Discuss the consequences of Across Region marriage on kinship system in modern Indian society. (UPSC CSE Mains 2020 - Sociology, Paper 1)
- The average Indian marriage, especially in rural areas, is still perceived as governed by traditional rules of caste and community. These are rules of endogamy (marriage within one’s own caste group although outside one’s own ‘gotra’ – clan), hierarchy (bride givers are inferior to bride-takers) and hypergamy (the woman must marry up, both socially and economically). The rule of caste endogamy is shared all over India. However, within the caste, isogamous (spouses of equal status) or hypergamous (spouses of unequal status) marriages may occur. In many parts of the North, village exogamy is another rule, making it imperative for spouses to be from different villages. Dowry, since it has become near universal in the country, can be considered as another rule. According to high caste customs, an honourable marriage is one accompanied by dowry and not by bride price (where the groom pays a sum of money to the bride’s parents).
- In the post-independence period, demographic and social changes (declining fertility levels with a distorted sex ratio, education and reduced segregation of the sexes, rising age at marriage, changing work patterns, etc) are leading to increasingly more differentiated and complex marriage and residence patterns. Although barriers of region, religion, caste and language have often been overcome by across-region marriages in India this has been possible mostly for English-speaking, educated, professional Indians. Other across-region marriages have been characteristic of royal elites. However rural Indians have rarely ventured outside the circles defined by rules of endogamy and exogamy.
- The marriages being discussed here, are ‘arranged’ across regions separated by hundreds of miles and do not occur through the agency of individuals brought together by the marriage, i e, they are not ‘love marriages. Across region marriages represent a pattern in which rural, often illiterate people from different geographical and cultural regions are getting linked. Here the marriage distance (defined as the distance between the bride’s natal and conjugal home) can stretch to hundreds of miles taking a woman completely away from her familial, regional, linguistic and cultural contexts, compounding greater spatial distance with greater social distance. While the traditional north Indian marriage pattern typically emphasised physical besides social distance, this distance was within the parameters of an identifiable local community. The two opposing tendencies of endogamy (marriage within the caste) and exogamy (marriage outside the gotra and village – in the case of village exogamy) placed certain spatial and geographical limits to the spread of marriage networks. For example, jats from Haryana would marry jats from neighbouring UP or Rajasthan. In across region marriages, on the other hand, a jat or chauhan from Haryana is now marrying a woman of indeterminate caste from Assam, Bengal or Bihar. The negative impact of marriage distance on women’s status and autonomy is likely to be further heightened under such circumstances. More importantly, the specific cause of the spread of these hitherto uncharted marriage networks, across far flung regions of the country, cannot be traced to marriage rules but lies in the linkages between female marriage migration, poverty and the sex ratio.
- Although the statistical significance of such marriages remains to be established, there is increasing evidence of them among all castes and classes. Information is trickling in from the states of Haryana, Punjab, UP and Rajasthan at one end and from Assam, West Bengal and even Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, at the other.
- Blanchet’s study provides information on the movement of Bangladeshi girls into UP for marriage.
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