum it created through a campaign wholeheartedly supported by the media helped them proclaim an incident in Chatra too, as an instance of Love Jihad and declare another bandh. On Friday, the VHP is protesting the alleged vandalising of an idol in at least one temple in Khunti.
November cannot come soon enough for Jharkhand. As the state inches closer to possibly holding elections that month, the sense is that a communal stake is being driven into the society, one hammering at a time.
Those who usually brand journalists as "paid and sickular" at the first available opportunity have been silent through the reporting surrounding the Tara-Ranjeet case. The media has given them little reason to be aggrieved about. "Do you think he [Ranjeet] is part of the ISI?" asked the reporter of a news channel to Tara in the presence of this newspaper. The 23-year-old, once an Eastern Zone champion in 10 m air rifle, looked perplexed. Another channel showed video footage of Ranjeet's mother swaying at her son's wedding to argue that she was well enough to assault her daughter-in-law.
The English dailies jumped on the bandwagon, too. Reporting on the seizure of Ranjeet's passport, one of them called him only as Rakibul Hasan Khan, the name Tara alleges he uses while in his Islamic identity. The newspaper's insistence on using the name came despite the passport itself being in Ranjeet Singh Kohli's name. Another published a report which claimed Ranjeet was being probed for terror links without having a single official say - either on or off the record - about the nature of allegations. The only quote on the claim is one by the state DGP, who merely says his force is probing, "all angles." By that yardstick, Ranjeet surely should be a suspect in the FIFA bribery scandal. The headline to a report in an English daily here on Friday has gone ahead and called Ranjeet a "love jihadist."
What the media does not realise is that it is becoming propaganda tools in the process. When the BJP declared a bandh in Chatra on Thursday, it alleged that a Muslim boy had been arrested for deceiving a Hindu girl into marrying him. The media has largely gone by the BJP-VHP version of events. Muslim Boy Jailed For Deceiving Girl goes the headline to a report in an English daily, which begins, "Another case of alleged love jihad was reported from Chatra district...." The report ignore the fact that the FIR does not mention conversions and that the boy was jailed because he had sexual relations with the girl, a minor. On Thursday, a Hindi daily reported that the family of a girl in Hazaribagh was alleging that she had been kidnapped by Muslim boys for religious conversion. The paper played up the conversion claim, relegating the Superintendent of Police's explanation that the couple had been in a relationship and had eloped, to the last sentence of its report.
What the reporting around the Tara-Ranjeet case in Jharkhand has exposed is also a shifting of goalposts by the Sangh Parivar: that it has altered the definition of its own conspiracy theory to suit its aims. When the Love Jihad allegations first surfaced in Kerala and Mangalore in 2008-'09, the Sangh Parivar alleged a larger conspiracy whereby Muslim boys were asked to entrap Hindu girls. Now, as the Chatra and Hazaribagh incidents would indicate, it is Love Jihad enough to "deceive" or fall in love with a Hindu girl on your own. Even the Sangh Parivar has alleged that Ranjeet is part of a wider network and the media has picked up on the insinuation, but there has been no evidence or anecdote to support the claim.
Surely, a lot of allegations against Ranjeet may come true yet. The police say he has accepted that he has friends in the judiciary, that he kept a room for himself in a hotel in Ranchi to entertain high-profile guests late into the night and that he assaulted his wife once. He has even accepted that he performed the nikaah two days after marrying Tara in a Hindu ceremony, but claims it was with the girl's consent and that he has never converted to Islam himself. However, media organisations have been only too happy to fill in the gaps in the story with theories of their own: when a former neighbour of the Kohlis' claims Ranjeet's mother was born a Muslim - which she denies - journalists wrote that she may have influenced her son to convert.
The media seems to have pronounced judgement in a case with little documentary evidence and it may have provided the spark for those who want to start a fire. Whatever happened to "Minimise Harm?"
