Being Faithful

In a popular comedy clip in a Tamil movie, actor Vadivelu, blood oozing from an injury on his forehead, walks down the street when a bystander asks him, “Why is there tomato chutney on your face?” Angry that his pain has been made light of thus, Vadivelu lands a punch on the person’s nose, drawing blood. “Oh God, blood,” cries the offender, as he covers his face. “If you are hurt it is blood, but if I am hurt it is tomato chutney? Is it?” Vadivelu retorts, before stomping off.

Though somewhat facetious, the scene comes closest to explaining how Indian society reacts to inter-faith marriages: a cause of celebration so long as one’s near relatives are not involved. A Hindu acquaintance marrying a Muslim girl deserves to be applauded as another example of India’s inclusive culture, a triumph of love over religion. But god forbid, if one’s brother or daughter chooses a partner outside his/her religion, reactionary shutters come down fast and angry. It is tomato chutney for others, but blood for us. And it’s true for all religions.

The response to a marriage proposal outside one’s religion ranges from a shocked ‘No!’ to a more considered and pensive ‘what will our relatives think of us?’  Immediate recourse is made of material, emotional and psychological weaponry--threats of disinheritance, high-strung appeals to one’s background and ‘family tradition’, imminent social boycott by friends and relatives and the inevitable ‘we will never accept him/her’. Doubts are zealously sown and unfounded misgivings voiced: ‘what will be the child’s religion in his school application?’; ‘who will convert, you or her?’; ‘so no more Diwalis and Ayudha Pooja for you hereafter?’

My cousin, a Hindu, was sought to be skewered by similar posers when he chose to marry a Syrian Christian. Apparently his wife was peppered with identical queries. Both stood firm. Result: a happy marriage with an expansion of their festival calendar—they now celebrate Diwali and Christmas. Faith never interfered in their relationship; it merely stepped aside.

Successful interfaith marriages are the ones where there is no contest between the two religions. “When one spouse seeks to impose his or her religion on the other, the marriage runs into trouble. Like when children are compelled to be named in a certain fashion or a set of practices sneak in,” he points out.

While open and free interactions between people in a fast modernising society, aided, no doubt, by a level digital field, would explain more instances of inter-faith marriages, the one reason for the success of such marriages is the preponderance of nuclear families. When couples live away from the influence of parents and relatives, chances of their unions surviving the early years of friction and adjustment increase dramatically. The pressure points that come into play when a new bride steps into her husband’s home double if it’s a joint family and quadruple if she is from another religion.

“The integration happens over time almost seamlessly. My Christian wife and my Hindu mom today are the best of friends, though my mom had expressed reservations initially. To satisfy both sides we had both Hindu and Church wedding ceremonies and ended up with two wedding albums. Since an Indian marriage is also the coming together of two families, how the respective families tackle their differences play a huge part,” observes Rahul Lakshman, a food technologist from Mumbai.

Religion can rarely worm its way through when romance, common interests and passion spark a relationship. The reality of religious differences hits a couple only when they present their respective cases to parents. “Best is to engage well-wishers as intermediaries. They can soften the blow for parents. Some parents even chastise their children for that, asking why involve a third person, since they feel their right to know first has been violated,” observes psychiatrist Dr Kannan.

A brief struggle ensues, but with hearts set on each other, a breach is usually blown through the ramparts of ‘tradition’.

In this feature, we portray inter-religious couples who made faith irrelevant in their marriages—not through abjuring it, but by wholly embracing other beliefs. The message in the Tanishq advertisement that raised the hackles of so many in our country wasn’t a rare, ornamental exception to be held up and shown off as secular gold. These stories prove that such things are a matter of daily significance, offered (and assumed to be accepted) with the practised assurance of daily prayers.

Between ‘Khan And Khanna’

Kabir Khan and Mini Mathur (Mumbai)

For film director Kabir Khan and his wife, TV presenter Mini Mathur, faith and religion have never been a point of contention in their relationship. “The Mathurs are a little conservative and tend to marry within their community, but when it came to me marrying Kabir, my parents realised that the person is way more important than his religion,” Mini says.

Since her mother-in-law, Soumya Rao, had already busted myths that an inter-faith marriage cannot last, Mini had someone to look up to. “She is a Telugu Hindu and eloped with my father-in-law, Rasheeduddin Khan, a Pathan, way back in 1965,” Mini says. “I remember during my wedding ceremony both sides were tripping over each other insisting on being part of each other’s customs. Our wedding celebrations were a beautiful amalgamation of two cultures... and double the fun.”

Since they married under the special marriages act, there was never a question of religious conversion. Kabir never expected Mini to change her name either. “I am still Mini Mathur. Our relationship is about love and acceptance. I am a practicing Hindu, but Kabir and I love celebrating all festivals from Janmashtami to Navratri to Eid to Christmas. It makes our lives richer when we celebrate diversity. It’s all about respecting each other’s culture.”

