When the traffic light turned
red, kids would dart up. Peering into the auto-rickshaw, tapping at the cab
window, they offered a dozen roses for a hundred rupees.
“Okay, fifty... Thirty! Only thirty,
Aunty!... Didi!”
Some people said, the flowers are
so cheap because they’ve been stolen from graveyards. Anyhow, it was possible
to buy cheap roses on the streets of Mumbai. At a roadside florists’, wrapped
in cellophane and bunched with a sprig of delphinium or myrtle, a dozen cut roses
could be had for a couple of hundred rupees, but you could pay as much as five,
six, seven hundred on Valentine’s Day.
One of the odd things about the
roses sold on the street was that they did not smell like rose. They did not
smell of death either. They smelt of a vacuum.
͂
February 2017, Mumbai: Churchgate,
a train station that reportedly serves hundreds of thousands of passengers on weekdays,
had been the chosen venue for the re-branding of February 14 as Matru Pita Pujan
Divas. Mother Father Worship Day. Commuters were greeted with billboards with
an idealized image of a family: Mummy and Papa sit on chairs while two teenage
children kneel on the floor. Boy’s head on father’s knee, girl’s head on mother’s
knee. They were careful to keep the sexes apart even within the confines of a
tiny nuclear family. ‘Valentine's Day’, appearing in small font in a corner, was
crossed out with an X. For more information, we were urged to visit www.mppd.in
Headlining this advertisement was
the face of Asaram Bapu, a religious leader with millions of followers that had
once included the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. Asaram – Asumal
Sirumalani before he acquitted the suffix “Bapu” or father – was the ‘Godman’
who, after the horrific gangrape of Jyoti Pandey ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi in 2012,
declared that the victim too had been at fault. To avoid rape, he said, we
should address would-be rapists as “brother” and beg them to stop.
In 2017, Asaram was already in jail,
accused of raping minors. The allegations against him left a bloody trail with
witnesses dying as the cases dragged on in court. In at least one case, a
teenager was raped because her parents were in the habit of obeying the
religious leader without question; they allowed him to take the girl into a
room alone, so he could ‘heal’ her unobserved. Now, there was his face, at one
of Mumbai’s busiest railway stations, instructing citizens to reject
Valentine’s Day, and to plug the love-shaped hole in our souls with worshipful
obedience.
In April 2018, Asaram was
convicted for the rape of a minor and sentenced to life in prison. His lawyers
said they would appeal to a higher court. In September 2018, he sent a mercy
petition to the Governor of the state of Rajasthan. Millions of followers were
reportedly praying for him. Some prayed to him, bowing to his image as
one would bow before a deity. In January 2021, he was applying for temporarybail in another ongoing rape trial. Weeks before, police officials in Uttar Pradesh had allowed a religiousfunction within the Shahjahanpur jail premises, including a banner featuringAsaram’s face.
Meanwhile, Asaram’s son Narayan
Sai, who also lived as a self-styled spiritual leader as his father did, was also
accused of rape. In April 2019, Narayan Sai too was found guilty and sentenced
to life imprisonment. In October 2020, he was discovered to be in possession ofa mobile phone inside prison. In December 2020, he was granted furlough by the Gujarat High Court.
Something else had happened in
February 2017. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photograph appeared in a
newspaper advertisement that promised the formation of “Anti-Romeo” squads. The
Uttar Pradesh assembly elections were around the corner and the BJP election
manifesto included the promise of creating such squads that would police thepresence of young men outside girls’ colleges.
Commercial outfits took their cue
and shifted tone. On February 14 that year, there were commercial advertisements
in the newspaper asking readers to show love to their children, rather than to
their partners.
In 2017, there were reports of
men affiliated with the Bajrang Dal, a religious organization, assaultingcouples in many different parts of the country. There were no further reports about whether these men had been arrested, and
whether or not the state was pressing charges against them.
One of India’s largest and most
populous states, Uttar Pradesh voted the BJP to power. The man picked to be Chief
Minister was a monk, Yogi Adityanath, and one of the first things he did after
taking office was the “Anti-Romeo” squads. Each squad would have one police officer
of sub-inspector rank and four constables. News reports quoted members of the
police force as saying that they intend to “cleanse” the city. Young couples hanging out in parks and shopping malls were described as “offenders” who would
be “punished”.
