This is BBC Trending - part of our Extreme series - where we’re taking
a look at life on the fringes of internet culture.
I’m Shruti Menon, a journalist with the BBC’s Delhi bureau in India,
and I’ve been investigating the “Bhagwa Love Trap”, the controversial idea that Hindu men
are trying to seduce Muslim women, and lure them away from their communities.
It’s a theory that’s taken off online in recent months, provoking harassment on social media,
and violence in the real world. And it isn’t the only controversial
theory that’s prevalent online. Love Jihad, an opposing narrative which claims Muslim
men are plotting to seduce Hindu women, has been around for much longer, and spread much further.
Evidence in support of either theory is scant, but the animosity between the two groups is real.
It’s been one of the defining themes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time in office.
This is a story about religious tension, gender politics,
and what they tell us about Modi’s India almost a decade since he came to power.
The shift inside of me as a reporter was when I saw this barrage of videos
going viral on the internet. This is Fatima Khan, a journalist
with the Quint in India, and one of the first people to write about the Bhagwa Love Trap,
highlighting videos of aggressive and violent confrontations circulating online.
Initially I saw one video, and then the second video, and then the third video,
and then I saw that there's a whole slew of videos, where Muslim women are being harassed, are
being assaulted by a mob of evidently Muslim men. And it's not limited to one part of the country.
Across India, videos like this one are being shared online.
Filmed in a city in east India, we can see a Muslim woman wearing a hijab,
and a man who appears to be Hindu, being heckled by a mob.
The crowd seems to be made up of Muslim men. They drag the Hindu man to the side of the road,
and beat him until he pleads with them to stop. The exact circumstances of this video
are unclear. But it’s been posted like the others with the same hashtag: Bhagwa Love
Trap. The idea that Hindu men are trying to entrap Muslim women and either marry them,
or abuse them in some way. Bhagwa is being used as shorthand for “Hindutva”,
which - to its critics - represents a kind of extreme right-wing Hindu Supremacy.
So, groups of Muslims, convinced that “Hindutva” men are trying to seduce their women,
are tracking down Hindu guys seen with Muslim women in the street. And causing a ruckus.
What I saw, coming from these men from my own community,
it was extremely vile. I couldn't believe my eyes that how can this happen?
This is Maryam, she doesn’t want us to use her real name. She’s a Muslim woman.
And she was accused of falling victim to the Bhagwa Love Trap.
Maryam wasn’t targeted in the street. Instead she was the victim of a doxxing
attack - having her personal details revealed online - one
of many Muslim women targeted in this way. A high profile account falsely accused her
of having relationships with Hindu men. They have taken some pictures from public
profiles of my friends and they started allegations like - I sleep around with
Hindu men. And they were abusing my family, my parents, and questioning my upbringing etc. etc.
In Maryam’s case, platonic friendships with Hindu men were taken as evidence that she’d been
“entrapped”. Others have experienced the same. Maryam says those false claims took their toll.
I mean I missed work for a week. Because I was really disturbed and scared to go out. For the
first time I felt unsafe in my neighbourhood. I mean you are claiming that you're protecting
women by basically ruining their lives. To find out more about the phenomenon I
went to meet with someone else who found the story alarming, and wrote about it online.
My name is Sara Ather, I’m an architect, a researcher and a writer.
It’s a sunny day, and we’re sitting under a gazebo beside a lake, part of Sunder Nursery,
in Delhi, and the site of another confrontation I’d seen online.
So one of the videos that I saw was taken somewhere here. It's in the heart of Delhi.
The fact that it has come to a place like this, which is relatively posh,
this just means that we are being silenced, even in the most protected places of this country.
Sara flagged something that’s vital to understanding how the Bhagwa Love Trap
theory started. It didn’t emerge out of thin air. It was triggered by another
set of videos circulating on social media. There is a very real threat here. There are
speeches that keep coming out of Hindu nationalists, where they're saying,
we have to marry Muslim women. There are even videos where they're saying that we
will give rewards to people who marry these Muslim women.
