Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: Love Commandos

Episode Date: August 13, 2023

In India, intercaste marriage is very rare and marrying for love is not widely accepted. Among those who defy tradition, a small number face threats of violence from their own families. Enter the Love Commandos, a group tasked with protecting these couples under threat. But how do they do it? And why are they controversial? Today on The Sunday Story, Ayesha sits down with Lauren Frayer, the reporter on Rough Translation's new series "Love Commandos". She spent five years tracking this mysterious group as NPR's former India correspondent, and reveals what she discovered when she started talking to the couples sheltered by the Commandos.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I just got back from my really good friend's wedding, and it really made me think about love because I got to see my friend and her partner join together. And it was all about their connection. They found each other. They really complement each other. And then it was also like a joining of families, right? That's the thing that you can kind of forget that it's not just these two people, but you have these two families and a whole community coming together to lift up this couple in this new step in life. This is a Sunday Story. I'm Ayesha Roscoe.

Weddings based on love, like my friends, are a very Western tradition. But in the world's most populous nation, India, love marriages are very rare. My colleague Lauren Frayer is here to talk about this. She spent five years as NPR's India correspondent, and she's here to talk about her new series, Love Commandos, on the Rough Translation podcast. It's about love, marriage, and a vigilante group in India. Just a heads up, this episode does include a brief mention of suicide. Lauren, welcome to the show. Hi, Ayesha. Thank you for having me.

So, Lauren, let's talk about this podcast because there's a lot in this. Marriage without love, for the most part, is not how we do it in the U.S. or not how we think about it. Of course, some people might be like, what's love got to do with it when it comes to marriage, right? Love actually has very little to do with marriage in India, at least at the beginning of a marriage. More than 90% of marriages in India are arranged by families. There's a spectrum of that. So it's anything from on one end, your parents managing your dating profile and like lining up prospective spouses for you. And on the other end of the spectrum is there is a small percentage of people in India who do not meet their spouse until their wedding day. And, you know, it leads to these misconceptions that people have in the

West about India. India has a booming economy. It's this emerging global power. And yet development doesn't mean adopting Western-style traditions and values. I mean, that's really interesting. What made you decide to start reporting on this topic? So I moved to Mumbai in 2018 to become NPR's India correspondent. And in my research for that assignment, I read about this group called the Love Commandos. So that sounds like, I don't know whether it sounds like an amazing band or like some superheroes. Yeah, yeah. I got to admit, the name was catchy.

I was intrigued. And I looked into this and the Love Commandos are a vigilante group that rescues lovers who are running away from arranged marriages. There's a small percentage of Indians who want to marry a person of their own choice. Most of them are able to convince their families to agree to that. However, a really small minority of them face violence and threats for that choice. And that's where this vigilante group comes in. This is a group that helps people escape from those threats and run away and elope with a person of their own choice. The group also manages their marriage paperwork, helps them get a marriage

license, register their marriage, gives them a place to stay in a safe house in Delhi to start their life as newlyweds away from threats from their families. And in the summer of 2018, I went to this secret safe house in Delhi, and I did a piece on it for NPR's Morning Edition. And then I stayed in touch with some of the couples that I met in that shelter, and I also stayed in touch with the commandos themselves. Okay, but let's step back a second. How does a group like this, the Love Commandos, how do they get started? In 2012, the Love Commandos make this huge splash by going on the largest, most popular TV talk show.

Like think Oprah, like, ten times bigger. The host is a guy named Amir Khan. He's a Bollywood actor, and he has this reputation for, like, social justice and highlighting political causes. Let me just play a little bit of this 2012 episode of this TV show called Satyam of Jayate. And the voice you're hearing there, free food, free stay, voluntary initiative, that is the voice of the head of the Love Commandos. His name is Sanjoy Sachdev. And, you know, he's a man in his 50s at that point. He kind of looks like everybody's parent, but he's actually saying something totally the opposite of what most parents in India are saying. And the gist of what he's saying in this TV appearance is, yes, run away. Marry the love of your life.

And the crowd just eats it up. And YouTube clips of this 2012 talk show appearance are still circulating in India. They've gone viral. And I would imagine that's how you can really resonate with young people or with anyone who ends up in the position where they're like, oh, you know what? I met this person. I fell in love. Maybe I don't want to, you know, have an arranged marriage. And here's an adult telling you it's OK.