Some of the cops reportedly told
journalists that they could tell a “Romeo” from the look in his eyes. It was an
odd sort of claim to make. No cop claims to be able to tell murderers and
rapists by the look in their eyes. What look is this that betrays itself so
easily? Could it be the undisguised look of love?
͂
Much before February 14 turned
into a battlefield for the heart of India, for me, the day had been truly associated
with parental love. It was my mother who taught me and my brother to cut red
velvet paper in the shape of hearts and make cards on February 14. It was just one
of the many creative things she did to make our lives a bit less dull. Still,
even as a child, I was aware that this festival was different from religious or
nationalist celebrations. You didn’t give Valentines to all and sundry; you chose
the recipients of your affection.
Until the 1980s, Valentine’s Day
celebrations were limited to a handful of families in India. In the 1990s, global
commerce began to nudge us more insistently in the direction of chocolate,
flowers, diamonds, red faux-velvet cushions, stuffed teddy bears holding red
heart-shaped cushions, jewellery shaped like a golden teddy bear holding a little
diamond heart. Restaurants began to advertise date nights with special décor. By
the late ’90s, political and right-wing groups began to react sharply, decrying
these tokens of romance as being foreign to Indian culture. In Mumbai, the
charge was led by the Shiv Sena, which had risen to power riding on nativist
sentiments.
In February 2001, for the first
and only time in my life, I bought flowers for a man outside my family. The
office was paying. I was a cub reporter working with Mid-Day at the time and
the Sena was warning against Valentine's Day celebrations in Mumbai. Stores and
restaurants were warned against changing décor and a few shopfronts were
smashed. During an editorial meeting, it was jokingly suggested that a
Valentine be sent to Balasaheb. Bal Thackeray, Balasaheb to supporters, was the
Shiv Sena Supremo at the time. The editor said to me, go do it.
So there I was, buying flowers
and a giant Hallmarks’ style card, which I had inscribed with messages from young
people across the city. On my way to Balasaheb’s residence, I struggled to keep
the nervousness off my face. I was trailed by a staff photographer, visibly
more nervous than I.
We didn't expect to make it past
security. Half a dozen men sat clumped together at the gate and they asked what
we wanted. I said, we were here to meet Balasaheb. Somehow, the men didn't
connect the flowers I held with Valentine's Day; they just asked if we had an
appointment. I said, no, but we’d like to try our luck. They shrugged and waved
us in. A member of the staff answered the door and informed me that Balasaheb
was taking his afternoon siesta. I breathed a sigh of relief, handed over the
flowers and card, and fled.
The next day, the newspaper
published a photo of me standing outside that door alongside a story of how
young people wanted to send across the message that they just want to live and
love in peace. I never went back to meet Balasaheb. I was too afraid. I still
am, even though he has been dead a few years. The Shiv Sena has not publicly
reversed its stand on Valentine’s Day and anti-love rhetoric has since entered
the political mainstream.
Over the last few years, a WhatsApp
forward has been doing the rounds in India. It shows an image of Bhagat Singh,
an instantly recognisable freedom fighter executed by the British colonial
government in 1931, accompanied by a scoldy message saying that it was on this
date Bhagat Singh were martyred but all you want is to celebrate Valentine's
Day. This was a patent falsehood. Bhagat Singh was executed on March 23, not on
February 14.
I considered sending a response
to the person who sent me the message, pointing out that, as per legend, Saint
Valentine was also a sort of martyr: he risked his life doing what felt right
in defiance of the establishment. Surely that was worth celebrating? I didn't bother
though. I was afraid of being dismissed as “westernised”, or worse, a
Macaulay-putri. A daughter of Macaulay. One whose mind has been colonised.
Meanwhile, Pakistan once again demonstrated
that it was India’s sibling nation. In 2017, the Islamabad High Court issued a
diktat against celebrating Valentine’s Day in response to a petition arguing
that it is against Islamic teachings. The judges did not see fit to remind the
petitioner that Islam defines marriage as a contract by mutual consent, and
that there’s no religious injunction against the purchase of teddy bears,
heart-shaped balloons, or roses.
͂
Inside the safety of my own head,
I build arguments. What is so ‘foreign’ about roses?
Heavily fragrant, blood red desi
roses are woven with jasmine into a sehra, a flowery veil worn by
bridegrooms at weddings in many parts of the Indian subcontinent. Roses are
woven into wedding garlands. Rose petals are strewn on the bed for a couple’s
first wedded night together. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru
used to wear a red rose on his jacket. Rose petals are showered over the heads
of leaders during political rallies. Rose gardens exist in several Indian
cities. Roses are cultivated in household gardens and potted in balconies.
