Fearless Freedom Page 6
She said that when she discovered she had an ectopic pregnancy, Kaleem and she registered themselves in a government hospital as husband and wife, and Kaleem paid for the surgery. But when her mother discovered the surgery, the whole story came out. Shalu decided she wanted to marry Kaleem, and that the most hassle-free way of doing so was for her to convert to Islam so that she and Kaleem could get married the Muslim way. The Special Marriage Act that allows for interfaith marriages is difficult for such couples because it requires a month’s public notice, allowing irate parents time to interfere. So Shalu converted to Islam and adopted the name of Bushra just to get married. She told Dixit that Kaleem had assured her she could continue to keep her Hindu faith. But her parents found out and took the help of Sangh outfits to prevent the marriage. Shalu told Dixit that if she had not given a statement claiming to be a victim of rape and forced conversion, ‘these people here would have killed me’. Her August statement, then, was a custodial confession obtained by custodial coercion and torture. Shalu said she loved Kaleem and wanted to marry him and passionately blamed her parents for involving politicians and the media.
Shalu also expressed the fear that she might be killed, as are so many in so-called honour crimes in the country. Al Jazeera and Dixit stayed the publication of the interview, however, fearing that it might endanger Shalu, who was still in the custody of her family. The story was only published, along with an audio recording of the conversation in October 2014, after Shalu escaped from her parents’ home to the local police station and declared that she was in love with Kaleem. Shalu told the police that she had made her August statement out of fear and coercion, that her life was in danger from her family, and that her father had taken money from a BJP leader to turn a love affair into a ‘love-jihad’ case.
Take a moment now to imagine the kind of courage it cost Shalu to come forward and tell her truth. To confess to interfaith love, premarital sex, pregnancy and abortion would have been hard enough as it is in western UP. To do so when in the full glare of media publicity, defying not only her parents but the political forces that rule the country, is nothing short of heroic.
In To Kill A Mockingbird,2 the iconic novel about an innocent black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, the defence lawyer Atticus Finch gently and compassionately invites the white woman Mayella to ‘tell us what happened’—to confess that, starved of companionship and friendship, she had, in fact, embraced the accused black man, and had been beaten up by her father when he caught her, and had only claimed ‘rape’ under pressure from him. But Mayella was unable to tell the truth—a sexual encounter between a white woman and a black man, even if it were a public secret that all recognized, could not be acknowledged openly. But Shalu, the Mayella of Meerut, did speak the truth. She ran away from a home that had become her prison.
Shalu and Kaleem married in 2015. But the media channels that had painted Kaleem as a rapist and spread the ‘love-jihad’ myth, avoided setting the record straight. In December 2015, Sourodipto Sanyal wrote in Newslaundry that the worst offender, Zee News, that had spread lurid, sensational stories about ‘love jihad’ without a shred of evidence, never admitted it was wrong about the Meerut case.3 Most other media too (with just a couple of exceptions) failed to hold the BJP and the RSS leaders accountable for having cynically endangered Shalu’s life and the freedom of Kaleem and members of his family and community just to create grist for their hateful ‘love-jihad’ mill.
Hadiya’s Swathanthryam
To me, twenty-four-year-old Hadiya’s story is most remarkable for how she showed our society a mirror, in which she emerged with a dignity, grace and honesty that various hallowed institutions failed to display and uphold. Our courts and judges come out of this story looking like petty, insecure patriarchs, while Hadiya stands tall and inspires.
Hadiya converted from the Hindu faith to Islam and changed her name from Akhila to Hadiya. Her father—like so many parents in India—refused to accept that this was her own decision, and repeatedly petitioned the Kerala High Court, alleging that his daughter was a victim of a forced conversion racket. The Kerala High Court threw out his petitions twice—on the obvious grounds that Hadiya was an adult capable of taking decisions on her own. His third petition, however, was entertained by the Kerala High Court, which began scrutinizing Hadiya’s life and her decisions.