The Monday bandh was protesting the delay in the arrest of Ranjeet Singh Kohli, whose wife Tara Shahdeo alleged that he had assaulted her with the intention of converting her to Islam. The Sangh Parivar alleged that it was a case of Love Jihad. The momentum it created through a campaign wholeheartedly supported by the media helped them proclaim an incident in Chatra too, as an instance of Love Jihad and declare another bandh. On Friday, the VHP is protesting the alleged vandalising of an idol in at least one temple in Khunti.
November cannot come soon enough for Jharkhand. As the state inches closer to possibly holding elections that month, the sense is that a communal stake is being driven into the society, one hammering at a time.
Those who usually brand journalists as "paid and sickular" at the first available opportunity have been silent through the reporting surrounding the Tara-Ranjeet case. The media has given them little reason to be aggrieved about. "Do you think he [Ranjeet] is part of the ISI?" asked the reporter of a news channel to Tara in the presence of this newspaper. The 23-year-old, once an Eastern Zone champion in 10 m air rifle, looked perplexed. Another channel showed video footage of Ranjeet's mother swaying at her son's wedding to argue that she was well enough to assault her daughter-in-law.
The English dailies jumped on the bandwagon, too. Reporting on the seizure of Ranjeet's passport, one of them called him only as Rakibul Hasan Khan, the name Tara alleges he uses while in his Islamic identity. The newspaper's insistence on using the name came despite the passport itself being in Ranjeet Singh Kohli's name. Another published a report which claimed Ranjeet was being probed for terror links without having a single official say - either on or off the record - about the nature of allegations. The only quote on the claim is one by the state DGP, who merely says his force is probing, "all angles." By that yardstick, Ranjeet surely should be a suspect in the FIFA bribery scandal. The headline to a report in an English daily here on Friday has gone ahead and called Ranjeet a "love jihadist."
What the media does not realise is that it is becoming propaganda tools in the process. When the BJP declared a bandh in Chatra on Thursday, it alleged that a Muslim boy had been arrested for deceiving a Hindu girl into marrying him. The media has largely gone by the BJP-VHP version of events. Muslim Boy Jailed For Deceiving Girl goes the headline to a report in an English daily, which begins, "Another case of alleged love jihad was reported from Chatra district...." The report ignore the fact that the FIR does not mention conversions and that the boy was jailed because he had sexual relations with the girl, a minor. On Thursday, a Hindi daily reported that the family of a girl in Hazaribagh was alleging that she had been kidnapped by Muslim boys for religious conversion. The paper played up the conversion claim, relegating the Superintendent of Police's explanation that the couple had been in a relationship and had eloped, to the last sentence of its report.
What the reporting around the Tara-Ranjeet case in Jharkhand has exposed is also a shifting of goalposts by the Sangh Parivar: that it has altered the definition of its own conspiracy theory to suit its aims. When the Love Jihad allegations first surfaced in Kerala and Mangalore in 2008-'09, the Sangh Parivar alleged a larger conspiracy whereby Muslim boys were asked to entrap Hindu girls. Now, as the Chatra and Hazaribagh incidents would indicate, it is Love Jihad enough to "deceive" or fall in love with a Hindu girl on your own. Even the Sangh Parivar has alleged that Ranjeet is part of a wider network and the media has picked up on the insinuation, but there has been no evidence or anecdote to support the claim.
Surely, a lot of allegations against Ranjeet may come true yet. The police say he has accepted that he has friends in the judiciary, that he kept a room for himself in a hotel in Ranchi to entertain high-profile guests late into the night and that he assaulted his wife once. He has even accepted that he performed the nikaah two days after marrying Tara in a Hindu ceremony, but claims it was with the girl's consent and that he has never converted to Islam himself. However, media organisations have been only too happy to fill in the gaps in the story with theories of their own: when a former neighbour of the Kohlis' claims Ranjeet's mother was born a Muslim - which she denies - journalists wrote that she may have influenced her son to convert.
The media seems to have pronounced judgement in a case with little documentary evidence and it may have provided the spark for those who want to start a fire. Whatever happened to "Minimise Harm?"