Nobody’s got anything against
chocolate either. On festivals like Diwali, Holi and Ganesh Chaturthi, even conservative
families exchange boxes of chocolate in addition to Indian sweets, which are
harder to prepare and more expensive. On birthdays, schoolkids distribute
chocolate rather than traditional Indian sweets.
The most conservative Indian
families have nothing against furry teddy toys; diamonds are perfectly acceptable
too. The objection, therefore, is not to Western cultural motifs. All the
symbols associated with love, even in commercialised formats borrowed from the
West, have been embraced warmly by Indian families so long as these motifs are
divorced from individual love. It was, therefore, love itself that was being
denounced as ‘foreign’.
How so? In my head, I argue: what
are you going to do with the body of evidence that is ancient Indian love
poetry? Ignore cultural influences brought into India by the Arabs, Turks,
Persians, Mongols, Abyssinians, Portuguese, French and English, but you must
contend with ancient verses in Prakrit, Sanskrit and Tamil. The Sangam era
literature is full of romantic dalliance and transgression. Ancient Indian
poetry describes soft, rounded bellies and breasts; eyes were likened to
lotuses, rainy seasons and absent lovers; parrots and clouds carried messages
to the beloved.
If conservative groups are
troubled by the foreignness of Valentine’s Day symbols, they should find it
easy to counter. Arrows tipped with marigold flowers could be exchanged instead
of greeting cards. They could write Sanskrit verses on palm-leaf stationery.
They could offer paan (betel leaf rolled with sugared rose petals)
instead of chocolate.
The Hindu pantheon is vast. It
includes Kama Dev, the god of love and desire. His consort, Rati, is a goddess
associated with beauty. Why not celebrate a Kama-Rati festival on February 14,
instead of worshipful obedience to parents? Any politician who wished to
counter Western cultural influence could have put up a show of spirited
defiance and initiated a Kama-Rati festival on February 14. He, or she, could
invite all members of Parliament and state legislatures to join in the
celebrations. If foreignness was the bogey, it was easily beaten. The true
bogey, however, is the sort of love that comes with sexual consent.
Politicians could, if they chose
to, take a leaf out of the playbook of The Indian Lovers Party (ILP), a
political outfit based in Tamil Nadu. It believes in the right of citizens to
marry whoever they like, and also lists global warming as one of its chief
concerns. It exhorts lovers to plant trees on February 14. The party’s
manifesto includes the promise of a gold ring to babies born to “lover couples”
on Valentine's Day. The founder, Kumar Sri Sri, has said that he formed the
party on February 14, 2008, with a view to remove the sufferings of 300,000,000
Indian lovers, though it is not clear how he arrived at this figure.
The ILP party has never won an
election though. Kumar received less than 5,000 votes in the 2014 general election
and only about 3,000 votes in the state assembly elections. The party symbol
is, predictably, a heart. There is an image of the Taj Mahal, the Mughal tomb
widely recognized as a monument to love, ensconced within a heart, pierced by a symbolic arrow.
At the time of writing this, the
party’s website appears to be defunct. There is no word on whether or not the
party intends to continue its electoral campaigns. Journalists do not seek
serious commentary from the party’s founder or members on the legislation and
constriction of marital choice, or on state-funded institutions interfering
with Valentine’s Day celebrations.
In February 2013, multiple
colleges in Hubli, Karnataka, decided to ban Valentine’s Day celebrations on
campus. There had been attacks by miscreants in previous years and, instead of
upping security and insisting on the rights of students to express love on this
day, or any other, the college administrators decided to clamp down on non-violent students.
In February 2018, Lucknow
University, one of India’s largest and oldest institutions of higher learning, issued
an order that students must not come to the campus on February 14. Officially,
it was meant to be a holiday for Maha Shivratri, so there would be no classes,
no cultural activities, and no exams. However, parents were warned against
sending their wards to college on the day. Students who showed up were
threatened with disciplinary action.
In February 2020, female students
of the Mahila Arts and Commerce College in Amravati, Maharashtra were made to
take a peculiar pledge on February 14. They were made to swear that they would
not have a “love marriage”.
