Love and longing in modern India
Ankit Saxena made the fatal error of falling in love with a 20-year-old Muslim woman.
Akhila Ashokan converted to Islam and, as Hadiya, married a man in accordance with her new faith. Convinced she had been brainwashed, her father got the Kerala High Court to annul the marriage. Hadiya has since told the Supreme Court that she wishes to continue with her studies and live with her husband. The court has granted part one of her wish.
Nobody has the right to interfere in a marriage between consenting adults, the Supreme Court declared this past week. The court’s ire was directed at khap panchayats. Left unsaid is what it makes of the Kerala High Court’s observation that, “The custody of an unmarried daughter is with her parents, until she is properly married off.”
India’s march to modernity might seem confusing to anyone who glances at matri- monial ads where would-be brides and grooms – more likely their parents -- configure their requirements under religion and community divisions.
A new generation of aspirational women does dream of love, but it is a love that carries the stamp of family approval, the chain of custody passing from father to husband, unbroken and unchallenged.
The price of un-permitted love can be high – social ostracisation and even ‘honour’ killings. Ankit Saxena was killed allegedly by his girlfriend’s family; the plot involved a fake road rage incident and was reportedly hatched by the mother. How awful is the ‘dishonour’ of your adult daughter falling in love with the ‘wrong’ man for you to have to kill him in coldblood, knowing that you will probably end up in jail for the crime?
Saxena’s murder reverses the love-jihad narrative in which Muslim men plot to marry gullible Hindu girls with the goal to convert them. It does, however, underline the horror with which Indian society continues to view interfaith marriages.
Behind all the noise and fury lies one indisputable fact: an insistence by parents, societies and even institutions to ‘control’ daughters. Cutting across religion, caste, community and even geography, there’s an assumption that all women (or girls as we call unmarried women) are simply incapable of making rational choices.
The courts often subscribe to this belief with judgments from across the country peppered with moralistic observations about a woman’s proper place in society.
But sometimes you cannot hide your love away.
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Once again, we will be witness to a new generation of Indians ‘proposing’ to their chosen ones with red roses. Once again, we will see old India close ranks at these strange customs. It’s Parent’s Worship Day, they will insist, or to use its more appropriate nomenclature, ‘matri-pitra pujan diwas’.
Roses may please kindly be sent to the correct and proper recipients.