That’s the uncomfortable truth at the heart of this story. There are videos
online showing leading figures associated with Hindutva actively encouraging Hindu
men to pursue Muslim women. Exactly as the Bhagwa Love Trap theory claims.
In this clip, that’s gone viral on Youtube, we hear a 2018 speech from a member of a far-right
Hindu group, saying ‘If we want to weaken the muslims, we have to target their daughters’.
And then there’s this video.
This is Yogi Adityanath, then a mid-ranking politician, speaking 16 years ago. You can hear
him shouting “If they take one Hindu girl we’ll take at least a hundred Muslim girls”. Today,
he’s the Chief Minister for the state of Uttar Pradesh. And he’s a member of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s party - the BJP - which openly subscribes to the
Hindutva ideology. We asked him if he still stood by the statement. He did not reply.
I wanted to speak to a Hindutva leader about what I’d seen.
I've come to Greater Kailash, a posh locality in New Delhi to
meet the working president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad a Hindutva group. His
office is in the basement of this old building. Let’s go find him.
With all that is in my knowledge,
there is absolutely no evidence of such a trap being run by Hindus.
This is Alok Kumar. Thick white hair, salt and pepper moustache and more softly spoken than
others in his organisation. He’s an elder of the Hindutva movement, and thinks the
Bhagwa Love Trap theory is nonsense. I would say that all are some fringe
people making boisterous claims. The perpetrators of this theory,
the Bhagwa Love Trap theory, are basing this on statements made by Hindutva groups
at various points by various people. Like in Islam, like in Christianity,
there may be some extreme fringe groups which say and do things which are not normal. All
the evidence is on thin ice. And there is no evidence that that has been backed up.
Before Mr Yogi Adityanath was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh when he was a member of the
Parliament, he said something to the effect of, if they take one Hindu woman, we should take 100
Muslim women. These are not fringe elements. The statement attributed to Yogi I'm not aware
of that. And we would not do it. Our tenets of our religion do not do it.
Alok Kumar says he hasn’t seen the Yogi Adityanath speech. But
that either way, videos like these do not represent the Hindutva philosophy.
I wanted to speak to some of the people actually promoting the Bhagwa Love Trap theory. So I
reached out to several accounts pushing the videos online. And the owner of one account, a Muslim
man, agreed to an interview, on the condition of anonymity. So this is an actor’s voice.
This has been going on for years. Hindu boys befriend Muslim girls and entrap
them. In love. When they’ve had enough, the Muslim girls are forced to suffer.
I asked him how he thought Muslim women could end up in relationships without their consent.
In most cases the Muslim girls are brainwashed. They’re caught
in a trap. It’s a conspiracy. That’s what I’m talking about.
What is the evidence that you have to prove that there is a planned conspiracy
of Bhagwa Love Trap that is causing this? When someone does something deceitfully,
then there is usually a plan or conspiracy behind it. If you don’t believe this,
then that is up to you, but we see it like this. During the interview he gave us some examples of
the Bhagwa Love Trap playing out in the real world. For example, a Muslim woman who married
and was later killed by her Hindu husband. When I checked, the tragedy didn’t fit with
the conspiracy theory. She hadn’t converted to Hinduism, and police reported the killing as a
domestic dispute about money. I looked into the four other examples he gave, and none provided
evidence to suggest a conspiracy at work. But he did say something I found interesting.
Isn’t it a bit far fetched to say that this is all a planned conspiracy against Muslim women?
You have to understand how hostile the environment is for Muslims in India at the moment.
It’s a point that will resonate with anyone who’s been watching Indian politics over the
last decade. Hindu nationalism has been on the rise, and many Muslims
claim they’ve suffered as a result. Long before the Bhagwa Love Trap theory
rose to prominence there was ‘Love Jihad’, the opposite idea. Much older, and much better known.
Love Jihad claims that hyper-sexual, hyper-aggressive Muslim men are luring
Hindu women away from their communities. It’s been pushed by Hindu nationalist groups for years.