͂
In the course of a creative
writing workshop, I had once asked students to write about something that
troubled them. One young woman wrote a story about a bright, compassionate
teenage couple that gets expelled from college after the security guard sees
them holding hands.
In co-educational schools, it is
not uncommon to have boys and girls sit on separate sides of a classroom. Some
high schools impose rules like asking boys and girls to use separate sets of
staircases. One of my workshop students told me of a school that had installed a
glass partition in the classroom with boys seated on one side, girls on the
other. No touching, not even by accident.
The student who wrote a story
about the kids expelled for falling in love resolved the conflict through
suicide. She was not being dramatic. It was perfectly logical, given the lived
experiences of millions of young people. Of the reported suicides in India, the
single largest cause is the amorphous term “family problems” (32.4%), while
“marriage related issues” (5.5%) and “love affairs” (4.5%) are other major
factors. These numbers suggest that far more people kill themselves for the
lack of love, or an inability to look forward to a joyful family life, than on
account of poverty, unemployment or indebtedness. Girls under 18 and young
women under 30 years of age figure in higher numbers than older women, and“housewives” comprise the largest group that died by suicide, followed by“students”.
Hundreds of young people are
killed if they do not obey their families in matrimonial matters, though there
is considerable underreporting of such crimes. While 356 cases were documentedas ‘honour’ killings between 2014-16,
only 30 such murders were recorded in 2018, and 24 cases in 2019. However, there is no record of murder if neither family reports it to the
police. Consider the case of the high school student strangled allegedly by her
family in Bihar in April 2017. She had been trying to run away with a
schoolmate when they caught her. Her killers were going to set her body on fire
and were prevented from doing so only because the police showed up just in
time. Once the body was destroyed, all evidence of crime would go up in smoke.
It was unlikely her family would even have reported her as missing.
Each week brings fresh accounts
of such murders. In December 2020 alone, three suspected cases were reported in
the newspapers. A young man of 27 was hacked to death in Kerala. He had married
a young woman against her family’s wishes. Reports suggested the couple had
been in love as schoolmates and had finally decided to get their marriage
registered in September. They were both Hindu, but of different castes. In
another case, a woman of 24 was shot dead, allegedly by her own family members
in Uttar Pradesh. Same religion, different castes. Reports said, her family
didn’t agree to the match even though their relationship had lasted eight
years. In June, the couple married at a temple. By December, she was dead. In
the third instance, in Bihar, a boy of 16 was reportedly hacked to death and
his body dumped in a river. He had been in love with a girl of another
caste.
Such murders are reported from
all over the country, usually as brief items on the inside pages of the
newspaper. The reports offer sketchy details such as the ages of the victims
and their community affiliations. In many instances, there is murder even
before young citizens have made a definitive choice. In April 2017, a boy of 19
was beaten to death in Jharkhand simply because he seemed to be interested in a
girl of 15. It wasn’t clear that they were romantically involved or whether
they simply wanted to get to know each other. Reports said that it was the girl
who had called, asking the boy to come and meet her. The boy was Muslim, the
girl was not. In another such case from Uttar Pradesh, in July 2016, a boy of 14
(or 16, depending on the newspaper you read) was killed for developing a
relationship with a neighbour’s daughter. Different religions. The parents made
no allowances for natural affinity and empathy and a childhood spent in
friendship.
One doesn’t need to to fall in
love across religious lines to attract violence. In October 2016, a boy of 20
and a girl of 16 were found hanging from a tree in the state of Odisha. He was Hindu,
reportedly backward caste. She belonged to one of the scheduled tribes, which are
broadly accepted as being within the Hindu fold, though their religious
practices are different. The boy’s father insisted that it was not a double
suicide, as was suggested in the early days of the investigation.
Some killings are neither about
religion nor endogamy but complex exogamy rules. In 2020, a young woman was
killed for marrying a man of the same gotra. Reports said the parents drove 80 km with her body in the rear seat of their car, before dumping her
unceremoniously into a canal.
Other killings are on account of regional or
linguistic differences. In May 2017, a young woman's parents entered her home
with a stranger who shot her husband dead. She was Hindu, north Indian. Her
husband was Hindu, south Indian. The daughter had already signed away all claims to wealth that she may have inherited. Yet, her family could not bear to
let her go and seek her own happiness.
What these cases have in
common is the parents’ disrespect for the sexual choices made by their
children. However, if elders do not violently prevent a match, they themselves
are at risk of being killed. In 2017, an elderly couple in Bihar was lynched by
a mob after their grandson eloped with a girl from another caste.
