Bengaluru: As Karnataka contemplates passing a law to prevent the so called practice of Love Jihad, hundreds of protestors rose to stage a movement against this in Bengaluru on Tuesday, December 1.
The protest was held at Bangalore's Mysore Bank circle and was a joint venture of several organizations that pertain to the issues of Dalits, Muslims, women and the LGBTQ+ community.
The protestors gathered with placards bearing slogans like "Need Love Not Hate", "Love is not a crime" and "This is what democracy loves like" in a show of support for interfaith and inter-caste marriages. The protestors proceeded to speak about love and read poems with different experiences of love.
Many significant figures in India including famed historian Ramchandra Guha have criticized the idea of criminalizing 'Love Jihad'. He said that this attack on the freedom to love is part of a greater attack upon our individual freedoms. He further expressed, as many of the protestors did as well, that this idea curbs a woman's agency upon her decisions.
A page dedicated to the campaign against criminalization of interfaith and inter-caste love on twitter, @ourright2love has posted several videos documenting the protest and the many speakers there.
( reported by Mafazah Sharafuddin )