3019 UNAMBIGUOUS: India’s higher courts have emphasised time and again the legal validity and social unassailability of interfaith marriages. PTI
Tahir Mahmood
Ex-Member, Law Commission
LOVE is blind’ is a quirky phrase being cited in the West since the beginning of the 15th century. “Love is so blind, it feels right when it’s wrong,” US star Beyoncé Knowles has been singing in our time. Cupid’s arrow can indeed break all sorts of blinds and pierce through the narrow confines of religion and caste. In India, arranged marriages have been the general social norm marriages by the parties’ own choice have been, and remain, an exception. Interfaith marriages belong to this exceptional category parents and guardians never ‘arrange’ their wards’ marriage outside their community, even in the 21st century. By no means, however, are cross-cultural marital alliances a new social phenomenon. The multi-religious society, that we have always been, has had enough spac