NEW DELHI, Nov 8 —When Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor stepped on stage at a so-called Leadership Summit here last week, old-timers shook their heads in disapproval.
Everyone knew that ‘Saifeena’, as the movie magazines now call the couple, was at the Taj Palace Hotel to talk about how they were living together in unwedded bliss.
Many in conservative India still frown on unattached men and women who cohabit.
Yet, the large hall at the hotel was more crowded than when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former US president George W. Bush addressed the forum earlier in the day.
“We didn’t want to flaunt it (the live-in arrangement) because each of us had just come out of a relationship,” said Saif.
He was referring to his divorce from his actress wife Amrita Singh and recent break-up with girlfriend Italian model Rosa Catalano and Kareena’s break-up with another Bollywood actor, Shahid Kapoor.
The couple said their relationship started two years ago when they went for a walk during the shoot for a film in Ladakh.
Suddenly, Saif turned to Kareena and said: “I think we’d be great together.” Kareena apparently thought so, too.
The two have been together ever since, but marriage is not in their immediate plans. That can wait, they said.
Saif said he had a tattoo of her name on his wrist “as proof of my commitment” to the relationship.
But what surprised most people more than what the couple said was the fact that it was a topic at a forum like the Leadership Summit. Reverend Babu Joseph of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference criticised the fact that Saif and Kareena discussed their cohabitation in public.
“This (live-in relationship) undermines the institution and value of marriage which will adversely affect the stability and cohesiveness of the society,” he said. “It will open the door to licentious behaviour.”
Asha Nair, a former school principal, had a similar reaction.
“They are aping the West. It’s an easy life. No cares, no values,” she said. “They enjoy the fruits of married life without any commitments.”
Nair was absolutely against giving such relationships publicity.
But others said that the two actors’ choice to live together is a reflection of a growing trend in society, although it is still confined to the big cities.
In recent years, there has been a rise in such relationships, especially among working men and women, according to media reports.
Many, particularly in the business process outsourcing industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of young men and women just out of the universities, find such an arrangement convenient.
Away from their homes and well-paid, but lonely from working on overnight shifts, they find comfort in cohabiting with a member of the opposite sex, much to the horror of their parents and the disapproval of society.
The ‘Other India’ still stages violent protests against the celebration of Valentine’s Day and harasses courting couples in public places, saying it is against the Indian culture.
But even the government and courts have begun to accept changing social realities.
Indeed, the state government of Maharashtra, India’s richest state, last year approved a proposal for an amendment in the Criminal Procedure Code that would legalise a live-in relationship and give the deserted woman the right to seek maintenance.
The panel had called for the term ‘wife’ to be redefined so that courts could treat a woman who lives with a man for a “reasonable period” as his legitimate wife.
In a ruling last year, the Supreme Court also validated long-term live-in relationships as marriages. A bench of the court declared that children born out of such a relationship would no longer be called illegitimate.
“Law inclines in the interest of legitimacy and thumbs down ‘whore son’ or ‘fruit of adultery’,” it said.
Despite the growing trend, opinion is divided.
Mohini Giri, president of the Delhi-based Guild of Service which helps marginalised women and children, had at that time likened the changes in the laws to legalising prostitution.
“Live-in relationships are as old as human beings,” she said. “What is there to legalise? Legalising it would only encourage more such relationships.’
Even young people are divided in their views on living together without the bond of marriage.
Varun Sangal, 29, a software engineer who works for a multinational bank, said there is nothing wrong with it.
“I wouldn’t mind living with the person I know I’ll want to marry. For me, it would be like a pre-face to marriage.”
But Sunayna Sabharwal, 28, a copywriter with a leading advertising company, said she would not get into such a relationship.
“I still believe in the institution of marriage, though marriages in our generation are not the way they used to be. It is as simple to walk out of a marriage as it would be to walk out of a live-in arrangement,” she said. “The level of commitment is the same.” — Straits Times
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