Asif Iqbal’s love lessons

Asif Iqbal, the no-nonsense love guru, helps when your right to choose a life partner is seen as a ‘law and order’ issue

Asif Iqbal has been handholding Indian lovers for 18 years. Be sure, be financially independent, don’t marry secretly, he advises them. “I tell them love with your heart, marry with your head,” Iqbal, 51, says. “Don’t cede your ground or give up your beliefs and convictions so easily. Don’t force anyone, accept the other’s ideas, have space for dialogue, and not a monologue. The success of your relationship is based on equality.”

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He’s the no-nonsense love guru — empathetic yet extremely practical — couples can turn to in these divided times. He knows his way around the justice system and has experienced, first-hand, how families react when their progeny pick their own life partners instead of compliantly waiting for their parents to find the ‘perfect fit’, using the worn Indian compendium of caste, creed, class and colour. Collective choice takes priority over individual choice in Indian families, he says pragmatically.

Not only did he and college mate Ranu Kulshrestha have to battle his family, they had to contend with a self-censoring sub-divisional magistrate in Noida, Delhi, who refused to accept the paperwork for the couple’s proposed marriage under the Special Marriage Act. The nearly 70-year-old law, though flawed, is used by interfaith and intercaste couples to solemnise their love. The official said an Iqbal marrying a Kulshrestha would become a ‘law and order’ issue.

All these years later, as the country hardens its stance against such love, criminalising interfaith marriage in many States, Dhanak of Humanity, the non-profit that Iqbal and Kulshrestha set up in 2005, five years after they married, to help interfaith, intercaste and LGBTQIA+ couples, finds itself a prime witness to a hateful storm. Keeping with the times, it now describes itself as an organisation against forced marriage and honour crimes.

In June, Iqbal is organising a seminar on why natal family violence should be recognised as an honour crime.

Iqbal has just read a piece in  The Indian Express about at least 50 ‘ Hindu Jan Aakrosh Morcha’ rallies that have been held across Maharashtra since November against ‘love jihad’ and other Islamophobic conspiracy theories. “Things are bad and deteriorating,” he says. “The damage that this is going to do and the perception it will create will make things even more difficult for couples.” Already, the number of couples that call Dhanak for help has fallen dramatically this past year.