There was a time when only \u2018arranged marriages\u2019 were the norm and \u2018love marriages\u2019 were frowned upon. People who were to be bound by marriage and expected to spend their entire lives together saw each other just once or twice before the wedding day, and they would not know much about each other. In the twenty-first century, arranged marriage has gone through superficial changes in urban settings even as, in various social set ups, it continues to be the same old ritual of getting two strangers married. However, even though love marriages have become more common and acceptable, archaic rules concerning love and marriages \u2014 especially of caste and religion (apart from class) \u2014 still rule the roost. Despite the progress on the fronts of education, technology and the economy, India as a collective society continues to be conservative when it comes to culture and social norms.<\/p>\n
Talking about \u2018love\u2019 marriage, according to Dr Aardra Surendran, Sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, \u201cThe entry of personal choice has been recent in the history of marriage as a social institution across cultures, and particularly so in India. It has been governed by the existence of caste and kinship structures. These norms may vary across regions and social groups across the country, but norms exist, and marriage outside of these norms is frowned upon even today in almost all regions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Surendran also says that the mingling of men and women from the perspective of attraction or love is seen as undesirable across cultures in India. \u201cWe may observe some superficial change in urban settings, owing to the increased presence of women in the public sphere, be it educational or work place locations, but the element of choice even in these settings is accepted only if carefully calibrated along religious, caste and class lines. Love has rarely been the operative element in deciding who to marry, and choice, particularly of the woman, has rarely existed in socially prescribed settings,\u201d she told Tehelka in an interview conducted via email.<\/p>\n
It is true that the mingling of young men and women is considered taboo and discouraged in most parts of the country. Recently, a local Haryana newspaper uploaded a video on its Facebook page, that went viral, speaking volumes about prevalent attitudes in the country against friendships between men and women. In the video, a person identifying himself as a lawyer practicing in the Delhi high court intervened when security persons and policemen in a public park asked a young man and woman, both adults, to give their parents\u2019 contact numbers so that they could be made aware of what their children were upto. The lawyer could be heard making the cops aware that it wasn\u2019t a crime for two adults to walk together in a park.<\/p>\n
In Uttar Pradesh, the \u2018anti-romeo squads\u2019 that were set up in 2017 by the Yogi Adityanath-government to protect women from being harassed saw self-styled vigilantes or \u2018moral police\u2019 often objecting to men and women hanging out in public places out of choice. Several men were put behind bars and no one knows if they had harassed women of were simply present at public spaces with their female friends or girlfriends.<\/p>\n
Ten youths \u2014 four boys and six girls \u2014 hailing from towns and small cities in different parts of the country, that this correspondent spoke to, all said that the mingling of adolescent and teenaged boys and girls is usually disapproved of by teachers, school administrations, parents and people in general who encourage youngsters to make friends of the same gender only. All of them also said that though caste and religion shouldn\u2019t matter, they are significant factors today even when it comes to \u2018love marriage\u2019.<\/p>\n
Dr Surendran further said that it might be premature to judge that choice-based marriages are easier in the urban areas. \u201cWhile more instances of choice based marriages are observed in urban areas, the general proscription against choice, especially if it implies a marriage outside community or caste backgrounds, exists even in urban areas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Caste and Religion Still Matter<\/strong><\/p>\n Recently, 23-year-old Ankit Saxena was stabbed to death by the father of his girlfriend who was from another religious faith. The fact that this incident took place in the national capital speaks volumes about the state of affairs in the rest of the country. Marriages in our country have always been arranged keeping in mind strict caste considerations.<\/p>\n Dr Surendran points out that \u201cfalling in love is often seen as a transgression of carefully guarded caste and community lines. Contemporary instances of violent repercussions to choice based marriages are cases in point, as they are seen as challenges to social order.\u201d<\/p>\n This is certainly evident from the hounding of couples, who cross the limitations of caste and religion, by khap panchayats in a few north Indian states and right-wing groups across the country. Every now and then there are cases of diktats issued against young men and women who dare to choose love over the shallow honour of their communities. There have been multiple reported cases of honour killings by families who believed that their children brought them unacceptable shame by marrying someone from another caste out of their own personal choice. Across India, caste considerations in marriage and friendships have always been significant. Chhavi\u2019s case is just one among a large number of relationships when castes of the man and the woman play a crucial role in their marriage, often becoming an obstacle in the couple\u2019s relationship.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court had in January reprimanded khap or community panchayats for passing their own illegal communal orders against inter-caste marriages of adults. \u201cWhat we are concerned about is that when an adult girl or boy gets into marriage, no khap, no individual or no society can question them. Whenever there is any kind of collective attack on a boy or a girl, who are adults, it is absolutely illegal,\u201d the apex court had said.