Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial
Bengal
By Rochona Majumdar, Oxford, Rs 750

No matter how alluring the orchids on the marriage pandal, the Swarovski crystals on the bridal lehenga, the star-studded sangeets or the mingling of foreign perfumes, the “arranged marriage” among Indians has been unable to rid itself of its peculiar stink — that of being old and rusty. A distinctive odour became associated with it when Indian customs came to be regarded as symbols of backwardness during the colonial era. The smell stuck. Arranged marriages raised more stink in independent India, when they often led to bride-burning. That smell, however, has been waning. And if Rochona Majumdar is read carefully, there is a chance of arranged marriages being sniffed at altogether differently.

Far from being “traditional”, the arranged marriage, Majumdar argues, is part and parcel of Indian modernity and modernization. At the time the “arranged marriage” took its distinctive form — Majumdar’s focus is on late 19th century- and early 20th- century Bengal — it borrowed from the past, but evolved its own standards and mechanisms on the basis of the conditions, ideas, aspirations and institutions that were peculiar to that age. And these were definitely ‘modern’. Take urban life, Western education, monetized relationships, use of the print media, cultivation of distinct tastes and the framing of laws — all characteristic markers of Indian modernity.

At the heart of the sudden change in marriage practices was, however, the family, or the “joint” family, more correctly. The stress that the joint family — which could be several households or people living together who function as and imagine themselves to be a unit — underwent with the advent of modernity produced the thrust for change in marriage practices. As Majumdar reads it, the story of the arranged marriage, together with its paraphernalia, represented, essentially, the story of the survival of the Indian family, which too changed remarkably.

In a sense, therefore, Majumdar tries to rescue the discussion on marriage from the nationalist discourse, which sees almost all changes in the notion of Indian conjugality as the result of the attempt of the Indian patriarchy to fight off colonial subordination. Majumdar does not disagree that a new patriarchy was born as a result of the conditions created by colonial rule, with its own stultifying ideas about gender. However, the changes that it wrought or the compromises it assented to — for example, acknowledgment of the distinct identity of husband and wife as a “couple” — was a necessity born out of urban experience.

This tactical move of the Indian joint family to save itself did not unfold at one go. It took decades, for it had to rearrange its priorities depending on the challenges it met. One such challenge came from the menace of dowry, a complication produced by the marriage market, as it evolved gradually. Together with the arrangement of marriages through newspaper advertisements, a dilution of the emphasis on caste, the commodification of bridegrooms by the marriage market, Majumdar sees dowry — a price the family of the bride had to pay to the groom’s family — as an entirely new development during the age (an assumption likely to be contested).

The criticism it evoked in society and the anti-dowry agitation — that addressed the reading public and not the State, unlike previous social reform campaigns — altered, Majumdar insists, the “tenor of the so-called women’s question in Bengal”. It simultaneously set in motion the circulation of ideas that would lead to far-reaching changes in the mental universe of Bengali society. Refinement in taste (at least the pretence of it), the ‘rediscovery’ of spirituality as the basis of Indian conjugality, the evaluation of rituals (that would decide the framing of laws) and the attempt to understand and accommodate what Majumdar calls the “couple form” all came from this exercise. Ironically, it also produced new stereotypes of women and expectations of their role and behaviour in the ‘family’.

It is impossible to dissociate the family from Indian conjugality, and that is what makes it so different from conjugality as seen in the West, which sees romantic love (a new concept, Majumdar argues, even by European standards) as its basis. This is neither retrograde nor progressive. It is just the way marriage in India has evolved, and with it, the attendant law. Majumdar’s argument seems disarmingly simple, as does her prose. But if it is the “joint family” that precipitated what may be called the rearrangement of marriage practices, Majumdar fails to bring out the precise tensions that were at work. She talks of the pressure produced by urban life and education, but does not sufficiently explain why exactly the ‘family’ was in death throes at the turn of the century. What were the actual dynamics within the joint family at that time? Majumdar also seems to underplay the Brahmo effect on the evolution of arranged marriages.

Yes, she talks about the Brahmo idea behind the preeti upohar, the change of marriage attire, particularly for women, the re-evaluation of marriage rituals, but not so much about their influence on the mental world of the youth. And there remain lingering doubts if “arranged marriage”, as she presents it, is not actually a “rearranged” form of marriage through negotiation or match-fixing as it always happened in Indian society.

Majumdar taps an unsual archive — of photographs and documents, marriage invitations, pamphlets and even jewellery catalogues. It is a fascinating and meticulous study which is likely to stir up debate and discussion on an aspect of everyday Indian life. It may even add to the stench of arranged marriage.