Tanishq, the jewellery company of the Tata group, released an advertisement recently. Upon severe objections raised on social media, the ad was withdrawn in a very short while. It showed a young pregnant woman being led to a lavishly decorated lawn where arrangements had been made to perform the baby shower ceremony. The woman is impressed and asks the elder woman leading her, "but this custom is not part of your tradition, is it?" to which the response is, "but tradition says that we ought to keep our daughters happy."

Very straight, very simple message - apparently - till we see and observe some more. 

From the outfits – kunkumam on young woman's forehead, the style in which she has worn her attire complete with jewellery and elder woman's head covered in burkha – it is made obvious that the former is (still) Hindu and the latter is Muslim. That is, the Hindu woman has married a Muslim man. This is also apparent, so?

​​Hindutvavadis state that such ads must not be made and shown. When questioned why, they say, "will they show the vice-versa situation of Hindu man bringing home a Muslim woman?" How silly! How does that matter? Aren't the two involved the ones to decide? The characters in the ad are certainly not minors and legally they have the right to decide whom to marry. Isn't this obvious? These Hindutvavadis seem so bigoted! Or are they right?

Let's read into the many things that are not so obvious. There are two aspects to what is hidden from sight.

First, Bharata does NOT yet have a uniform civil code (UCC). This means that the marriage and family laws that the Hindus have to follow do not apply to the Muslims or to the Christians. They have different marriage and family laws. How different are Hindu marriage laws from Muslim marriage laws?

1. The marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man is not a legally valid marriage. Therefore, the woman has no right of inheritance of the man's property. In fact, she doesn't even have rights to be decently maintained by the Muslim man because she is nothing more than his concubine. This is as per the legal judgement given by the Supreme Court.

If the marriage is as per the Hindu Marriage Act, anybody who has married a Hindu is recognised as his/her legally married spouse.

[This makes us realise that the woman in the Tanishq ad is actually not the man’s legal wife if she was still a Hindu and so the situation created in the ad would not be as the girl would not be recognised as the daughter-in-law unless the girl had converted to Islam in which case, paradoxically, the celebration of the Hindu ceremony would not be there at all!]

2. This means that the man is free to marry other women even while he lives with this Hindu woman. It is a well-known fact that even women born in Muslim families suffer parallel polygamy (being married to several women at the same time) to this day.

This is not the same as the Hindu law where a man is allowed to be married to only one woman (and vice-versa) at a time. Marrying another person will be valid only if the earlier spouse has been legally divorced.

3. This means that the woman has no legal recourse. The shariah court does not work for the woman as she is not the Muslim man’s wife and, moreover, she is not a Muslim. As we already saw, even the Supreme Court refers to the shariah law in such instances because in Islam, the male’s background is considered important to take forward the case.

Under Hindu marriage law, both the male and the female are held equal.

4. If the woman converts to Islam, this is the law that rules over her at the time of inheritance: The wife gets one-eighth of the share if there are children and one-fourth of the share if there are no children. In case the husband has more than one wife, the one-eighth share is divided equally among them. On the other hand, the husband gets one fourth of the share of his dead wife's property, if there are children and one-half if there are no children. (Mulla Mohammedan Law, Vol 3).

Under Hindu law, the law of inheritance for both men and women are identical.

In Islam, a woman is considered to be *half or lesser* than that of a man.

Second, the threat of what has been wrongly termed “Love Jihad” by some members of a Kerala church is in fact “Jihadi’s Poison Love”. Wow, that is such an overarching accusation, an indication of intolerance by the majority Hindus? Is it?

1. Islam allows for men to have women slaves for sexual pleasures. They especially speak of women of the conquered territories and kafir (non-believer) women.
2. Hindu women have been targeted by Muslim men ever since the Islamic invasions started about a thousand years ago. They were systematically abducted, sexually violated, raped and killed. This led to the rise in child marriage among girls. Further, they were even prevented from going out to schools to study. This is why our women were so free before a thousand years were tied down after that. This practice of abusing Hindu women by Muslim men continues.
3. The vulnerable women of these days are those who, in the name of liberalism, are mesmerised into believing that they are equal to the Muslim man that they are courting. They are easily ensnared because they are ignorant of Islamic laws of marriage and family.
4. By the time the woman comes to know that she is never going to be the man’s wife legally and that she gets nothing as sustenance from him, it is already late. The only option for her would be to convert to Islam. In case she is a brave woman who wants to get out of this relationship, she is abused physically and mentally. If she insists on a legal marriage or tries to flee, she is unceremoniously killed.
5. Women are never treated equal to men in Islam. This is the reason why the Hindutvavadis ask if they would make an advertisement showing a Hindu man marrying a Muslim woman. There has not been any answer to this question. No, such an ad would not be made because it would cause the ad maker to be harmed or killed by Muslims. Why would Muslims do that? They would do that because it would imply that the woman would be treated at par with her husband (yes, she is legally his wife in this case). They would not accept this situation under any circumstance as they firmly believe that a woman with rights is harmful to society. This would also mean that the trend of women leaving Islam in order to obtain greater respectability as wives of a Hindu men would set in. Therefore, there is a high possibility that the Muslim girl and her Hindu husband would be targeted and killed. Unless the Hindu man converts to Islam, that is.

Now that you know all this very clearly, you are free to do ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

Either

Educate your children (both girls and boys) when they are in their early teens on how the marriage and family laws of our country work for different religions.

or

Just tell them that everybody is equal and it does not matter whom they choose to marry as long as they are not minors.

The choice is yours!

I want my children (and country, consequently) to be safe and would continue to offer my support to the Hindutva voices and reiterate that all Hindus must oppose Tanishq ad (and other similar ads) and brave through the false blame of intolerance.

Image Credit: Mumbai Mirror, https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/india/whats-the-controversial-tanishq-ad-and-why-is-boycotttanishq-trending-on-social-media/articleshow/78636691.cms