UP village bans love; it's arranged marriage or nothing

A world away from the skyscrapers and Bollywood romance of Mumbai, a village in the heart of rural India has banned love.

Police are investigating the decision of the village of Asara, in the north-western state of Uttar Pradesh, to ban "love marriages" as opposed to those that have been arranged by parents. Women under 40 have been ordered not to go outside unaccompanied.

In a slew of draconian measures, the village council or "panchayat" also barred women from using mobile phones and insisted they cover their heads in public, in what has been described in local media as the "Talibanisation" of rural India.

A council member, Sattar Ahmed, said "love marriages" were damaging and a "shame on society".

The orders have caused outrage in a country that is striving to modernise, but is shackled by conservative social traditions in many areas where women's rights are non-existent.

The home minister, P Chidambaram, condemned the orders, saying they had "no place" in a democratic society.

"Police must act against anyone issuing such diktats. If anyone takes action against any young man or woman based on illegal village courts, then they must be arrested," Chidambaram said at a press conference. Leaders of the panchayat justified the new rules by stating they were intended to safeguard women from "bad elements" in society.

"It is very painful for the parents, especially the girl's family, because such marriages dent their respectability," said Sattar Ahmed.

The measures were swiftly condemned by women's rights groups. Sudha Sunder Raman, the general secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association said: "This notion that women up to the age of 40 need protection and need to be controlled is extremely chauvinistic and undermines all basic norms."

The head of the National Commission for Women, Mamta Sharma, said the council rulings were "laughable" and unenforceable.

"Panchayats do not enjoy constitutional powers. And if there are no powers, there is no need to follow the orders," she said.

Panchayats are an unelected group of elders, who are seen as the social and moral arbiters of village life.

Although their rulings carry no legal weight, they can be highly influential and have been blamed for numerous abuses, such as sanctioning "honour killings" of women whose actions are deemed to have brought shame on their family.

Last month, a man in western India paraded his daughter's severed head through his village, after he killed her because he was upset with her way of life and "indecent behaviour". Ogad Singh beheaded his daughter, Manju Kunwar, before surrendering to authorities. The 20 year-old had been living with her parents in the Rajasthani village of Dungarji, 250 miles from Jaipur, after leaving her husband two years ago. She then apparently eloped with another man.

India last month topped the Thomas Reuters Foundation poll as the worst place, out of the top 19 economies in the world, for a woman to live.