Editorial: What’s love got to do with it

Of the many cultural imports from the West that India imbibed, from Halloween to Black Friday, April Fool’s Day, and what have you, there are few occasions as memorable, and as controversial as Valentines Day. It’s an annual ritual whose outcome has become as predictable as makeshift improvements in public utilities and services in the run-up to elections. Gift retailers, confectioners, hospitality groups and travel operators mint millions, as yuppie couples profess undying love in the backdrop of expensive treats, all-inclusive vacations and top of the line spa treatments.

Concurrently, in the national capital and the northern hinterlands, and at times, even the metros of the south, a group of moral policemen, armed to the gills with anti-capitalist rhetoric, would embark upon a cleansing drive. Their agenda – disrupt youngsters having a good time at any public place – from pubs, parks and promenades, to the beaches, hotels and railway depots. Their weapon of choice – intimidation and the fear of exposing the said relationship to the parents. Not that Indians need a specific day to profess love, but there are specific problems in our understanding of love as a concept.

In the 75th year of our independence, when India is gung-ho about Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, there are a few pain points concerning personal agency with regard to an individual’s relationship choices, and their consequences, that are yet to be addressed. Earlier this year, a debate was set into motion in courtrooms, where matters of a personal nature were laid bare as activists and lawmakers debated criminalising marital rape. The fact that the institution of marriage, which is seen as a celebration of love between two individuals, also includes such aberrations where a woman’s individual liberty is sacrificed at the altar of her spouse’s demands, calls into question our definition of what comprises love.

While the jury is out on the contentious issue, other developments have steam-rolled their way into the public’s consciousness. Last week, the Haryana Cabinet passed the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill 2022, which aims at prohibiting religious conversion effected through fraudulent means, including through or for marriage. States like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have also enacted laws that would make forcible religious conversion through marriage, or love jihad, as it’s being termed right now, a punishable offence.

How many of such cases of conversion actually hold water, are revealed in newspaper headlines every day. Last November, it was reported how half of the cases of love jihad that were being investigated by the Kanpur police’s Special Investigation Team had turned out to be consensual relationships between Hindu women and their Muslim partners. The SIT that had been specifically constituted to probe instances of religious conversion through marriage, dropped the said cases due to lack of adequate evidence.

Amidst such disconcerting developments, it was encouraging to come across a news item involving two members of the transgender community in Kerala who decided to register their marriage under the Special Marriage Act. The duo is counting on the High Court to recognise their marriage under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. It is worth remembering India is a land of thousands of love stories that might have been immortalised through literature, cinema, music and pop culture. But the onus is on us to safeguard whatever little semblance of romance we have in our lives, and that it does not get sucked dry in the current socio-political milieu.