The “disease” of waiting for children to turn 18 before getting them married has led to “love jihad”, a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Madhya Pradesh said on Saturday. To save their daughters from getting trapped, parents should fix their marriages early, Gopal Parmar told ANI. “Love jihad” is a term frequently used by Hindutva organisations to allege a conspiracy by Muslim men to marry women from other religions solely to convert them to Islam.
Parmar said no one had heard of divorces when child marriages were in practice, The Indian Express reported. Marriages worked because parents “used to apply their mind” and find “compatible children” for matches, he said.