Often, young lovers lose hope
when faced with unending disapproval and the prospect of a forced separation. In
February 2018, young lovers from Jalna, a small town in Maharashtra, who had
gone missing on Valentine’s Day were found dead a few days later, with a bottle
of poison and a note affirming their love. The parents of the girl, who was 17, had filed a kidnapping case against the
young man. In Assam, another couple reportedly killed themselves after celebrating Valentine’s Day together. Both were 26 years old.
In February 2017, a young couple
in Kerala was harassed and filmed when they were out on a beach on Valentine’s
Day. The mob humiliated the young woman and assaulted the young man when he
tried to stand up for her. A few days later, he killed himself.
͂
Kerala does better than most
Indian states on most human development indices. It has a 99.5 percent female
literacy rate, the highest in the country, and only 0.9% of girls under 18 are
already married in the state.
However, Kerala is also where
young couples were caned by political activists in the presence of the police
and journalists. The man who led the attack was 57 years old and had reportedly
been arrested before for molesting a disabled woman. In November 2014, a Kiss of Love protest was initiated in Kerala to push back
against several instances of “moral policing”, or more accurately, the
harassment of men and women who happened to be out in public, either displaying
some sign of affection, or taking a walk together, or even riding pillion on a
bike. In once such incident, in 2013, a boy of 19 was killed in an accident
after being chased by a mob of men, while his girlfriend rode pillion behind
him.
Both religious and political outfits in Kerala were threatening to physically
prevent people from kissing or hugging during this protest march. The state police responded by arresting the advocates of love.
Kerala was also where a student
organisation initiated a website for inter-caste and inter-faith marriage: www.secularmarriage.com was launched
in 2014, and was hacked within hours of the launch.
Kerala is also where a girl of 21
was detained by the cops on charges of child abuse. Her boyfriend was 17 and
she had moved in with him. His mom complained that her son was being sexually assaulted since he was under the legal age for marriage, which is 21 years for
boys in India.
Kerala is where a student of
homeopathy converted to Islam. Akhila chose to become Hadiya, and she went
looking for love. She found it in Shefin Jahan, a Muslim man, and all hell
broke loose. Her parents accused her husband of having links with the dreaded
terrorist organisation, ISIS. They said she was brainwashed and didn't know
what she was doing. The National Investigative Agency was involved. The matter
went first to the High Court and then the Supreme Court. The Kerala High Court
annulled her marriage and awarded custody to her father. She was 25 years old
at this time.
The case was appealed and state investigators
argued before the highest court in the land that this young woman was a victim
of “psychological kidnapping”. She fought legally to recover her personhood
and, in March 2018, the Supreme Court restored her marriage. However, in the
interim, it also advised her to return to her hostel rather than her husband's
home.
At one point, her father had
asked members of Siva Sakthi Yoga Centre, a Hindu organisation, to prevail upon
her. Hadiya accused them of “torturing” her and trying to convert her back to
Hinduism against her will. Akhila/Hadiya's father claims to be an atheist.
In recent years, there have been
blatant attempts by certain groups to prevent inter-faith marriages where the
groom is a Muslim man by keeping tabs on marriage notices posted at the
registration office, and sharing private information on social media, while
inciting people to forcibly separate couples.
In March 2020, the Kerala state
government announced that it would open ‘safe houses’ for inter-faith couples and when one such couple was threatened after announcing their declaration to
marry under the Special Marriage Act, as is currently required by law, the
state decided to stop a public display of such announcements.
At the time of writing this, www.secularmarriage.com was up for
sale. The domain owner was offering it up for USD 997.
͂
The Indian Constitution is
supposed to have sought inspiration from the Constitutions of various modern
democracies. It allows us many fundamental rights and freedoms but it does not
speak of the pursuit of happiness.
It is not uncommon to hear elders
in an Indian family say: What is this nonsense about happiness? You think
you can be happy? The purpose of marriage, they are likely to say, is not
happiness; it is perpetuation of the self, with all its privilege and prejudice
intact. Clans decide: who is chosen, how s/he should behave, how much money must
be spent on the wedding, under what circumstances can the union be dissolved. Negotiations
between clans are controlled by a complex schema of socio-economic hierarchy.
Every group has been assigned a fixed place and nobody must attempt to rise
above their place by mingling with their social superiors.
