Sonakshi, Swara, Richa And The Right To Choose
Bollywood may not be known for its ability to speak up against the establishment but it has plenty of champions of interfaith love even today.
When Swara Bhasker announced last year that she was marrying Fahad Ahmad, I thanked her for being a lighthouse for Indian lovers. Her marriage was a wake-up call to all young people that they can and should be in charge of their love stories. It was a booster shot for interfaith, intercaste and LGBTQIA+ lovers who are often forced to sacrifice their love at the altar of parental control. Now actor Sonakshi Sinha has done the same, opting to wear a scarlet Raw Mango Chand Booti sari which will never be seen the same way, its twinkling crescent moons gently reprimanding those who, even in 2024, continue to be against an adult woman’s right to choose a partner.
Interfaith marriages have always been ‘normal’ in the Hindi film industry. Devika Rani, the first lady of Indian cinema, married Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich nearly 80 years ago; Nargis and Sunil Dutt romanced 66 years ago. Kabir Khan and Mini Mathur may be a modern-day interfaith couple but the director’s parents, Leela Narayan Rao and Rasheeduddin Khan, eloped in 1965. “I didn’t think of him as a Muslim man, he was just Rasheed. And I was just Leela,” Leela told her daughter Anusha, who shared their story on India Love Project, the Instagram account I co-founded in 2020.
The modern-day version of Leela’s statement could well be from Kareena Kapoor who married Saif Ali Khan in 2012. “The most important thing between Saif and I is that we like each other and enjoy our company,” Kapoor told The Indian Express. "How should it matter what faith he follows or what his age is, that isn’t even a point of discussion.”
But in an age when interfaith marriages are demonised, it requires a tenacious celebrity to announce she is marrying a person of another faith, especially if they are Muslim. Swara, Sonakshi (who married actor Zaheer Iqbal) and actor Richa Chadha (who married actor Ali Fazal in 2020), have all displayed that steel in recent times. All of them now serve as prominent reminders to young lovers that no matter what your parents or politicians say, the right to chose a partner is inscribed in our Constitution.
Bollywood may not be known for its ability to speak up against the establishment but it has plenty of champions of interfaith love even today. And they are at the forefront of the ongoing Great War to love whomsoever they want irrespective of gender, religion or caste. The fight for marriage equality, the hateful conspiracy theory of ‘love jihad’ and the murders of intercaste couples are all playing out simultaneously on the same Indian battleground. Love is a torturous journey for those young adults who don’t comply with the rules and their parents.
“My life is like that ad,” Chadha once told an interviewer. “I’ve got so much love from Ali’s family, and he from mine. I feel sorry for those loveless people who have a problem with someone else’s marital choices.”
The advertisement she refers to was by jewellery-maker Tanishq and it was the reason we launched India Love Project in a hurry on Instagram in 2020. The ad showed how families could put aside their differences and come together. It was a marker of this nation’s shared humanity, history and of our oneness. But that was precisely its problem. The backlash and intimidation of its employees forced the company to withdraw the ad four days later.
And no matter how many laws you introduce or societal barriers you strengthen, you can’t control love. Sparks will continue to fly at the oddest places. Swara and Fahad, for example, met at a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, and they later used their wedding video to make a political point. “For me, asking questions to my government is the most patriotic act,” Fahad says at the start of the video. Sonakshi and Zaheer’s video invites viewers to witness the love and joy on display during their registered marriage at home.
Of course, all the cases I’ve listed are from privileged India and while Swara has suffered for speaking up—“My Twitter account cost me my career,” she said recently—perhaps the biggest price of falling in love is paid by interfaith and intercaste couples in the hinterland. This love is fraught with danger—death is a likely consequence. The recent murders of intercaste couples in Haryana are only the latest in the bloody history of such love stories.
It is this trauma of intercaste love that finally joined the dots between Pa Ranjith, founder of anti-caste platform Neelam Cultural Centre and someone who changed the way the Dalit community is represented in Indian cinema and Bollywood biggie Karan Johar, who mainstreamed the queer community in films. Ranjith produced Tamil cult film Pariyerum Perumal (2018) which is now being remade by Johar’s Dharma Productions and directed by Shazia Iqbal, whose family is no stranger to interfaith relationships.
The sooner more people are willing to stand up and fight for the right to love, the easier it will be for our next generation to love without fear.
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.
