“Mera Abdul aisa nahin hai.”
This slogan – recently amplified along with messages by Hindu nationalist accounts in the wake of the Shraddha Walkar murder case – suggested that all Abduls, or Muslims, might be potential killers, and those who did not share this essentialist belief were naive Hindu girls. Sections of the mainstream media too, in as many words, have vilified a community over the incident, in its reliance on the trope of “love jihad”: the conspiracy theory that Muslim men are ensnaring Hindu women as part of an organised network to convert Hindus to Islam and make India an Islamic state.