Independent investigations by Indian news outlets NDTV and the Indian Express, looked into a string
of alleged cases of Love Jihad in Uttar Pradesh and found no evidence to support the theory.
The central government doesn’t record the number of interfaith marriages in India.
But I spoke to an NGO that helps interfaith couples register their marriages and they
say they haven’t reported a rise in the number of couples approaching them recently.
Either way, the Love Jihad theory remains popular. It’s led to Muslim men being threatened, harassed
and beaten. And some see the Bhagwa Love Trap as an invention designed by Muslims to hit back.
At a park in the north of Delhi I went to meet a man many see as responsible for popularising
the Bhagwa Love Trap theory. He greets me with a polite bow, and we sit down next to a fountain.
Do you agree that you were the first one to bring it up into the national media?
Yes. You can give this credit to me. Yes, I was the first one.
Shoaib Jamai is a Muslim scholar and a regular on Indian news channels. He’s in his 30s,
and wears thick rectangular glasses. I asked him if he felt responsible
for triggering the wave of attacks we’ve seen crop up on social media.
I absolutely condemn this kind of heinous act. And I don't support the people from
Muslim society who’re trying to take the law into their hand. This country runs by law.
I think this actually hampers the whole idea. This actually hampers the reputation
of the Muslim girls themselves. So he disapproves of the attacks,
and the doxxing. But on the validity of the theory itself, Shoaib is in no doubt.
Lots of Hindu organisation actually propagating this ideology. It is a crime.
But aren't you fearmongering or causing this fear that Muslim women are being brainwashed?
Definitely not. It’s a very real serious concern. And it should be
the concern of the government also. I wanted to know what Shoaib made
of the other side of the argument. Whether he thought Love Jihad was a real conspiracy too.
They have tried to put up some of the cases in the name of Love Jihad, but in the police
investigation, in the media investigation it turned out to be false. It was the rumours.
You don’t believe that it’s a real thing. Yes.
Similarly, Bhagwa Love Trap, is there real evidence?
The concern is real, and it will spread further and further if you can’t stop this right now.
For Shoaib, the Bhagwa Love Trap is real, but Love Jihad is a false conspiracy theory.
Back in Greater Kailash, I put the same thing to Alok Kumar, head of the Hindutva
organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he takes the opposite view.
I've been speaking to people who believe in this theory and who are perpetrating this theory
online. What you said about Bhagwa Love Trap is what they have been saying about Love Jihad,
that it doesn't exist and that it's not happening. When I say Love Jihad, I do not mean that there is
an infrastructural command structure maintained at the national or international level. It is a
lone wolf thing. But then there is a section - a large section - of Muslim men falling prey to it,
in the way of their religion, to lure Hindu women into their trap.
For Alok, it’s Love Jihad posing a danger to women in India. Bhagwa Love Trap is the fraud.
None of the evidence I’ve seen on either side provides confirmation of a widespread conspiracy
actually being enacted on the ground. It hasn’t been possible to check every anecdotal case. But
the ones I have looked into haven’t stood up. Given how recently the Bhagwa Love Trap has
risen to prominence, we don’t yet have statistics that would support or debunk the theory. Whatever
lies behind the angry rhetoric, we shouldn’t discount the effect of the rhetoric itself.
And on that point, Fatima Khan, the journalist I met at the beginning of
the programme says we shouldn’t view the Bhagwa Love Trap as simply ‘Love Jihad in reverse’.
Bhagwa Love Trap, I would really caution against seeing it as the flip side of Love
Jihad because Love Jihad conspiracy theory has great political backing,
it was discussed in the Indian Parliament at length.
As Fatima points out, “Love Jihad” has become a firm fixture in India’s political discourse.
On the other hand, the Bhagwa Love Trap as it is called,
it is a fairly nascent conspiracy theory. It’s something that doesn't
have political backing at all. It doesn’t have religious political backing either.
Political backing or not, the Bhagwa Love Trap theory continues to result
in real-world consequences for many across India.
That’s it for this episode of BBC Trending. Thanks to producer Sam Judah,
editor Flora Carmichael and our studio manager Hal Haines.