Love and Marriage in Modern India

The establishment of Indian independence in 1947 led to important legal reforms in gender relations. Voting rights were extended to women by the Constitution of 1950, which also outlawed discrimination by sex. Laws adopted somewhat later provided for divorce by mutual consent, banned polygamy (except among Indian Muslims), and established the right of women to have abortions.

The new laws benefited upper-class, well-educated Hindu women who took advantage of increased opportunities for careers in politics, business, and education. However, regardless of the law and their abilities, career women in India were often unable to win acceptance as equals by their male colleagues and associates. Circumstances were far worse for the hundreds of millions of poor women, most of who lived in India’s 560,000 rural villages. For these women, issues such as access to the most minimal level of education, obtaining adequate nutriction and basic health care (especially relating to childbirth), and opportunities for paid work of any kind remained major concerns.

In the 1970s, the continuing obstacles Indian women faced led to the emergence of a feminist movement. As their counterparts did in other countries, Indian feminists founded organizations and journals, conducted research on gender issues, lobbied governmental officials, became active in the labor movement, ran for public office, and organized protest demonstrations. The striking achievements in recent decades of female Indian writers such as Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Gita Mehta, and Arundhati Roy gave literary expression to the new feminist activism.

Indian feminists have had to face more difficult challenges compared to their counterparts in the West. The tradition of purdah (the physical exclusion of women) continues to be significant in India’s villages. In addition, owing to widespread poverty and the social pressure on families to provide dowries for their daughters, female infanticide in some rural regions is still a serious problem. Finally, there is widespread prejudice in India against widows, a lingering legacy of the once-significant practice of widow-suicide (sati).

As the product of Indian realities (as well as contacts with feminists in the West and elsewhere), the views of Indian feminists have their own distinctiveness. The document by Madhu Kishwar (that I would like you to read by clicking here), one of India’s leading feminists, provides us with an interesting illustration of this point. Kishwar’s essay, which appeared in the journal Manushi (Woman), argues in favor of what she calls “family-arranged” marriage (which is still the way most marriages come about in India), as opposed to Western-style “self-arranged” marriage. The article led to much debate in the pages of Manushi and should not be understood as the authoritative view of India’s feminists on the issue of marriage. It is, nonetheless, an important statement and is included here because of the window it open on important aspects of Indian society and culture in the 20th century.

After reading the article, I would like you to consider and discuss the following: According to Madhu Kishwar, what is wrong with the idea of “love marriage?” Why does she believe that “self-arranged” marriage is a more useful term than “love marriage?” What advantages does Kishwar see in “family-arranged” marriages? What problems does she acknowledge in family-arranged marriages? Is there a contradiction between family-arranged marriages and love between spouses? What does this article suggest about the emotional life of Indian married couples? About the importance of individualism in India? Is Kishwar’s portrait of marriage in the West accurate? How do the gender and family circumstances described by Kishwar in the 1990s compare with those described by Manmohini Sahgal in the 1920s? Were there significant changes? How do the views of Kishwar compare with those of Higuchi Keiko on here? Your thoughts…