Meanwhile, Hadiya placed an advertisement on a matrimonial website and chose to marry Shafin Jehan. The Kerala High Court, in an appalling verdict, annulled the marriage. It rejected Hadiya’s plea that she was an adult, declaring that ‘as per Indian tradition, the custody of an unmarried daughter is with the parents, until she is properly married. We consider it the duty of this court to ensure that a person under such a vulnerable state is not exposed to further danger . . . A girl aged 24 years is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways’. Note: this is a legal document, not a colloquial drawing-room conversation. The use of the word ‘girl’ rather than ‘woman’ is therefore a deliberate one, intended to infantilize adult Indian women. The use of the word ‘properly’ is also quite telling. Hadiya’s marriage to Shafin is ‘improper’ because her father did not, in the words of his counsel, ‘give away his daughter in marriage and ensure that the person who marries her is a suitable person’.
The Kerala High Court verdict also displayed an Islamophobic bias against conversion, declaring that ‘[It] is not normal for a young girl in her early 20s, pursuing a professional course, to abandon her studies and to set out in pursuit of learning an alien faith and religion’. Ask yourself, what if the young woman had abandoned her studies in order to marry a man of her father’s choice: would the court have considered it normal or abnormal? What if she had joined a Hindu ashram: would the court have found it abnormal? Or did the court’s perception of Islam as ‘alien’ influence its decision? As in the so-called Meerut ‘love-jihad’ case, various channels were emboldened by the Kerala High Court verdict to run ‘audio tapes’ claiming to expose ‘love jihad’.4
Jehan appealed in the Supreme Court against the Kerala High Court verdict. But the Supreme Court, which had, not long ago, given a landmark verdict on the Right to Privacy as a constitutional right, faltered for long months when called upon to uphold Hadiya’s right to privacy and autonomy. It seems that the wisest lose their heads when they taste the potent potion of Islamophobia and patriarchal paternalism.
Advocates representing Jehan and Hadiya asked the Supreme Court to stay the Kerala High Court order, ensure Hadiya’s immediate freedom from parental custody and hear Hadiya’s own version of events to determine whether her conversion and marriage were a result of force. Instead, the Supreme Court allowed the order annulling Hadiya’s marriage and ordering her into parental custody to stand, and, to top it all, ordered the National Investigative Agency (NIA) to investigate for evidence of a forced conversion racket!
The then chief justice, J.S. Khehar, referred to Hadiya as a ‘child’, and when asked not to do so, smilingly said ‘for us she is a child’.5 Again, such language in a courtroom is not casual or accidental—it is part of an insidious agenda of infantilization of adult women. The use of this word by the chief justice was as though the Supreme Court of India had, like a neighbourhood ‘uncle’, patted young Indian women on the head, called them ‘beti’ and told them they mustn’t bother their little heads with serious decisions that are better left to their dads.
Hadiya remained in her father’s custody for seven months, from May to November 2017. The Supreme Court, which could have freed Hadiya in August, did not even agree to summon her till November, in spite of the fact that Hadiya was clearly a prisoner in her own home, prevented from meeting her friends. She had even told the only visitor permitted, right-wing ideologue Rahul Easwar, that her life was in danger from her father’s violence.
When the Supreme Court finally summoned Hadiya in November 2017, it was still reluctant to let her speak. Instead, the judges rambled on about ‘Stockholm syndrome
’, asking, ‘If we proceed with interviewing the girl in question, would that not amount to the court accepting that there has been no indoctrination and that she had consented to converting to Islam for the marriage with her free consent, in a competent state of mind?’6 They talked about her in her presence, as if indeed she were a child incapable of understanding adult matters. Hadiya’s lawyer, Indira Jaising, urging the judges to hear Hadiya as she was an adult woman with agency and who wanted to speak to them, asked if she would have been treated the same way if she had been a man. The judges responded with derision, with the then chief justice Dipak Misra asking, ‘Where does gender come into this?’7 Indeed, the judges’ inability to see that no court would ever declare that the custody of an unmarried son lay with his parents was a huge part of the problem. The judges denied seeing the enormous elephant in the room—gender.
