Author – Dr Jas Simran Kehal

The urge for affectionate relationships with a person of individual choice is one of our basic and fundamental necessities.  According to Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs, once the physical survival and safety needs of a person are met, the need to get and give love arises. In fact “love”, once considered as a merely simple emotion is now being considered by anthropologists as an evolutionary characteristic of human beings. Let’s discuss its evolution, eugenics, neuro-research, statistics, social and political influence and current status in India.

India can boast of being historically having Taj Mahal as a symbol of love with around 7 million visitors annually, Khajuraho as a temple of love and Kamasutra as guide book which has been translated into many languages worldwide.  Why then there is such a recent steep decline in fondness for fellow beings in our country?

In spite of propagating love by giving philosophy of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism to the world, it is considered a taboo to talk on this topic in our country. None of us is taught about this basic human instinct in school and colleges leaving our young generation to conjecture. Perhaps everyone, as in my case, gets first glimpse or idea of love from cinema which rarely traverses caste and community barriers. This desultory introduction to love is detrimental for its future battles with countless strictures imposed by our community.

As a youngster tries to delve into depths of love and thereby secondarily adding virtues like compassion, gratitude, joy, kindness, and serenity, the society makes sure that he/she does not enter even the affection zone. ‘Unrequited love’ and ‘Cupboard love’ is all that our youth is left with at the age at which neurochemicals naturally drive youth towards selfless one. Societal barriers never allow true love to bloom and once anyone’s youthful love is killed, it targets someone else’s. It’s a really contagious emotion.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all”, said Aristotle. With no one guiding about the value of developing affectionate relationships, young souls are relegated achieving physical satiety thus making love transient rather than eternal. While Global conferences on Love are being held worldwide and universities are dedicating separate departments for research on this topic, Indians are busy channelizing their love hormones by thinking merely of sex. No wonder that despite a ban on pornography, India is the third-largest porn watcher in the world, mostly men with 30% female users.

Falling in love takes 1/5^th of a second and releases a high level of dopamine helping to make love a pleasurable experience similar to the euphoria associated with a small dose of cocaine. Why does one have to wait for a specific day in February to express it? It should be a year-round affair. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that in addition to positive feelings romance brings, love also deactivates the neural pathways responsible for negative emotions such as fear and social judgement preventing critical assessment of people. As Mother Teresa said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them”.

If this emotion is so universal that even animals are known to shower it unconditionally, then why our countrymen are forsaking true love? Religions are the biggest stereotypes to judge people. India has a top-up of caste, sub-castes, regional and class typecasts. It is in our country that love is pigeonholed and not allowed to bloom freely. Media, politics, theology make sure that society does not amalgamate. For every hate crime, there are hundreds of friendly incidents happening which are hidden by media. Social media adds fuel to fire. Politicians avert love to bust the barriers of caste and religion. They avoid displaying religious bonhomie publically although in some cases their own kith and kin are in interfaith and inter-caste marriages. As far as religion is concerned, barring a few episodes, mythology is full of hatred with murders, abductions, coups, exiles, deception and warfare while symbolically serving sermons for universal brotherhood and affection.

The state has left a citizen with no courage to love. Communalism is being legitimised as the current majoritarian government is normalising anti-minority sentiment. It’s a ‘no love-only fear’ scenario. The only love propagated and permitted is that for one’s genes, caste, race or nation.  Sixty-five per cent of Indians are under the age of thirty-five and their love hormones instead of spreading acts of endearments all over, are being deviated to a trap called ‘love for the nation’. Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote our national anthem, said that “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter, my refuge is humanity. I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.” Unfortunately, the saffron brigade is not only suppressing critical thoughts but also essential emotions.

