Priyanka and Umar

Bhopal, April 12: Radical Hindu groups today called a bandh against an inter-faith marriage and met the governor to demand that the minimum age for such unions be raised to 25.

The move comes a day after high courts in Mumbai and Jabalpur recognised the marriage of Bhopal girl Priyanka Wadhwani to Umar, who had converted and turned Umesh before the wedding.

The couple had fled to Mumbai after their wedding, conducted by a Hindu priest, but Umar’s family was today “excommunicated” by the hard-line Majlis-e-Shura Bhopal.

Saturday’s Bhopal bandh was called by the Hindu Kanya Bachao Samiti, made up of representatives from the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP.

The leaders of the Samiti (which till yesterday called itself the Hindu Kanya Raksha Samiti) rushed to governor Balram Jakhar pressing for amendments to the inter-faith marriage law.

“I told Jakhar that 18-year-old girls are not mature enough to take the momentous decision to marry outside their religion,” said Uttam Chand Israni, Samiti chief and a Sindhi community leader.

He saw no contradiction in two separate age limits for brides depending on whether the groom was from the same religion. His logic was: “People can vote at 18 but a person can contest a Lok Sabha election only at 25.”

B.L. Tiwari, part of the delegation, asked Jakhar if it was fair for a person to change his faith just “an hour” before marriage. “Does it not call for scrutiny of conversion laws?” Tiwari told The Telegraph.

He claimed that in the past one year, 22 Hindu girls had eloped and married Muslim boys and changed their faith — but only five Muslim girls had married Hindus and only three had changed their faith.

“I have studied the trend closely,” Tiwari said. “Among Muslims, inter-faith marriages are restricted to the elite while in Hindu society, it’s widespread among the middle and lower-middle classes.”

As for Umar, “he continues to be Umar, not Umesh, for us. We don’t accept him in our fold”, Tiwari said.

The Majlis-e-Shura was equally unrelenting. “I call upon the Muslim community in Bhopal to boycott him (Umar) and his family. He has ceased to be a Muslim,” said its leader Ausaf Khurram Shamiri.