In such a social environment, love
is a four-letter word. It is the freak gene in the body of the nation. A tic
that can't be controlled. It will not do as Papa wants. It will not kneel to
Mamma’s wishes. Maternal love and paternal love are lauded but these
relationships do not entail mutual respect and equal rights. Love for the
homeland is tolerated as long as its manifestation is limited to observances
such as standing up for the national anthem, or saluting the armed forces. To
ask citizens to think about what true love entails can be construed as
treachery.
Riot is another four-letter word,
often triggered by rumours that a girl was harassed by one or more boys of the
other community. Young people are often dissuaded from loving relationships
through threats that their union would lead to communal riots; it is understood
that innocents get murdered and raped during riots.
The few who dare to dream of
consensual sexual relationships run grave risks. There is the ever-present
threat of murder of course, but there is also the threat of rape with no legal
recourse. An increasing number of Hindu vigilante groups have taken it upon
themselves to prevent legal marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men. They
do this through setting up a network of informers in the courts where such
marriages can be registered, as well as through infiltrating young people’s
social groups to spy on them. There is no remorse and, with new legal ordnances
in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh against religious conversions for or on
account of marriages, they have been emboldened to not only prevent inter-faith
marriages but to actively hunt down couples and report them to the police.
Reports suggest that volunteers
of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have “intervened” and “picked up” women who go to
courts to get their marriages registered. They proudly declare that they
intervene in similar ways every other day. One volunteer claimed that after
forcibly separating the couple, they “get the woman married off to a Hindu from
our own group”. He freely admits to using force, and that the girl did not
consent.
The opposite of sexual consent is
another four-letter word. Rape is a crime in law, except when the perpetrator
is married to the victim. The 2015 National Family Health Survey reports that
at least 9 percent of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 had faced sexual violence and in this category, 90 percent had been assaulted by a
current or former spouse. Some reports even suggest that more women end up in hospitals with injuries suggesting sexual assault during India’s wedding season.
Rape is also a legal trick used
by clans against consenting lovers. A significant proportion of rape and
abduction cases have been discovered to be filed by parents of girls and womenwho elope and want to get married to men of their own choosing.
In such a climate, that there
should be a group called Love Commandos is the hurrah of life. A volunteer-led
group, Love Commandos offers support to couples who want to marry for love.
They offer an emergency phone contact, and temporary shelter. Their website (www.lovecommandos.org) says that they
do not intervene with parents. They place their faith in the Constitution and
the law courts. They also make it clear that they do not cater to minors or
unemployed youths. Which is to say, you cannot be clothed and housed and fed
indefinitely.
What happens to young lovers who
do not yet have jobs, as indeed most do not, when they are between 18 and 21
years old? How long can they hope to keep their bodies intact, without the help
of their own families or clan networks?
Much of India therefore sticks to
cautious marriages where sex can be taken for granted (only by men) and
affection is a chancy bonus. It prefers marriages that are hard to walk out of,
with the shadows of two extended clans and millions of caste members standing
at the door, not to mention the weight of jewels, houses and cars extracted as
dowries. The Lok Foundation-Oxford University multi-year youth survey suggests
that 93 percent of urban Indians have had arranged marriages. Only 3 percent of
the respondents said they had a “love marriage” while a lucky 2 percent had a
“love-cum-arranged” match, that is, they fell in love with the person their
parents chose for them.
Growing urbanization and new
technologies have not changed social norms significantly. The rates of
“arranged” marriage remained over 90 percent, regardless of whether the
respondents are in their 80s or their 20s, and the overwhelming majority marry within their own caste. What’s more, an overwhelming number of young people do not appear to be
striving for change. A survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS) and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung suggests that 24 percent of
Indians between the ages of 15 and 34 are “extremely patriarchal”, that 53
percent disapprove of dating, and 45 percent disapprove of inter-religious marriage.
Another study, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that 74 percent of
Indian women need permission from parents, husbands or in-laws to go somewhere,
even if it is just to see a doctor, and 58 percent need permission to go to the
grocery store. Only 5 percent of Indian women surveyed felt they had any real
control over who they married.
According to the National Family
and Health Survey of 2016, about 27 percent of Indian women between the ages of
20 and 24 were not yet 18 when they married. Even among those who were not
legally underage, the question of choice was fraught. The new mean age of
marriage for Indian women (Sample Registration Survey 2018) is about 22. This data
suggests that girls are marrying later, perhaps gaining at least a school education
if not a college degree. However, there is significant pushback on the question
of choosing who to love.
