Inter-caste, Inter-Religious Marriages In India: The Dynamics & the Myth

Inter-caste, Inter-Religious Marriages In India: The Dynamics & the Myth

KAKALI DAS

A new Pew Research Centre report, based on a face-to-face survey of 29,999 Indian adults fielded between late 2019 and early 2020 – before the Covid-19 pandemic – takes a closer look at religious identity, nationalism and tolerance in Indian society.

The survey was conducted by local interviewers in 17 languages, with adults ages 18 and older living in 26 Indian states and three union territories.

The report titled Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation is a most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of Indian public opinion to date. The sample includes interviews with people belonging to every religion and even the ones religiously unaffiliated.

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It says that most Indians, since they don’t have much in common with members of other religious groups, prefer close friends belonging to the same religious community as them. 86% of the Hindus, 80% of the Sikhs and 72% of the Jains who have responded, have said that their friend circle is from the same religion. Moreover, roughly two-thirds of Hindus say that it is very important to stop Hindu women (67%) or Hindu men (65%) from marrying into other religious communities.

Even larger shares of Muslim oppose inter-religious marriage. Nearly 64% of the Hindus say that it’s important to be Hindu to be truly Indian, and 80% of them say that it’s important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian.

Incidentally, most of these people who link Hindu identity with national identity are from Northern (69%) and Central (83%) India, and fewer from Southern India (42%). 60% of the voters who believe that it’s important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian, also, apparently, voted for the BJP in 2019. (https://www.pewforum.org/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/ – full report)

Our constitution guarantees us the right to choose the religion we want, marry whomsoever we desire to, as long as the laws of this country aren’t broken. But it does seem today, in our country, that there are certain religions we can’t preach, certain people we can’t marry; in fact, there are states which have outlawed conversion altogether. 

“It has been widespread that who we are as a nation is because of “the constitution,” our foundational document, but it is the very constitution which says that if one wants to marry someone from a different faith, then the police is supposed to protect him/her, ensure if the person has adequate shelter etc. and not oppose their relationship or put them behind bars,” Karuna Nundy, Advocate, Supreme Court said.

There are many Indian myths about people falling in love and marrying outside their religions. Scholars say that ancient Dharmashashtra texts even sanctioned Gandharva marriage, which didn’t require parental approval.

However, other texts like Manusmriti didn’t reflect such acceptance. Unfortunately, our current attitudes seem to mirror this thinking. As of the 2011 census, only 5.82% of marriages in India was intercaste. And contrary to popular belief, the more educated people are, the stronger are their preference for marrying within their caste or religion.

On the other hand, honour killing is a crime Indians are only too familiar with, where couples are murdered by their families for daring to marriage outside their castes, gotras or religions. Even in popular culture, Indian TV shows rarely depict inter-caste or inter-religious relationships.

Even though Bollywood is synonymous with the stories of lovers fighting against the world to be together, very rarely do they cross the rigid boundaries of caste and religion. And when they do, the ending is hardly happy. But this preference for marrying within the community isn’t unique to India.

Opposition to inter-community marriages is seen in many different contexts, especially when there are histories of conflict. It all comes down to the notion of maintaining the ‘purity’ of lineage, and ensuring that the future generations of the family continue to uphold the social divisions and networks that the family has been benefited from.

Be it their political position, socio-cultural identity, ritual status or ownership of properties, everything is seen to be linked to this notion of ‘purity’, which makes any transgression a matter of shame and dishonour. But what sets India apart is the extent to which we live and literally die by these social hierarchies.

It has often been argued that India’s caste system is one of the longest surviving social hierarchies in the world, which till today, determines not just interpersonal relationships but economic structures too. In addition to that, India is also one of the world’s most economically unequal countries with the top 10% holding 77% of the country’s wealth. But not only are our caste and class hierarchies rigid, even within families elder and male members receive almost a reverential status.

A cross-country comparison found a high score for ‘power distance’ in India, meaning that people from all backgrounds tend to be more accepting of social hierarchies. This makes the pressure to marry within the community even stronger. In fact, many young Indians date around on the implicit or explicit understanding that the person they ultimately will marry will be from their own community.

And for those who marry outside their community, research shows that they don’t receive the same type of social and family support that couples from the same community receive when they get married. This impacts their ability to deal with marital conflicts, especially related to employment and child care, where family support can be helpful in easing transitions or in relieving pressure.

This, in turn, further the perception that they made a mistake by marrying ‘inappropriately,’ and reinforces the message for younger family members that marrying within your community is just easier and better. But, the fight for inter-community marriages isn’t merely about letting people love and live freely, it is equally about eliminating social hierarchies and discrimination. 

Besides, there are a lot of myths that are propagated by very strong attempts toward the Hindu Rashtra. Evidently, if the people are bombarded incessantly on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, TV, Ads with the message that the correct way to be an Indian is to marry within your very own narrowly defined community, which overlays an already existing conception of marriage that originated as an institution to keep land within kinship structures, and with false information campaigns running around them, they are bound to be misguided, misinformed. The way inter-faith marriage has been tabooed is because of the way marriage has been created, and how the BJP and Hindu Rashtra have propagated it.

Here, I would also mention the problem with the Hindi belt which overwhelms the entire data on the internet. I had a problem while surfing and trying to segregate the data about Muslim education, which I found to be abysmal on the internet.

But in reality, 36% of the Muslims are graduates in Tamil Nadu, which matches with the Brahmin graduate figures of the entire country. There are these pockets of India which are distinctively different, and numerically the Hindi belt does dominate India in sheer numbers, in every way, whether it’s about politics, education, health etc. 

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar famously said, “the real remedy for breaking caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of caste.”

Many organisations and support groups such as “India Love Project”, “Project Anti Caste Love” are enabling exactly that, by highlighting positive stories of inter-community relationships, and actively supporting couples who wish to marry outside their communities.

But for a change to occur, questions need to be raised regarding these rigid hierarchies, by undoing the social conditioning which teaches us to look for love only within our social boundaries.

When our Constitution itself guarantees a person’s right to choose a partner irrespective of caste, creed, or religion, then isn’t it about time that Indian society catches up?

[Images from different sources]

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