When the judges finally agreed to question Hadiya, and asked her what her dreams for the future were, she answered, ‘I want freedom [she used the Malayalam word “swathanthryam”].’8 Her words echo the Subramania Bharati poem I quoted in the second chapter, which valued and cherished veera sutantiram—brave freedom in women.9
For Hadiya to have stood firm after months of mental torture in her father’s custody was truly inspiring. She told the media later that her father had got representatives of a ‘yoga centre’ (which is actually an anti-conversion clinic to coerce women who converted from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam, or married men from these faiths, to return to their faith and renounce their partners) to try and coerce her to renounce Islam and Jehan. This is a ‘yoga centre’ where many other women have complained of being confined and tortured to renounce their Christian or Muslim husbands.10 It is also the place where Athira, too, had spent time, after which she converted back to Hinduism from Islam—it was Athira’s allegations of forced conversion that television channels had aired as ‘love-jihad tapes’.11 In spite of the many testimonies against this ‘yoga centre’, courts that have been so willing to order NIA probes into ‘love-jihad’ bogeys in spite of women’s vehement denials, have yet to order a probe of this institution.
An exchange between Hadiya and the Supreme Court judges is especially telling. The court asked her to live in a hostel and complete her studies, and asked, ‘Who do you want as your guardian?’ To this, she replied, ‘My husband. I want someone who accepts me as Hadiya.’ On hearing this, Justice Chandrachud decided to lecture Hadiya on feminist principles, saying, ‘No husband is a wife’s guardian. I am not my wife’s guardian.’ Justice Chandrachud did not see fit to tell his own brother judges of the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court that they had no business recommending or appointing ‘guardians’ for adult women!
Eventually, on 8 March 2018—the hearing coincided with International Women’s Day—the Supreme Court did set aside the Kerala High Court order, stating that the Kerala High Court was wrong to annul Hadiya’s marriage and that she was ‘at liberty to pursue her future endeavours’. Justice Chandrachud said, ‘If she [Hadiya] has no issues [with the marriage], that’s the end of the issue.’12 But Hadiya made it clear repeatedly to the Kerala High Court, on record, that she had married Jehan of her own choice. Why did the Supreme Court delay for months before hearing Hadiya? Why, even after hearing Hadiya, did it delay for several more months—from November 2017 to March 2018—before setting aside the Kerala High Court order and upholding Hadiya’s choice to marry Jehan?
Was the deliberately long delay, first in hearing Hadiya and freeing her from parental custody and then in upholding her marriage, perhaps intended to wear her down in the hope that she might change her mind? We have seen how, in so many honour-crime cases, women forcibly confined in parental custody lose the will to fight and, exhausted, recant their earlier statements and say what their custodians demand they say. Hadiya survived months of confinement, isolation and torture, and retained her clear vision that what she wanted was her ‘swathanthryam’. It is ironic that our country’s courts are willing to entertain fantastic conspiracy theories about the brainwashing or the seducing of Hindu women by Islamic terrorist recruiters—without any evidence to back them—but the same courts are unable to recognize that a woman held in forced parental custody is vulnerable to brainwashing and torture! Hadiya’s courage and clarity of vision should shame our honourable judiciary: she knew what they took so long to acknowledge—that it was her swathanthryam, her freedom, not ‘national security’, that was at stake.
The fact that the Supreme Court allowed a fishing expedition by the NIA into the marriage of two consenting adults and the decision of an adult woman to convert to play out for so long should worry all Indian women. The Supreme Court merely sounded regretful that it could not overrule a woman’s choice—it expressed no concern or criticism that the liberty of a young adult woman was taken away and she was made a prisoner in her father’s home by the order of a court.
Kausalya: Freedom Fighter against Caste
In 2015, eighteen-year-old Kausalya from Tamil Nadu married V. Shankar, whom she had met and fallen in love with at an engineering college. Shankar was a Dalit and Kausalya was from the dominant Thevar caste, and so Kausalya had to defy her furious parents to marry Shankar.
