Marriage is the foundational relationships for our society. Good marriage is the bedrock of strong society, which lays foundation of a strong family. Marriage is a process of giving sanctity and reorganization of living relationship of two opposite sex of two different family, caste and religion.

There is nothing wrong, if a Hindu and Muslim marry with each other, it is just a coalescent of two cordial and loving soul, which is the quintessential of marriage. But, there is a sect of people in every community and religion, who obstructs them to do so, because, they are filled with wrong and absurd ideas of their orthodox principles, which are so fundamental that leads to extremism and lunatic behaviour, which may further lead to social evils, like honour killing and mob lynching as well.

It is indeed shocking, despite raising levels of literacy and education, prejudicial beliefs do not reduces. In fact, they are worryingly high, which is leading our plural society to a conservative one, in terms of religious beliefs and practices. Religious and traditional values are around hierarchies, around the notion of purity of race and pollution, which seems to be more sacrosanct and valuable than human rights and the right to live and the right to marry by choice in our society.

Even liberal families claims inter religious marriages as sin and wrong and can pollute the purity of whole clan. The real essence of marriage is trust and love, if these two core values are present in a relationship then nothing else should matter but, it is ain't simple as it looks, there are some people, who uses wrong ideas and propaganda to infiltrate people with communal hatred in the society.

The uses of terms, like love Jihad to show Muslim man as hypersexual, insensitive and exploitative vulnerable Hindu women and convert them to their own religion and may also leave them in the long run. The main motive behind these wrong propaganda and ideas is to fill the minds and hearts of people with ire by using the religious connotations. When we say inter religion marriage in India, we talked about India in its comprehensive manner, as in broder sense just a secular India.

Be it be a Muslim or Hindu, everyone have a right to marry with a person of one's own choice and it is an integral part of the right granted under article 21 of the Constitution of India ( right to life and liberty).

In one of the famous Hadiya case, Hon'ble Mr. Justice DY Chandrachud wrote:
 the choice of a partner, whether within or outside marriage, lies within the exclusive domain of each individual. Intimacies of marriage lies within the core zone of privacy, which is unavoidable. The absolute right of individual, to choose a life partner should not be affected by the matter of faith. Neither the State nor the law can dictate a choice of partners or limit the free ability of every person to decide on these matters. They form the essence of personal liberty guaranteed under the constitution.

The social values and morals have their own space, but they are not above the constitutionality and guaranteed freedom. Our choices and decisions should be respected, because it is ours, and approval of the same should be in the hands of society, but it must be in tune with the constitution of India, to upheld the social notion of marriage.

In the Utopian vision government should not interfere in the matters relating to marriage, because, it comes under one's own right to marry, but there are legislation, which aids and regulates inter religious marriage, for example, the Special Marriages Act, 1954. This is a special act, which lays down provisions and governs the marriage of individual's belonging to two different religion.

Marriage is a social institution, so there is sanctification of the status of parties to the marriage by the State as well as the Society, who are the main stakeholders of the social institution of marriage. These stakeholders, not only involve themself into it, but also ensures the legal rights and obligations of parties to the marriage are given sanction and kept intact after marriage.

At the cessation, I want to quote Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who aptly said:
By common endeavour, we can raise the country to a new greatness, while a lack of unity will expose us to to fresh calamity.

It is the responsibilities of all Indians, to maintain peace and harmony among the different religions of India and uphold the core values of Indian Constitution and to fulfill the desires of our freedom fighters, by maintaining unity among the Hindu and Muslims, which was the foundation of Swaraj. At penultimate, I would like to urge that “humanity should be our race and love should be our religion”

Written By: Vivek Raj