Recent developments in India’s political landscape have reignited debates around love, marriage, and sexual autonomy. In Gujarat, the state government has proposed amendments to marriage registration rules that would require couples to declare whether their parents have been informed of their marriage — a move framed as a safeguard against elopements and cases linked to so-called “love jihad”. Also, a Supreme Court bench remarked that unmarried men and women are 
“total strangers” and should be cautious about engaging in premarital physical relationships, adding that it failed to understand how couples could indulge in sex before marriage. 

But amid all this, one group remains largely spoken about rather than spoken to: Gen Z. Often characterised as either excessively liberal or unexpectedly conservative, young Indians are frequently reduced to stereotypes about hookup culture, loneliness, or moral decline. Is today’s generation truly rejecting tradition, redefining it, or simply navigating intimacy on its own terms?