As per WHO, India has the highest suicide rates in South East Asia and third-highest female suicide rates in the world. National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) reported an average of 28 students committed suicide every day making it highest in a decade figure of 10,000 student suicides in 2018. By worshipping false Gods (religious and political) aren’t we getting detached from our fellow beings? If these students had inculcated a feeling of love for anything or anyone they deemed fit, they wouldn’t have taken this escape plan from a beautiful world.

In comparison to marrying for social status or family pressure, love marriages are often eugenic in nature as it requires people to find worthy characteristics in each other. Dr Ambedkar in his undelivered speech “Annihilation of Caste” questions- What harm could there be if a mixture of races and blood was permitted to take place in India by intermarriages between different castes? He summarises that the caste system does not embody the eugenics of modern scientists. It is a social system which embodies the arrogance and selfishness of a perverse section of the Hindus who are superior enough in social status to set it in fashion and who had the authority to force it on their inferiors.

Legislative go-ahead for inter-caste and inter-religion marriages in India was initiated way back in 1872 by enacting a new civil marriage law followed by Special marriage act,1954 which stated that Indians can marry irrespective of religion or faith followed by each party. To depose this law unconstitutionally, self-appointed conscience keepers like khap-panchayats and anti-Romeo squads are being patronised terrorising love birds. Latest NCRB data suggests a 28% increase in murders because of love affairs since the last two decades in India with Uttar Pradesh accounting for around 395 murders annually. The society has become so love intolerant that it is the third biggest murder motive in India besides personal enmity and property dispute. Liberal states like Kerala which hold less importance to casteism are least violent in this context.

Honour killing is an assault on a woman’s autonomy to prevent her from exercising her choice of love and marriage. Girls are being killed inside the womb so that they are not born and outside so that they do not live to love. This is done to stop love from transcending ethnic, caste, community and religious barriers by executing a control on Roti-Beti.

Anti-miscegenation laws of Hitler which forbade marriage between Aryans and Jews. Indian Human Development Survey reveals that only 5% of marriages are inter-caste. Furthermore, it reports that Christian dominated Mizoram (55 per cent), Meghalaya (46 per cent), Sikkim (38 per cent) and Jammu and Kashmir (35 per cent) had the highest inter-caste marriage rates, while Madhya Pradesh (1 per cent), Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa (2 per cent each) and Punjab (3 per cent) had the lowest. These data bust the myth that traditional barriers of caste can be broken with modernity and convicts a particular religion due to its deep divisions and sub-divisions in the form of castes and sub-castes.

Maintaining caste endogamy remains an essential characteristic of Indian marriages.  Lakshmi Krupa in her article “Love in the Time of Caste” aptly summarizes that- Caste groups sustain power on their ability to control men of subordinate castes, which rides on their ability to control women in public and private spheres. Thus caste and religion divisions leave a very limited choice for selection of a life partner and the forces, primarily religious and secondarily political nowadays, are responsible for wilting of love. Moreover, endogamy leaves couples with a limited gene pool thereby increasing predisposition to genetic diseases for the next generation.

Love for inanimate things is also on hold under this regime. For three years in a row, Biryani is the most ordered meal on India’s largest food delivery app, Swiggy. In their fascist enlightening speeches, UP chief minister Thakur Ajay Singh Bisht declared to feed bullets instead of biryani and our prime minister vitriolically suggested recognizing anti-nationals by the clothes they wear. Indeed, the taste of what we eat or wear is also being censored. The only love percolating downwards from the government seems to be that for cow urine (gaumutra) and cow dung (gobar).

If love is contagious, so is hatred. It is for the society to understand that the lotus has come to power riding the chariot of hate by creating social, religious and cultural rifts. Hate cannot drive hate, only love can do that. The only management to counter this poison of hate is first to diagnose the disease properly and then request Dr Cupid to inject the anti-venom of romance into our mega-diverse society.

As Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must discover…..the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make this a new world. But love, love is the only way”.

Author – Dr Jas Simran Kehal
MS (Ortho), MA (Journalism)
Kehal Trauma Centre, Nangal Dam. Punjab