Hindu TV actor says was pressured to abandon his faith for marriage by Muslim actress girlfriend, shares reason behind breakup
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 
20 October, 2014
Case Summary
Hindu TV actor Kushal Tandon revealed that the reason behind his breakup with his Muslim actress girlfriend Gauahar Khan was the latter's insistence that he convert to Islam. Kushal Tandon is an Indian model and actor known for his work primarily in Hindi television. Gauahar Khan and Kushal Tandon’s love story began in 2013 on the reality show Bigg Boss season 7. They first became friends, and then their bond grew into love. Their relationship continued even outside the show, but it didn’t last long. The two had announced their breakup through a tweet in the year 2014. According to a report by Hindustan Times, a day after announcing his breakup with Gauahar, Kushal confided in a journalist friend that the primary reason for their separation was religion. The 35-year-old reportedly told his friend that Gauahar had asked him to convert from Hinduism to Islam. Kushal had said that while love is very important in life, it is not everything.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category - Men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women. The sub-category selected is - Forced to convert before marriage. In such cases, a non-Hindu woman is in a relationship with a Hindu man when the force/pressure against the Hindu man to convert his religion begins to manifest. The relationship in such cases is mostly consensual and the religious identity of the perpetrator is known to the Hindu man in the relationship, however, at some point during the relationship, the non-Hindu woman starts to force/pressure the victim to convert his religion and give up his Hindu identity. In such cases, the methods used to force/pressure the victim to convert his religion often revolve around forcing/pressurizing the man to involuntarily consume beef, forced circumcision, forcing/pressurizing to read the Kalma or even pressurizing the victim to do ‘Nikah’, which is marriage under Islamic law, with a prerequisite being conversion to Islam. Cases where the Hindu man consensually converts to Islam in a relationship will be left out of the hate crime database, even though it could be argued in several cases that the conversion was a result of religious brainwashing. In this case, although the relationship between Kushal Tandon and Gauahar Khan was consensual, the pressure placed on Tandon to abandon his Hindu identity and adopt Islam highlights a clear instance of coercion on religious grounds. The act of demanding religious conversion as a precondition for continuing or formalising a romantic relationship constitutes not only a violation of individual autonomy but also a targeted assault on a person's religious identity. In this context, the pressure exerted by the non-Hindu partner was not rooted in mutual respect or spiritual inquiry but in an imposed condition that one’s personal faith be relinquished. This dynamic, when motivated by the religious identity of the victim and not by mutual consent, aligns with the established patterns of hate crimes documented in several similar cases. Even though there may not have been physical violence, the emotional and ideological coercion directed at changing a person's faith to suit the partner's religious framework is itself a serious form of religious hostility. Hence, this case is added to the hate crime database. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that the report does not specify the exact date when the actor was forced to convert to Islam. Therefore, for documentation purposes, we have recorded the date based on when the incident was reported in the media.
Victim Details
Total Victim
1
Deceased
0
Gender
- Male 1
- Female 0
- Third Gender 0
- Unknown 0
Caste
- SC/ST 0
- OBC 0
- General 0
- Unknown 1
Age Group
- Minor 0
- Adult 1
- Senior Citizen 0
- Unknown 0
Case Status
Unknown
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Muslim Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
female
Sources 
