When “Muslimness Could Bring Trouble into Secular Spaces”: Anti-CAA Protests and Religious Slogans

A BBC article reported that “a Facebook page calling for violence against 102 Muslim men who are allegedly in relationships with Hindu women has been taken down” . Raised by Indian parents who had an inter-religious marriage in the 80s, the idea of intolerance of kinship networks being formed across religious and caste lines and the recent spate of ‘love-jihad’ related violence is deeply troubling to me at a personal level. Moreover, far from normalising such relationships, advertisements from nationally renowned brands like Tanishq and Surf Excel depicting loving friendships and filial ties between Hindus and Muslims have been boycotted and pulled out. Congress Member of Parliament and former diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, has been vocal in condemning these cases of communal violence, which has risen exponentially since the election of right wing Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. In response the backlash against the Tanishq Ekatvam ad campaign, Tharoor tweeted; “So Hindutva bigots have called for a boycott of @TanishqJewelry for highlighting Hindu-Muslim unity through this beautiful ad. If Hindu-Muslim ‘ekatvam’ irks them so much, why don’t they boycott the longest surviving symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity in the world -- India?” . In this essay I explore the dichotomy of public and private in official discourse in multicultural polities, and how religious identities, freedom to love and marry, and other issues relevant to women’s lives problematise it. Moreover, I suggest that the recent visibilisation of Muslim women leading mass protests against a religious majoritarian government shatters this false dichotomy that has been propped up by a studied ignoration and exclusion of these bodies, lives, experiences, connectivities and issues from the political discourses around equality and democracy