These Rooms Give Young Indian Lovers Rare Privacy. Cue the Complaints.

Asia Pacific|These Rooms Give Young Indian Lovers Rare Privacy. Cue the Complaints.

Privacy can be hard to come by in India. Life is a communal swirl of relatives, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded, and prying eyes are everywhere.

Enter Oyo, a popular hotel-booking platform. The company, backed by big names in venture capital, built a hip reputation as a gateway to “love hotels” for unmarried couples. Inside its budget rooms, young lovers who might otherwise be left to steal furtive kisses in the nooks and crannies of public parks or shopping malls could exert their passions behind closed doors.

Now, Oyo is stepping back from its image as a refuge for hookups. This month, it revised its policy guidelines to give some partner hotels the discretion to deny rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.

So far, the change applies only to Meerut, a midsize city northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy was a response to complaints by civil society groups and was formulated “in line with local social sensibilities.”

Oyo’s move spurred memes and a backlash on social media, especially among 20-somethings. To many, it drove home the tension between traditional values and modern ideals that defines life for millions of young Indians.

Premarital sex is still largely taboo in this deeply conservative country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. It is widely viewed as a malign import from the less-inhibited West, and as an affront to Indian culture that is either to be policed or left unacknowledged.