What forces the couples to do suicide ? What forces their parents and fringe elements to kill them ?

Love is the most pure thing in the world which binds people together. It is impossible to imagine a world without love. But the society have created barriers which prevents people from falling in love. I am going to write on India specific barriers on love. We Indians have arranged the filters in a serial manner to fall in love. We have seen multiple instances when a couple in love did suicide , ran away from their hometown just because they fell in love with other and that relationship was not agreed by their parents. This happens every odd day in India.

Why this happens ? What forces the couples to do suicide ? What forces their parents and fringe elements to kill them ? The answers to all these questions leads us to another question i.e., What prevents the Indian youth from falling in love? and What prevents them from marrying with each other ?  So these are some barriers which prevents people from falling in love : 

Look/Beauty : He/She should look handsome or beautiful. Funny thing is most guys experiences love at first site only when the person is fair , handsome, sexy and beautiful. If the person doesn’t fit in this criteria , he/she is rejected at the first place.

Age : Age is very important factor to fall in love. Boys prefers younger girl or girl who is junior to them in college. The basic reason behind this is our patriarchal mindset which continues till date. This is not from one side. Even most of the girls prefers the boys who are elder than them. Not everyone is like “Sid” of “Dil Chahta hai” or Priyanka Chopra of Real life . 

Religion : This is the drakensberg like thing standing in between you and your choice.  Couple from same religion are married easily as compared to those who don’t belong to same religion. There are concepts like ” love jihad ” which has harassed many couples in India.

ये इश्क नहीं आसां बस इतना समझ लीजिए,

धर्म का दरिया है और छुपते छुपाते जाना है। Sorry fort the edit.

I will give an example here.  

A girl and her Muslim boyfriend was targeted publicly on Facebook along with about 100 interfaith couples with each of them Muslim men and their Hindu girlfriends. The Facebook post included instructions: “This is a list of girls who have become victims of love jihad. We urge all Hindu lions to find and hunt down all the men mentioned here” (Source : Washington Post).  Interfaith marriage is like a sin for the Indian society. This not only stops at religion . Many religions don’t allow couples from different sects to get married. But there are some who are breaking this norm and challenging the age-old outdated traditions. 

Caste : Any write up on marriage is incomplete without adding caste in it. Caste matters a lot to get married and even to fall in love. See this examples : 

A young married couple was allegedly killed in Lakkalakatti village of Gajendragad Taluk here by the woman’s brothers for marrying a Dalit man, police said on Wednesday (Source : Gulf News ). 

In an apparent instance of honour killing, a 22-year-old woman from Kalamadugu in Jannaram mandal of Mancherial district, Pindi Anuradha, was beaten to death on Saturday night, allegedly by her father Sathaiah, brother and relatives, for marrying outside her caste. (Source : The Hindu )

Three relatives of a man who married a Dalit woman around a month-and-half ago were allegedly hacked to death by the woman’s kin in a hate crime in Naushehra village, 40 km from the district headquarters, on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, local police said.( Source : Hindustan Times )

Manoj and Babli of Benwal caste were brutally murdered on June 15, 2007 and their bodies were thrown in a canal near Narnaul in Haryana. Leaders of the Jat community actually seem shocked that honour killings are being questioned because according to them the very basis of this case was wrong! The community believes that same gotra marriages in a village are absolutely unacceptable, no matter what the consequences may be. (Source : India Today).

Amrutha, 21, belongs to a wealthy, upper-caste family, while Pranay, who was 24, was a Dalit (formerly untouchable). In April 2016, they married despite her parents’ objections. Now five months pregnant, she finds herself saying the unimaginable. “My father killed my husband because he did not belong to the same caste as me.” (Source : BBC News)

                                                Women protesting against honour killing

In our society a boy and girl with same surnames cannot marry with each other even when they are from same caste. Sub caste also matters between caste marriages. So this is the state and fate of inter-caste marriages in India. 

Financial status of Family : “Always marry with someone from same financial status as you”. This is the top most priority nowadays .  Boys and girls from cities tends to fall in love with each other as compared to those from villages. The colony in which she/he stays, the rate of the bungalow , his bank balance, type of job he/she do, how many people are educated in the family ,whether he/she is from a joint or nuclear family and how’s their lifestyle are some of the parameters considered before getting married ,the list may go on and on. This happens not only in love marriage but also in arranged marriages. So most of the boys/girls before choosing a partner of their choice cross checks all these things before confirming the relationship.

Apart from these there are other reasons like ego , likes and dislikes  and even ideology which stops people from falling in love. 21st century youth is challenging the societal norms which unnecessarily prevents them from falling in love. Even the Supreme Court now stands in favor of the queer and transgender community. The scenario will change slowly and steadily because in India traditions and culture matters most and it is difficult to come out of outdated or harmful traditions (Sati Tradition). The onus is on the youth of the country. Let us come out of the caste , religion ,status and all the things which are barriers to love. At last we humans need Love and happiness to live .