Given the bad rap the country’s police force and judiciary have been getting in recent times, both agencies couldn’t have asked for a better means of damage control than to protect a distressed couple in love. There was a touch of the melodramatic in the Delhi High Court’s assurance to the 19-year-old runaway bride, Konidela Srija, daughter of Telegu superstar, Chiranjeevi, and her groom that, following its directive to the Delhi Police to provide security as requested, “you (the couple) shall not face any vengeance from Chiranjeevi”. One could almost hear a film-like crescendo building up in the background as these words are pronounced!The authorities in Kolkata — where Rizwanur Rahman, a 30-year-old computer graphics teacher, was found dead on the railway tracks soon after his marriage to Priyanka Todi, daughter of an influential businessman — were not initially as supportive. It was only after a national outcry and the intervention of the high court, that five highly placed police officers were transferred, and Rahman’s mother was assured by Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee himself that the case would be dealt with in all seriousness.Giving a human dimension to the legal and technical details of officialdom, however, are the poignant faces of two young, anxious women. Sirja’s plight and Priyanka’s pain have evoked the sympathy of people all over the country. Yet they also beg the question: what do these tales of vengeful families and young lovers forced to seek state protection, say about the progressiveness of urban India?Stories of ill-fated lovers and grisly punishments by village panchayats abound in rural India. Sometimes an incident, particularly when it involves caste taboos, gets into the national news. And then it is forgotten as yet another instance of a tradition-bound section of society, too hide-bound to change. But surely urban India should be different? Our towns and cities have long been perceived as avenues for modernisation, spaces where the rule of law would permit love to cross boundaries of class, caste and religion. This assumption has only gained strength with time, more so with westernisation and recent trends which have empowered women and shifted power from the old to the young.Four decades of feminist activism have paved the way for an awareness of women’s rights. Television shows in today’s India talk openly of gay rights and single parenthood. Social norms have loosened. Live-in couples now flaunt their relationships and a previously unthinkable level of boldness is evident in fashion and lifestyles. How do stories like Srija’s and Priyanka’s fit into this permissive idyll? Has news of our modernisation been exaggerated?To some extent, this would appear to be the case. The social fissures that form so easily in cities as a response to issues of reservation and religion indicate that caste and religion are still pervasive influences in urban India. As far as marriage goes, surprisingly the young — despite appearances to the contrary — are more prone to conforming to tradition than rebelling against it. Youth surveys reveal a majority to be inclined towards arranged marriages. And though most want a greater say in their choice of partners, they are likely to choose spouses from the same class and the same or congruent castes. Materialism and a willingness to permit women in the workplace have also not translated into an upheaval of old patriarchal attitudes. There is a telling scene in the recent film, Chak De, India, when the goalkeeper, a married woman, tells her coach that her in-laws, after having availed of the flat allotted to her as a sportsperson, now want her to stop playing the game.Another fact is the uneven cosmopolitanism of our urban culture. Kamala Ganesh, head of the sociology department at Mumbai University, maintains that ‘regionally rooted’ families in cities can be very feudal and are often associated with a culture of violence. This is evident both in the two recent cases of elopement but also in incidents such as the murder of Nitish Katara in 2002; Katara it may be recalled, was involved with the daughter of a strongman from western UP. State authorities also tend to demonstrate regressive tendencies, sometimes in collusion with the families. Prem Chowdhry, in her book Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India, maintains that the state criminalises runaway couples: following the filing of a complaint by parents of girls in unconventional marriages, the couple become state fugitives hunted down by the police with posters and newspaper announcements.Indian marriage laws impose no restrictions on grounds of social division. Yet laws are known to work best when supported by a cultural preparedness as was evident from the positive outcome of the Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929), for instance. But sometimes change, like love, has a way of forcing itself upon society. Ganesh points to the “increased opportunities and pathways of mobility, globalisation has opened up for the young”.In this context the episode last September, involving runaway bride Sabia Gaur from East London, is pertinent. Sabia, 18, met Ashwani Gupta, 22, from Ghaziabad on the internet. After a three-year-long relationship, she decided to marry him. On hearing of the marriage, which became a cause celebre in India, her father, Abdul, a conservative Muslim shopkeeper, told reporters that his daughters were allowed no freedoms at all, but they could do nothing about the internet. “While we slept at night, this evil came into our home and has led to our daughter marrying a Hindu boy.”Mumbai-based Shah is the author of ‘Hype, Hypocrisy and Television in Urban India’
