NEW DELHI: India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party has approved legislation in the country’s most populous state that lays out a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone found guilty of using marriage to force someone to change religion.
The decree for the state of Uttar Pradesh was passed Tuesday and follows a campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party against interfaith marriages. The party describes such marriages as “love jihad,” an unproven conspiracy theory used by its leaders and Hindu hard-line groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage.
Under the decree — which will become a law after its approval by the state’s governor, a formality — a couple belonging to two different religions will have to give two months’ notice to a district magistrate before getting married. The couple will be allowed to marry only if the official finds no objections.
Uttar Pradesh government minister Siddharth Nath Singh said prison terms of up to 10 years would stop unlawful conversions and provide justice to women.
Uttar Pradesh is the third Indian state ruled by Modi’s party after Haryana and Madhya Pradesh to approve such legislation to check what Hindu nationalist leaders call forced and unlawful religious conversions.
Earlier, the state’s top elected leader, Yogi Aditynatah, a Hindu monk, said at a public meeting that those waging “love jihad” should either refrain from it or be prepared to die.
Amid a rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India under Modi, Hindu hard-line groups have long accused minority Muslims of taking over the country by persuading Hindu women to marry them and convert to Islam.
Although India’s constitution is secular and provides protection to all faiths, the issue of “love jihad” has gripped headlines and pitted Modi’s party leaders against secular activists.
India’s investigating agencies and courts have, however, rejected the “love jihad” theory, which many see as part of an anti-Muslim agenda by Modi’s party.
On Tuesday, a court in Uttar Pradesh heard a case of interfaith marriage and said that “interference in a personal relationship would constitute a serious encroachment into the right to freedom of choice of the two individuals.”
The court’s ruling came after a Muslim man was accused of forcibly converting his Hindu partner.
India is a predominantly Hindu country, with Muslims making up about 14% of its more than 1.3 billion people. Hindu hard-line groups also oppose conversions to Christianity and have vowed to continue trying to prevent interfaith relationships.
Critics of Modi — an avowed Hindu nationalist — say India’s tradition of diversity and secularism has come under attack since his party won power in 2014 and returned for a second term in 2019.
They accuse the party of fanning religious passions and presiding over religious intolerance and sometimes even violence. The party denies the accusation.
But an apparent mood of fear, anger and disenchantment is growing among ordinary Indian Muslims. They say Modi and his party are slowly disenfranchising them, leaving the community reckoning with a future as second-class citizens.
The new decree comes at a time when Indian politics are increasingly becoming religiously charged.
On Monday, police registered a case against two executives of online streaming service Netflix, after a leader of Modi’s party objected to scenes in the series “A Suitable Boy,” in which a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy kiss against the backdrop of what appears to be a Hindu temple.
The police complaint was registered in Madhya Pradesh state for allegedly offending the religious sentiments of Hindus.
A Netflix India spokesperson declined to comment.
Many Indians on Twitter demanded a boycott of Netflix and called for the series to be taken off the platform.
Last month, jewelry brand Tanishq withdrew an advertisement featuring a Hindu-Muslim family celebrating a baby shower from TV channels and its social media platforms, following a backlash from Hindu nationalists and Modi’s party leaders. They said the ad promoted “love jihad.”
The withdrawal of the ad drew sharp criticism from many in India and shed light on the country’s growing religious polarization under Modi, whose party and supporters envision the country as a Hindu nation and are accused by critics of normalizing anti-Muslim sentiment.
Indian state outlaws religious conversion by marriage
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Indian state outlaws religious conversion by marriage
- India is a predominantly Hindu country, with Muslims making up about 14% of its more than 1.3 billion people
Disaster losses drop in 2025, picture still ‘alarming’: Munich Re
- Costliest disaster came in the form of the Los Angeles wildfires in January, with total losses of $53bn
FRANKFURT: Natural disaster losses worldwide dropped sharply to $224 billion in 2025, reinsurer Munich Re said Tuesday, but warned of a still “alarming” picture of extreme weather events likely driven by climate change.
The figure was down nearly 40 percent from a year earlier, in part because no hurricane struck the US mainland for the first time in several years.
Nevertheless, “the big picture was alarming with regard to floods, severe ... storms and wildfires in 2025,” said Munich Re, a Germany-based provider of insurance for the insurance industry.
HIGHLIGHT
Around 17,200 lives were lost in natural disasters worldwide, significantly higher than about 11,000 in 2024, but below the 10-year average of of 17,800.
The costliest disaster of the year came in the form of Los Angeles wildfires in January, with total losses of $53 billion and insured losses of around $40 billion, Munich Re said in its annual disaster report.
It was striking how many extreme events were likely influenced by climate change in 2025 and it was just chance that the world was spared potentially higher losses, according to the group.
“The planet has a fever, and as a result we are seeing a cluster of severe and intense weather events,” Tobias Grimm, Munich Re’s chief climate scientist, told AFP.
Last month Swiss Re, another top player in the reinsurance industry, also reported a hefty drop for 2025, putting total losses at $220 billion.
According to Munich Re’s report, insured losses for 2025 came in at $108 billion, also sharply down on last year.
Around 17,200 lives were lost in natural disasters worldwide, significantly higher than about 11,000 in 2024, but below the 10-year average of of 17,800, it said.
Grimm said 2025 was a year with “two faces.”
“The first half of the year was the costliest loss period the insurance industry has ever experienced,” he said — but the second half saw the lowest losses in a decade.
It is now the cumulative costs of smaller-scale disasters — like local floods and forest fires — that are having the greatest impact.
Losses from these events amounted to $166 billion last year, according to Munich Re.
After the LA wildfires, the costliest disaster of the year was a devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar in March, which is estimated to have caused $12 billion in losses, only a small share of which was insured.
Tropical cyclones caused around $37 billion in losses.
Jamaica was battered by Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall, generating losses of around $9.8 billion.
By region, the US’ total losses amounted to $118 billion, $88 billion of which was insured — around the same as an estimate of $115 billion total losses from US nonprofit Climate Central.
The Asia-Pacific region had losses of about $73 billion — but only $9 billion was insured, according to the report.
Australia had its second most expensive year in terms of overall losses from natural disasters since 1980 due to a series of severe storms and flooding.
Europe saw losses of $11 billion. Natural disasters in Africa led to losses of $3 billion, less than a fifth of which was insured.
The report comes at a time when skepticism toward green policies is growing, particularly since the return to power of US President Donald Trump, who derides climate science as a “hoax.”
But Grimm warned that the Earth “continues to warm.”
“More heat means more humidity, stronger rainfall, and higher wind speeds — climate change is already contributing to extreme weather,” he said.
