• 1 A Facebook group called “Live-In Relationship/Cohabitation in India” posted a photo album displayin (...)

1As compared to premarital dating, which is increasingly acceptable among the urban middle and upper classes in India, live-in relationships pose a far bigger threat because they undermine the sanctity of the bond of matrimony. Cohabitation of unmarried couples has always existed but in the public imagination, it is mostly confined to the extravagant world of film celebrities1 or the Hindu pantheon, which includes several extramarital, polygamous and other unconventional couple constellations (Gudermuth 2006).

• 2 I draw from various media resources and analyze them, following the grounded theory method (Mey and (...)

5Using a media culture perspective, this article further analyzes the conflictual online discourse evolving around the Red Label short film. In particular, looking at viewers’ comments reveals conflicting attitudes that reflect discursive trends in Indian society, although the validity of the findings is necessarily limited to a certain section of society and based on exemplarity analysis, rather than big data.2 On the one hand, the concept of live-in relationships is regarded as a welcome and progressive development, even though it is considered a “western” concept that has influenced Indian society. On the other hand, concerns about the decline of the family system and the rise of a commitment-phobic generation are expressed by self-proclaimed conservatives as well as YouTube users.

• 3 In the Velusamy vs Patchaiammal case (2010), the Supreme Court held that “a relationship in the nat (...)
• 4 The dominant Hindu, upper caste, and middle class perspective falls short of acknowledging the dive (...)
• 5 See Sharma (2011a); Nagpal (2011); Ramgopal (2012).

7In India, unmarried couples have been considered equal to married couples in terms of rights since 2010. For example, an unmarried woman is entitled to inherit her deceased partner’s property.3 In a further landmark judgment on April 13, 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that couples in live-in relationships will be presumed legally married (Firstpost 2015). Despite these progressive judgments, controversies around the moral validity of cohabitation continue to polarize Indian society. Marriage continues to be the most important rite of passage and secures the viability of the lineage through procreation. Generally speaking, hardly any event is more important in South Asia than the wedding and the celebration usually takes on a very public character to announce the new family alliance. It functions de facto as an initiation into adulthood and actualizes the transition into entirely new social roles. In his work on Hinduism, Michaels states that premarital sexuality, illicit children and the dissolution of a relationship appear even more problematic given the public aspect of marriage and the associated rituals (2006:128). However, acts that occur in an accepted realm of silence are somewhat excluded from this proposition.4 Therefore, heterosexual marriage as a normative and exclusively acceptable relationship model is hardly ever challenged. One exception would be the initiative “Vina Mulya Amulya Seva” (Invaluable Service Without Any Price), that provoked nationwide attention.5 Natubhai Patel founded a non-profit organization in Ahmedabad in order to bring elderly singles together, with the aim of creating marital or live-in relationships. “There is no maximum age for marriage. No-one can stop two adults from living in either,” a BBC photo reportage quotes the founder (BBC News India 2012). Patel started the organization after the devastating 2001 earthquake in Gujarat which left—in addition to a total death toll of around 20,000—many people widowed and without family; thus the initiative is welcome and increasingly popular. Moreover, it does include widowed and divorced senior citizens in its matchmaking attempts. The propagation of remarriage, especially for widowed Hindu women, is particularly noteworthy since it breaks traditional taboos and may be read as a signifier of slow social change. On the other hand, the fact that “Vina Mulya Amulya Seva” exclusively targets senior citizens makes clear that this particular space is created for those who are, due to their age and connected social status, no longer subject to social rules in the same way as young people. Young people are just beginning to fulfill their expected social roles. For them, the “right” marriage significantly influences social status during adulthood.

• 6 StayUncle: http://stayuncle.com/home.
• 7 Other highly medialized examples of moral policing include attacks in Meerut parks on couples (2005 (...)

