Is the state shaping our private choices? From what we eat to who we love and what we read…

“We are open about our relationships within our friends. We have even informed our parents. But sometimes, we face awkward questions in our [extended] social circles about our relationships,” says Roman, an IT professional.

The couple’s unease stems from certain recent developments in the country.

Last month, the Supreme Court did something simultaneously expansive and restrictive regarding live-in relationships. A two-judge bench of the apex court held that the legal provision dealing with cruelty by a husband or his relatives can apply to live-in relationships that are “in the nature of marriage”. The judgment is significant because it recognises that a woman need not be formally married to receive protection against cruelty. It, however, drew a line between live-ins with the intent to marry, or not.

The judgment comes at a time when the uniform civil code brought in in some states mandates the registration of live-in relationships.

“Why should one have to register a live-in relationship?” wonders Roman.

The ‘why’ is something that many across the country are left wondering as they are faced with intrusion and intervention in areas that should remain strictly private, and as many point out, “a matter of personal choice”. The intrusion is not always from the government, or backed by legal orders, but as those The Federal spoke to point out, comes from individuals or organisations who “seem to have been emboldened” by the government’s tacit support, or a certain “social conditioning”. It extends from state scrutiny of private relationships, to laws against anti-conversion (citing the bogey of love-jihad), the often informal push for vegetarianism and perhaps even an attempt at linguistic imposition (as some states have termed the Centre's three-language policy for schools, claiming it to be an effort to promote the study of Hindi in schools across the country).

One of the latest example comes in the form of the ongoing row in West Bengal over the consumption of non-vegetarian food during next month’s Durga Puja celebrations in the state. The statement against the eating of fish and meat during the festival, which coincides with Navratri celebrations in many parts of the country, came from Dhirendra Shastri, also known as Bageshwar Baba, during an address in West Bengal. While the state’s recently-elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, has since assured that there is no restriction on the consumption of non-vegetarian food during Durga Puja, what is difficult to ignore is the warm welcome extended to Shastri by Adhikari and his ministry before the controversy erupted. And while the CM has assured about no dietary restrictions, he has advised Durga Puja organisers in the state to adhere to ‘Sanatani [an alternative term for Hinduism] traditions' when it comes to picking themes for pandal decorations and not hurt anyone’s religious sentiments.

Bengalis living in the state and outside have hit back with posts, reels and memes on social media against both the non-vegetarian controversy and the advisory on ‘themes’, but the fact remains that what is an individual dietary choice or a neighbourhood celebration decision has entered the realms of public discourse.

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This is the second time since coming to power in Bengal following this year’s assembly elections that the BJP has drawn public ire over alleged attempts to promote a vegetarian culture in the state. Months earlier, the government found itself targeted after it was reported that midday meals in the state would likely become a vegetarian fare, with eggs being dropped. The government has since decided to provide money separately to schools to add eggs to the menu if they so wish.

And Bengal is not the first state to have witnessed this ‘push’ for vegetarianism.

During Navratri in 2022, the mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation called for meat shops to be closed during the festival, triggering a debate over whether a civic authority should regulate what others eat because a particular food offends or conflicts with the religious practices of another community. Reports of fringe Hindutva groups attempting to stop the serving of non-vegetarian food in the National Capital Region (NCR) during the festival have routinely made it to the news in recent years.

In Tamil Nadu, devotees of the Hindu deity Murugan eating fish after fasting in Tiruchendur temple became a controversy in May 2024. Devotees who follow the tradition of observing a fast for a day and completing their prayer by eating fish in Tiruchendur on the next day of the Vaikasi Visakam festival (to commemorate the birth anniversary of Murugan) are now upset by a new norm introduced over the past two years restricting consumption of fish. A circular purportedly issued by the executive officer of the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy Temple at Tiruchendur bans the cooking of non-vegetarian food in areas belonging to the temple during the Vaikasi Visakam festival.

Fifty-nine-year-old Kalimuthu, a regular visitor and ardent devotee of Lord Murugan, recalls several trips his family made to the temple during his childhood, when they would enjoy a meal of fish after fasting.

“Temple authorities introduced a new norm in 2024. I haven’t heard of this since my childhood. They told us not to consume non-veg food near the temple complex. We used to end our fast on the day after Visakam with fish, which is available fresh here. This is not a new practice; it is an age-old practice. We are not sure why they banned it,” Kalimuthu told The Federal.

Such incidents become difficult to dismiss as scattered, isolated examples when one recalls the Centre’s repeated serving of veg-only meals to visiting international dignitaries in recent months and years. One example is the all-veg meal reported served to Russian president Vladimir Putin during a banquet at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Critics have also said how it presents an incomplete picture of India’s culinary heritage by leaving out local non-vegetarian fare.

And so from official laws to informal conditioning, in the form of a state banquet, a religious or political leader or organisation demanding exclusion of people of minority communities from ‘Hindu festivals’ (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has said Muslims should be kept out of this year’s dandiya events in Maharashtra, held during Navratri celebrations), or even films and books promoting a certain perspective, the attempts to control what the common man eats, wears, thinks, who they associate with, or fall in love with continue. It can appear in forms as innocuous as AI generated social media reels showing the ‘perfect family’, where the women wear traditional Indian clothes, does the cooking and family outings are made of trips to the temple. (The food, when shown, is of course vegetarian). Think of it as the new-age version of the ‘Adarsh Balak’ posters, which once sought to inculcate moral values in children. Only now, what’s ‘moral’ to some is coercion and control for the rest.

If Roman is disturbed by the public scrutiny of his relationship, the unease can change to actual fear for someone in an inter-caste or inter-religious marriage.

