Vinod, Shah Bano tied the knot in 1989 and their family of five was boycotted, they say, because of the inter-religious marriage, leading them to Islam. (Express Photo: Milind Ghatwai)
Twenty-seven years after their inter-religious marriage, at least two incidents last year made Beena and Vinod Khare realise they could never count on his family — or their faith. In June 2016, when Vinod’s octogenarian father Suryaprakash Khare died, he went with his elder son to attend the last rites, but they were not allowed anywhere near the body. A month later, their son fell ill and the family had to remain by his side in hospital for days. “All that while, my daughter was alone at home with only our dog for company. Someone in my husband’s family should have checked on her, but no one did,’’ says Beena of the ostracism that eventually led their family of five to embrace Islam and for her to revert to her maiden name — Shah Bano.
In 1989, Shah Bano had married Vinod, who came from an old landed family not far from her house in Bajaria locality in Rajnagar, a small town in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur district. In a place where even inter-caste marriages are still frowned upon, the marriage had its consequences: Vinod’s family not only threw him out but also told him he would not get any share in the family property. Bano, who had become ‘Beena’ after her marriage, was told by both her parents and in-laws to keep away.
The couple struggled through the boycott, living in rented places and struggling to bring up their three children with no one to fall back on in times of need. Vinod tried his hand at odd jobs — traded in wheat for some years and even ran a magazine. He and his elder son now sell chaat near a lake in the town.
On August 18, Vinod Khare, 50, became Ghulam Mohammed; Beena, 46, became Shah Bano; Ekta, 22, became Fatma Khatun; Aman, 21, became Aman Ahmed; and Suraj, 14, became Aftab Ahmed. They signed an ikrarnama (agreement) on a Rs 100 judicial stamp paper and made individual affidavits on stamp papers of Rs 50 to announce that they had stopped idol worship and embraced Islam.
“From today, we have given up Hinduism and embraced Islam. We are not doing so out of fear or under inducement or greed… We will have nothing to do with Hinduism… We will worship Allah and follow all conditions in Islam,” reads the ikrarnama. The conversion has caused a stir in the town, which has a population of less than 16,000, with Hindu organisations trying to woo the family back and Muslim outfits welcoming them with open arms and frequently calling on them, even suggesting prospective grooms for their eldest child Fatma, an Arts graduate.
In the months leading to the conversion, the family realised how difficult it was to find a match for Fatma among Hindus.
“Most families backed off when they learnt of my religion,’’ says Shah Bano, adding how that has changed with the recent conversion. “Fatma has now started getting proposals from Muslim families. Though we have no money and we are in no hurry to get her married, at least we now feel wanted again. We are finally getting visitors,’’ she says.
Shah Bano says she lost her parents a few years after her marriage. “My sister and four brothers also snapped ties with us but unlike my in-laws, they are not allergic to us,’’ she says.
She hopes the ordeal that began when they first tied the knot on July 1, 1989, will finally end with the conversion. “Lord Rama’s vanvas (exile) lasted 14 years, but we have been subjected to insults over 28 years and two months,’’ says Shah Bano, sitting in her small brick house, built on “encroached government property” in Mali Mohalla.
Two kilometres away, sitting in the courtyard of their large ancestral home, Vinod’s mother Shanti Devi says the family severed all ties with him because “he went against the family’s wishes’’. “He did not inform the family when he ran away with her (Shah Bano),” she says of the eldest of her seven children. “My husband was so angry that he did not want any ties with him. He did not want the property to go to him,” says Shanti Devi, who shares the house with four of her sons and their families.
The family, which also owns a 14-acre plot, is embroiled in a property case with Vinod. “He has already lost one case, but there’s another one pending,” she says. Vinod moved court after his father died without leaving any property in his name. The Khare family is now wondering if they can use Vinod’s conversion to their advantage in the ongoing litigation.
The brothers allege that before marrying Shah Bano, Vinod “ran away with a lot of money”. “Our family used to run a successful video parlour business in the 1980s and Vinod, being the eldest, had access to cash,” says Vinod’s younger brother Arun. “If we had accepted Vinod or his marriage, our children would have gone through the same difficulties his daughter is facing.’’
After they embraced Islam, Ghulam and Shah Bano held a nikah — their third marriage, they joke. “After our marriage in 1989, which was held according to Hindu rituals, we had undergone a court marriage because we needed some proof. And now, this nikah,” says Shah Bano.
“Nikah was necessary because, according to Islam, they could not have stayed under one roof without getting married,’’ says Ikram Hafiz, the imam who solemnised the nikah on August 21. It was after the nikah that right-wing Hindu organisations came to know of the conversion.
VHP leader Anupam Gupta claims the Muslim community offered “inducements” to get the family to convert. He says the documents made by the family in support of their conversion have no legal sanctity since Madhya Pradesh’s anti-conversion law requires notifying the district authorities after the conversion which, he says, they haven’t.
The Chhatarpur-based Shahzad Hafiz, who helped the family make the documents, refutes the VHP’s charges of inducing the family.
He adds that Ghulam Mohammed and his sons have started offering namaz in the local mosque. “They are learning the ropes. We correct them when they make mistakes. They are our brethren,” he says. The couple rule out any possibility of reconversion to Hinduism. “Unko bhram hai agar unko ye lagta hai ki ham vapas aayenge (They are living in illusion if they think we will change our minds about this),’’ Shah Bano says of the frequent visits by VHP and RSS members, asking them to reconsider their decision to convert. “What will we gain by going back? It’s not a gudda-guddi ka khel (child’s play).’’