Yes, you can do that. Yeah, to go against what everyone else is doing. So you said you went to one of these secret safe houses run by the Love Commandos. Like, what was that like? I met the head of the commandos on a street corner outside of a metro stop in Delhi. And he wouldn't tell me where the safe house was. I had to follow him. He hops on a motorbike.

I hop in an auto rickshaw with my producer. And he literally does everything short of like blindfolding us so we wouldn't see where we were going. We wind through these narrow alleyways. We did like five or six turns so we would lose track of where we were going. And eventually we end up at the heart of Paharganj. And this is a Delhi neighborhood

that's famous for backpacker hotels. It's near a train station. There are also some brothels. There's like a tangle of power lines and rickshaws zooming around, kids playing cricket in the street. And we pull up next to this nondescript four-story building.

And he opens the door to this secret safe house. Welcome. It is our base shelter. Base shelter of the Love Commandos. Here we have a metal detector for checking. Checking to see if I've come in with weapons. Yeah. Inside the shelter, I met couples.

Some of them hadn't been outdoors in two months, they said. Part of the deal of this shelter protection is you put your safety in these men's hands. So they confiscate your cell phones. You'd have no contact with your family. You wait weeks, sometimes months, for the commandos to get you a marriage license, register that marriage license with police and get you police protection if you need that. And only after they're confident that you will be safe on the outside, do they let you go? Wow. I mean, that's incredibly intense. Just to get married can be a big paradigm shift. But to have to give everything up, it's hard to imagine. I mean, what did the couples there tell you? Some of them had these

dramatic escape stories. And like, keep in mind, I'm a foreign lady coming in with a microphone asking them to share their trauma. And I had to be respectful of that, but they actually did want to share it. And while they were polite and quiet, they described these like harrowing escapes from threats on their lives. They had come from every corner of the country to reach this safe house in the Capitol. And they were really frightened about what the future held. And so in the shelter, you know, I hand out my phone number. I say, look, I'm doing a story for NPR. If you would like to keep in touch, please reach out. Here's my email. And a couple months later, I started to hear from them. And I heard, you know,

even more dramatic versions of their escape stories and violence that they faced. And I also started to hear different versions of life in that shelter, versions that I found pretty troubling. Whoa, so it sounds like the safe house may not have been so safe for them after all. Like, what did they tell you? They described long days of cleaning and cooking and running the shelter themselves, being asked to fork over large sums of money to the commandos, and even being asked to give foot massages to some of the Love Commandos.

And then the real shocker came. Owner of NGO Love Commandos has been arrested for allegedly harassing and blackmailing interfaith couples who sought help at his shelter home in Delhi. So the Love Commandos, who are supposed to be protecting these couples in their most vulnerable moments, they end up getting arrested. You know, maybe I'm a bit cynical because I was thinking, now what do the commandos get out of this? What do they get out of helping? So maybe I need a little more love in my life.

What actually happened? Well, the love commandos got thrown in jail. There was a whistleblower and a police raid and a whole lot of drama. I mean, I thought I was reporting a story about love and escape and, you know, about culture and tradition and marriage in India. And I ended up reporting a true crime story that became a podcast for NPR. And I reported this for five years. These were couples that I met in the shelter. I kept in touch with after they left the shelter. I kept in touch with the Love Commandos through their rise and fall. And this

whole thing ended up morphing from like a love story to a story about broken trust. To be clear, the love commandos are charged with six offenses, including extortion for demanding and taking money from couples in their care, and with wrongful confinement for allegedly keeping couples longer than was necessary in the shelter for their safety. Sanjay Sachdev and his colleagues have repeatedly said they are not guilty. They have entered a not guilty plea in court. They're still awaiting trial. But Satchitav says he's the victim here of a big misunderstanding and of a political conspiracy. Wow. So how did the couples that you spoke to, how did they react to his arrest? I mean, on that day, my phone was ringing off the hook because all the couples were like, did you hear? Did you hear? And they were

really divided because some of them saw it coming and others were like, that is just not the Sanjay Sachdev and the Love Commandos that we know. He's a hero. The Love Commandos are a target for a lot of powerful people. Sanjay Sachdev was helping young people defy their parents and go against deeply held norms in their country. There's also a political backdrop here because Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a Hindu nationalist. And under him, forces of tradition have been really emboldened. Sanjay Sajdev has been affiliated with a few different opposition parties. And when he was arrested, he said, this is a political conspiracy against me. Why was Satchit even doing this? With so much stacked against him,

why did he say he was really putting himself on the line to help these other people? I mean, I've spent years thinking about that, about his motivations. And I think what he would say is that he just believes it's right. He just believes that young people should have a right to marry who they choose. And one of those couples were Surya and Akanksha. And for safety reasons that will become clear later in the story, I'm only going to use their first names here. But Surya and Akanksha grew up as neighbors.

