Every house in Karanji is painted a bright pink. And not without reason. This is a village of love. Here,there are no love stories that end in tragedy, says sarpanch Prabhatai Khobragade. Sounds cheesy? But while elsewhere khap panchayats dictate death sentences to couples who dare to fall in love,Karanjis somewhat overt declaration of tolerance is heartening. Karanji,a village 200 km from Nagpur,has consciously steered itself away from its culture of caste disputes (between the dominant Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes) and intolerance,to one that willingly plays the bridesmaid for any couple who wants to marry,within the caste or outside. The sarpanch says that in the last five years,the village has scripted over 38 love stories that have ended with the proverbial and they lived happily ever after. And all of these have been inter-caste marriages. In 2005,a couple,Ashok Garpalliwar and Meenakshi Deulmalle,came to our village from one of the nearby villages. While Garpalliwar belonged to the Kumbhar community,Deulmalle was a Teli and families of both were strongly opposed to their marriage. The two even thought of killing themselves but came to Karanji and took shelter in the village temple. We spotted them and called them to the panchayat office. They were genuinely in love and we all felt that their lives shouldnt end tragically. We called both their parents and convinced them. Though they agreed grudgingly,the initial opposition has melted away and today,the couple is accepted by both families. Their two daughters go to the village school, says deputy sarpanch Tukesh Patruji Wanode. While this was the first inter-caste marriage that Karanji played host to,the acceptance and the understanding the villagers attained did not happen overnight. Till about seven years ago,our village witnessed severe caste disputes. SCs had their own well and the OBCs had theirs. While talking to each other and drinking water from each others wells were impossible,inter-caste marriages only meant suicides and fights, says Wanode,who was also the first one to challenge the caste-system by opening his well to OBC villagers in 2003. That was the beginning of the Tantamukti Abhiyaan,a campaign to rid the village of all disputes. Word about the Garpalliwar-Deulmalle marriage spread and couples started coming to Karanji,not only from nearby villages but also from other states such as Uttar Pradesh,Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. We have solved so many cases that it has become an established system. We first talk to the couple. Nothing is done without taking the parents along. We call both parties and counsel them independently. Sometimes they are easily convinced,sometimes we talk to them about laws and gently push them into agreeing, says Khobragade,the sarpanch. The panchayat samiti then gets the couple married. We consider every marriage a celebration and every panchayat samiti member contributes some cash,which is used for printing three wedding cardsone for the village,one for the deity and one for the couple. Sweets are distributed and the village celebrates the wedding, she says. And in cases where parents of the groom dont accept the match,the couples stay back in Karanji. Thats how Rakesh Khobragade and his wife Laxmi made Karanji their home. Rakeshs parents opposed the match because he was apparently more educated than Laxmi. After a two-year courtship,we wanted to marry. But my parents refused to accept us. So we eloped from our village Chandrapur and came to Karanji,where we got married. Today,Karanji is our home and we cannot think of staying anywhere else, says Rakesh,37. These tales of happily married couples come up frequently at nukkad conversations. Among the most popular of these stories is that of Sachin Wade and Sheetal Welaji. Their alliance had all the ingredients of a filmy love story,complete with parents who swore revenge,police who gave the couple a chase and friends who finally got the two married.
