Krishnamurti explains love’s evolutionary role to his young audience thus:
If your parents began to think out why they love you, you might not be here. They think they love you; therefore they want to protect you . . . Fortunately, there is this feeling of love . . . otherwise, you and I would not have been educated, would not exist.
The real thing is to understand yourself . . . you will find out that the more you know about yourself physically as well as psychologically . . . the more you will find out the truth . . . It is that truth that will help you to be free.
I have found it perplexing that in India these days, while anger is permissible—and even sometimes perceived as courage and manliness—love is not. ‘First comes marriage, then love!’ is how we do it in India. It is difficult to find data on the number of arranged marriages in India, but various sources indicate that around 90 per cent of Indian marriages are not borne out of love.2 Instead, they are arranged by families in the hope that love will blossom later. The alternative, where a couple falls in love first, literally called a ‘love marriage’, is a dirty thing. Nowhere else in the world does the term ‘love marriage’ exist, because most marriages now by default are preceded by love. But here, it is not so. In India, parents dread that their daughter’s innocence will be lost in a love affair, and the careers of their sons ruined if they waste their time courting a girl. Any romance before marriage must be covert, and affairs are likely to be dropped sooner or later anyway for a marriage arranged with a spouse chosen by the family.
In this regard, we have a peculiar sense of modernity, where many families consider themselves modern in giving their sons and daughters the worst lessons of hypocrisy. They tell their progeny that they are free to court the opposite sex for fun (not love!), but not marry them. Young ones are admonished against falling in love: ‘Have fun, but do not fall in love!’ For ultimately, when the time comes to marry a partner of the family’s choice, breaking an attachment to someone else will only cause pain. Moreover, love makes us, quite literally, weak in the knees and vulnerable—and most of us in India are taught all our lives that it is not appropriate to be so. We are told that we must not let the bothersome animal encumbrance of our emotions take over.
Take a look at our epics. In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, there have been great tales of love, such as that between Ram and Sita, which I have written about earlier in this book.3 The nature of this relationship is, till date, held up as an example for today’s generation. It is not uncommon to hear the compliment ‘Ram aur Sita jaisi jodi hai’ (the couple is like Ram and Sita). Even in this ancient epic, love developed in these relationships only after marriage. Ram won Sita over in a svayamvara ceremony—one of the seven permitted ways to choose a groom in the Vedic age—organized by Sita’s father. Ram and Sita were married, and only thereafter came the love between them. On the other hand, in the Mahabharata, the great love affair between Radha and Krishna was never formalized as marriage. We also never hear a compliment likening a contemporary couple to the lovers Radha and Krishna.
The 700-verse Bhagavad Gita, set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahabharata during the war against the Kauravas, warns that we must stay away from love. It defines love in the context of desire. It says that if we have a continuous desire for someone, it generates imagination (bhavana) about that person, which slows down our thought processes. The Gita further explains that such a state first leads to attachment (kama) and then to anger (krodha), which leads to infatuation (sammoh), then to the confusion of memory (smritivibhrama), thereafter to the loss of reason (buddhinasha), and ultimately to total ruin (pranasha).4
In an even earlier era, the Nyaya-Vaisheshika philosophy of the Vedic age considered love, and in fact all other emotions, to be a defect (dosha) or an impurity (upadha). Nyaya and Vaisheshika were two separate schools of thought, both belonging to the Vedic school of philosophy, but over time, they became so intertwined with each other that the two came to be referred to as one. The Nyaya-Vaisheshika philosophy explains that these ‘defects’ are the result of ignorance (mithyajnana) and they give rise to actions that lead to the feeling of pleasure or pain. It classifies the defects into three groups: attraction (raga), aversion (dvesha) and illusion (moha). In the first group, we find love, selfishness and greed. The second group includes anger, jealousy, envy, malice and resentment. The third group encompasses error, suspicion, pride and negligence. So according to this philosophy, there are no positive emotions. Even love was deemed a defect, ultimately, because all emotions lead to attachment and error.
Narada Muni, the great Vedic sage, travelling musician and witty and wise storyteller, who miraculously makes an appearance across several eras in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, as well as in the mythologies of the earlier Puranas, has similar wisdom to impart about love. This omnipresent sage has explained that an emotional state of attachment to someone can lead to five types of behaviour. One, if we consider the other superior to us, the attachment is called devotion (bhakti). Two, if we consider the other inferior to us, then the attachment is called infatuation (vatsalya). Three, if we consider the other equal, the attachment is called friendship (maitri). These three are relevant when a person is attached to another individual. If the attachment is to an object, he says, it is called craving (kama). Only when these four types of attachment are combined is it
