Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 26 February 2018 | Page 33
“There is no rich
or poor, Jat or
lovecommandos.org
Jatav difference in
those who seek our
help,” says Sanjay
Sachdev of Love
Commandos.
LOVE ACTUALLY (Left) A Bajrang Dal
protest against Valentine’s Day; (above)
‘Love Commandos’ rescues couples whose
families seek to tear them apart
PTI
experts deemed that to be an underestimation. And so,
in the interpersonal space, a firm anchoring in a sense
of identity and self-worth is yet to take root fully—rela-
tionships are founded on this loose soil of inner conflict
and self-doubt. “That women are considered keen to
invest more in relationships and nurture them at all cost
is itself a kind of oppression,” says Prof Satish Prakash, a
Meerut-based Dalit ideologue. “Nobody recognises that
she nurtures indiscriminately from a sense of insecurity.
She is silent as she does not have any other choice.”
C
ONCRETE reasons for this lack of a full singular
identity—as if women aren’t ‘complete’ without
marriage—aren’t hard to find. Their changing
educational and economic profile has not entitled
women, in the eyes of family or community, to ownership of
property, forget respect. Dowry demands are at an all-time
high. One grotesque extreme was that of a man in West
Bengal recently exposed for having ‘stolen’ his wife’s kidney
to ‘recover’ the dowry promised. The equation couldn’t be
starker—he was merely selling off a piece of property.
The law is supposed to have a modernising force, driving
society’s reforming impulse, but this has not happened—
that’s at the core of the crisis. In 2006, in Uttar Pradesh,
only six per cent of women owned land independently.
In Haryana, at aro und the same time, only 11 per cent
households were “female-headed”. Muslim and Christian
communities, with a few exceptions, deny women the right
to own property. UP, India’s most populous state, continues
with the Zamindari and Land Reforms Act of 1950 instead
of migrating to the new Hindu Succession Act that gives
women rights to agricultural land. The older law does not
recognise the inheritance rights of widows, daughters and
sisters unless all male descendants are dead or gone.
“Even in Haryana, women’s property rights exist only in
name,” says Jagmati Sangwan, general secretary, All India
Democratic Women’s Association, a social activist who has
battled khaps for decades. “This is at the root of all conflicts.
Women are too scared to demand property and men want
girls married by 15 or earlier, so they never attain enough
education or independence to demand what’s theirs. After
such a long struggle, the Supreme Court said khaps should
not threaten couples. And Naresh Tikait says they will stop
producing girls! They can’t say anything to the SC directly, so
take their anger out against the weakest section, women.”
Even if Tikait’s scary, Malthusian threat does not come to
pass, there’s always the everyday punishments of transgres-
sion. Or V-Day violence, which has gone way beyond small
crowds of rowdies descending suddenly on a theatre or a
club and thrashing young, romantically inclined couples.
It’s an elaborate, choreographed ritual of social anger, with
widening acceptance from institutions. Universities close
for the day to preclude chances of love blooming perchance
on campuses. Public thrashings, of course, are routine by
now. “Under the guise of Valentine’s Day, Muslims befool
Hindu women,” says Manoj Saini of the ‘Hindu Yuva Sena’,
a rag-tag outfit that did a ‘lathi puja’ to forewarn couples
(and establishments that welcome them) in Muzaffarnagar.
Xenophobia blends seamlessly into misogyny in his words.
“They wear kalava, teeka, and take names like Raju and
Pappu. Girls don’t realise they are Muslim, and get trapped.”
DU professors Tanveer Aijaz and Vineeta, a ‘Hindu-
Muslim’ couple, are concerned over the myths and violence
being woven around stories like theirs. When they wanted to
marry, their families broached conversion too but they went
for the Special Marriages Act (SMA), meant for inter-caste/
religious couples. “We foresaw accepting conversion could
lead to daily battles,” he says. It helped that they are not
“practising” devouts, and both are repelled by notions of
groups bound by perimeters that don’t allow mixing.
26 February 2018 OUTLOOK 33