Celebrating love outside the shackles of faith caste, ethnicity and gender

t a time when social media is filled with communally divisive narratives about inter-faith marriages, when politicians speak about “love jihad laws”, and when a jewellery brand pulled back an advertisement portraying such a union following public outrage, three journalists show examples of relationships that are not limited by traditional boundaries.

Outside the shackles of religion, caste, ethnicity and gender, the ‘India Love Project’ (ILP) features stories of love and marriage. Established and released about a fortnight ago by Priya Ramani, Samar Halarnkar and Niloufer Venkatraman, it includes 150-word stories and pictures of couples on its Instagram and Facebook handles. Couples discuss the difficulties they experienced to get married, fights and prejudice.

The vignettes show how wonderfully binary relationships and homes co-exist. One of the stories, written by their daughter, is about Daniela Menichella and Raj Awatramani. It starts with how the cross tucked at the front door of the house faces Krishna’s painting on the west wall.

Explaining how the project started, Ms. Ramani says that while they had been tossing the idea for a while last year after politicians began spreading hate on interfaith marriage, they began seriously discussing it. But, considering the amount of work and time a website would take to set up they did not launch it.

”We decided we had to start ILP as soon as possible after seeing the bullying that Tanishq was subjected to because of an inter-faith advertisement, and feeling disheartened at the way the organisation instantly pulled its advertisement. We implemented a plan for a millennial entrepreneur and launched it on the fly without worrying about all the details,” she said.

Ms. Ramani says they hope to shift the toxic conversation surrounding love and marriage through their project, and bring back the warm, fuzzy feeling associated with love.

Although the government had claimed in Parliament last year that love jihad was not and does not exist as a legally recognised concept, Mr. Halarnkar says it has been armed and normalised to the degree that people feel it is a valid national concern. “We believe it is important to fight this false narrative. What a better way to fight against something that is false and something that is true. Nothing could be more real than the lovely, inspiring stories landing on our page,” he said.

The team now wants to publish one love story every day on their social media accounts and is also thinking about joining hands with organisations that are already working to help these couples resolve obstacles. An overwhelming response has been given to their project, and they are now in the midst of organising the flood of responses they have received. They also want to get more stories from the hinterland and feature more inter caste and LGBTQ love stories.

Ms. Ramani said, “I believe older couples find it easier to share their experiences, talking about whether the problems of young couples are different or simpler compared to the older generation. Younger couples are probably worried about bigoted landlords or keeping a “low profile” in their workplaces. But in all age groups, there are enough stories to keep us alive for a long time. Some things don’t change as far as their challenges go but yes, younger couples speak about how hard it is to keep the narrative based on love in a time of great hate.”

A few inter-faith couples have written telling them that the project and the stories are profoundly inspiring, yet to formalise their relationship. One of the messages sent by them says: “… These stories are like rays of hope in these times when there is a growing hatred towards minorities.”

In summary, Mr. Halarnkar added, “In a country where dating is frowned upon and young people find it so hard to meet someone more inter-faith relationships just make a lot of sense. Widening the pool, so to speak, actually makes it possible to leap in further. And that’s a wonderful thing. Love makes you calmer and gentler, and the qualities this country really needs are calmness and gentleness.”