Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that Assam Congress president Bhupen Borah could be arrested if someone files a complaint against him after Borah made highly objectionable comments linking Mahabharat with love jihad. Talking to reporters, Bhupen Borah had said that when Dhritarashtra married Gandhari and Krishna married Rukmini, they had indulged in love jihad.
Bhupen Borah made the comments objecting to Assam CM describing the recent incident of the triple murder in Golaghat as a case of love jihad. In the horrific incident, one Nazibur Rahman Bora killed his Hindu wife and her parents by stabbing them with a knife. The woman Sanghamitra Ghosh had married him ignoring the opposition of her parents, and later marital discords led to the murders. Himanta Biswa Sarma visited the family on Wednesday and said that the case was the result of love jihad.
Responding to the comments, state Congress chief Bhupen Borah said that love jihad is going on for ages, and it took place even during the Mahabharata times. He claimed that Dhritarashtra had married Gandhari against the wishes of her family, and had even got her brothers imprisoned for objecting to the marriage. He also claimed that Gandhari had blindfolded herself so that she does not have to look at Dhritarashtra.
Bhupen Borah further claimed that Lord Krishna also married Rukmini against the wishes of her family, and thus it was also love jihad. He claimed that Krishna had changed his name to marry Rukmini, and Arjun had posed as a woman while accompanying Krishna.
Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma strongly reacted to the comments, saying that if someone files a complaint against Bhupen Borah, then the police will be forced to arrest him. He added that the incidents in Mahabharat were love and not love jihad. He clarified that love jihad means forcing someone to change through religion, and neither Gandhari nor Rukmini were forced to change religion. ‘
He added that earlier it was only love, but now love jihad happens and that’s why murders take place. ‘There were love between Krishna and Rukmini, there was no change of religion, there was no Jihad’, he added.
The Assam CM said that Muslim boys should marry Muslim girls, and Hindu boys should marry Hindu girls, and if someone wants to marry from the other religion, they can do so under the special marriage act without forcing a change of religion. If marriage takes place because of love, then it does not involve change of religion, and the word jihad does not appear in such cases, he said.
Just like we should not invoke Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad in any controversy, we also should not mention Lord Krishna in any controversy, the CM said.
False claims about Mahabharata by Assam Congress president
It is notable that apart from being highly controversial, the comments made by Bhupen Borah are also factually incorrect. He claimed things not mentioned in Vyasa’s Mahabharata and he mixed-up incidents. For example, the family of Rukmini was not opposed to her marriage to Krishna, only her brother Rukmi had opposed it. And according to the scriptures, Balaram had accompanied Krishna while taking Rukmini, and there is no mention of Arjuna being present. Arjuna had taken the female form Brihanalla during the exile for a year, and there is no mention of him accompanying Krishna in that form when Krishna went to Vidarbha to marry Rukmini in both Mahabharat and Bhagawat Purana.
Similarly, according to Vyasa’s Mahabharata, Gandhari didn’t object to her marriage with Dhritarashtra, and she blindfolded herself only because the Kuru prince was also blind, not because she hated him. The story of the Kuru kingdom imprisoning 100 brothers of Gandhari along with Shakuni is also not mentioned in Vyasa’s Mahabharata, and it is a recent narrative peddled by the likes of Devdutt Pattanaik, known for spreading fake narratives of Hindu scriptures.
