Backstory: Framing a Monstrous Crime of Passion Through the Lens of 'Love Jihad'

 Backstory: Framing a Monstrous Crime of Passion Through the Lens of 'Love Jihad'

A fortnightly column from The Wire's ombudsperson.

Backstory: Framing a Monstrous Crime of Passion Through the Lens of 'Love Jihad'

Students from the Gurukul Art School pay tribute to Shraddha Walker, who was murdered by her boyfriend Aftab Ameen Poonawala in Delhi, in Mumbai, November 15, 2022. Photo: PTI/Shashank Parade

Pamela Philipose

Pamela Philipose

COMMUNALISMGOVERNMENTMEDIAPOLITICSRIGHTS

21 HOURS AGO

The murder and dismemberment of 26-year-old Shraddha Walkar is yet another monstrous crime perpetrated against women that Delhi has had to witness in recent times. 

Much like the gang rape and eventual death of Jyoti Singh (‘Nirbhaya’) a decade ago, it has – since the latest story broke on November 12 – quickly assumed the proportions of a media spectacle. A livestreaming, if you will, of every little shard drawn from police sources, friends and family members, as well as reporters on the ground. 

On television, the case is eternally unspooling, cycle by repetitious cycle. This continuous reiteration of known information (sometimes with edits: 35 pieces, no, 16), does in no way dissuade the binge watchers who are lured into the narrative through successive “breaking news” invitations that use adjective-heavy kickers – “More gory details emerge”; “Blood-curdling revelations”; “Spine-chilling details” – to keep the story going. 

The Nirbhaya coverage saw a new level of graphic detail being made public in terms of the mutilation done to the female body. We had, at that juncture, shuddered to read and hear those details of entrails and rod which would earlier have been edited out, keeping human sensitivities in mind.

But, as I had observed in a book that I written on the mediatisation of India, “competition between peers fuelled a tidal wave of information that washed away such compliances…The explicit reportage on the condition of the woman’s body based on eye-witness accounts also contributed towards the creation of an atavistic desire for retribution that marked the crowd response”.

Today, that dam has long since broken. In the Shraddha Walkar murder, every detail, including the minutiae of the ways in which the killer disposed of the body, is offered up without a thought.

There are crucial reasons why editorial reticence on publishing violent or graphic material is advised. It leads to a coarsening of the public discourse; an undermining of people’s capacity to be empathetic; a normalisation of criminal pathologies. The potential impact on the impressionable minds of children is also enormous. Resulting anxieties and traumas are rarely registered, even though they have a long afterlife with potentially severely damaging consequences for society, including the encouragement of psychopathic behaviour and copycat attacks. 

Also read: Shraddha Walkar Murder: Stop Asking Why She Did Not Leave

(I am happy to report that the editors of The Wire had weighed in on the subject long before the present case and have tried to set a norm for themselves. For instance, when it comes to publishing violent or graphic images of death, The Wire’s standard is to refrain from publishing them. If a red-flagged image is imperative to a story, then the editors discuss the best way to handle it – through trigger warnings, and the like.)

The most ominous aspect of the Shraddha Walkar news story was the manner it was framed as a ‘love jihad’, right from the point when the story broke on Saturday, November 12, and the name of the killer was revealed as ‘Aftab Poonawala’. This fed into the familiar, pre-fabricated template, assiduously created and replicated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindutva right wing; of Muslim men as sexual predators intent upon capturing Hindu women for purposes of conversion. 

Initially, doubts were raised on whether the man was indeed a Muslim since ‘Poonawala’ is a common Parsi name as well. But soon, Hindutva trolls and media outfits were quoting Walkar’s father to confirm his Muslim identity and many outlets took to adding his father’s name, ‘Amin’, to his own, as clinching evidence.

Although the nature of this relationship, judging from the few details floating around which include the killer’s social media posts, does not conform to the ‘love jihad’ angle, attempts were constantly made to bring in that element. One of the questions put to Rajat Shukla, a “friend of Shraddha”, was whether Aftab was religious. He couldn’t answer it, but was happy to go along with the ‘love jihad’ angle. 

Also read: For India’s Sake, Stop Destroying Communal Harmony With the Bogey of Love Jihad

Hindutva proselytisers like Kapil Mishra, with his humongous 1.3 million followers on Twitter, were among the first off the block. This is a rough translation of the tweet in Hindi he put out: “Bollywood, media, ads that promote false constructs like brotherhood, politics that is soaked in the blood of daughters, rich and upper middle classes drinking the poison of fake secularism, the sold police and the jihadi education model. Don’t blame daughters for murders like Shraddha.”

This egged Tapan Das to immediately tweet (rough translation): “The biggest weakness is that we have not been able to keep our sisters and daughters within our grasp. They are left free to do what they want. If parents and brothers keep an eye on each and every sister’s/daughter’s movements, then I do not think anyone else will fall in love so soon. They will be caught in the net.”

