The roots of a pluralistic society

Being in a mixed marriage is a mixed bag. The upside, of course, is that you get to marry someone you actually like and get along with instead of compromising because of social/familial compulsions, and the fact that you get to live out your liberal impulses instead of merely validating them by watching "secular pop cinema" "" itself a vanishing genre.

But then there is the downside, at once obvious to anyone with subcontinental sensibilities: you can be bumped off by influential in-laws, or at the very least put behind bars by a partisan force.

And even if you escape such extremes, you are constantly "" and doubly "" fearful of impending riots, fearful of being ostracised not just by some amorphous "society" but by near and dear ones and, finally, fearful of your children growing up to be "confused".

Now, the last is something that many people with secular credentials "" the handful who go in for mixed marriages at any rate "" tend to rubbish.

Does Shah Rukh Khan not, for instance, tell us all how his children celebrate both Eid and Diwali? How they know both their Koran as well as the Gayatri mantra? And does it not sound suitably romantic and idealistic that they do?

But showbiz is unlike any other way of life and many ordinary citizens in mixed marriages that I have had the pleasure of meeting (thanks to my own) voice precisely these kind of fears"" baseless or otherwise.

Unfortunately, sometimes these fears result in the negation of precisely those liberal impulses that had made the marriage possible in the first place. A Muslim friend's Hindu mother, for instance, says that she chose to "fully follow" Islam after her marriage so that her children would grow up "rooted".

Are children with two religions "" or no religion "" less rooted? Now that's a debatable point and which side you take would obviously depend on what kind of roots you cherish: for instance, a class identity, a regional-linguistic one, or a religious-cultural one.

But the dilemma is just a pointer to the many complexities that frame a mixed marriage. Bollywood's favourite formula for resolving these is a cliched co-opting of the female protagonist within the mainstream religious-social order.

Think of all the "secular" flicks that you have seen in the recent past. Right from the sensitively delineated Bombay by Mani Ratnam to the glamorous, true-life Zubeida to the crass Sunny Deol-starrer Gadar, all have upheld India's "secularism" in their own way but a closer look reveals another subtext: it is the woman always who has been of the "other" faith, brought into the fold after her marriage.

And that's one way of resolving the inherent tensions in a mixed marriage even in real life "" the woman forsakes her cultural-religious identity.

Economics, or class more correctly, too plays a vital role in this private agreement. If Marx, contributing to Hegel's critique, has been famously quoted for saying that religion is the opium of the masses, it is also of certain classes.

Typically the business classes, in this country. Of course, these are very broad strokes, but in general, patriarchy, tradition and religion matter less to our new breed of young, urban professionals than to any other segment in the society "" however much we may taunt them for being more convention-bound than their 1960s-70s parents.

So, I would imagine "" or hope "" that it would help if both the partners are gainfully employed, preferably in the fields of liberal or creative arts.

But in the end, nothing matters more than individual dispositions and attitudes. All tensions cease and all wrinkles are smoothened if both the partners show a healthy disregard for at least organised religion (as opposed to gestures of personal faith). And a sense of humour. In that case they will find that for each rabid reaction they get, there is enough support from a surprising number of people. But that's just the kind of pluralistic society we are. Hopefully, we will continue to be.