Love in Indian culture - Research Paper Example

The same is especially applied to humans, where love enjoys central place in their life and activities in general. There are multiple types of love observed by the humans, which include spiritual love, natural affection, physical attraction and carnal desires and others. Spiritual love is generally viewed to be one’s sheer feelings of reverence for the deity, faith, scriptures and the holy personalities in which one has established profound and unflinching belief. The individuals maintain love for their faith, and even sacrifice their lives for the cause of faith.

Moreover, the parents’ deep feelings for their children could also be stated to be the example of the purest and selfless love. While elucidating the love between the young members of society, it becomes evident that the adolescents start developing the love emotions along with their physical and mental growth (Lv & Zhang, 2012:357). The love generally appears while the development of unseen attraction towards the members of the opposite gender. It is the time when the individuals witness tremendous excitement with the imagination of feeling the person of opposite gender close to his/her heart, though sometimes far from the eyes; almost the same is the situation with the south Asian cultures.

South Asian cultures, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, are unanimously declared to be the conservative and religious-minded societies of the world. An overwhelming majority of these states is the follower of Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism and Christianity, all of which regard morality, chastity and virtuousness to be the essential parts of everyday individual and collective human life. Since the religions these societies have adopted lay stress upon love after marriage, pre-marital dating is strictly discouraged by the social values.

As a result, the mixing of the members belonging to opposite genders in public is not approved by these societies (Orsini, 2006:52). Hence, the concepts of dating and physical contacts are not very open and common in these cultures. Not only this that families impose severe restrictions on their female members to have any contact with boys before marriage, but also deviation from the same invites wrath of fathers and brothers, who do not hesitate in killing their daughters and sisters provided they find them meeting with the adult males beyond the marital-knot.

It is therefore still mostly the marriages are arranged by parents and elders in these conservative societies (Dasgupta, 1998:968). Although globalization has introduced significant alterations in the concept of love and dating, and the educational institutions offering girls and boys education facilities under one roof, which have increased the level and frequency of meetings between the young and adult couples to a great extent. However, still the trend of dating and physical encounters are confined to the elite stratum of society consists of politicians, industrialists, feudal lords, civil and military bureaucrats, corporate class and showbiz communities, which maintain seldom care for religious cults, social norms and moral values in their individual and collective life (Orsini, 2006:221).

Nevertheless, the Indian and Pakistani cultures still do not allow open illicit sexual relationship in society. It is therefore the immoral, adulterer and dissipation-inclined politicians and actresses aptly become the target of the