Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Jan 11, 2025

Letter to the readers, Mainstream

Indian society remains a conservative place with limited respect for legally guaranteed individual/personal rights of adult citizens. In the name of traditional values, community, caste, religion, and family carry greater weight compared to individuals and their rights and choices. In any society people trying to build personal relationships require places to interact, meet, to socialise, and need space and privacy. Personal space is under constant surveillance and a controlled gaze of society. Individuals try to find solutions in public spaces, in parks, cinemas, and on social media networks to date to meet and try to find hotels & short-term accommodation for greater intimacy outside of their families. Independent-minded citizens who go against the current face the wrath of society, vigilante groups & even the police. Over the past years, the rights of individuals to choose their life partners have faced frequent opposition. Traditional parent-approved marriages is the dominant norm & live-in relations are frowned upon. Recently Oyo Rooms, one of the largest low-cost hospitality chains which provided an easy solution to couples announced a regressive policy of shutting their doors to unmarried couples [1]. Such a policy by Oyo announced for one north Indian city has apparently come to assuage the ‘sensitivities of the local community’. It is possible that this move will be replicated across this accommodation chain in India and probably in other comparable facilities. Will such a policy also apply to foreign tourists looking for accommodation in India? No law of the land in India forbids unmarried couples from staying in a hotel and this move is clearly discriminatory for personal freedoms. India’s ruling party which is ideologically committed to ‘conventional family values’ is hardly expected to challenge this move. Activists of Bajrang Dal a reactionary vigilante part of the Hindutva right have already demanded a state-wide ban in Karnataka on unmarried couples from hotels & homestays [2]. Feminists and left formations must take up the defence of unmarried couples and forward looking political parties should announce that public sector hospitality facilities in opposition ruled states to keep their doors open to unmarried couples as we traverse the first quarter of the 21st century.

January 11, 2025 —HK