<\/p>\n The Love Jihad Fiasco<\/strong><\/p>\n The going gets tougher for couples when it comes to inter-faith marriages. There is ongoing propaganda against inter-religious marriages, especially when the woman is Hindu and the man a Muslim or a Christian. Cries of \u2018love jihad\u2019 have been doing the rounds in every case where a Muslim has married a Hindu. Let us assume, for the sake of being open to dissenting opinion, that there could be the possibility of a secret campaign to convert vulnerable Hindu women to Islam or Christianity. However, even then, there are several instances of women, and men, College sweethearts Kritika Mathur and Sharif Qamar got married in 2015 under the Special Marriage Act, 1954, that allows inter-faith court marriage without either spouse having to change his or her religion.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the very beginning, no body in my husband\u2019s family expected me to change my religion. In fact, they were as accepting of me as they would be of a girl from their own religion,\u201d said Mathur, who teaches Finance and Economics at Ambedkar University in New Delhi. \u201cWe now have a little daughter who we have named Ayesha, which is both a Hindu and a Muslim name. Both of us follow our religions as we desire \u2014 I have a small temple in our house and read the Gita daily; he tries to go for Friday prayers whenever he can. My parents are more than happy now,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n When asked if religion plays an important role in marriage, NRI Dr Arfana Ahmed Kishan told Tehelka that religion is personal to every individual and marriage is about accepting differences beautifully. She was born and raised a Muslim in Hyderabad and had left home over 25 years ago, at the age of 23, to get married to a Hindu man of her choice. \u201cMy parents were dead against our relationship. After we got married, even his parents didn\u2019t accept me as I wasn\u2019t a Hindu. Our marriage dint work and we ultimately got separated and divorced after having two children but that dint really have anything to do with the fact that our faiths were different,\u201d said Dr Ahmed Kishan, who is a medical practitioner based in North Carolina, USA. She continues to use her husband\u2019s name as surname because it is mentioned in her Indian passport and she doesn\u2019t want to complicate things.<\/p>\n The popular case of Hadiya, a young adult who converted to Islam and then married a Muslim man, is an interesting case study of the ongoing campaign alleging \u2018love jihad\u2019. The Kerala high court as well as the Supreme Court had both cast aspersions on the adult woman\u2019s decision to convert and marry. There was also a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe to find out if she was coaxed into converting to Islam for marriage. Finally, the apex court recently realised that Hadiya, being an adult, had the individual autonomy to take important life decisions herself.<\/p>\n Women Bear the Brunt<\/strong><\/p>\n Another glaring fact about love and marriages in our country is that women are certainly more suppressed than men. Thanks to our patriarchal and feudal mindsets, women are considered to be the beholders of their families\u2019 honour, like property, rather than personal entities with their own desires and rights. Today, in both urban and rural set ups, women\u2019s lives are scrutinised and their characters questioned especially when it comes to being around members of the opposite sex and choosing their own life partners.<\/p>\n Agreeing that perceptions in India against falling in love are stricter for women than for men, Dr Surendran pointed out, \u201cHistorians and anthropologists have explained the control of female sexuality as the key element in the development of prescribed norms on marriage. Female sexuality is seen as the locus of family honour, and providing the woman the agency to choose her partner is seen as destabilizing this carefully maintained normative order, which is also pivotal in maintaining other hierarchies.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that violent \u201crepercussion is much higher if love or marriage is between a woman who belongs to a \u2018higher\u2019 caste or \u2018majority\u2019 community and a man who belongs to a lower caste or minority community. This in turn is because it is assumed that marriage implies a subsumption of the woman\u2019s identity into the man\u2019s family, and hence the dilution of purity or superiority of dominant identities or groups.\u201d<\/p>\n Even as more and more youngsters are having pre-marital sex today, norms pertaining to women\u2019s sexual choices and virginity continue to be primitive.<\/p>\n Recently, three men were thrashed by a caste panchayat in Pune for starting a campaign to stop an archaic practice of conducting \u2018virginity tests\u2019 on brides on the first night after marriage. According to news reports, as per the practice, a newly-wed couple is handed a white sheet on their wedding night to use during sexual intercourse. The next day, the caste panchayat along with others from the community ask the groom: \u201cWas the bride \u2018fine\u2019?\u201d To indicate that the bride was a virgin, he is required to say thrice: \u201cmaal khara (good product).\u201d If not, then the bride is questioned about who she lost her virginity to and then the both are asked to pay a \u2018penalty\u2019 \u2014 mostly monetary, varying from woman to woman.<\/p>\n
\nbeing happily married to partners from other religions without changing their faiths.<\/p>\n![\"pic](\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/pic-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cMy parents were not too happy about our relationship but they weren\u2019t against it either because they knew that my happiness depended on it. However, Kritika\u2019s mother was quite vocally against our plan to get married,\u201d Qamar, currently working with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), told Tehelka. After the couple convinced both families to accept their union, they decided to get married in court and then throw a reception, rather than perform any religious wedding ceremonies.<\/p>\n