On 14 March 2016, a shocking video went viral. CCTV footage from Udumalpettai showed Kausalya and Shankar emerging from a shop together (she had just bought him a shirt for a college function) and walking towards a bus stand. As soon as they reached the main road, assailants rode up on motorbikes and attacked the couple with sickles. Shankar was killed on the spot. Kausalya, severely injured, was hospitalized.
Kausalya knew it was her parents who had ordered the killing. She knew because they had told her that they would have her and Shankar killed. She knew because they had abducted and tortured her many times since her marriage.
Kausalya’s story is similar to that of so many other women. What is new are the insights she gained from her experience—into the cruelty inherent in the caste system, and the difference between love based on mutual respect and love subject to control.
Speaking to Vincent Raj, the executive director of Evidence, the organization that supported Kausalya’s struggle after Shankar’s murder, she said, ‘My family always loved me. I was their “pet” daughter. My father got me everything I asked for. At the same time, I was barred from stepping out of the house. I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone as well. I am not sure when exactly this became the norm, but I guess that’s how it had always been; perhaps since my birth.’13
Remember the National Family Health Survey data we read in the first chapter?14 Kausalya’s story brings that data to life. Love for a daughter in India’s caste-ridden society translates all too often into surveillance and confinement by parents.
As Kausalya speaks about Shankar, it is easy to see why she fell in love with him: his respect for her personhood and autonomy shines through. It was his respectful acceptance of her rejection of his offer of love that first drew Kausalya to him. She said, ‘[He] wasn’t angry when I rejected his love. I liked that about him. We began to have friendly conversations . . . Shankar had a special habit: he always maintained a safe distance with his women friends, treating them with lot of respect and dignity.’15
Shankar did not behave as though he were entitled to Kausalya’s love. He did not indulge in any macho displays of aggression or Devdas-like grief to manipulate her or make her feel guilty or obliged to love him. He did not act as though she owed him love. Instead, he respected her decision but told her quietly that he still liked her a lot. That won Kausalya over: ‘I had reasons for not refusing him the second time. Beyond love, I had developed respect for him as well. Shankar made me realize that dignified and respectful behaviour is the way of love.’16
Kausalya’s family got to know of her friendship with Shankar and began abusing him and preparing to get her married to someone else. Left to themselves, she and Shankar would have got married after completing their studies and finding jobs. But now, worried that th
ey might be forcibly separated, they decided to get married. Kausalya would work and support Shankar till he finished his own studies and got a job, they decided. So, they had a simple temple wedding with the help of Shankar’s friends.
Kausalya’s memories of Shankar contain small details that are very moving, and give us a clear picture of what kind of a man he was. She said, in a voice choked with emotion, ‘I had never done housework, so Shankar was the one who cooked for me. Even before he was killed, he was telling me that he is going to make pooris for me that night.’17 Elsewhere, Kausalya had this to say, ‘For those eight months that I lived with him, he was more motherly than my mother towards me. He would cook for me, wash my clothes, take care of me like a child. He did things that society considers women’s chores . . . For others, love means many things. For me, love gives women self-respect.’18
Kausalya’s family swung into action to undo the marriage, doing what so many other parents of eloping daughters do. They filed a case against Shankar, alleging he had kidnapped Kausalya. Kausalya and Shankar filed a complaint at their local police station, stating they feared harm from Kausalya’s parents. The couple found, as Manoj and Babli of Haryana did, that the police supported the casteist patriarchs and not the rights of the couple. With both Kausalya’s and Shankar’s family members gathered at the police station, the police inspector rebuked Kausalya for defying her parents, saying, ‘Love lasts for sixty days and desire for thirty! You come from a family of means. You have married a poor boy. How will you live?’19 She stood her ground. Kausalya’s aunt made her strip off all her clothes and jewellery that had been provided by her parents. She said of this experience, ‘In a room at the police station where I was removing the clothes given by my family, I sensed the depravity of caste and the insult I had to undergo because of it.’20