For years, the phrase “love jihad” has transformed consensual relationships between Hindu women and Muslim men into objects of suspicion. Uttar Pradesh's anti-conversion law, introduced in 2020, gave that suspicion a statutory framework by regulating religious conversion connected to marriage and other relationships. The consequences were not merely theoretical.

In December 2020, a Muslim man in Moradabad, Rashid, was arrested after members of the Hindutva outfit, Bajrang Dal, intervened at a marriage registrar's office where he had gone with his Hindu partner. He was booked under the new anti-conversion law. His wife said she was an adult and had married him willingly. Rashid and his brother were subsequently released after police reportedly found no evidence of forced conversion.

Such news reports leave 20-year-old Delhi resident Jameela Parvin “upset”. “I feel that in recent years, we discuss individual preferences a lot but fail to talk about our democratic rights. I took part in the recent students’ protest [for reforms and accountability in education, following the NEET paper leak scandal that broke out in May]. I took my friends there. Religion, food, and dress do not matter much when we are ready to ask bigger questions,” says Parvin, a commerce undergraduate student.

Human rights activist R. Murugavel cites the case of Monalisa Bholse, whose marriage became a sensation online when many religious groups posted messages alleging that the girl had been kidnapped and married to a Muslim man in Kerala. Bholse, who became an internet sensation for her beauty after her photo at last year’s Kumbh Mela went viral, insisted that she had married a man of her choice, but that her father had filed a case alleging that his daughter was abducted.

“When Monalisa’s documents were produced in court, the Kerala High Court granted transit bail to Mohd Farman, Monalisa’s husband, in the case. Her birth certificate, Election ID and bank passbook were produced in court to prove she is an adult. But this message did not go viral. Only sensational messages are promoted on social platforms. This is also a form of threat,” Murugavel told The Federal.

The narrative becomes easier to peddle when dressed up in mass culture as entertainment. One example, is Kerala Story (2023) and Kerala Story 2 (2026), both of which revolved around the themes of love-jihad, conversion and terror.

From what to eat, and who to love, to what to wear.

In 2022, Muslim students at a government pre-university college in Udupi challenged restrictions on wearing the hijab in classrooms. The Karnataka High Court upheld the restrictions. The Supreme Court later delivered a split verdict. While Justice Hemant Gupta upheld the restrictions, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia set them aside, arguing that the issue was ultimately one of choice and that the education of the girl child should be paramount. But in May 2026, the Karnataka government officially withdrew the 2022 hijab ban order and permitted religious symbols like the hijab, turban and rudraksha alongside prescribed school uniforms. Again, the message of imposing the ban was discussed much, while its prominence was reduced when the state government withdrew the ban after a period.

Karnataka-based advocate Priyadharshini Hegde pointed out that scores of school and college students experienced distress about being seen in public places in hijab. “How are we raising our children? Why do we need to attach meaning and aggression to the food or cloth preferences of an individual or some groups? It’s becoming intense these days. But I believe the younger generation has the spirit to fight back,” she told The Federal.

More recently, an advertisement for a jewellery brand featuring actor Kriti Sanon and centred around the celebration of the Hindu festival Rakshabandhan, found itself at the centre of a controversy last month, for Sanon’s ‘non-traditional’ attire, with some calling it too revealing. The fact that it was shot for a brand promotion and not something that Sanon chose to wear to a real-life celebration — though it would be her choice were she to do so — mattered little to those targeting her. While the actor also received a fair bit of support from those who insisted attire was a matter of individual choice, the attack was vicious enough for the brand to withdraw the advertisement.

According to the Swedish research organisation V-Dem Institute's Democracy Report 2025, India ranked 106th out of 179 countries, and specifically on the parameter related to the Electoral Democracy Index (EDI), the country's democratic score plummeted to 0.38, registering its lowest performance since 1975. In the case of the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), India's score is 0.26. It identified India among the countries undergoing autocratisation in 2024 and said freedom of expression was declining globally amid democratic backsliding, disinformation and polarisation.

Academicians say that the State's ability to shape private life becomes even more consequential when it moves from behaviour to knowledge and particularly when the state machinery doesn’t want its younger citizens to raise questions.

Over the past few years, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks have become a major battleground of history and politics. References to the 2002 Gujarat riots (Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the chief minister of the state and his government had faced criticism over the handling of the situation) is among content that has been removed from school textbooks.

Educationist P. Mani questions why the material concerning the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and references to Hindu extremist opposition to Gandhi were altered or removed from revised editions of certain subjects. “NCERT has defended its changes as part of rationalisation and curriculum reduction, while critics have argued that politically consequential history was being erased or rewritten. The dispute is not simply about whether one paragraph should remain in a textbook. It is about something deeper. What kind of opportunity will this generation get to know, question and debate,” asks Mani.

He adds: “Students cannot challenge a historical interpretation if alternative interpretations have disappeared from the classroom. The State need not explicitly tell a citizen what to think if it can exercise enough influence over what the citizen is exposed to in the first place.”

Earlier this year, some NCERT school textbooks for Karnataka drew criticism for “promoting vegetarianism”. A textbook named ‘Krishna” was also claimed to be an attempt at saffronisation (a reference to the Hindu deity Krishna), though NCERT claimed the book was named after the Krishna river which flows in the area.

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The recent students’ protest over the NEET paper-leak case has given many hope in Gen Z’s ability to organise, unite and demand accountability. While the ‘disproportionate’ online trolling of Gen Z women dissenters and the Prime Minister’s social media post about the 'cultural shock of seeing our daughters using such language', even as he 'forgave' them, is perhaps yet another attempt at moral policing, a likely conforming to the traditional social construct of a woman as being more ‘amenable’, the questions it prompted of whether the irreverence of Gen Z women was more worrying to a section of society than that of their male counterparts, proves that dissent survives.

It is that same spirit of dissent which prompts Roman to question why their private relationship must be subjected to public scrutiny.