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. When we despise someone’s actions, we strongly feel the need to change that aspect, especially if that someone is a near and dear one. This act of changing could mean to get into an argument or to persuade the other person to let go of that attribute for being a better person.
Every person is born with certain attributes to themselves — both external and internal. As much as we all know that one cannot bring about a change to the external attributes, we should realise that nothing should be done to change the internal ones too.
Every person is capable of performing a fete. What is impossible for someone can be a cake-walk for another. This is because of the inner qualities like judiciousness, speech, temperament, etc, are specialised attributes of every individual. Only that individual is capable of pullingoff a situation that is well-suited for them.
It is futile to try to change somebody. Instead, we should be content with what we all have been endowed with and find suitable choices to reap the better of it. It is like embracing both faces of a coin as a whole to realise its true value.