And what happened was what happens to a lot of teenagers. Love is a beautiful feeling. There's a butterfly in your stomach when you're in love with someone. They're 15 and 17, and they fall in love. And what was wrong with that? That sounds pretty normal. It's totally normal. Average teenage behavior, right? The difference is that Surya and Akanksha are from different castes. And many people in India feel that you should marry within your caste.

And you should also marry the person that your parents arrange for you to marry. And so Akanksha is from a dominant caste. That's a caste that's sort of considered higher in this hierarchy. Surya is from a more oppressed caste. And while their families were close friends, having your kids get married is a totally different story. And Surya and Akanksha know that very well. And so they date in secret. And Surya told me how he like deliberated long and hard about when and how to confess his love for Akanksha. Because it's not like, oh, let's just, you know, date a little bit. Let's have a fling. We're teenagers. Both of them had to accept that they were going to go against all of these traditions

in their society and against the path that pretty much everyone they knew had taken. That's a lot for a teenager in love to have to deal with. How did they figure this out? They come up with three plans. Plan A, we'll convince our parents they'll accept our relationship, we'll win them over, they'll love that we're together. Plan B is if our parents don't accept our relationship, we're going to have to run away and we're going to have to elope. And plan C is suicide. My goodness. And they hope it doesn't reach that. But they say if we're not allowed to be together, we're going to send a drastic signal to everyone in our community, to other parents in this situation. Wow.

So this is like Romeo and Juliet. Like this is that sort of thing. My goodness. Yeah, like teenage romance no longer looks frivolous, right? This is serious stuff. Surya and Akanksha sneak around for years. And then on Akanksha's 21st birthday, her parents call her into the living room and they say, congratulations. We're so proud of the young woman you've become.

We've done our duty as parents because we love you so much. And we've arranged a marriage for you to a guy on the other side of the country. Akanksha is horrified, and she gives them a surprise of their own by saying, well, I can't marry that guy. I want to marry the neighbor, Surya. Wow. You are listening to The Sunday Story. We'll be right back.

Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. We're back with the Sunday story.

We're talking to Lauren Freyer about her new series with NPR's Rough Translation podcast, Love Commandos. Lauren picks up the story right after a young woman, Akanksha, tells her parents she doesn't want the marriage they've arranged. She wants to marry her childhood friend, Surya. So how do her parents react to that news? They're pretty adamant that she doesn't get to choose. They say, no, don't be silly. You're not marrying the neighbor's son, Surya. We've found a perfectly good match for you within our

cast. And they take away Akanksha's phone so that she can no longer text Surya. But the couple find ways to communicate. They start slipping notes back and forth through a window in the bathroom. So they write notes on paper, slip them through the window. They flutter down outside. The other retrieves them. And one day, Surya slips a note with just one letter. And Akanksha knows exactly what it means. The letter B.

Plan B. Right. Plan B. But in this case, it means let's run away together. That's very romantic. That's like very romantic. And so the version of a knight in shining armor in this story is Surya on a motorbike. Akanksha gets permission to attend computer class and she leaves for computer class one morning.

Surya pulls up on a motorbike outside. She hops on the back of the bike, wraps her arms around his waist, and they run away together. It's actually the first time they're alone together because they've always been surrounded by their families. And suddenly it's the two of them. And they don't really know where to go. But they go to the train station and they board a train and they start zigzagging across India. Akanksha's father and Surya's mother start to chase them. They go to Nagpur. They go to Ranchi. Turning the phone on briefly and then off again in each city because he knows that his parents will be able to track his phone.

And so he's trying to throw them off. And the parents eventually get them on the phone. And Surya's mother says, we need to right this wrong. The whole community is watching. If we don't return Akanksha to her parents, this is going to be a stain on our families forever. And so she says, And actually, four years later, I sat down with Surya's mom.