8Given the ritual and social importance of marriage for the entire family, unmarried couples often lack the blessing and support of their families. Furthermore, they face practical problems such as renting a house or staying in a hotel room together (Chatterji 2015). Recently, the Delhi-based start-up StayUncle was set up in order to help couples renting a room in Indian metro cities (Balachandran 2016).6 Such initiatives originate in response to increased moral policing and persistent opposition to unmarried couples living together within parts of Indian society (Brosius 2013:266ff). One of the most prominent cases of moral policing is the infamous Aksa Beach hotel raid (August 6, 2015) on Madh Island and at Aksa Beach in Mumbai, where around 40 couples staying in hotel rooms were arrested and charged with “public indecency” according to section 110 of the Bombay Police Act (“Behaving indecently in public” from 1951). The couples were held in police custody for nearly five hours and charged with a fine of Rupees 1,200. Three cases were also registered under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act that pertains to prostitution (Devnath 2015). Being a very drastic example, the incident immediately led to outcry in the media and furious debates among citizens and politicians, online and offline.7 Above all, it generated a discussion over ideas of public and private space. The critics’ fundamental argument is that public intimacy and certain behavior by women (e.g. drinking) is morally wrong, even socially destabilizing. Several authors have noted that displays of affection might be acceptable in certain “privatized/modern public space” (malls or coffee shops) that are clearly marked as middle class. But intimacy in public parks renders less-privileged couples more vulnerable, as their exclusion from the above mentioned “privatized/modern public spaces” additionally reveals a classist division in moral judgment (Brosius 2013:271f; Phadke 2007:1514):

• 8 See Choudhary (2015); Prakash (2013); Shukla (2015).
• 9 An early example is Mahesh Bhatt’s film “Arth” (1982), a semi-autobiographical representation of th (...)

Against this background and the ever-lurking danger of physical attacks, unmarried couples often lack privacy, acceptance and safety. We thus observe an obvious contradiction between the liberal legal framework and social reality. Nevertheless, following the legal recognition, a growing visibility of live-in relationships in the media is observable. News media have reported extensively and overall approvingly on legal proceedings regarding the status of live-in relationships since Indian courts ruled them legal in 2005.8 Television serials and movies9 increasingly broach the issue and a widely aired television advertisement picked it out as a central theme, as I will show later on. The growing medial visibility creates an impression of growing social acceptance, but discussions and debates taking place in response to media content mirror social anxieties and suggest that something uncomfortable persists. Commentary functions in online media constitute a very interesting source for a new form of audience or readership studies. As Chauhan has shown with his India-based study on advertising language, media is an integral element of modern culture and society and advertising holds a peculiar position between marketing-driven intentions and hidden messages (2010), or in Hall’s words “encoded meanings” (2006). Although a more comprehensive analysis of a variety of media sources would be preferable, the following case study of Red Label’s tea advertisement and the online responses it generated reflect most of the dominant discursive themes I have identified so far in academic and public discussion.

• 10 Red Label India: Red Label – Surprise Visit, published on May 21, 2015. Links to YouTube videos are (...)

9Originally scripted for nationwide television broadcasting on Hindi-language channels, the company Brooke Bond Red Label also posted the advertisement via its official account on YouTube and added the description: “Can hospitality melt away the differences? Watch the heartwarming film of Red Label tea and find out. It’s a story about old and new. About relationships and conflicts. About tea and togetherness.”10

• 11 The advertisement’s dialogues are spoken in Hindi.
• 12 A dupatta is a long shawl or stole worn over the chest and thrown back around the shoulders. It is (...)

10The one-minute commercial’s storyline is rather simple. The short film opens with an elderly couple ringing at their son Chirag’s door to pay him a surprise visit on his birthday. The first sentence uttered by the mother includes a comment on his pale looks with the promise to get him a wife soon.11 Suddenly, we see a girl brushing her teeth appearing in the background, accompanied by melancholic guitar music, which creates an uncomfortable moment rife with anxieties about what will happen next. She is eventually introduced by Chirag to his parents as Pallavi with whom he is living. The mother’s smiling face immediately drops to an unbelieving expression and she watches every move Pallavi makes with consternation. The awkward situation is finally dissolved by Pallavi who quickly puts on a dupatta,12 rushes into the kitchen and prepares tea for the utterly surprised parents. She not only serves them but even considers the father’s diabetes and the mother’s preference for two spoons of sugar. After confirming that she added cardamom to the tea as well, Chirag’s mother is finally pacified and concludes that Pallavi’s tea is not bad. Indicated by the music getting louder and more cheerful, the audience thus witnesses a nearly scandalous situation dissolving into intergenerational harmony and the hope of mutual acceptance through a cup of good tea.

• 13 Red Label India 2014.
• 14 Tanishq Jewellery 2013.
• 15 Myntra, 2015.
• 16 99acres.com, 2015.