In May 2018, one of India's
elected representatives more or less advocated child marriage, saying that more
young people are straying and there are “accidents like Love Jihad” because
they aren’t married whilst they’re still too young to decide. The state of Madhya Pradesh is now contemplating new laws to raise the minimum
age of marriage for women to 21. In theory, this makes for a more egalitarian
system, since it removes the legal age difference between the sexes. However, there
is no law in this state, or elsewhere in India, which specifically gives girls
and young women the right to live separate from their parents, and to shun
their guardianship in the event that they choose to form romantic or sexual
partnerships before marriage.
͂
A few years ago, I was out for a
late-night stroll on the promenade with a group of visiting writers in Mumbai.
They drifted off one by one, until there was just me and one other, a man.
There was a police station across the road, so I had assumed that this was a
safe spot. A group of cops was parked just a few feet away, enjoying the sea
breeze and drinking cups of lukewarm tea brought by vendors who went about on
bicycles well past midnight.
As we strolled past, the cops
asked me to go home. I asked, why? They said, “You shouldn't be out this late.
If something bad happens to you, you will blame us.”
I didn't ask why something bad
would happen to me when the police station was right there, in plain sight, and
uniformed men sworn to protect me parked just a few feet away. I went home
without argument.
Another writer friend told me
about the time she was kissing a young man and was confronted by cops in a
Delhi park. They accused her of obscene behaviour. The phrase “chumma-chaati”
was used. Literally, it means kissing-licking and is used with a note of disparagement.
It happened years ago and she could laugh when she told the story. The truth
is, she knew that she barely escaped being detained.
An enquiry or suspension of cops
in one district does not deter cops elsewhere. No government is willing to take a clear stand
on the question of citizens’ right to public spaces, and the right to
experience and express love. There is a broad, ill-defined law against
‘obscenity’ that can be stretched all the way from kissing to hugging to
holding hands or eating an ice-cream on the promenade. The police and elected
governments take their cues from what the majority chooses to punish.
In May 2018, a couple was beaten up by their co-passengers in the Kolkata metro rail for either “standing too
close” or hugging. There were no further reports about the attackers, or about whether or not the
state police prosecuted them for assault.
Also in May 2018, a Christian
youth was killed in Kerala and his body tossed into a canal. He had married just
a few days before. The girl was also Christian, but from an upper caste family.
The girl was a legal adult, yet she was summoned to the police station where her family tried to forcibly take her back home, in the presence of the police.
Reports do not tell us that the police
prosecuted the parents for trying to interfere with an adult citizen’s marital
choices.
͂
The state never talks of consent.
There is no talk of seeking, and giving, sexual consent in schools and
colleges. There is no talk of sexual consent in religious discourse. It is as
if our leadership – not just politicians but leaders in faith, in education,
even in business – finds the idea of female consent to be a dangerous one.
Instead, elected representatives
talk of keeping women safe by “parking them at home” as if they were cars. They
blame rape on Chinese food, or women for adopting “Western” clothes. Most
recently, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh even suggested that all
“working” women, that is, those who have paid jobs to go to, register
themselves with the police so that they can be tracked wherever they go.
Where the state cannot control women’s
choices legally, it allows extra-legal forms of control to flourish. It used to
be that one could escape the stranglehold of the orthodoxy in rural areas by
moving to cosmopolitan cities. That was one reason why Dr B.R. Ambedkar had
urged Dalits to move into cities, to escape the stranglehold of local caste
networks. However, there are reports of landlords refusing to lease out homes
based on religion, caste, diet and marital choices. Singles, quaintly described
as bachelors or bachelor ladies, are unwelcome too.
Some real estate rentals spell it
out clearly: “families only”, which translates to married heterosexual couples,
ideally with kids. Family is thus understood to be a unit where you are not
free to choose the person you live with; it is a unit where you can be labelled
appropriately. This is a form of housing discrimination that targets multiple
groups, including sexual minorities, singles, people who choose to walk out of
unhappy or abusive marriages, or couples who do not believe in legalizing their
status.
