There is a good reason why our motherland is described as a mai-baap state rather than a ‘nanny’ one. The parental nod – or ‘nahin!’ – is seen as the last flag for any enterprise, individual agency be damned. So, it comes as little surprise that the Gujarat government is considering making parental consent mandatory for couples seeking to tie the knot of their own volition, a.k.a. ‘love marriage‘. In a way, this is the state’s willingness to come to terms with more and more young people opting out of marriage arranged by their families. If you can’t beat them, control them. Thus the plan for a parental stamp that Heer-Ranjha would have found difficult to dodge.
Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel is even considering commissioning a ‘study’ to look into incidents of couples eloping – in Patel’s words, ‘girls eloping for marriage’, as if the ‘boys’ are mere accessories. Thoughtfully, he said he is mulling over commissioning this study after checking whether the Constitution supports it or not. One is sure that in India – and what Gujarat thinks today, India thinks tomorrow – one can work one’s way around constitutional nitty-gritty for mom ‘n’ pop’s sake. Sigmund Freud was, thankfully, Austrian. So, no point going down that psychoanalytical road. But being an interloper in people’s eloping will take much romance out of, well, romance.