Her name is Poonam. I asked her, Did you intend to get them married? Or was that a trick? No. No. And she laughs and says, Or was that a trick? No. No. And she laughs and says it was definitely a trick. And it worked. Sori and Akanksha decide to go back to their parents. But just to be safe, they take out an insurance policy. And that is they decide to get married. They get married. So just like that, like, what do they have to do to do that? Yeah. So they think their parents will have less chance of separating them if they get married so just like that like what do they have to do to do that yeah so they

think their parents will have less chance of separating them if they get married and so they quickly arrange a temple they borrow clothes and it's a done deal and then they reunite with their parents and akanksha says her father is livid surya and Akanksha immediately recognize their parents have no interest in allowing them to stay together. And then it gets worse. Akanksha says her extended family takes her away and locks her up. But I mean, she was married at that point, right? Could they really just take her away? Well, she's married. Yeah. And you're allowed to live with your spouse when you're married. But Akanksha says her parents are having trouble accepting that, and they still see her as their property. As far as they're concerned, they tell her this elopement has to be undone because it's a stain on them and their honor and that of their whole community.

Now, I just want to be clear, I'm telling you Akanksha's side of the story. I did not reach out to her parents to verify this. I did verify it with Surya and members of Surya's family and the Love Commandos, which helped document their escape. But I have not reached out to Akanksha's parents out of consideration for her continued safety and well-being. Akanksha says her family takes her to their ancestral village. It's where her extended family comes from, and it's where her grandmother still lives. It's a place that she associated with happy childhood, summer vacations. But this time she gets there, she says she's locked up. And she says her family beats her, even her grandmother. And she told me she remembers the feeling of the rings on her

father's fingers as his fist hit her face. My goodness. And at some point into this ordeal, Akanksha manages to steal her aunt's phone and send a text off to Surya. She's able to send just one line of text. The text says, I am alive. I'm in this village, but I think they might kill me. And Surya, he doesn't dare respond, but he makes one phone call to the only group he thinks can help them, and that's the Love Commandos. And so the Love Commandos help Surya get to Akanksha's ancestral village and try to rescue her. And at the same time as the Love Commandos and Surya are trying to get to that village, Akanksha's family is telling her, he's not coming for you. He's never coming for you. You need to file rape and kidnapping charges against Surya. It's the only way to save our family honor. You need to

say he tricked you into marrying him and that everything that's happened was against your will. And Akanksha spends eight days locked up, she says, being beaten by her family. And finally, she's at the point of collapse. And after more than a week of this, she says, fine, take me to the police station. I will literally say whatever you want. I will file charges against Surya. Oh, no. So she's going to betray him?

They sit her down in a police station, one parent on each side, and the police officer turns on a tape recorder and says, do you know a man named Surya? What did he do to you? And Akanksha's family's right there, and they're expecting her to do as they've asked and accuse Surya, and it's not what she does. And she says, yes, I know a man named Surya. He's my husband, and I want to be with him. Oh, she was not going for that. This was her man, and she is sticking with him. And the police are like, well, that's not what you're supposed to say.

She says, the police stop the tape, rewind it, turn it on again. Do you know a man named Surya? And Akanksha repeats, he's my husband and I want to be with him. This is so dramatic. It's like a movie. Like, how do her parents react? Well, her parents are like, we're done. Like, we are washing our hands of this daughter that we can no longer control.

And they walk out and they abandon Akanksha at this police station. She's there all by herself. She has no idea where Surya is. Her family's been telling her, forget him. He's not coming for you. He's a bad guy. And she's left at this police station with only the clothes on her back, no phone, no nothing.

It's getting dark. And then Surya walks in. And I asked them later about that moment and what it felt like. And Surya told me it was like putting a fish back in water, like coming back to life. That's really romantic. It makes your heart go pitter-patter a little bit when he showed up at the police station. Akanksha was there. And so then after he comes in, it's the Love Commandos who've come to help, right? The Love Commandos help Surya get there and help both of them get to Delhi and to their safe house. And this is where you visited. Yeah, this is the same safe

house I visited. And they're there for several months. And they've never lived on their own. You know, they've always lived with their families. So in this shelter is where they learn to grow up and be adults. And Sajdev registers their marriage with local police. He arranges police protection. And they start the healing process. And they meet other couples for the first time who are in their shoes, other couples who've eloped like they did. And it's exhilarating to realize they're not alone and that there are other young lovers in India who've taken the path they did and they bond. And eventually, Surya and Akanksha leave the shelter and his family welcomes them home. They have yet to reconcile with Akanksha's parents.