Their children are equally aware of all religions. They will be free to decide on their religion when they can understand what it really means. “Kids should know and study about all the religions. I feel everybody should adopt a religion when they are 18 years old,” says Kabir. For now they’re happy celebrating everything.

For Kabir, having grown up in Delhi, Hanuman has always been his favourite god—no wonder he directed Bajrangi Bhaijaan with such passion. He recollects: “During Rama Lila we used to have a competition among all the kids in the locality that whoever was able to climb the tallest tree first got the role of Hanuman. And I used to bag that role every year, thanks to my tree-climbing skills.”

Talking about the relationship she shares with her mother-in-law, Mini discloses, “We don’t relate to each other through the prisms of religion. Respect begets respect and we share saris, recipes and our home. I don’t remember a single day in our house when religion has been a point of dispute. We just don’t let religion dictate our lives.”

Mini recalls a joke that her father used to crack: “Khan or Khanna mein fark sirf NA ka hota hai. (Between Khan and Khanna, there is only a missing ‘NA’). And NA stands for not applicable.”

— As told to Lachmi Debroy

Real Life Veer Zara

Veeraraghav and Salma (Bangalore)

When Salma had come down from Ahmedabad to meet her prospective in-laws in Chennai, they made for the Marina Beach. The date: December 26, 2004. After spending an hour there, they drove to a restaurant in Central Chennai for breakfast. Even as they were settling the bill, they heard the news that a tsunami had devastated the very beach they had frequented an hour ago.

Veeraraghav’s parents and sister, god-fearing Tamil Brahmins, read a divine message in the episode: Salma belonged to their family. The Gujarati Muslim girl from Ahmedabad and the Brahmin boy from Chennai had a simple, quiet court wedding in Ahmedabad the next year, with parents from both sides in attendance. “That her brother had married a Hindu girl helped break the ice initially. My father-in-law had a few doubts since his daughter wanted to marry a stranger, but after I met him a couple of times everything became smooth,” recalls Veeraraghav. Since the movie Veer-Zara, about a Hindu air force pilot falling in love with a Pakistani girl, had been released in 2004, friends had a ready, jokey reference—that Veer and Salma were the real-life Veer-Zara.

While Veeraraghav remains a Hindu, Salma practises Islam; when a son was born to them they chose a neutral name—Ainesh. “We left the religion column in his birth certificate and school application blank. We are not very religious, but she accompanies me to a temple and I go with her to the mosque occasionally. Both of us enjoy Sufi music together. It is an imagined myth that religion would be an irritant in your marriage,” explains Veeraraghav, who used to be NDTV’s bureau chief in Ahmedabad when he had met Salma, who was then with Oxfam, for a story.

It was the culinary habits that called for adjustments. Veeraraghav remains a vegetarian while Salma and Ainesh are non-vegetarian. When they stayed with his parents for two years in Chennai, Salma stuck to vegetarian food  at home. Later, her mom-in-law set up a separate kitchen where she could cook her signature non-vegetarian recipes. “When we moved to Bangalore it boiled down to dal thrice a week and sambar-rasam for the next three days. The seventh day is reserved for other cuisines,” says Veeraraghav. Thankfully, it’s only studied solicitousness that brings a brief variation to their routine of consummate understanding. “Only when extended family members try to be over polite and nice, they make you conscious about our respective religions. Sometimes there is over-adjustment on either side--like Salma’s mom made sure there is curd rice when I went there for dinner. I politely discouraged her the next time,” he recalls

— As told to G.C. Shekhar

Delhi Boy, Lucknow Girl— Rest Is History

Shailendra Kumar and Nilima Jafri (New Delhi)

It wasn’t love at first sight for Shailendra Kumar and Nilima Jafri when they met in Delhi’s Hansraj College in 1999 as students of history. Friendship developed gradually with a willingness to accept each other the way they are. After 11 years of courtship, the duo decided to solemnise their relationship. Shailedra is from a traditional Hindu family—conservative and orthodox. Nilima’s antecedent: a Shia Muslim from a liberal and open family, and descendant of Lucknow’s Nawab. Given the contrast, the couple went for a court wedding in July 2010, without consent from Shailedra’s family. “Religion is something very personal. It has nothing to do with marriage or family. It is something you do personally. We never even thought about her surname. It was always like you have your own identity and I will have mine. Even after marriage she continues to use her surname,” he says.

Their first encounter with an inter-religion issue post-marriage was when their elder daughter was born. Shailendra, an Indian Revenue Service officer and joint commissioner income tax currently, was asked to fill out a hospital form for the birth certificate. The sticking point was the column on religion. He was puzzled. He was enjoying the first tryst with parenthood. The form posed a challenge. He left the religion column unchecked. But the hospital officials told him the municipal corporation wouldn’t issue the birth certificate if he didn’t mention the child’s religion. “How can I decide the religion of my just-born child? I asked. She will decide it for herself what she wants to be,” says Shailendra. But he relented finally as the officials kept insisting. Hindu. He wrote.