11Red Label uses a controversial topic to equip its consumer-good with associations of social progressiveness and therein employs a marketing strategy that seemingly encodes a social message into the advertisement. Research on advertisements has shown, that “[b]eyond the objective to sell products and services, advertising is noted to affect social attitudes, define social roles and influence cultural values” (Gabler 2010:2). Red Label had already gained attention in the past for its socially progressive commercial titled “Neighbors,” in which Hindu and Muslim neighbors share a cup of tea and thus create intercommunal harmony.13 Advertisements with messages that are interpreted as driving social change can be found in other commercial branches apart from tea advertising as well. Tanishq, an expensive jewelry brand, aired a television commercial displaying the remarriage of a Hindu woman and the groom’s acceptance of her daughter from a previous marriage.14 Following Gabler’s argument, images of gender roles and the formation of the couple are constituted through public imagination, which is strongly influenced by mass media, including advertising (2010). But as we see in “Surprise Visit,” discourses on couples transcend gender constructions and touch on multiple other social constructions, e.g. the parent-child relationship (Chirag and his mother), the couple-family relationship (Chirag and Pallavi towards his parents), and even more generally the idea of the collective. Red Label is not the only Indian brand to cash in on the representation of live-in relationships. The fashion brand Anouk15 as well as the real estate website 99acres16 have increased the visibility of cohabitation by presenting it as part of daily life. The Anouk advertisement is particularly notable because it features a lesbian couple getting ready to be introduced to the visiting parents. It thereby additionally breaks the taboo on homosexuality. Referring to the 99acres advertisement, a blogpost on swener.com reads:

• 17 On the state ideology of developmentalism with regards to television see: Singhal and Rogers (1989) (...)
• 18 For research on information society or information capitalism, see e.g. Beniger (1986); Webster (20 (...)

It is of course debatable whether advertising does in fact mirror the “perception of the society,” as the blogger above claims. Nevertheless, Hall has remarked that “though the production structures of television originate the television discourse, they do not constitute a closed system. They [on] draw topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience” (2006:164). Following his argument, the audience is both source and receiver of the encoded message. But just as significantly, the companies promote themselves as agents of social change, a stance which resembles the traditional post-independence Indian governmental attitude towards media production.17 The didactic entertainment of the nation-building era transforms into consumerism with a social message in post-liberalization India. The emphasis on this interpretation lies in the psychological aspect of capitalism, which advertising may trigger. Television commercials such as the ones discussed above actualize affective reactions, a phenomenon which in turn generates clicks, likes, or higher ratings, translating into capital profit. Thereby, advertising companies simply employ the postindustrial logic of information capitalism, where the creation, distribution, use, and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity.18

• 19 For studies on the online matrimonial market and virtual friendships in India see: Agrawal (2015), (...)
• 20 “Desi” is a colloquial term derived from the Hindi word deś (देश) for land/homeland. It denotes peo (...)
• 21 In the nationalist discourse of the 19^th and early 20^th century, the “New Indian Woman” denotes a n (...)

13Another interesting example is a recent Indian television commercial for Tinder, a popular global dating app, where a mother approves of her daughter going out on a date. While being celebrated as groundbreaking by some, others criticized the stark resemblance to matrimonial advertisements19 and mocked Tinder for “going desi”20 (Nettikkara 2016). The idea remains that the daughter eventually has to have a heterosexual monogamous marriage. The commercial’s tribute to modernity is her going out and finding that man. This perspective intersects with the image of the “New Indian Woman,” a concept that has been constructed and mediated by the media since the 1980s (Mankekar 1999 and 2009), although it was first located within colonial nationalist discourses (Chatterjee 1989).21 The contemporary “New Indian Woman” pursues a global lifestyle but sticks to “Indian values”; she combines tradition with modernity and stays “Indian at heart” (Chaudhuri 2001; Fernandes 2000; Mankekar 1999; Munshi 1998). I have argued elsewhere that this image is found in the aspiring middle and upper classes which constitute the prime target group for online matrimonial advertising (Titzmann 2011a:54). The Tinder advertisement follows a similar principle by showing the daughter going out on a date in line with her mother’s expectation of her finding an eligible groom.

• 22 As one anonymous reviewer suggested, Collingham’s exploration of Indian food history may point to a (...)
• 23 I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing out these three main strands of interpret (...)

