“To not be able to love the one you love is equal to have your life wrenched away” – Vikram Seth.
Of all the inhumanities that we as human beings can do to other people, the most inhuman things are to say: “You cannot love the person you love not because of age difference or maturity but he or she comes from a different religion, a different caste or same village.” Yes, it happens every day, every moment in every place in India and the world. The bitter truth is that this hideous crime is being done to a person by their own family or society. These people get disgusted by seeing that their family members are happily in love: for them, it’s an offense in law, it’s against the order of nature, it brings dishonor to their family, and it will corrupt everyone around.
What can one say to people who think this way? How can one understand their frame of mind – people who, not content with living their own lives, seek to destroy the life, the happiness of others?
One lashed his daughter to death because she fell in love with a boy from a different caste. Others seek to blackmail or send to prison two men because they love each other and which, according to the society, is against the law of nature, even though the law has given them freedom and recognition to them. The mindset is just the same. The poison isn’t intrinsic but it comes from the enforcers, justifiers, the defenders of fake pride, and the lovers of honor over humans.
The voluminous accounts of rape, torture, extortion, and harassment suffered by homosexuals and transgender people because of this thought process this mindset has still not ended even when section 377 for the same has ended. The defenders of this thinking say that a minor fraction of the country’s population is gay or transgender, so they cannot be considered as a normal human being. Strange, although this number is not small. If only 5% of India’s people are transgender, which is an underestimate, it would be more than 50 million people, a population as large as that of any state of India or any country in the world. This has treated those people as of lesser value.
Love is what makes this life beautiful. The right to love is what makes us human. To outlaw, the expression of this right to love is profoundly cruel and inhumane. What makes life tolerable is love– to love someone, to be loved by someone, and even after death or parting– to know that you have loved and are loved.
To not be able to love the one you love is equal to have your life wrenched away. To do this to someone else is to murder their soul. So, everybody must voice out and support these people whose own family members and the country have become their biggest enemies.
-Tulsi Ojha
Jaipuria Talks Blog 