She's still estranged from them. But, you know, after all that they've been through, they go back to the village where they grew up to be with his family. And for me, it's an example of how Surya and Akanksha are just really reluctant rebels. They never wanted to rebel. They never wanted to rebel. They never wanted to leave home. They just happened to fall in love. And for them, family is still everything. It's true of so many of the couples that I met in the Love Commandos shelter.

They're all just trying to play the cards they've been dealt in life. And they feel a duty to their families and to their parents. They didn't want to be in this situation. They also happen to have fallen in love and they don't want to have to choose. And so their lives are about reconciling these two values,

a duty to their family, but also a desire to follow their hearts. What you're describing, that is a love story, definitely with a Bollywood ending, a Hollywood ending. You could see it on the big screen of young lovers overcoming all these obstacles. And it sounds like in this story that the Love Commandos and Satyajit is doing something noble, right? So how did he come to be portrayed as a villain and arrested? So in the shelter, I told you there was bonding among the couples, but it was also pretty intense.

It's this like crazy Spartan boot camp with no contact with the outside world. And rifts, arguments start to form among the couples. Surya and Akanksha were very happy with the treatment they received from the love commandos. But a lot of other couples, in fact, most other couples that I have spoken with, they start to doubt the love commandos. They start to doubt how long their documents are taking to be processed, how rudimentary the conditions are in the shelter, where the money that they've contributed is actually going. And they start to see the love commandos in a completely different light. And when Surya and Akanksha leave the shelter, other couples, more disgruntled ones, they

decide to become whistleblowers. And they actually turn Sajdev in. And the tide just completely turns on him. He was charged with criminal intimidation, extortion, wrongful confinement, holding couples against their will. Now, Sajdev has pleaded not guilty. He denies any wrongdoing, and so do his co-defendants, the other love commandos. And so in our podcast,

I spend a lot of time exploring who Sanjay Satchdev really is, what life was like in this safe house, and the stories behind all those headlines, you know, whether he is a hero or a villain. Okay, so you've hooked me in because I'm not much on love, but I'm definitely a lot on scams and potential con men. And is this person really who they say they are? So I want to know what's going on with Satchdev. I want to know, is he the hero or is he a villain? I'm going to tell you to listen to the podcast. Honestly, five years later, I'm still trying to figure out that myself.

I mean, he may be both. Most people are, though, right? Most people are a little bit of the hero and the villain. That's true. Well, I don't know about you, Aisha. I'm only a hero, but, you know, everyone else. But really quick before we sign off, I just want to come full circle to your friend's wedding and the love you saw at that wedding last weekend. Because even though this story ended up being like a juicy true crime thriller, it's really

just all about love and about how much couples endure to be together. I spent five years in India, and on one of my very last days in the country, I went to the movies. I actually went to see a classic Bollywood rom-com. And it was at this iconic theater in Mumbai that's been playing the same 1990s rom-com literally since 1995. Every day there's a matinee. The movie's called Dilwale Dilhania Le Jayenge. I'm so sorry for that Hindi pronunciation. That's what you get from five years on Duolingo. But basically, everybody who knows this movie

calls it DDLJ for short, the acronym. And this is like the iconic rom-com. It stars Shah Rukh Khan, who's like the heartthrob of all heartthrobs in Bollywood. And in this theater, the whole audience dances and sings and recites the dialogue from memory. And it's this joyful experience, totally cheesy. It's a rom-com. What do you expect?

But it was the perfect ending to my India time and the perfect balance after having made this podcast, which started as a love story and turned to suspicions and police raids and criminal allegations. And yeah, like back to love. It reminded me of how much a great love story can grip people and grip people's imaginations, even if it's not part of their tradition in real life. Lauren, thank you so much for talking with us today. It's really an incredible story. Thank you so much for having me, Aisha. You can hear Lauren's reporting and the full series on the Rough Translation podcast. Love Commandos is available on NPR One, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Kimberly Izar, Elena Torek, and Justine Yan. It was edited by Irene Noguchi. Our engineer is Robert Rodriguez. Music from Ramteen, Aura Bluey, First Comm Music, Universal Music Productions, and Audio Network.

The Sunday Story team includes Jenny Schmidt, Andrew Mambo, and Henry Hadi. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom, and our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. We'd love to hear from you, so send us an email at thesundaystoryatnpr.org. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first, we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.