14Based on a decoding of what I perceive as visual sub-codes that mark a gendered Indianness in the dominant-hegomonic discourse, Pallavi in “Surprise Visit” adheres to certain “Indian values” by putting on a dupatta and attempting to please her possible future in-laws with her skills of servitude and hospitality.22 The fact that she is challenging the norm by living in with Chirag recedes to the background. Both protagonists manage to balance their modernity with a simultaneous Indianness. In summary, the advertisement is open to multiple interpretations. The progressiveness of taking up a counter-normative constellation with the depiction of a live-in relationship cannot be denied, while the didactic of social advertising is reminiscent of pre-liberalization developmental television. On the other hand, advertising is essentially embedded in consumer capitalism. One could conclude by calling Red Label’s strategy consumerist progressivism.23 While I decode the advertisement’s progressivism as a clever marketing strategy and attempt to point out the subversion’s limitation, viewers respond strongly to the “hidden messages” they detect in the short commercial.

• 24 For a more detailed methodological discussion on social media analysis see Jayachandran (2014) and (...)

15The following section takes a closer look at how viewers interpret the Red Label commercial. The analyzed sample included all posts made until October 30, 2015, which amounts to 65 analyzed comments (including replies to comments). On April 7, 2017 the video had 101,419 views, 250 likes, and 29 dislikes. 30 different registered YouTube users posted below the video and from an interpretation of their user names the numbers of male and female users are almost equal. 12 names appeared male, 13 female and 5 could not be related to any gender. However, user names are chosen freely and might not reflect the actual gender of the person. Among the defining characteristics of social media platforms like YouTube are interactivity and non-verifiable authors. Both pose challenges to existing textual-analysis approaches. Interactive functions can be taken into account via the traceability of discussion threats rendering possible an exploration of dialogical discussions emerging between two or several users. But as Jayachandran in her methodological discussion on the analysis of reader comments to online news observes, “[t]he anonymity afforded through concealing identities while commenting could result in ‘utterly aggressive content’ that impedes constructive discussions” (2015:48). She further refers to studies concluding that writing under pseudonyms lowers the intellectual quality of the comments as well as the author’s responsibility for them (Jayachandran 2015).24

• 25 Many viewers use a colloquial mix of Hindi and English language, so-called “Hinglish,” which I expl (...)

17The most discussed topic among the viewers’ comments was the girl’s behavior. Comments were more or less unanimous in the observation that Pallavi perfectly fulfills her prescribed gendered role. As mentioned above, by serving tea she adheres to principles like servitude, demureness and hospitality that are conventionally expected from a daughter-in-law. A viewer comments: “yeah, the girl getting tea part is not good… too clichéd” (Kakul Singh).25 Another one writes: “I’m sure several people especially pseudo feminists kinds will still have the problem with the girl getting the tea” (raina1161) and receives a reply from Agratha Dinakaran: “Well, I’m yet to see an ad where guests come over, and it’s the boyfriend/husband who rushes to the kitchen to get tea and snacks.”

• 26 I have made a similar observation about a strong dissociation from feminism as an ideological movem (...)
• 27 “Kaise parents ne kuch react nahi kiya [How (i.e. why) did the parents not react] ?????? my mother (...)

22She contextualizes her article within a globally resonant discourse that young women nowadays actively distance themselves from feminism and elaborates on her own classroom experience teaching gender studies: “For young women, their feminism is precarious because it places possible heterosexual romance at risk by marking them as ‘anti-men,’ or so they perceive. Further, it often places them in an antagonistic position with their families” (Phadke 2015:64f). While leaving open the question of which gender is hidden behind the user name Sectum Sempra, the strong antagonism could well be understood within Phadke’s explanation.26 Viewers vividly discuss whether the depicted scenario seems realistic or not. The majority agree that the commercial does not reflect a realistic intergenerational relationship and that the easy acceptance of the live-in scenario is rather wishful thinking.27 Nevertheless, the effort to encourage social change is welcome and positively commented upon: “The ad is good and highlights a new age of parents” (raina1161). Remarkably, the normative framework of the highly hierarchically structured Indian family system pervades viewers’ interpretation. Given the social power structure, parents need to change in order to render social change possible. Viewers decode this effort as the inherent social message of the advertisement: “That’s what they are trying to change… parents ki mentality that it’s okay!” (TheFreeSpiritedSoul).

• 28 Gorā (गोरा): white (Hindi). It is used as a colloquial term for foreigners from the “West.”

23The idea of a normative and culturally rooted Indian family further serves to demarcate “western” culture from “Indian values.” Viewers relate to the structure of the traditional joint family, whereby several generations live under one roof, as Indian and perceive a live-in relationship as the “western” opposite: a nuclear and individualistic relationship of two people, often without the blessing of their respective families. “Are some young Indians way to cool to live with there families now? Gora28 wannabes” (SuperKing604), criticizes a viewer. Others go even further by accusing Red Label of threatening the traditional value system: “dumb is this company to buy such creative ideas destroying the value system of the culture” (Deepak Lanka).

