The Indian marriage, which has for long been identifiable with its distinctive stench of charred flesh, is now standing trial in South Africa and looking as unspeakably ugly as it always has. In how privileged its lead players — Shrien Dewani and his murdered wife Anni — are, lies the large reach and immeasurable influence of a revered ancient Indian ‘institution’. Here’s a little synopsis of the case for those who haven’t been following the story. Shrien Dewani, son of a successful Indian businessman in the UK, marries Anni Hindocha, daughter of a successful Indian businessman in Sweden. They go to South Africa on their honeymoon where, in an apparent car-jacking, Anni is murdered. Dewani goes back to the UK, seemingly broken hearted, local papers write editorials on how unsafe South Africa is, and everyone on the internet looks lovingly at their wedding picture and remarks about how a perfect fairytale came to a grisly end. Soon though, South African police allege that Dewani had paid money to have his new wife killed in a fake car-jacking.

Four years later, after losing his fight against extradition to South Africa to stand trial because he was depressed and mentally ailing, Dewani is now in court, and a whole new set of truths have emerged. Dewani admits to being bi-sexual, he has hired the services of male prostitutes and indulged in extreme BDSM. He even surfed the gay hook-up website Gaydar while he was on his honeymoon. It now emerges that he was moody and constantly critical, and that Anni had her doubts about him even before they married. She told her cousin that she wanted to end the engagement, but since she was from a good Indian family, she was advised that things would change for the better once they were married. Anni was also flummoxed that while they were courting, Dewani didn’t seem interested in any physical intimacy with her. Once again, desi values were aired out and she was told to see this as a sign of his virtuous character. And the circus that is the great Indian wedding chugged along merrily — through stag parties in Las Vegas and a ₹2 crore wedding in Mumbai — until it all came to a grinding halt in that car in Johannesburg.

In the morphing structure of relationships and marriages, Dewani’s story of therapy through marriage is nothing new. While the Indian marriage is seen as the cure for most personal ‘ailments’ — starting with alcoholism and gambling — it is in the ‘treatment’ of homosexuality that it finds most use. I spent 18 months starting in 2012 trailing 11 women and asking exhaustive questions about their marriage in order to research my book on mothers-in-law. It was in the course of this that I met a girl who I call Rachna in the book. Rachna met her future mother-in-law at a friend’s wedding. The woman took Rachna under her belt, building a bridge of friendship, peppered with frequent lunches, shopping expeditions and movies. Then she introduced her to her son, who had just returned from London after his MBA, and set them up. While his mother picked a wedding date and a wedding dress and took over all the responsibilities of planning a perfect week of festivities, Rachna found herself increasingly confused by her fiancé Gaurav. He was friendly, yet distant. He took her on dates (often his mother planned them and tagged along), yet did not seem very interested in her. The few times they spent alone in his room, he made absolutely no move towards her, and on the couple of occasions that she did, he fobbed her off by saying his mother wouldn’t approve of premarital sex.

I was introduced to Rachna by a common friend. The friend on hearing these accounts immediately suspected that he was gay and told Rachna so. I am certain Rachna suspected it too. Yet, she was caught between guilt on account of transgressing Indian values and the disappointment she would cause all around if she broke the engagement. Besides, Gaurav’s lack of physical interest in her wasn’t something she could discuss with anyone outside a circle of friends. She couldn’t tell her mother about it — because this is India, we don’t attempt to have sex with our fiancés and discuss it with our parents — nor could she discuss it with her friendly future mother-in-law. Eventually, Rachna decided that her risks of marrying Gaurav were the exact ones she would have had to face had she married a stranger her parents chose for her. She decided to “just settle”, she told me, a sad but rather accurate choice of words. It’s now 11 months since the wedding, and Rachna — frustrated and furious — told the friend that her suspicions were right all along. Yet, she hasn’t gathered the courage to walk out of her marriage, for which “good Indian girl can talk to her elders about this? It seems a wrong thing to desire, a wrong thing to demand.”

Both Anni’s and Rachna’s stories are even more pertinent now that the BJP’s youth wing, ABVP, has decided to impose Indian values and advocate against live-in relationships, which is often a euphemism for pre-marital sex in secure relationships. Saket Bahuguna, the Delhi state secretary of ABVP, was quoted as saying the opposition to such relationships was in order to “apprise girls of benefits of a marriage institution and detrimental effects of being in such a relationship as it promotes crime against women like torture and other abuses”.

His statement is particularly ironic considering the long history of violence against wives in the Indian marriage — starting, perhaps, with Sati and going through decades of dowry deaths. As long as the Indian marriage is seen as a mandatory symbol of sexual normalcy and a fully endorsed character certificate, torture, abuse and — as in Rachna’s case — a callous indifference to real needs will be its pillars. With education, exposure and a generation that is capable of far more adventure, there is no better time than now to liberate the Indian marriage from the so-called Indian values.

(Veena Venugopal is editor BLink and author of The Mother-in-Law . Follow her on Twitter >@veenavenugopal )

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