The torrent of communal rage online quickly turned on the victim. Hindutva influencer Shefali Vaidya, with her 668,000 followers, kept tweeting and taunting the dead Shraddha for defying her father. Before long, the number of ‘followers’ on Shraddha’s Instagram page had risen from 120 to 5,117, with many posts blaming her for her fate.

The linear narrative put out by one meme – follow the path of dharma and you will be carried on a palanquin like a princess; follow the path of adharma and you will end up in a suitcase – was the general line.

Soon, television channels began to interview women who had married outside their Hindu faith and suffered tragically as a consequence. Important to note here is that there were no attempts to dwell on the life story of an Abhijeet Patidar who slit the throat of his partner Shilpa at a Jabalpur resort and videographed her as she gasped for life, just as the Shraddha Walkar story broke; nor was “one Rahul” who strangled his girlfriend, Gulshana, to death on November 17 in an area not far from where the Aftab Poonawala atrocity had played out, of much interest. Since the names of the men involved did not fit the master narrative, it was far more productive for the media to chase the story of Nidhi Gupta, allegedly pushed out from the fourth floor by her lover, a certain Sufiyan, in Lucknow. 

This was not media coverage driven to ensure the safety and security of women; in fact it undermines any effort to do so. As a perceptive observation in an article in The Wire noted: “By falsely framing the problem as one of ‘Muslim violence against Hindu women’, their propaganda prevents people from recognising and addressing the real problem that Shraddha’s murder points to: rampant intimate partner violence faced by women in India and the world over.”

Also read: Delhi Murder: Six Ways To Use Our Anger To Fight Violence Against Women

What is significant about this moment is that it shines a light on how ‘love jihad’, once just a trial balloon floated in the early years of the Modi primeministership, has now become an immutable concept, reinforced by both law and media coverage. It is a powerful tool for the Hindutva project in a country where ministers promise new laws to “save Hindu girls”, and Supreme Court judges direct the government to do something about “deceitful religious conversions”. 

The tragedy of Shraddha Walkar, who fell in love with a monster who happened to be a Muslim, and paid for it with her life; which should have led to a renewed examination of ways to strengthen women’s agency and confront endemic sexual violence, has instead become a cautionary tale to all Hindu women in the country to shed their capacities for free thought and action; submit completely to the patriarchal control of the family and its traditions.

The irony, of course, is that some of the worst forms of sexual violence against Indian women today take place within the fold of the family. 

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End police impunity during search and seizure actions

Seizing the electronic devices of a media establishment and of those working there is a bit like a steel industry being deprived of its motors and conveyor belts – machinery essential to its functioning. The Delhi police’s move to seize the devices belonging to senior personnel of The Wire, as well as from its office, is rife with multiple violations, beginning with the failure to provide the hash value of the devices seized and ensuring that a cloned copy of the material was given at the time of seizure. 

Days after that unacceptable raid conducted on October 31, the devices have still not been returned. Meanwhile the Union government, under whose jurisdiction the Delhi police functions, has failed to come up with counter-petition to the one that a group of academics had filed, much before The Wire’s case, seeking guidelines for search and seizure of electronic devices by investigative agencies. The Supreme Court has now fined the government Rs 25,000 for this failure. 

The lawless nature of this entire operation against The Wire was driven home by no less than a former Supreme Court Justice, B.N. Srikrishna, in an interview given to the socially and politically engaged portal, Article 14 , and republished in The Wire.

“Police must be able to demonstrate the need to gather the data without consent. Simply saying the purpose is a criminal investigation is not adequate, in my opinion,” Justice Srikrishna observed. Meanwhile, according to a Live Law report, a Delhi Court has ruled that the police have no right to seek the password of the electronic device of an accused without his or her consent as it violates Article 20(3) of the Constitution and Section 161 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Also read: Interview: ‘Police Cannot Touch the Data on Your Computer Without Your Consent’

Many political prisoners in India today find themselves in jail under repressive laws like UAPA through precisely such illegal seizures of devices. Every citizen should understand their rights in this regard.

Postscript

That the political establishment’s knives are out for The Wire is clear from the recent statements of Union minister of information and broadcasting, Anurag Thakur. In a public speech, he termed its reportage (implicitly all its reportage) false and malicious and targeting the government.

According to a Hindustan Times report, he went on to observe that such reportage was being done “with no regard as to what it does to India’s image and prestige.” I&B ministers have a long legacy of media bashing – V.C. Shukla’s attempts to crush the press during the emergency of the 1970s are now legendary.

Minister Thakur should have desisted from making such remarks on National Press Day of all days! Incidentally, even though he did not name this news portal, the Hindustan Times read his mind clearly enough to headline its report: ”Malicious, targeted’: I&B minister hits out after Wire’s false reports’.

When they were asked to bend, they crawled…