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Love Commandos: Saviors, Revolutionaries or Scamsters?
“Khullam khulla pyaar karenge hum dono. Iss duniya se nahi darenge hum dono..
(We shall express our love openly. We shall not fear the world,” goes the lyrics of a popular Bollywood song from the 70s.
In January 2018, childhood sweethearts Pranay Perumalla, a Dalit, and Amrutha Varshini, a so-called ‘upper’ caste Hindu, entered into an inter-caste marital union against the wishes of their families. In September 2018, twenty-four-year-old Pranay was brutally murdered in front of his helpless pregnant wife in the South Indian state of Telangana. He was hacked to death by a hitman hired by his wife's influential father. Amrutha’s family was against this union as they believed that the ‘honor’ of the family had been tarnished by this act of marrying a ‘lower’ caste. Their love was tragically crushed in the name of honor and the price that the ill-fated couple paid for love was ‘Pranay’s life’.
In the suburban and rural pockets of the world’s largest democracy, thousands of star-crossed lovers get caught up in the upswell of perceived challenges to Indian society’s age-old marriage traditions. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that most Indians do not have the privilege to choose their lovers or express their love openly even today. Women and men, who violate the code of caste, chastity or religion, are chased, hunted down, beaten up publicly, ostracized, house-arrested, forcibly remarried, brutalized, and killed.