New Delhi, September 05: Cries of 'love jihad' have been doing the rounds in every case where recenlty a Muslim boy named Tanvir Ahmed deceptively married a hindu girl, Archana a couple of years back, driving her life into hell now.
Calling himself a Hindu boy, Anuj, in the beginning, Tanvir deceptively married Archana in a small village, revealing his identity only after she started expecting. "We got married by the hindu tradions back in my village. When I was declared pregnant, he suggested unusual muslim names for 'boy' and that's where I had a doubt", said Archana in a video viral over the social media.
"He tried to kill me a couple of days ago, soon after revealing the fact that he was not Hindu. He is on the run now and has taken away all my money, jewellery, deposits.. leaving me with his child alone", she added weeping her tears off.
"Going to the police also did'nt help me", she said, "they casually asked me to chill out and go home. The officer called Tanvir in front of me and asked him to return, after which they turned lethargic to look after the incident seriously", she said adding that now was the time for her to take action herself.
There was a time when only arranged marriages were the norm and love marriages were frowned upon. People who were to be bound by marriage and expected to spend their entire lives together saw each other just once or twice before the wedding day, and they would not know much about each other.
In the twenty-first century, arranged marriage has gone through superficial changes in urban settings even as, in various social set ups, it continues to be the same old ritual of getting two strangers married. However, even though love marriages have become more common and acceptable, archaic rules concerning love and marriages, especially of caste and religion still rule the roost.
The going gets tougher for couples when it comes to inter-faith marriages. There is ongoing propaganda against inter-religious marriages, especially when the woman is Hindu and the man a Muslim or a Christian. Despite the progress on the fronts of education, technology and the economy, India as a collective society, necessarily continues to be conservative when it comes to culture and social norms.