RISE OF THE RUNAWAY ROMANCERS

THE YOUTH OF BIHAR ARE DEFYING AGE-OLD NORMS TO MARRY FOR LOVE. BUT THE REPRESSIVE MINDSET OF SOCIETY, STEEPED IN CASTE LOYALTIES, MEANS THEY OFTEN HAVE TO ELOPE-AND NOT RETURN. IF THEY DO TRY TO WIN ACCEPTANCE, THE RESULTS CAN BE TRAGIC

- Amitabh Srivastava

Love kar ke bhaage hain ghar se, Bihar laut na paayenge, theek hai? (We have loved and eloped, won’t be able to return to Bihar, alright?)

Romance is not a light word in India…especi­ ally in its hinterland. It is serious business, and can have life­altering consequences. The 2019 Bhojpuri song, which became a chartbuster upon its release in Bihar, spells it out in defiantly simple terms. The old caste order shows no signs of easing in rigidity; indeed, modernity seems to have set off a reactionary surge. But the young people are doing what they have been eternally good at: being young and falling in love. Defying the cast­iron norms of Bihar, they are voting for romance…even if it means having to vote with their feet. In short, eloping to get married. That song, whose various versions have attracted over 80 million views on YouTube, could almost be an anthem for the times. Or moving pictures of a society in transition.

More proof? Well, Bihar police records suggest there’s been a 37 per cent spike in elopement marriages in 2022, over the figures for 2020. The Covid lockdown that forced the business of romance strictly onto the digital domain appears only to have stoked passions. It’s a travesty that one has to quantify love as if it’s a criminal activity, but that’s the only data ready at hand. Elopement, in India, tends to get recorded as “abduction”, with parents filing a case in those terms. Thus, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB registers a 23 per cent rise in “abductions for marriage” in 2021 over the previous year. The data shows as many as 5,378 women being “abducted for marriage” in Bihar in 2020. A year on, that number had jumped to 6,608.