There are other forms of indirect
control over young people’s sexual choices. If you were a jobless young lover,
your best bet of safety lay in a city where you could live independent of
parental control. However, you’d have to live in a slum, and even that could
turn out to be a costly affair. There is no unemployment dole in lieu of a
minimum wage, no social security that can be de-linked from your family, no
council housing that allows you to live without family support. You’d have no
clean water, no guarantee of electricity, no easy access to a toilet. You might
die of cholera or dengue before your own clan hunted you down.
A tiny fraction of the population
feels free to marry who it will. The rest focus their energies on not letting
anybody get above themselves in the social order. Even this tiny fraction
barricades itself against the threat of disruptions of class via love. Clothes,
address, furniture, accent, leisure habits, food choices give us away. Within
the educated middle class, we hear barely disguised cries of outrage when a ‘pretender’
surfaces: someone who dresses better than her job ought to allow, someone who
uses an ambiguous surname that doesn't immediately betray his religion or caste
origins. When the discovery is made, those higher up on the ladder feel
wounded. As if poverty or social ambition were evidence that the beloved had no
feelings to begin with, as if no true love was possible between those who belong
to different social strata. As if the very opposite were not true: those who
look for surnames and house addresses that betray social origin are handicapped
for love.
One is not supposed to say things
like this among friends. One raises a brow when one hears of affairs that
involve the giving up of privilege, the giving up of inherited wealth, the giving
up everything except the beloved. I have never heard such choices being lauded
in public discourse or in private conversations.
Now, the country finds itself at a
pass where not only are couples targeted for marrying someone their families
disapprove of, but hanging out with friends across community lines can lead
assault, lynching or arrest. In 2015, a bunch of students posing for a
photograph led to a violent attack. In the photo, a young man sprawls playfully
across the laps of four girls. One of other boys who also appears in the
picture, sitting nearby, was Muslim. He was hunted down by a gang in Mangalore,
driven to an isolated location and badly beaten, although there was no
indication that he was involved with any of those girls.
In May 2018, another Muslim youth
came within inches of his life when he went to meet a girl in Uttarakhand. He was
saved from a potential lynching by a mob because a police officer stepped in. The Sikh cop turned into an overnight celebrity. He appeared as a last spark of
hope. His name and image were circulated on social media as representative of
the best among us. The photograph that went “viral” showed the young man with
his skinny arms wrapped around the cop.
In February 2020, a Dalit youth in Rajasthan was allegedly beaten up and his head partly tonsured when he went
to meet a female friend from an upper caste family.
By the end of the year, a 17 year
old boy was first attacked by a group of people, then arrested under the new
Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion ordinance. He had simply been walkinga female friend home. He remains in jail, despite the teenage girl and her mother’s protests that she
was neither abducted, nor allured, nor had there been any intention to elope.
What are these young citizens’
thoughts on Valentine’s Day? Do they quake and crouch in terror? Drained of all
hopes of love, do their beings fill up with the great rush of worshipful
obedience?
͂
The rhetoric against Valentine’s
Day is kept alive by one group or the other. In 2020, ‘warnings’ were issued by
the Hindu Sena in Coimbatore, and Delhi.
The Bajrang Dal has continued to issue warnings against Valentine’s Day celebrations, and continued to harass citizens in 2018 and 2020.
In 2018, the Hindu Kalyan
Mahasabha had organized a ‘lathh puja’ or a symbolic worship of sticks, as a
warning against Valentine’s Day. The same year, the Bharat Hindu Front “married” a dog to a donkey, with some of
the group’s members claiming that this sort of union was equivalent to people
marrying across caste or religious lines. It was as bald a claim as could be
that they do not see members of different castes or faiths as fully human, or
members of the same species. There was no response from the State, asserting
anything to the contrary.
There is not one cabinet minister
or leading politician from any national political party who has declared
unequivocally that women are free to love whoever they choose, that those who
defy their families deserve respect and protection, and that parents and clans
will just have to lump it, else they will be punished severely. Our political
leadership does not say to us that love is necessary, that life can be painful
for the lack of it. Nobody stands up for the right to be out celebrating on Valentine’s
Day.
The nation’s women continue to be
exposed to furtive touch, irresponsible touch, unwanted, violent touch. They
are never told that they must insist on consensual touch, always. They are
never reassured that, for all its thorns, life can also bring roses. They are
never promised fragrance and sweetness. Not even on one day of the year.
*
This essay was first published in Scroll: https://scroll.in/article/985684/valentines-day-why-it-is-hard-to-celebrate-consensual-love-in-india
