December 21, 2024

Even as the shock over a father giving out a supari and getting his daughter’s husband killed had not died down comes another shocker from Telengana. In the heart of Hyderabad, another father tried to hack his daughter and her husband with a sickle in broad daylight on a busy thoroughfare in front of a movie hall. While the man escaped after a few blows that left him injured, the daughter almost got her hand chopped off. Such was the fury of the drunken father that he did not even wait a second on seeing the couple, got down from his bike, took out the sickle and went after them. Their crime – the daughter had married a Dalit.

Even if we enact thousands of laws to protect Dalits and the freedom of choice of adults to marry, nothing is going to come out of it as long as seemingly normal people are not able to digest the choices made by their wards or are unable to shake off age old caste-based prejudices. Why do people who otherwise display little or no animosity towards Dalits or backward classes suddenly turn killers if the latter are to become a part of their family? Is a person to be judged by his or her caste or by his or her education, behavior and station in life? Why don’t parents realize that if a person has been able to win the heart of their son/daughter than there must be something in that person that has impressed them? Here we are not talking about impressionable age teenagers. We are talking about young adults who are well educated and can think for themselves.

But parents invariably think that the other person is taking advantage of their wards. Like in old Hindi films, they think that “kuch jadu kar gaya/gayi”. But youngsters today are too hard-nosed and career-minded to fall for magic. Love is something that is in the hands of Cupid. Instead of turning enemies of the couple, parents should help them start a new life together. But most parents cannot come to terms with the bride/groom selected by their wards, especially if they are either from a lower caste or from lower strata of society or of a different religion. Barriers are falling fast but as the events in Telengana show, prejudices still exist and lovers find it hard to make parents accept their choices.