There’s much to fear, girl, if you’ve loved

'Pyar kiya koi chori nahin ki / Chhup chhup aahen bharna kya / Jab pyar kiya to darna kya!' sings a defiant Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam.

The legendary film, celebrating love that defied tradition, was released 50 years ago last week. Set in the Mughal era, the film speaks of the love between Salim (ie Jehangir) and the dancer Anarkali, in the face of stiff opposition from his father, the emperor Akbar (played by Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Prithviraj Kapoor, respectively).

In one of filmdom’s most spectacular scenes, the dramatic dance sequence that has come to symbolise Bollywood’s biggest hit, Anarkali challenges Akbar’s way of seeing.

For 50 years we have been humming this song — apparently rewritten 105 times by lyricist Shakeel Badayuni for music director Naushad. But we have not allowed it to touch our core beliefs. Even 400 years after Anarkali and Salim, lovers defying custom need to be afraid, be very afraid, of their parents’ inhumanity.

And it is usually the girl, like Anarkali, who pays with her life. (Sure, in this film she had an escape route which she possibly did not have in real life.) Every day women are punished brutally for falling in love without parental permission.

Just a few days ago Sher Singh, a Sikh granthi, murdered his daughter Gurjeet Kaur, 20, and critically injured her lover in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur. In many closed societies within our curious democracy, the daughter’s family is expected to kill her when she transgresses, to save family honour.

Women’s bodies have long been the battleground for fighting family feuds. Males clash with each other and rape the opponent’s wives, sisters and daughters. The woman belongs to her family, not herself — so when she falls in love against her family’s wishes she is actually claiming possession of herself, therefore robbing the family of their property. That’s when the girl becomes the thief and her family rushes to kill her.

A recent study by the National Commission for Women has found that in 89% of cases the girl’s family committed the honour crime. They also found honour killings to be a largely North Indian phenomenon, peaking in areas where khap panchayats are active. Which fits in with another new study that found Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh responsible for about 900 honour killings a year and the rest of the country toting up another 100 to 300. This study believes that at least 1,000 young lovers are killed every year for 'honour'.

Naturally, khaps have been extremely upset about the proposed law against honour killings. They have risen in righteous indignation and appealed to the president (ironically, a woman) for their right to commit honour crimes.

It’s only slightly different elsewhere in India. This week we heard of a minor tribal girl in Bengal who was stripped and paraded naked to the beating of drums through several villages for hours as hundreds of jeering men and boys groped, molested, stoned and caned her. And recorded her torture on video with their cellphones. Her crime: she had fallen in love with a boy of another community.

Around the country, women are routinely stripped, paraded naked and beaten up to punish not just them, but their families or communities. It is done to instil fear, to suppress dissent, to make an example of a vulnerable individual to protect age-old customs and prejudices.

Pyar kiya to darna kya? There is much to fear, girl.