Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India

Abstract

The introduction of modern concepts like adulthood and sanctity given to individual rights has legally turned the individual settlement of marriage between two consenting adults to be legitimate. Under the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, except for certain incest taboos, the legal restrictions on marriage of two adult Hindus are almost non-existent. Briefly speaking, this means that under the law both sagotra (same gotra) and inter-caste marriages are permitted. Yet, the customary rules regulating marriages in most parts of north India are based upon caste endogamy, village and clan exogamy. While keeping within caste, they adopt the gotra or got, as is known in rural north India, rule of exogamy (gotra are an exogamous patrilineal clan whose members are thought to share patrilineal descent from a common ancestor). For marriage certain prohibited degrees of kinship have to be avoided. As a rule three or four got exogamy is followed by most caste groups upper or lower. Any break in this, though legally allowed, is not acceptable.