• 29 See: Mani and Varadarajan (2005) who write on the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas as “The Largest Gathering (...)

25More recent studies have emphasized the roles of individuals and families as factors for change and social mobility as opposed to earlier studies focusing mainly on the caste system (Kaur and Shruti 2016; Sharma 2011b). Nevertheless, the joint family as a “traditional” ideological construction remains and is also closely tied to political ideas that stress the primordial Hindu identity of India and its social values and norms (Poggendorf-Kakar 2003:179f). It finds consistent confirmation within popular Hindi cinema (Uberoi 2001a). Another political aspect is the equation of the Indian family with the nation. Family rhetoric is central to nationalist discourse, exemplified by the conceptualization of “Mother India” (or the goddess Bharat Mata) and expressions like “the global Indian family.”29 Poggendorf-Kakar stresses the Hindu nationalist connotation of the contemporary discourse around “Mother India” but she also notes that the metaphor of the nation as goddess can be traced back to a synthesis of nationalism and Shakti worship in 19^th century Bengal (2003:184f). Following this logic, the nation is conceived as a family and the family is conceived as the core cultural principal of Indian society. Former Indian President Abdul Kalam co-authored a book titled “The Family and the Nation” (Mahapragya, Jainulabdeen, and Kalam 2014). The book cover reads: “Only a strong and happy family can lead to the birth of a noble nation,” thus further perpetuating the nation-family nexus.

• 30 In Germany, the impressive success of Michael Nast’s book on a generation that he calls “relationsh (...)
• 31 E.g. the Facebook group “Live-In Relationship/Cohabitation in India.” The cover photo shows a tropi (...)

Similar accusations are not unfamiliar in a global popular discourse: the thirty-somethings of today are often called the undecided generation suffering from fear of commitment.30 The sociologist Eva Illouz has argued that a fundamentally capitalist logic of consumer choice can be seen as an explanation (1997). Too much choice results in having difficulties committing oneself because of the ever lurking thought that something better could come up. Hence, it comes as no surprise that most of the pro-cohabitation groups and posts contain references to liberalism, choice, freedom, and individualism.31

• 32 In this context “hookup” denotes a non-committed physical encounter.

27In her comment, Balaga argues that high divorce statistics and moral decay—e.g. “hookups”32 and “online prostitution”—are the eventual outcomes of live-in relationships compared to “conservative relationships,” i.e. marriage. As indicated in her comment, sexuality is closely related to the issue of culture and western influence. In this line of argument, live-in relationships refer to illicit sexuality and threaten the priority of controlled (female) sexuality. The holy bond of heterosexual matrimony forms the basic module within the above-discussed family conceptualization. Unconfined sexuality, consequently, undermines the moral superiority of the entire construction. Cohabitation, which is imagined inclusive of sexuality outside wedlock, as well as unmarried couples being sexually intimate in hotel rooms or public spaces, appears to threaten the values connected to the family’s symbolism, thereby threatening Indian culture. Recent incidents of moral policing indicate an overall hostile attitude towards relationships outside marriage. Balaga’s comment thus points to her perception of an encoded threatening “message” in the Red Label advertisement. Her own reading is situated within the normative discourse on the Indian family system and its entanglement with nationalism and morality. Within this context, many scholars have noted that women’s sexuality is the main site of anxiety. Mankekar links female sexuality also to middleclassness:

• 33 For further studies on middleclassness, gendered family relations, and its representations in India (...)
• 34 For detailed studies on the entanglement of patriarchal power relations and the joint family system (...)

Bearing in mind women’s responsibility to protect and reproduce the symbolic Indian family, her respectability signifies not only her personal virtue but also that of the nation.33 Challenges to the normative family are therefore highly uneven along gendered lines, as the roles of Pallavi and Chirag in the advertisement clearly indicate. Feminist scholarship has particularly critiqued the institution of the family for being hetero-normative, patriarchal, exclusionary and hierarchical (Shah 2015).34 A perceived breakdown of patriarchy is therefore often decoded in terms of moral decay. Similarly to Balaga, another viewer paints a scenario of ever-increasing moral deterioration if commercial advertisements continue to feature norm-breaking social settings: “What’s next in this series? Parents visiting during a gang bang and enjoying a cup of tea made by a stripper in a dupatta?” (Rahul K).