In a country
where casual relationships are still frowned on, young Indians are defying
parents and society by using smartphone apps to meet partners
Yusuf Khan
has a four-sentence formula for finding love. When he has a few minutes to
himself, the recent graduate from Mumbai, India’s financial capital, opens up
the dating app Tinder on his phone and swipes right a few times.
If the
woman likes his profile, he sends her four instant messages in rapid
succession: “Hey, how are you?” and “You look interesting” are followed by a
joke based on her picture or one-line biography, and he finishes with “Do you
wanna get a coffee or a drink?”
“It’s
an efficient way to meet girls,” he says. “But the key is to ask her out on a
date very fast.”
Khan
is 24 – high time, according to his parents, he started looking for a wife. If
he cannot fit women into his busy work schedule, they say, they can always
start asking around friends and family for a suitable match. Khan does not tell
his parents, but he goes on at least one new Tinder date
every month. Despite pressure from the family, he is in no rush to marry.
“Right now I’m dating just to enjoy myself. I like meeting new people, someone
interesting, someone fun,” he says.
In
rapidly developing India, the process of finding love is in the midst of a
revolution. Spurred by apps such as Tinder, Woo and TrulyMadly,
the old tradition of arranged marriage is giving way to a new, westernised
style of dating, where growing numbers of people are choosing to date for fun,
without the end goal of marriage. Exposure to western culture has seen the
gradual breakdown of the traditional Indian family; arranged marriages have
become less formal; more people are choosing to live in separate homes to their
parents or in-laws; and dating and sex out of wedlock are becoming increasingly
common.
Now
young lovers trying to straddle the gap between their parents’ conservative
ideas about marriage and the reality of finding love in modern India face a new challenge: the Indian
government. India’s IT and telecommunications minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad,
has sent an advisory note to the country’s myriad matrimonial websites asking
service providers to make users sign a declaration saying that they have an
intention to marry and are not using the website for any other purposes, such
as dating.
By
doing so, the government has drawn an invisible line between those who want to
date, and those who want to marry, as though the two groups are unrelated.
Self-segregation
between these two groups already exists. In the past decade, hundreds of
matrimonial websites, such as shaadi.com, SimplyMarry or BharatMatrimony, have flourished. Unlike
Tinder, or other dating apps that have a reputation for being hook-up
platforms, these matrimonial sites draw people looking for lifelong partners.
“It’s like a love-cum-arranged marriage,” says Yogita Suryavanshi, who found
her husband on a dating website. “We met and three months later we got
married.”
In
these speedy marriages, which often happen for financial reasons, or because of
family pressure, people fall in love after the wedding rather than before it.
“Before we got married, I wasn’t sure if I loved him,” Suryavanshi says. “It
was like 50-50. Everything was opposite. I love Chinese food and he hates it.
I’m quite western and he’s traditional. But opposites attract and now everyday
I feel like I’m learning more about him, like there’s something new to
discover.”
The
move to make the separation between dating and marriage more clear-cut is not
surprising from India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, led by
prime minister Narendra Modi. The party champions economic growth and material
progress, but has always been traditionalist in its approach to matters of the
heart.
In
2014, members of the BJP’s youth wing vandalised a cafe in the southern state
of Kerala where couples had been seen kissing in public. In response, thousands
of Indians took part in a nationwide kissing protest. Kissing has always been
taboo in India and the film censor board – headed by Pahlaj Nihalani, a vocal
BJP supporter – has often asked for on-screen kisses or intimacy to be cut
short or removed, most famously in the latest James Bond film.
Pramod
Bapat, a spokesman from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s ideological
parent, explains his discomfort with modern dating. “When you see a couple
kissing in public, naturally it makes everybody watching feel awkward. There is
no need to exhibit. These things are so personal. They have sanctity. And if
you tell me, ‘Well what about freedom of expression?’ then I’m sorry, but I
don’t subscribe to it.”
Sex,
too, is kept in check by conservative-minded politicians. Oral and anal sex are
banned – rendering gay sex virtually impossible. A ban
on pornography was
introduced last year, and public displays of affection could result in criminal
charges under India’s vaguely written “obscenity” laws.
But
it’s individuals, rather than the state, who do most of the policing around sex
and dating in India. Casual relationships are still uncommon and those who
choose to date often have to deal with gossip, ostracism and moral judgment.
Women, particularly, are considered promiscuous if they lose their virginity
before marriage and are less likely to find a suitor if they have been seen
with another man.
For Khan,
these conservative attitudes make dating extremely difficult. Like many young
Indians, he lives with his parents. Telling them that he is going on a date is
out of the question, let alone bringing the girl home if the date goes well.
Sex has to happen in the back seat of a car or in a hotel room. “Most hotels
won’t even let you take a room if you’re an unmarried couple,” he says. “So
typically I have to go to a pretty good hotel. It is very expensive.”
The
logistics of dating are difficult, and opportunities to meet people are few.
Taru Kapoor, head of Tinder India, says: “The urge to connect with other human
beings is very natural. In India, it is particularly hard to meet someone
outside your immediate social circle. You can meet someone at school or college
or at work – and that’s pretty much it. Especially for women, you can’t really
walk up to someone and say hello. It’s awkward.
“Finding
love is very difficult. Either you wait for it to happen, or you have to resign
yourself to the idea that your parents will choose your marriage partner for
you. There’s very little individual agency. Dating apps
like Tinder give people more control over who they meet and who they date.”
It’s
not just India’s young millennials who are under pressure to conform to
traditional morals around relationships. Ramesh Kakade’s first wife died after
a road accident 12 years ago. “I was destroyed by it,” says Kakade, now 69. “I
didn’t eat for days, I wanted to commit suicide.”
Eventually,
Kakade started dating an old friend from college, who helped him overcome his
grief. “There were lots of fights in the family because of it,” he says.
“People used tell me that I shouldn’t be dating someone at my age. My friends
started calling me ‘hero’, to make fun.
“In
Indian culture there is no tradition of remarriage. I took permission from my
daughters when I decided to marry her. When we got married, nine years ago now,
the local newspapers and TV channels all covered it because it is so unusual in
our society.”
Kumar
Deshpande, who started a lonely hearts club for older singles after his
father-in-law lost his wife, says this is a huge problem for older people.
“Children tell their parents that it is not OK for them to remarry,” he says.
“We have many such people coming to us, asking for advice. So what will they
do? They will be alone.”
Kakade,
who has attended some of Deshpande’s singles’ events, says: “Usually the older
men come and they sit in the front. The women come and sit in the balcony – and
they leave before the end.
“The
fact that they’re coming means that something is telling them to meet other
people, but then they get scared and go away. My friends sometimes ask me how I
went about remarrying. But they’re not daring enough to do it themselves. What
can I do? Everyone’s afraid of what people will say.”
Some names have been changed
Representative
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