India – Drivers of the transformation

• India's contradictions are often hard to grasp: on the same day you can visit an LGBTQI festival in the capital, where hundreds of trans and gay people are loudly demanding their right to marry, or talk to a terrified heterosexual couple who have received death threats and had to go into hiding because of their interreligious relationship. While glossy magazines celebrate the country's most famous interfaith family - Bollywood stars Shah Rukh (Muslim) and his wife Gauri Khan (Hindu) - daily newspapers are full of reports of couples being beaten up and killed by their families or supposed guardians of morality, simply because they do not belong to the same caste or religion:

To this day, only a small privileged group can afford to break with centuries-old traditions. For the vast majority of the country, the categories of 'caste' and 'religion' remain as rigid as ever. And in a survey conducted by India's Lok Foundation in partnership with Oxford University just six years ago, 93 percent of married people in Indian cities said that their family had chosen their partner. In 2020, the US Pew Research Center found that 99 percent of Indians marry people of the same faith, and 95 percent of Hindus marry only within their caste.

In other countries, social status and background also play an important role in choosing a partner: People all over the world like to keep to themselves. But in Europe, for example, there are more opportunities for advancement and religious groups are less segregated. In India, very strained relations between the Hindu majority and the smaller religious communities make things even more difficult. In the Pew survey cited above, almost two-thirds of Hindus said that only Hindus were truly Indian - an attitude fuelled by the right-wing conservative ruling party.

In this social climate, it is dangerous for people to fall in love outside their social group. Those who rebel against the rules and want to marry outside their community need help. From Asif Iqbal, for example.

If you want to meet him, you have to travel to the east of New Delhi. In a labyrinthine neighbourhood across the Yamuna that locals no longer consider part of the city, he invites you to an interview at the office of the Dhanak of Humanity association. „In our society, it is traditionally the parents' responsibility to choose a partner for their children,“ says Iqbal. „The couples who come to us have broken with this tradition - but it is still difficult for them to live without their parents' blessing. Suddenly, these young people have no support, and in the worst cases, they are even afraid of those closest to them. It is in this emergency situation that they turn to us.“

Dhanak of Humanity has been in existence for almost twenty years. Since its inception in 2004, Asif Iqbal and his current team of five have been counselling couples in need: helping them to register their civil marriage, advising them on how to deal with their families and, in the event of an acute threat, placing them in police-protected accommodation, a government safe house. According to a Supreme Court directive, there should be at least one of these in every district by 2018. In fact, only 3 out of 28 states have such facilities. The safe house in Delhi can only accommodate ten couples. One couple waiting for one of these rare places slept in the Dhanak of Humanity office for months last year - the young man (from a strict Hindu family) had been abducted by his siblings before he and his Muslim girlfriend managed to escape to Delhi with the help of Iqbal and his team.

During the interview, the phone keeps ringing and Iqbal promises in a calm voice to call the callers back. Up to 60 couples call every month, but the team only sees about 40 couples a year through the crisis to marriage and beyond. „It takes trust to work with us,“ says Iqbal, adding that many couples are ultimately too afraid of the consequences of their decision.

The organisation says it has helped more than 5,000 couples since 2004. Its funding, the equivalent of around €30,000 a year, comes from membership fees and donations. „Everyone should be free to choose who they spend their life with - that's our belief, that's what drives us,“ says Iqbal. He is joined in the meeting room by other staff, sitting on chairs or cushions on the floor. Everyone here knows what their clients are going through, because almost everyone in this office is a survivor - a survivor of a society that rejected them for daring to choose their own partners. „We all know the pain and ostracism that this choice can bring,“ says Iqbal.

He himself met his wife, Ranu Kulshrestha, when they were both studying social work. He comes from a Muslim family, she from a Hindu one, and their parents were strongly opposed to the union. „We tried for years to convince them that we wanted to stay together. When that didn't work, we finally got married against their will,“ he says. Bitter recriminations and a break in contact were the result. The couple have now been together for 24 years, and Iqbal's elderly parents love their daughter-in-law and grandchildren - but still consider their son's interfaith marriage 'the greatest sin'. After all these years, Iqbal can laugh at their stubbornness and use his experience to give hope to couples seeking help. „Every one of these love stories challenges the system. That's why they are fought so hard for. And that's why there is so much power for change in each of these marriages.“

Since 2017, a conspiracy narrative called Love Jihad has been circulating in India, defaming interfaith marriages between Hindus and Muslims as a large-scale repopulation strategy. According to this perfidious propaganda, (mainly male) Muslims are deliberately marrying (mainly female) Hindus in order to infiltrate the Hindu majority society. Indian investigators confirm that there is no evidence of this. Nevertheless, the conspiracy myth has entered the political mainstream: in 2020, the chairperson of the country's National Commission for Women publicly warned of a 'ticking time bomb' of love jihad. And in 2021, many Hindu nationalist-ruled states passed laws making it harder to convert to another faith.

The consequences are far-reaching. Couples who want to marry in India according to religious rites without complications must be of the same faith - or convert before marriage. In states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, such conversions must now be reported to the authorities in advance and the converts must prove that their decision is of their own free will. The criteria for this are more than vague and leave a lot of room for discretion on the part of the officials. Failure to prove this could result in up to ten years in prison. According to independent research, most of the criminal complaints have been filed by conservative political groups.

Couples who wish to avoid this and marry in a civil ceremony, regardless of religion, are hardly better off: according to the Special Marriage Law, they must register their marriage a month in advance. Their names - which usually reveal their religious affiliation - and addresses are published by the authorities. Conservative political groups now systematically search these records to put pressure on the couples' families, sometimes violently.

Dhanak's relationship counsellors also have to be on their guard against these extremists. To refute the accusation of matchmaking, the lovers have to swear on oath before the counselling session that they are together voluntarily. This is to prevent anyone from constructing a love jihad. „The couples have to cooperate with the police from the start - that's the only way we can be sure that our organisation won't be blamed if the boy or girl backs out later,“ says Iqbal. Previous locations have seen violent protests from angry parents, which is why the address of the office and safe house is kept secret.

Iqbal is cautious and diplomatic about the political developments: "The new changes in the law, which make it more difficult to convert, have intensified discussions about the complicated relationship between religion, marriage and personal autonomy. As a result, even friends of couples are now reluctant to act as witnesses. For fear of legal consequences. „Open confrontations are rare, but in recent years there have been cases of parents working with the police and making threats.“

How do they deal with the growing pressure? The Dhanak employees say that their network is important, this association of rejected couples: They act as witnesses for each other. They help each other through the difficult weeks and months of loneliness. They know the problems that can arise in a relationship when you have given up your whole life for the other person. Many supporters have become close friends - a circle of people who shake the foundations of marginalisation.

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To Series: India – A country on the move