Patna,(BiharTimes): There is no dearth of people, both within and outside the Bharatiya Janata Party, who find personal overtone in the former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi’s move to oppose the love-jehad campaign launched by Yogi Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj, the two firebrand MPs of the saffron party.
While the hotheads within the BJP see a great Muslim conspiracy to ensnare Hindu girls to marry Muslim boys and than convert them to Islam, the story of Sushil Kumar Modi is totally different. He married Jessie George, originally from Kerala, but settled in Mumbai, in 1987. But nobody ever accused him of being involved in a great Hindu conspiracy to convert Christian girls to Hinduism.
By that logic former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi too should be credited for doing a ‘great service’ to Hinduism as he too married a Catholic Christian of Italy, Sonia Gandhi, and brought her to India. But then a strong section in the BJP never accepted her and the present External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, had after 2004 Lok Sabha election, threatened to shave her head off if the then Muslim President A P J Abdul Kalam invites Sonia Gandhi to form the government.
Though Sonia herself declined to become the prime minister many in the saffron brigade continue to suspect her. They are of the view that Sonia Christianized Rajiv Gandhi and both Priyanka and Rahul are Christians. This simply because the former married a Christian, Robert Vadra.
No doubt there are umpteen examples of Hindus marrying Muslim girls as well.
Anyway SuMo knows that there are many BJP leaders who have married outside their faith and it would be politically wrong for the party, especially in Bihar, to support this campaign of love-jehad. At least they have learnt from the UP by-polls.
However, leader like Giriraj Singh openly came out in favour of Yogi’s campaign against the so-called love-jehad.
But Giriraj has less to do with the whole love-jehad business as he had to settle personal score with SuMo too. He is using love-jehad issue just as a tool to do so.
Yogi, Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj and others seem to have forgotten that a single love-marriage between Prithviraj Chauhan and Samyogita, daughter of his cousin and king of Kannauj, Jai Chand, perhaps played a more significant role in changing the history of India than several other factors. Prithviraj eloped with Jai Chand’s daughter. Jai Chand took revenge, as unlike other Rajput kings and chieftains, who supported Prithviraj, he allied with Muhammad Ghori, who succeeded in capturing Delhi in his second attempt in 1192. Ghori did not spare Jai Chand either and in 1193-94 defeated him in the Battle of Chandawar. He was killed and his son Harish Chandra ruled Kannauj as a sub-ordinate of Ghori and his successors until 1225, when Iltutmish ended his reign.
Perhaps SuMo knows this story better than Yogi and Sakshi Maharaj.