(Indian Express
April 18, 2007)
Act of vigilantism
When the law for inter-faith marriages is so reluctant, how can the government fight orthodoxy?
by Coomi Kapoor
The recent marriage of a Sindhi girl with a Muslim boy against the wishes of their families has created a storm in Bhopal. The Sindhi panchayat pronounced a fatwa which would do the Taliban proud. The nervous Muslims of Madhya Pradesh are treading on eggshells. The secretary of the Majlis-e-Shura emphasised that when the couple came to the Shura for the girl to convert they were turned away, and he advised the boy, who had converted to Hinduism, to remain loyal to his new faith.
Earlier this week Surat was brought to a standstill because of a bandh called to protest a Hindu trader’s daughter fleeing to Bombay with her Muslim lover. The Star News television channel which acted as saviour to the beleaguered couple — less, one suspects, due to altruism than an attempt to hike its viewership rating — attracted the ire of vigilantes. Lathi-wielding members of a group styling itself as the Hindu Rashtra Sena went on a rampage, ransacked the channel’s office, beat up employees and generally created mayhem.
In a conservative society like ours mixed marriages generally raise hackles and bring out society’s bestial side. Primeval passions are aroused when people are led to believe that one religion is asserting hegemony over another. Every now and then one reads about eloping couples who opt for conversion in order get married, leading to heightened communal tensions. The way it works in our country is that if a marriage has to be solemnised speedily and without red tape, both bride and groom have to be of the same religion. Conversion is an easy way out. At times, for convenience, both even convert to a third religion.
So why don’t couples from different religions apply to get married under the Special Marriage Act 1954, which was specifically drafted with people like them in mind? I am something of an expert on the way the legislation works, having gone through the cumbersome procedure twice for my two daughters, who chose partners from different faiths. Even in the national capital, the act is administered in a manner so that as many obstacles as possible are placed in the way. You either end up hiring a lawyer familiar with the working of the marriage office or muster enough determination, time and patience to go through the lengthy rigmarole.
Just a few months back a JNU professor swore to me proudly that his daughter would be married only under the act — although she and her fiancé were both Hindus, they did not believe in religious ritual. After a few trips to the marriage office in South Delhi, and his enthusiasm for a secular ceremony waned. The couple got married with the traditional Hindu rites.
At the marriage offices in Delhi it is usually the clerks who interpret the law since they have been at the desk much longer than the young IAS officers who are additional district magistrates and burdened with numerous other duties, from riot control to elections. The trick in getting your way is not to be intimidated by the clerk, but to out-shout and out-reason him, quoting the relevant law. When I presented the forms of my would-be son-in-law, duly filled out and attested by the New York consul general’s office, I was told they would have to be sent back and attested by a notary in New York. My daughter quoted the law — I still have no idea whether correctly or incorrectly — to say it was illegal for an Indian document to be attested in a foreign country. The clerk, who spoon-fed the officer, struck a compromise allowing the forms to be attested by the notary public on the pavement outside. For a fee, the notary made no fuss about attesting a document datelined New York when she had not even seen the face of the signatory. A retired senior diplomat’s wife was less fortunate. She was informed firmly that she would have to fly her daughter and her foreign fiancé to India a month prior to the wedding to complete the formalities. In addition, the fiancé had to procure an affidavit from his embassy to confirm that he had not been married previously.
When applying for permission to get married under the act, you have to work against a deadline, so that the considerable paper work is completed in at least a month, and not more than three months, before the scheduled date of the wedding. Be prepared to be scrutinised and sneered at by sceptical clerks and marriage officers who believe that there has to be something dubious about your intentions or you would not be in their office in the first place. A colleague recalls how minutes before her wedding the marriage officer called her aside, bolted the door and told her she was making a terrible mistake. He laboured under the delusion that his role was that of a marriage counselor, not a marriage officer. When I presented my daughter’s fiancé’s documents with the column for religion left blank, the marriage officer took great offence and snapped that he had never heard of anyone doing such a thing in all his years.
One of the most retrograde provisions of the act is the column enquiring about religious affiliation. Since the entire form — with addresses, photographs and religious affiliation of the couple — is pinned on the notice board for a month, couples from different religions become easy prey for fundamentalist outfits who demonstrate outside their homes shouting slogans. The need for publicising the details a month in advance is so that anyone can voice objection to the marriage. In contrast, for a religious ceremony no notice whatsoever is required. And no elementary verification is considered necessary of the pundits, maulvis and granthis who officiate. The provision (19) in the Special Marriage Act, which states that those who marry under it, whether Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain, will effectively be severed from their families, implies that they are to be penalised for marrying outside their religion.
Bigotry and religious prejudice can be eradicated from society only when the government leads the way. But when the guardians of the law themselves have ambivalent feelings on the subject, is it any wonder that eloping couples almost invariably keep their distance from the marriage office and the Special Marriage Act?
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