The wedding reception of a Muslim man and a Hindu woman in the Ghaziabad city of India’s Uttar Pradesh on Friday was briefly disrupted as a mob of religious extremists tried to gatecrash the ceremony but were stopped by local police, IANS reported.
Upon learning of the interfaith marriage, members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had teamed up with fellow zealots from Hindutva ideologues Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and Jai Shiv Sena to stage a protest outside the home of the bride’s parents, claiming that the matrimony was a case of ‘love jihad’.
Ignored was the fact that not only the now-married couple, but also their families were completely fine with the marriage, and the reception was actually thrown by the bride’s father, Pushpendra Kumar.
“They have decided to live together, so they have registered their marriage under the Special Marriage Act in Ghaziabad,” Kumar said. “We had arranged a reception party. I don’t see any love jihad in their marriage.”
Regarding the threats, he added: “I had been receiving phone calls for the last two days to stop this marriage. But both are major and mature enough to know what’s wrong and what’s right.”
But come reception day, the two families were astonished to find that an assortment of protesters had gathered outside their residence to stop the event.
Fortunately for them, the police saw the protest as an attempt to interfere with the private life of an individual and used force to disperse the protesters.