That aside, the couple has upheld a composite culture. The two daughters—Aalia and Amayra—know little about being a Hindu or Muslim. They recite the Gayatri Mantra at school prayer sessions, and observe Muharram in Lucknow. Shailendra and Nilima, a homemaker who left social work to bring up the kids, say their children are free to choose their religion. They feel that Indian society works on presumptions—people assume and presume things and arrive at a mental picture about a Hindu or Muslim family without realising that it can actually be different.

—As told to Jyotika Sood

Two Of A Kind, In One Frame

Samshul Huda Patgiri and Juri Baishya (Guwahati)

“It’s strange! We are discussing it after so many years. We never realised this is an issue to be discussed,” says Samsul Huda Patgiri, a professional photographer in Guwahati. He is referring to his marriage of 14 years with a Hindu woman—Juri Baishya, his girlfriend before their wedding on December 3, 2006. There was resistance, obviously, from Juri’s family, but time has chipped away the differences and the two families are quite close now. “I was pretty confident we would pull it off. Though her mother opposed, her siblings understood. But I wonder if this can happen today,” he says.

What brought them together was their love of photography—travelling together in search of a good subject or a dream frame. Many a time, they participated in exhibitions. And gradually, they felt it was more than friendship…and Sam proposed her on a rainy summer evening under a streetlight after a hectic photoshoot in Guwahati. “ We were happy to be together. travelling around and clicking photos, discussing and arguing. And the journey continues,” Juri says. She feels religious differences between the families got blurred over the years. She recalls a relative, who is an active member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, did not object to her marrying a Muslim. “Their only concern was if the guy is serious enough about the marriage,” she adds.

The wedding was as dramatic as some of their photos. It was December and Juri had arrived home late yet again. Her mother, anxious and angry, called Patgiri and asked him to take her away. He sent his brother the next morning to pick her up and they got married by evening with a happy mix of Muslim and Hindu friends in attendance. “I never asked her to change her name or religion. I want her as she was,” says Patgiri. They named their daughter Afreen Anisha and son Rayan Abir—names that don’t bear a religious stamp. “Our son was born on Holi. We named him Abir,” he says.

—As told to Abdul Gani

The Orkut Marriage

Debjani Chatterjee Alam and Mehebub Alam (Calcutta)

In 2005, Debjani Chatterjee Alam and Mehebub Alam met on Orkut—the social network before Facebook. They were students. Debjani says: “I was doing my masters in rural management and he was studying for his architecture degree. We were friends for years and decided to take it to the next level in 2008. We got married in 2010.” A decade on, the couple is as happy as parents of a beautiful daughter and a faithful dog can be, if not more. “We celebrate everything within and beyond our faiths. Food plays a major role in the celebration. We try to let our daughter know about the beauty of every religion and, most importantly, humanism,” Debjani says.

How did the families react to their relationship when they broke the news? Unhappy, but not reactionary, Debjani says. “But they respected us and our choice. They were more concerned about society when we decided to get married. No religious customs were performed during the wedding. It was a simple court wedding. Back then we thought the families needed time and, hence, there was no point going for the rituals. They needed time and we gave them.”

The two families accepted their marriage over time. “When my daughter was born, grandparents from both sides wanted to have a grand celebration. She had akika following her father’s custom and annaprashana following her mother’s. She got the best of both traditions.”

—As told to Lachmi Debroy

The Weft And Weave

Zishan Ali and Gargi Bhattacharya (Bhubaneswar)

Restaurateur Zishan Ali and Gargi Bhattacharya, who owns a handloom and textile store in Bhubaneswar, met while working at Audio Visual Arts, a production company in Calcutta in 1995.They married on Christmas Day in 1997. Gargi says, “It was difficult as my mother-in-law couldn’t accept initially that her eldest son married a Hindu. She came around after some 10 years as I learnt to brush aside her taunts. We now have a great relationship because she has learnt to value me as a human being. I never wanted to be the cause of bitterness between mother and son.”

Her father-in-law was supportive from the beginning and that saved the marriage from falling part in the first year. Gargi’s father, who was alive then, couldn’t believe that she chose to marry a Muslim. “My father had come from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) during Partition, so I didn’t hold it against him,” he says. She brought her father to Bhubaneswar to speak to her parents-in-law. He was floored by their hospitality and the range of fish dishes served at lunch. In the following years, he grew fond of Zishan and his parents, and would visit them often.

“We are atheists and practise no religion,” Gargi says. But festivals meant new clothes, eating out and taking short holidays outside town. Married for 23 years, they are proud parents. Zain, the firstborn boy, used to celebrate Christmas, Eid, Diwali, Durga Puja and Holi with equal gusto. He died aged 15. The younger Rean, 17, is a special child with autism. “We had left it to Zain to choose whatever suits him. He used to visit the mosque on Eid with his grandfather and fill his pockets with ‘eidi’. He loved Christmas parties, the new clothes and eating out on Durga Puja, and the mayhem of Diwali and Holi. We didn’t teach him the concept of god, but told him to listen to the voice inside him that might tell him what is right and wrong, and to do what made him happy!”

—As told to Lachmi Debroy